Threads of Crimson and Gold In The Bible

        The Dutch critic, Professor Kuenen, criticized the Old Testament with unbiased freedom, and especially the Prophets; yet he wrote concerning them. As we watch the weaving of the web of Hebrew life, we endeavor to trace through it the more conspicuous threads. Long time the eye follows the crimson; it disappears at length; but the golden thread of sacred prophecy continues to the end. The Prophets teach us to live and to struggle; to believe with immovable firmness; to hope even when all is dark around us; to trust the voice of God in our inmost consciousness; to speak with boldness and with power.We have often visited the ruins of a famous castle in Heidelberg, with which no doubt many of our readers are well acquainted. Long ago it was captured, and, that it might never be a stronghold to the patriots of Germany again, the enemy burnt it and blew up the walls. But in the weedy fosse there is a huge fragment of a tower which, when exploded, alighted there; and in the goodly joining of its stones and the hardening of its ancient mortar such a rocky mass had it become, that when lifted from its base, instead of descending in a shower of rubbish, it came down superbly a tower still. And like that massy keep, the books we have been considering are so knit together in their exquisite accuracy, the histories are so riveted to one another, and the epitles so morticed into the histories, and the very substance of epistles and histories alike is so penetrated by that cement of all-pervasive reality, that the whole now forms an indissoluble concrete. Such a book has God made the Bible that, whatever theories wax popular or whatever systems explode the scripture cannot be broken. Hamalton, 1814-1867.