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THE WORLD, AS KNOWN AT THE TIME OF THE

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GENERAL HISTORY,

BRIEFLY SKETCHED,

UPON SCRIPTURAL PRINCIPLES.

INTRODUCTION.

To review the human race as one large family, and to trace it through all its stages of developement, from the earliest to the latest times, is the province of general history. It enters into detail respecting particular nations, only so far as they have borne an essential or a material part in the concerns of the family at large; for which reason it may also be sometimes more occupied with the memoirs of some renowned individual than with those of a whole uncivilized nation, and may properly attribute more importance to a John Guttenberg, the inventor of printing, than to all the Taladshangas of Asia. But as we cannot certify a traveller of his having taken the right road, until we know whither he is destined; so must we feel bewildered with unaccountable things in general history, till we have received some information concerning the great

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"end of all." Nor can this "end" be guessed at, by observing only the course of any one particular nation; every such course being nothing more than as a single tributary rivulet, or but as one of the many mechanical arts or materials required for the erection of a palace. Neither can we learn it, by contemplating the state of the world at any one particular period of its history; every such period being only, as it were, a stage in the transition to some further developement : and because the history of man so often appears to take a retrograde movement, or at least a different course from that to which it is ultimately bound. Were mankind the arbiters of the rise and fall of nations, then might it be possible for the events of every passing age to declare to us the grand general result. But as the cur

rent of events is under the influence of man's Lord and Ruler, who prescribes the courses of nations and of individuals, so as that all shall concur to the fulfilment of the secret counsel of his own will, the ultimate result can be learned only by communications from himself. DIVINE INSTRUCTION, therefore, is requisite to all proper understanding of human history.

Had God left man to wander in total ignorance, excluded from all means of arriving at the knowledge of his ways, then would it indeed be hopeless to attempt to understand the general drift of historical events, until the final consummation of all things. But since his whole determinate counsel, by which even the minutest contingencies are overruled, is briefly comprehended in his revealed word, we are en

abled, by this Divine lamp, to discern our way clearly, at whatever section of man's history we pause to inquire; and to perceive the fitting relation which every such portion of history bears to things past, and to things future. But the greater number of our historians, though they have so far honoured the Bible as to give it the credit of being an authentic record of antiquity, yet have treated it too commonly as a mere human book, which they allow may be consulted with advantage in the absence of other documents; and have failed to notice as of prime importance, that it contains the solution of all historical mystery; that it gives, as it were, a voice to the dead letter of visible nature, and exhibits that perfect and complete outline of Providence, which all the apparent confusion arising from man's free agency is only filling up according to a Divinely preconcerted and settled plan. Men's ordinary way of consideration discovers to them, as it were, but the outside of events; like the exterior of a city to a stranger, who is ignorant of the order of its interior, and who mistakes for its centre one of the more prominent buildings observed by him from his station without the walls; whereas that centre is some humble fountain in the market-place, which of course he is unable to descry. Very different are the views of one who makes use of the word of God as vantage ground, from whence to cast his eye over the whole plan of general history, its multifarious ramifications, their variety of instruction, their mutual connexion, and their uniform tendency to demonstrate the wisdom

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