The Historical Scriptures [pp. 484-504]

I The Historical Scriptures.
point, not merely in sacred but in universal history, its chronological and moral centre, to which all other events must be referred, and by which their significance must be determined, is
the Advent of Christ, the Incarnation of the Son of God. The
revolutionary change which it produced, not only in the Jewish
Church and State, but in the whole condition of the world, is
so distinctly marked and legible in every thing around us, that
we cannot imagine a more obvious and natural division of the
subject into two great parts, than that which is afforded by this
grand event. Such a division is the more convenient for our
present purpose, because universally familiar and coincident
with what has now for ages been the customary method of determining the dates of history. Apart from the intrinsic dignity
and value of the primary epoch thus assumed, it is a practical
advantage of great moment, to be able to set out from one already so conspicuous and well known, and requiring no laborious calculations to reduce it to the ordinary methods of computing time. It is a vast advantage, that the primary division of
our subject should be one which brings it into close and intimate relation to the other parts of history, instead of being insulated from them, as belonging to some other world, and interesting only to some other race.
Having fixed our eye upon the point through which the
first great line of demarcation shall be drawn, let us now look,
for a moment, at the two great portions into which that line
divides the Sacred History. Unequal as they are, when chronologically measured-the proportion being scarcely that of
one to fifty-this immense disparity is rectified at once by a
consideration of the mutual historical relation between these
two periods. When we consider that the three-and-thirty
years of our Saviour's presence upon earth-we might almost say, the three years of his public ministry-have been
permitted by the Holy Ghost to fill as large a space in the inspired record as whole centuries and ages of an earlier date,
we need not hesitate to draw our lines of distribution on the
same safe principle, and give to the Evangelical and Apostolical
History a place in some degree commensurate, not only with
their absolute importance, but with their relative position with
respect to the preparatory dispensation. Taking this dis
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