Excerpt from The Typical Persons of the Pentateuch; Their Message to the Church in All Ages; Man in the Presence of God: Sermons Preached During the Season of Lent, 1870-71, in Oxford

Before I answer this question, let me freely admit that other histories too have their own connecting principles and lines of resemblance: other races and families have distinguishing marks, separating them from the rest of the world, and so giving to the antique story a voice of prophecy fulfilled - perhaps again and again - in later days. History, it has been said, re peats itself. We should expect it to do so; for is not human nature substantially the same in all ages; sub ject, indeed, to infinite varieties of influence, wayward and versatile, inconstant and infirm, - yet in this very inconstancy and waywardness, apt to reproduce itself? Fruitful in old errors, and'ready to act over again for gotten scenes? Those of you who read history atten tively must have been startled, I am sure, with the strange parallels and correspondences which come from time to time in your way. A turn in the narrative brings you face to face with what had seemed alto gether buried and past. Old chronicles come down, as it were, from their shelves, and speak in language of these later days. The monuments of bygone ages give up their dead; we can hardly believe our eyes as we look on these resuscitated forms. Nor is it al together an unnatural consequence, that we sometimes question the truth Of what is told us about old times because of this very resemblance to later experience.

The likeness is suspicious; it has a look of forgery about it' and not unfrequently the hasty critic con demns it as such. He finds a modern air in what was really neither ancient nor modern, but a truth of every age.

About the Publisher

Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com

This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.