REV. J. MUNSON OLMSTEAD, M. A. AUTHOR OF "THOUGHTS AND COUNSELS FOR THE IMPENITENT," GOULD BOSTON: AND LINCOLN, 59 WASHINGTON STREET. 1853. 13.47. C1308.9.30 HARVARD COLLEGE LIBRARY 1871, Oct.16. Prof. Francis Bowen, of Cambridge. (K.U.1833 Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1853, by J. MUNSON OLMSTEAD, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. DAMRELL & MOORE, PRINTERS. 12 PREFACE. THE difficulties connected with the writing of the following work were so fully anticipated by the author, that not until some time after a demand in this day for one of the kind was, in conversation with some literary and Christian friends, insisted on, and himself warmly urged to undertake it, could he obtain his own consent to engage in the effort. No contemporaneous historic pen had left aught concerning the period to be surveyed — a period of almost a thousand years, and lying back near the beginning of time commencing with the year of the world 1056, and extending to 2006; and the sum of what the pen of inspiration had afterward recorded, was comprised within the compass of a few short chapters. A large portion too of the subjects soliciting investigation were intrinsically difficult to be handled. If, in the great absence of historic detail, it might be thought that the investigations and discoveries of modern science could |