Excerpt from Authorship and Date of the Books of Moses: Considered With Special Reference to Professor Smith's Views<br><br>The attentive reader of the Scriptures, especially of the earliest Books, cannot fail to be struck with their brevity and conciseness. They contain much important matter - historical, doctrinal, and practical - comprehended within a very small compass. Of their contents, part was written for the special instruction of God's people in times and circumstances widely different from the present, and part for the instruction of mankind in all time to come. They contain a history of the human race, commencing with its origin, and especially of a godly seed, with an account of its training, actions, and destinies. References are also made in the earliest periods of the world to an ungodly race, with which that seed was brought into contact, and to their influences upon one another, whether for good or evil. The Scriptures subsequently reveal, and gradually develop, divine truth, for the instruction of a chosen race, first limited to a single family, and afterwards to a single nation, which sprang from that family, placed under a peculiar dispensation, which. Though imperfect and temporary, was preparatory to one that was perfect and final, through which all the nations of the earth were to be blessed. As the Old Testament Scriptures embrace a period of about three thousand five hundred years, and as the historical matter occupies but a small portion of them, the narrative must necessarily be extremely brief. The facts stated are consequently often stripped of details and explanations, which could not have.<br><br>About the Publisher<br><br>Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com<br><br>This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.