De Beauvoir Priaulx,³⁴ looking at Moses as a counsellor, leader, and legislator, says:—“Invested with this high authority, he announced to the Jews their future religion, and announced it to them as a state religion, and as framed for a particular state, and that state only. He gave this religion, moreover, a creed so narrow and negative—he limited it to objects so purely temporal, he crowded it with observances so entirely ceremonial or national—that we find it difficult to determine whether Moses merely established this religion in order that by a community of worship he might induce in the tribe-divided Israelites that community of sentiment which would constitute them a nation; or, whether he only roused them to a sense of their national dignity, in the hope that they might then more faithfully perform the duties of priests and servants of Jehovah. In other words, we hesitate to decide whether in the mind of Moses the state was subservient to the purposes of religion, or religion to the purposes of state.” ³⁴ Questiones Mosaicæ, p. 438. The same writer observes³⁵ that, according to the Jewish writings, Moses “is the friend and favourite of the Deity. He is one whose prayers and wishes, the Deity hastens to fulfil, one to whom the Deity makes known his designs. The relations between God and the prophet are most intimate. God does not disdain to answer the questions of Moses, to remove his doubts, and even occasionally to receive his suggestions, and to act upon them even in opposition to his own pre-determined decrees.” ³⁵ p. 418. NEW LIFE OF DAVID IN compiling a biographical account of any ancient personage, impediments often arise from the uncertainty, party bias, and prejudiced coloring of the various traditions out of which, the biography is collected. Here no such obstacle is met with, no such bias can be imagined, for, in giving the life of David, we extract it from an all-wise God’s perfect and infallible revelation to man, and thus are enabled to present it to our readers free from any doubt, uncertainty, or difficulty. There is perhaps the fear that the manner of this brief sketch may be adjudged to be within the operation of such common law as wisely protects the career of the saints from mere sinful common-sense criticism; but as the matter is derived from the authorised version for which England is indebted to James, of royal and pious memory, this new life of David may be safely left to the impartial judgment of Mr. Justice North, aided by the charitable and pious counsel of Sir Hardinge Giffard. The latter, who has had more than one criminal client for whom he has most ably pleaded, might be relied on to make out a strong, if not a good, case for punishing any one who is unfair to the man after God’s own heart. Mr. Justice Stephen has furnished me with some slight guide in his notice of Voltaire’s play called “David:”—