2. Consequently these passages are incontrovertible proof of the genuineness and real antiquity of these writings. In their time they had interest――just that interest which attaches to sober truth: none more or other than this. 3. The Scriptures were written with special adaptation to their first readers, and must include therefore those matters which had real value and interest _to them_, whether they would continue to have interest and value many thousand years onward or not. This fact, often overlooked, has many important bearings. 4. By far the greater portion of these historic books has a permanent interest and value to us and will have to their readers through all future ages. We see in these ancient books not only the earliest developments of human nature in the primitive society of the race, but also the earliest manifestations of God to men, and can trace their progressive unfoldings step by step, age after age by new methods and with clearer light as we move on toward the great era when God became manifest in human flesh. 5. It may well reconcile us to the annoyance (if such it be) of some unreadable portions that precisely these above all others afford us the strongest evidence of the genuineness and high antiquity of these entire books. They constitute an internal mark of antiquity and genuineness which by the laws of human nature never could be counterfeited. The man who should attempt to counterfeit such proofs that his fiction is true history would not prove himself very sharp save in the skill of spoiling his book and frustrating the only conceivable object of a fiction――for the sake of what? We lay down Genesis, profoundly impressed that this oldest volume of human history is unsurpassed in simplicity and beauty, and wonderfully rich in its revelations both of man and of his Maker. CHAPTER XII. EXODUS. THIS second book of the Pentateuch takes its modern name from its principal event, the exodus of the Hebrew people――their marching forth out of their house of bondage from the land of their oppression, to be replanted under God’s gracious providence in the goodly land promised to their fathers.――――This one main event as recorded in this book includes many subordinate points, _e. g._ I. The _oppressions_ of the Hebrews by the Egyptians. II. _Moses_, who became in the hand of God their great Deliverer; his history; his early training and his call from the Lord to this great work. III. _The great mission of Moses to Egypt’s king_; his reception; the ten successive plagues――miraculous judgments from the hand of God; the case of the magicians; the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart, and the ultimate result. I. _The Oppression._