ON

THE BIBLE.

WRITTEN FOR THE

MASSACHUSETTS SABBATH SCHOOL UNION.

BY ERODORE.

REVISED BY THE PUBLISHING COMMITTEE.

Boston:

PRINTED BY T. R. MARVIN, FOR THE
MASSACHUSETTS SABBATH SCHOOL UNION,
And sold at their Depository.

Be it remembered, that on the seventeenth day of November, A. D. 1829, in the fifty fourth year of the Independence of the United States of America, CHRISTOPHER C. DEAN, of the said District, has deposited in this Office the Title of a Book, the right whereof he claims as Proprietor, in the words following, to wit:

"Conversations on the Bible. Written for the Massachusetts Sabbath School Union. By Erodore."

In conformity to the Act of the Congress of the United States, entitled "An Act for the encouragement of learning, by securing the copies of maps, charts and books, to the authors and proprietors of such copies, during the times therein mentioned:" and also to an Act entitled "An Act supplementary to an Act entitled An Act for the encouragement of learning, by securing the copies of maps, charts and books, to the authors and proprietors of such copies during the times therein mentioned; and extending the benefits thereof to the arts of designing, engraving and etching historical and other prints."

JNO, W. DAVIS,}

Clerk of the District of Massachusetts.

PREFACE.

A CHILD who has been accustomed to read the Bible from infancy, may, and in fact generally does, acquire a minute and familiar acquaintance with all its parts, while he is entirely destitute of any general and comprehensive conceptions of its character and design as a whole. The manner in which the Scriptures are read, for the ordinary purposes of devotion, does not commonly encourage the attainment of any general views. A new chapter is not read until at least all vivid recollection of the preceding has passed away;-one book is not collated with another; the subjects of allusions are not sought for and examined; and thus a great many of the beauties, as well as a great many of the difficulties of the Bible, remain unobserved, for want of the very little spirit of investigation which would be sufficient to discover them. There are probably many, very many, families in New England, which have for years listened morning and evening to the reading of the Gospels, and yet whose inmates would now be surprised to learn, that our Saviour was clothed by his enemies, on the testimony of one evangelist, in a scarlet, and on that of another, in a purple robe.