If I say, surely the darkness shall cover me, even the night shall be turned into day. Yea, the darkness is no darkness with thee, but the night shineth as the day: the darkness and the light are both alike to thee." A similar train of lofty conception pervades the writings of the prophets. "Who hath measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, and meted out the heavens with a span, and comprehended the dust of the earth in a measure, and weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance? Behold, the nations are as a drop of a bucket, and are counted as the small dust of the balance; be taketh up the isles as a very little thing. It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grass-hoppers. Lift up your eyes on high, and behold who hath created these things, who bringeth out their host by number: he calleth them all by names, by the greatness of his might, for that he is strong in power, no one faileth. Hast thou not known, hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth; fainteth not, neither is weary! There is no searching of his understanding." The following quotation from the same inspired author is very striking, inasmuch as the truth contained in it is founded upon an enlarged view of the Divine government, and directly pointed against that insidious Manicheism, which, originating in the East, has gradually infected the religious opinions of a large portion of mankind. Light was imagined to proceed from one source, add darkness from another; all good was traced do one being, and all evil was ascribed to a hostile and antagonist principle. Spirit, pure and happy, arose from the former; while matter, with its foul propensities and jarring elements, took its rise from the latter. But Isaiah, guided by an impulse which supersedes the inferences of the profoundest philosophy, thus speaks concerning the God of the Hebrews:--"I am the Lord, and there is none else; there is no God besides me: I form the light, and create darkness; I make peace and create evil; I, the Lord, do all these things." But it is not only in such sublimity of language and exalted imagery that the literature of the Hebrews surpasses the writings of the most learned and ingenious portion of the heathen world. A distinction not less remarkable is to be found in the humane and compassionate spirit which animates even the earliest parts of the sacred volume; composed at a time when the manners of all nations were still unrefined, and the softer emotions were not held in honour. "Blessed is he who considereth the poor and needy; the Lord will deliver him in the time of trouble. The Lord will preserve him and keep him alive; he shall be blessed upon earth, and thou wilt not deliver him into the will of his enemies. The Lord will strengthen him upon the bed of languishing; thou wilt make all his bed in his sickness."