historical portions of the Old Testament, in which, under the illumination of the Holy Spirit, the direct intuition of God’s purposes and of the deep springs of human action superseded the necessity of philosophical argument and deduction.  The historians of the Old Testament did not pause to argue concerning their statements of men’s motives and God’s designs.  They saw both with wonderful clearness of vision; and they found in the simplicity and directness of the Hebrew syntax, so far removed from all that is involved and complex, a suitable vehicle for their simple and direct statements of truth.  How congenial the Hebrew language is to poetic composition, as well in its rugged and sublime forms as in its tender and pathetic strains, every reader of the Old Testament in the original understands.  The soul is not more at home in the body than is sacred poetry in the language of the covenant people.  As the living spirit of the cherubim animated and directed the wheels of the chariot in Ezekiel’s vision, so does the spirit of inspired poesy animate and direct the words and sentences of the Hebrew language:  “When the cherubim went, the wheels went by them; and when the cherubim lifted up their wings to mount up from the earth, the same wheels also turned not from beside them.  When they stood, these stood; and when they were lifted up, these lifted up themselves also:  for the spirit of the living creatures was in them.”  Ezek. 10:16, 17.  The same characteristics fitted the Hebrew language most perfectly for prophetic vision, in which the poetic element so largely prevails.

2.  Turning now from the Hebrew of the Old Testament to the Greek of the New, we have a language very different in its structure; elaborate in its inflections and syntax, delicate and subtle in its distinctions, rich in its vocabulary, highly cultivated in every department of writing, and flexible in an eminent degree; being thus equally adapted to every variety of style—­plain unadorned narrative, impassioned oratory, poetry of every form, philosophical discussion, and severe logical reasoning:  in a word, a language every way fitted to the wants of the gospel, which is given not for the infancy of the world but for its mature age, and which deals not so much with the details of particulars as with great principles, which require for their full comprehension the capacity of abstraction and generalization.  In the historical records of the Old Testament, and in its poetic and prophetic parts, the Hebrew language was altogether at home.  But for such compositions as the epistle to the Romans the Greek offered a more perfect medium; and here, as everywhere else God’s providence took care that the founders of the Christian church should be furnished in the most complete manner.