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CONCLUSION.

Our investigation has led us to the following conclusions :

I. THE historical Books of the Old Testament contain the most crude and unworthy notions of God and of his Providence. The human representations of the Deity given in Genesis are quite in character with the mode of thinking which prevailed in the infancy of mankind. Jehovah is portrayed as the national-God of the Hebrews throughout the historical writings.

II. The notions concerning God contained in the Books of the Prophets, particularly in those which were written after the captivity, though strictly Judaical, are certainly less limited, and less remote from truth.

III. The purest and most elevated conceptions of God are to be found in those Books which were composed by private individuals; who either disregarded the peculiar national ideas and prejudices of their countrymen, or had raised themselves above them. It was not so much by the teaching of their priests and prophets, as by the studies and contemplations of their other wise men, that the religious principle was cultivated and developed among the Jewish people.

LONDON:

PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS,

Stamford Street.

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