and the pure spirituality of Christ. External forms are more and more discarded in the later portions of their writings; and their views of the old dispensation become increasingly independent of those who lived near its origin. In the Messianic system toward which they gladly advance, is evidently expected a clearer light and less cumbrous service. The Hebraic dispensation was provisional, and appointed to generate what was necessary for all men; but it was neither designed nor adapted to continue longer than to do a preparatory work, since it was circumscribed to a small portion of the human family, and was unfitted for extension throughout the world. It ended as soon as the ideas coined in the die prepared by Jehovah were thrown into the hands of Japhet, whose mission it was to transfer them into all historic languages, and give them a free circulation co-extensive with the commerce of the globe. The fountain of faith was enlarged in Shem simultaneously with the immense development of admiration in Japhet. Both were equally aside from Egypt, and its reminiscences of Ham. The Hebrews were an alphabetic people, and never used a hieroglyphic, but despised symbolism in all its forms. They were the depository of that pure and sublime monotheism, which has been the special glory of the Shemitic races from the earliest time to the present day. The Indo-Germanic races, to which the Persians were allied closely in antiquity, and of which the Greeks were the purest exponent, borrowed temple-worship from over the sea, like every other element of artistic decoration, and perfected it. So far as the Jews possessed art, they appropriated it from the banks of the Euphrates, perhaps, but never from the Nile. In their best days, and under the auspices of two mighty kings, father and son, they were incapable of erecting a suitable religious edifice without foreign aid. Had it not been for his fortunate alliance with Hiram of Tyre, it is probable that Solomon would never have seen executed the temple which so greatly enhanced his fame. That was of Tyrian art, fashioned after Phœnician types, and foretokened how, still further west, the splendor of Shem, and taste of Japhet, would yet more closely commingle, and be mutually benefitted in the joint works of faith and love.