Note 399 — SERMON IV.[390]

Analogy, P. ii. c. vii.—The same thing has been more fully expressed in a volume of Sermons which deserves to be far better known than it is:—"I suppose that if there is one portion of the Old Testament which a discriminator would set aside as less needing to be reckoned inspired than other parts, it is the Historical; the books which are strictly narrative. Now it may seem to have been providentially ordered, in the purpose of meeting this view, that these books are made to bear on them most peculiarly the stamp and the claim of Inspiration. For they do not profess to be so much the account of what Man did, as what God did in ruling men, and guiding human events. They are a history of a providential course of events, and, (which is the point,) as seen from the providential point of view. They are a history written not on Earth, but above the skies. Events are spoken of therefore in this view. A man's obduracy is recorded thus,—'God hardened his heart.' A king numbers his people; it is recorded as a thing suggested in the spiritual world. In fact, the historic volume of the Old Testament is a history of the secret springs of things; it is a narrative of things which none but God Almighty could know; not Man's Word therefore at all, but God's."—Sermons, by the Rev. C. P. Eden, pp. 153-155. Several other extracts from the same suggestive volume of a very excellent Divine, will be found in the Appendix.