From strength to strength

To me this work has been, next to preaching the Gospel, the most delightful employment. The land through which I have passed has not been a wilderness to me, — a land of drought and barrenness, but it has been a country of fertile vales, and hills of the richest mines, abounding with such beautiful prospects and refreshing shade and cooling fountains, that I have often stopped to enjoy the scenery, to listen to the sweet songsters of the grove, to “ drink of the brook in the way,” and thus to “go on from strength to strength.”

My feelings have gone along with those of the sacred writers to such a degree, that often when alone, in my study I have been reading a page perhaps for the seventh time, I have had to stop in order to wipe away the fast flowing tears, or to offer up such prayers and praises, as the subject called forth. And then, only think of such a song as that of Deborah’s! Having in such perfection all the softness and delicacy and minute detail and lively description of female composition! Who could translate it without feeling his very heart dance within him!

I could almost wish that all the Lord’s people were translators, as Moses wished them all prophets, in order that they might see with their own eyes the very words and the very manner, often inimitable in translating, in which the great God expressed His thoughts to man, and might thus enter more readily into all the scenes and circumstances and feelings of those “ holy men of God, who spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.” God’s word is, indeed, a great deep; who can fathom it? It is divinely beautiful; who that once looks upon it can help gazing for ever with ever increasing delight? It is fraught with the riches of eternity; who shall not prize it “ above gold, yea, above fine gold ”?

Gesenius and Simoni’s Lexicon

My helps have been Robinson’s Gesenius and Simoni’s Lexicon, Michaelis’ Hebrew Bible, with critical notes in the margin, Rosenmiiller’s Scholia, Barnes’s Notes on Isaiah, Keiiffer’s Turkish Bible, Leeves’s Greco-Turkish, and the Septuagint, with the English.