when one family was chosen to keep and hand down the deposit of divine truth,—the series of providences which brought the ancestors of the Jews into Egypt,—the long captivity on the banks of the Nile,—the work of Moses, whereby the bondsmen were made into a nation,—all these things are represented in the Old Testament as occurring under the immediate direction of Almighty power. The people of Israel were taken out of the midst of an idolatrous world, to become the depositories of a purer knowledge