In this indispensable department of primæval history it is possible that we may have been misled by a very natural misapprehension as to the character of the earlier portions of the Hebrew Scriptures. We read them as if they were addressed to ourselves, and as if their object was historical. These are, both of them, erroneous and misleading ideas. It is evident, on the face of the documents, that their writers had in view no readers excepting those for whose immediate behoof they were composed, and no objects excepting religion and patriotism. Their aim was to form the Israelites into a people by the instrumentality of a Code, sanctioned and enforced by religion. The writings, therefore, necessarily lay a foundation for the religion, give an exposition of it, and set forth the motives for its observance. The Code is the point of view from which the religion, and the formation of the people that from which the Code, is to be regarded. History is no more their object than science. They do, of course, contain a part, and that a most important part, of the history of mankind; for, in carrying out their aim, they give much of the history of a people that was destined to have a great, and permanent, and ever-growing effect on the world. But it is important to observe that even this they contain only incidentally. To us both their religious aims, and their incidental history, give them a value which cannot be over-estimated. We shall, however, only fall into mistakes if we lose sight of their primary, limited, Hebrew, religious purpose, and regard them as universal history.