might suffer and die for our sins. The Bible shows that this did not happen till about 4,000 years after Adam, the first man, had been created in the Garden of Eden.

At the time our Saviour came, only the first part of God's Book, "THE OLD TESTAMENT," had been given to mankind through the medium of twenty-five inspired writers, who had all pointed onward to Jesus, the Redeemer of the world.

The first half-dozen books of the Bible (including Job) are believed to have been written by MOSES in the wilderness; but just before the people of Israel reach the Promised Land, MOSES goes up to Mount Nebo to die, and JOSHUA then succeeds him as the ruler and historian of Israel. Joshua is succeeded by SAMUEL, the Prophet and Judge, and Nathan and Gad, the Seers; and in a further era, EZRA and NEHEMIAH-collect and conclude the inspired Chronicles of Judges and of Kings, and add to the Canon of THE OLD TESTAMENT, the Psalms of David, and others, and the Proverbs and Songs of Solomon, while in order to understand the four greater Prophets, whether Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel, or the twelve minor, we must realize that their inspired histories or predictions were all interspersed through the reigns of the different kings of Judah and Israel, except those of HAGGAI and ZECHARIAH, who prophesied during the rebuilding of the Temple at Jerusalem after the Captivity, and MALACHI, who referred to fresh corruptions during the absence of NEHEMIAH in Persia. His book closes the Canon of the Old Testament Scriptures 400 years before Christ.

We are apt to have rather confused notions of the time when the Prophets lived, and of the people to whom they prophesied, whether to Israel or to Judah, and this will only be cleared up by our observing the distinct division of those two kingdoms, which we often forget when we call all Israelites "Jews." *

*The name "Jew" was properly applied to a member of the kingdom of Judah after the separation of the Ten Tribes. It occurs twice in the second book of Kings; 2 Kings xvi. 6, xxv. 25, and seven times in the later chapters of Jeremiah, from the xxxii. onwards, and always refers to Jerusalem and Judah. After the partial return of Judah it may have included whatever members of the Ten Tribes (and they must have been

Of Judah there are twenty kings, and of Israel nineteen kings. The books of Kings and Chronicles, with Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther, which follow, present therefore the great platform of Israel's history (occupying about 530 years), on which all the Prophets moved and spake, although their books seem to come after the Kings in the Bible. We cannot at all understand the Prophets unless we remember the King and his times, in which each Prophet lived, and how these kings succeeded each other.

Each reader should make a list for him or herself of the two sets of kings, with their dates, and fill in to each reign the particular prophecies sent to either kingdom.

The order of the books of the Old Testament would then not stand exactly as we have them, but rather as follows, in order of time:

CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER OF THE BOOKS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT.

The two books of Samuel give us the history of Saul and David, and are the best key to many of the Psalms. David's life takes up forty chapters, and is told over again in nineteen chapters of the first book of Chronicles, while its close occupies also two chapters of the first book of Kings-sixty-nine chapters

comparatively few) had returned with the captives of Babylon. Those who were their adversaries call them "the children of Judah and Benjamin." (Ezra iv. 1.) They are also called in the narrative the "children of Israel," which in part they certainly were; for all Jews were Israelites, though all Israelites were not Jews.

in all. The life of Solomon and "all his glory" is told in twenty chapters-eleven in the first book of Kings and nine in the 2nd of Chronicles, but it is in the second book of Kings and the second book of Chronicles that we must look for the history of the divided kingdom of Judah and Israel.

In the NEW TESTAMENT are handed down to us the great events of the Birth, Death, Resurrection, and Ascension of the World's Redeemer, and after our Lord had been seen to go back into heaven by his disciples, He gave power by His Holy Spirit to eight more inspired men, Evangelists and Apostles, who had followed His steps on earth, to finish the wondrous Story of Salvation, and to write the NEW TESTAMENT, or the second part of the Bible.

Matthew and John, Peter, James, and Jude, had seen Jesus for themselves, and could recount His sufferings and declare His doctrines as eye and ear witnesses; while the great Apostle Paul had, as he ofttimes declares, also received his ministry, "not from men, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ."

Mark evidently travelled with the Apostles. He was a younger man than they, and had not himself gone about with Christ. We find him last with Peter (1 Peter v. 13), whose private secretary many suppose him to have been. Luke also appears to have written much under the influence of his beloved teacher, Paul, and to have derived his information from the Holy Family and many other sources, which he grouped together, as empowered by the Holy Ghost.

