The ill consequences to the English reader, so far as the doctrines essential to his salvation are concerned, are counteracted by the record of the visible appearance of the official Person incarnate, the historical narratives of his acts, his expiatory death, his resurrection and ascension, and the doctrinal revelations and apostolic testimonies of the New Testament; and he is far too easily led to regard the Divine oracles as of little significance or importance, except in so far as they specially teach those essential doctrines. In this partial view of their import and design, the Old Testament is lightly esteemed or disregarded with respect to the far greater part of its contents, by those who most highly esteem the New, and with respect to the whole of its contents, by many. It is not recognized as a continuous record of personal Divine manifestations, visible appearances, supernatural acts, audible enunciations; a record of the creation, of the apostasy and its consequences, of the administration of providence and grace, and of visible interpositions and retributions towards individuals, families, and nations; a progressive disclosure of the attributes, prerogatives, and purposes of the Self-existent, of his acts as Lawgiver and Ruler, and of his supremacy, majesty and glory, whereby He who personally appeared and acted under the ancient dispensations, and at length became incarnate, revealed himself in his delegated relations as truly to the universe of the unfallen as to man, and as truly with reference to results yet future as to those incipient events in which were laid the foundations of his onward, universal, and never-ending system of manifestations and agencies, and in the progress of which all the wonders of mercy and justice, all the retributions of time and awards of eternity, all the paradoxes and mysteries of the past, and their relations to the future, are to be disclosed, vindicated, and rendered luminous to the apprehension of intelligent creatures. The eternal purposes which were purposed in him before the foundation of the world, and the sequel of the covenants, prescriptions, promises, comminations, symbols, and predictions which, in connection with the first of their respective series of events, were announced to the patriarchs and prophets, await the future for their ever-widening range of illustration and accomplishment. The scene is but begun. The first steps only of an endless progress, the first events only of a continuous, inseparable, and endless series, the first disclosures only of a boundless range of development by the same divine Actor and Revealer, have yet transpired. The earth as his footstool is yet to be the scene of the restitution of all things. His early footsteps on it are to be retraced in a renewed paradise, and the visible manifestations of the past to be resumed, when all that is recorded of Him in his offices and his administration, and