Unity and Beauty Of The Bible

       We take the Bible into our hands, and examine diligently its different sections, delivered in different ages of mankind. There is a mighty growth in the discoveries of God's nature and will, as time rolls on from creation to redemption; but as knowledge is increased, and brighter light thrown on the Divine purpose and dealings, there is never the point at which we are brought to a pause by the manifest contradiction of one part to another. It is the wonderful property of the Bible, though the authorship is spread over a long line of centuries, that it never withdraws any truth once advanced, and never adds new without giving fresh force to the old. In reading the Bible, we always look, as it were, on the same landscape; the only difference being, as we take in more and more of its statements, that more and more of the mist is rolled away from the horizon, so that the eye includes a broader sweep of beauty. If we hold converse with Patriarchs occupying the earth whilst yet in its infancy, and then listen to Moses as he legislates for Israel, to Prophets throwing open the future, and to Apostles as they publish the mysteries of a new dispensation, we find the discourse: always bearing, with more or less distinctness, on one and the same subject: the latter speakers, if we may use such illustration, turn towards us a larger portion than the former of the illuminated hemisphere; but, as the mighty globe revolves on its axis, we feel that the oceans and lands, which come successively into view, are but constituent parts of the same glorious world. There is the discovery of the new territories; but, as fast as discovered, the territories combine to make up one planet. There is the announcement of the new truths; but, as fast as announced, they take their places as parts of one immutable system. Indeed, there is vast difference between the Epistles of St. Paul, and the Psalms of David, or the Prophecies of Isaiah. But it is the difference, as we have just said, between the landscape whilst the morning mist yet rests on half its villages and lakes, and that same range of scenery when the noontide irradiates every spire and every rivulet. It is the difference between the moon, as she turns towards us only a thin crescent of her illuminated disk, and when, in the fullness of her beauty, she walks our firmament, and scatters our night. It is no new landscape which opens on our gaze, as the town and forest emerge from the shadow, and fill up the blanks in the noble panorama. It is no new planet which comes traveling in its majesty, as the crescent swells into the circle, and the faint thread of light gives place to the rich globe of silver. And it is no fresh system of religion which is made known to the dwellers in this creation, as the brief notices given to patriarchs expand in the institutions of the law, and under the breathings of prophecy, till at length, in the days of Christ and His apostles, they burst into magnificence, and fill a world with redemption. It is throughout the same system for the rescue of humankind by the interference of a surety. And revelation has been nothing else but the gradual development of this system, the drawing up another fold of the veil from the landscape, the adding another stripe of light to the crescent, so that the early fathers of our race, and ourselves on whom ''the ends of the world are come,'' look on the same arrangement for human deliverance, though to them there was nothing but a clouded expanse, with here and there a prominent landmark, whilst to us, through the horizon losing itself in the far-off eternity, every object of personal interest is exhibited in beauty and distinctness. Melvill