Many scholars have devoted their entire lives to the task of deciphering old documents, as it is impossible for literature of an age anterior to our present era by many centuries to preserve its original physiognomy two thousand years later. A translation of the hymns of the Veda, or of the Zend-Avesta, requires exactly the same process as the deciphering of the inscriptions in the time of Cyrus, Darius, and Xerxes. The only certain way is to compare every passage in which the same word occurs, and look for a meaning that is equally applicable to all. From the lack of this method Sanscrit and Zend texts have been rendered most incorrectly. It is precisely the Sacred Writings that have suffered the most from the efforts of interpreters. Those passages of the hymns which have no close connection with religious or philosophical doctrines are generally correctly rendered, but as each generation expects to find the ideas reflecting its own time in the words of the ancient seers, the most simple discourse--if it can in any way be construed to represent modern thought--is tortured and twisted so as to coincide with preconceived ideas, however foreign to the mind of the writer. It is the same with the Hebrew version of the Old Testament. At the time when the seventy Jews at Alexandria were occupied in translating the Scriptures into Greek, 250 B.C., although Hebrew could not be looked upon as a dead language, yet even the most learned amongst these elders did not understand the original of many of the expressions, and probably few of the translators undertook the task of explaining how far those to whom Moses’ discourses were addressed, understood them. If the Old Testament has lost amongst the Higher Critics some of its ancient glories, it has, on the other hand, acquired a historical value which theologians of former times had never contemplated. The knowledge of comparative philology having been used in deciphering the cuneiform inscriptions or hieroglyphics engraved on the ruined walls of the temples and palaces of Nineveh and Babylon, we possess information concerning the worship of the Phœnicians, the Carthaginians, and the Nomads of the Arabian peninsula. We no longer seek the help of the inscriptions in proving the truth of the biblical records; it is rather these which confirm the correctness of all that we learn from the inscriptions. One more remark on the subject of our venerable and venerated Bible. I do not understand how it is that some people with literary tastes never open the Old Testament to satisfy them. Lack of habit perhaps. Some of the wits of the Renaissance looked down on the Old Testament; now the admirers of classic literature know better how to appreciate its literary beauties of many kinds of which it is full; some of our modern writers have been much commended for their perorations; the perorations of the chapters contained in the Bible are superb.