COURSE OF READING FROM THE OLD TESTAMENT, DESIGNED TO PRESENT A GENERAL VIEW OF ITS PRINCIPAL MATTER AS ILLUSTRATED BY CHRISTIANITY; AND THUS EXHIBITING ONE AND THE SAME DESIGN CARRIED ON BY THE REV. HERBERT N. BEAVER, M. A. LONDON: J. HATCHARD AND SON, 187, PICCADILLY. 1834. PREFACE. THE brief statement of the design of this work, given in the title-page, may require some further explanation. What is there meant by a general view may be understood by considering what this expression means when applied to a material object, as, for example, to a large and magnificent building. In order to form a correct idea of a building which consists of a variety of parts extending over a large surface of ground, it is necessary to behold it from a distance, in such a point of view, as may take in at once those principal parts, which, by their correspondence with each other, display the uniformity and consistency of the whole. This view is a general view; and however attentively you may examine all the parts separately, in a close view, you cannot form a true idea of the effect of the whole, but by taking this general view of it from a distance. We have a general view, then, of the principal matter of the Old Testament when we retain in our minds some clear idea of that unity of the whole, which is seen by the correspondence which so many different and distant parts have with each other, through the connexion which they all have with the same great subject, the kingdom of Christ; that is, the state of things established by the gospel. |