of instruction, its temples of solemn worship; its philosophers, poets, orators, and statesmen; its laws, manners, sciences, and fine arts, are the accumulation, the work, and the growth of centuries. It is the same with nations as with individuals, and with all nations and countries as with one; the blessings of civilization are gradually diffused, sometimes retarded, and often buried for ages beneath the inroads of barbarism; but again emerging in greater abundance, taking a firmer step, and advancing onward and wider than before. And at last, from the favored position on which we have been placed, we see before us the certain prospect, in the increased facilities and means of communication which are now opened up, that they will be still more universally imparted, until truth, righteousness, and peace, cover the face of the whole earth. Consider now, under the same progressive aspect, the _scheme of revelation_. Here we find the same analogy prevailing from the less to the greater, from the smallest tokens of the Divine favor, to the full and boundless manifestations of inexhaustible love and mercy. From the fall to the restoration of man, the expressions of God’s interest in our condition are limited and obscure; but the plan is defined and the means arranged in the only way that was proper to display his goodness and make us sensible of his mercies. The blessings conferred upon the people of God, before the law and under the law, were chiefly temporal. Hence the rites and ceremonies of their worship were purposely of such a nature, and so multiplied, as principally to operate through the medium of the senses. Hence the various symbols of the Divine presence, when God personally, as it were, descended among them, and over-awed them by his visible glory. Hence the giving of the law amidst thunders, and lightnings, and shakings of the mountains, when external nature under its most appalling aspects bore testimony to the severe justice of the Divine character, and seemed to intimate, in a way which even the most hardened sinners would understand, how dreadful must be the judgments of their incensed and supreme Lawgiver. The Israelites were not sufficiently removed from their natural state to be as yet capable of a religion purely spiritual, like the Christian; and hence it was, that every later dispensation of God excelled the former, even as the trumpet on Mount Sinai “waxed louder and louder,” every succeeding blast transcending those that went before. The prophets rose above the ritual law, and showed men a more excellent way of worshiping God than by external performances, thereby preparing their minds for the reception of the Gospel. The tabernacle was no longer used after Solomon’s temple was built, but was laid aside, as the temple itself was “when the fullness of the time was come;” and as the sanctuary and tabernacle preceded the temple, so the glory of the latter was to be greater than that of the