Matthew speaks of Jesus as the SON OF ABRAHAM, and his Gospel is often called the Gospel of the Kingdom.

Mark writes of Him as the SERVANT of God.

Luke chiefly as the SON OF MAN.

John pre-eminently as the Son of God.

The Apostle John was the youngest of the inspired Apostles, and had been the intimate friend of his Divine Master. At the Crucifixion he received the tender charge to take his Lord's place as a son to His own dear mother; and the personal love which his Lord had shewn him had doubtless admitted him to deeper and greater knowledge of His Divinity, which his GOSPEL

shows us that he had, and which he pondered in his heart, like the Virgin Mother, till he likewise received that grand "REVELATION" from Jesus Christ (probably while labouring in the mines of the rough and rugged Isle of Patmos) which closes our NEW TESTAMENT Scriptures, and has comforted the suffering saints and martyrs of all ages.

The Book of the Revelation has a wonderful connexion with the prophecy of Daniel. We must leave what is certainly future in it to reverent meditation; the Fall of Babylon, the Binding of Satan, the First Resurrection, the Thousand Millennial Years, the Final Judgment, the New Heavens and the New Earth; but when we come to this closing Book we shall have passed up the flight of solemn and eternal Stairs, beside which in their order, one above another, ready to instruct each willing hearer, still stand the venerable forms of Moses and Joshua, Samuel and the Seers of his period; David and Solomon, Ezra and Nehemiah, along with Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, and all the prophets-who lead our steps upward to the broad landing-place of the Redeemer's first advent.

"the

And thence by aid of the Evangelists, Matthew, Mark, and Luke; by the teaching of the Apostles, Peter and Paul, and James and Jude, we have been handed onward to John, the beloved disciple, who, by His Master's choice, holds open door into heaven." When Solomon built the gorgeous fabric of God's Temple in Jerusalem, there was an ascent to that which astonished the Queen of Sheba, and gives us a faint shadow of this more wondrous flight of Bible stairs, which Divine wisdom has built up for men even upon earth, whereby they may approach the "temple of the Tabernacle of the testimony in heaven" (Rev. xv. 5), and look in over the sea of glass mingled with fire, "and listen to the song of Moses and the Lamb," hymned by the harps of God.

THE CHAIN OF THE BOOKS.

Dear friends, young or old, on whom God has recently bestowed the new heart and the right spirit, that is ready to ascend these stairs of the heavenly Temple, may His Presence abide with you as you enter on your inheritance of these inspired

books, each telling different parts of one connected Story, for one thread runs through them all. King Solomon, the wisest of men, compared the books of his Bible to a chain of which not one link could drop out except with great loss to the rest, every single link of that chain having been ordered of God. What does the wise man say that he would have us do with it?

"My son, my daughter, forget not my law, but let thine heart keep my commandments: For length of days, and long life, and peace shall they add unto thee.

"Bind them about thy neck, write them upon the table of thine heart.

"So shalt thou find favour, and good understanding in the sight of God and man" (Prov. iii. 1 to 4).

The Roman Catholics, who are taught from childhood more about the Virgin Mary than about the Bible, wear a chain of beads, by which they number their prayers or Ave Marias to that dear Mother of Christ, to whom, however, her Son never bade them pray. The children of Protestants are not taught to "count their beads," but do we reckon as carefully as we might do, and as frequently, our links in the chain of God's books? so that we may study the portions by turns of those Divine instructions which alone can keep us from error and evil?

And now that the writings of Prophets and Apostles and Evangelists have been added to King Solomon's Bible-in the fulness of time, each generation can still see for itself how thoroughly all the books combine to form one book, not as mere chapters thrown together, but marvellously and spiritually interwoven; the most distant portions connected by quotations and allusions, and each part aiding to explain the others.

The Bible comes down to us by the varying human utterance of thirty-three different minds, but through a space of 1,500 years all these have concurred in a profound unity of thought and plan, so that no one part can be detached or withdrawn without affecting all the rest. "The Scripture cannot be broken," as Jesus said, John x. 35. "Destructive criticism may go to work with its penknife, like Jehoram of old, but when it has done its worst the writing is calmly restored as before."

The Book is stamped with the signature of the Almighty God