doubt that Job is the first writer whose productions are preserved. That he wrote before Moses seems quite evident from statements easily understood; viz., his descriptions are only of the manners and customs of the ancient patriarchs, his religion is purely patriarchal, the only idolatry he mentions is the worship of the sun and moon, thus seeming to antedate the time of their idol worship, and lastly, he makes no mention of Sodom, Gomorrah, or Abraham, which would scarcely have been the case had he written after Moses. Moses may likely have read Job and have received added inspiration from it, if, indeed, he should need more than to have received the tables writ with God’s own finger. There are, thus far, six pamphlets bound with sixty of later date that make up our book. Look at the antiquity of these six venerable fragments, written one thousand years before Homer sang, one thousand years before either Herodotus or Confucius was born. Following these earlier Scripture writings there came to be mentioned the rolls of the prophets, songs and sketches of genealogies and history, so that gradually fragments, here and there, came forth by divine direction, which, preserved by divine care, were to enter the canon which we have of sixty-six pamphlets, by about forty writers, the entire authorship spanning a period of about sixteen centuries, geographically ranging over the cities of Chaldea, the plains of Arabia, and the mountains of Palestine. The range of mind is equally varied; written by men who sat on thrones, by some who lived as hermits in the mountains, and by some who were shepherds and fishermen. About 600 B. C., it is recorded in Jeremiah xxxvi that Jehoiachim, while listening to the reading of the roll, became so enraged at its contents that he took his penknife and defaced it, and then cast it into the fire-place and saw it consumed. He has had many descendants of the same temper, and his race is not yet extinguished. In about 450 B. C.—I am careful to give approximate dates in round numbers—the sacred rolls were so mutilated that when Ezra and Nehemiah returned from the eastern captivity and reorganized the old worship in the city of Jerusalem, they added to their other improvements the establishment of a district library, Ezra collected and translated all the copies of the Bible, writing in a kind of Chaldaic Hebrew, the old language modified by the eastern dialect, with which the Hebrews in their captivity had grown familiar, so that now there were two languages of Scripture, the Samaritans clinging tenaciously to the old Hebrew of Job, and Moses, and the prophets after them.