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imagination, or to allure by ingenuity in drawing supposed resemblances. But on this question why should there be any doubt? The Bible is a book of import much too grave to be treated in this manner. God, and heaven, and hell, and never-dying souls, are no originals for fancy pictures and amusing sketches. It is a degradation of the awful majesty of Scripture to treat it in this way. Were I to speak what my feelings prompt me to do, I should say, that it is a profanation of its holy contents. When romance and fiction and conceit and conjecture and enigma are all mixed up with instruction of the most serious and important character which can be addressed to human beings, what mind, that possesses a refined taste and delicate sensibility, will not be revolted and displeased with such a procedure?

I repeat what has been already said: When God speaks to men, he speaks more humano, by men and for men. Viewed in this light, the poetry of the Scriptures is poetry with all its characteristics; the prose is prose; the genealogies are what they purport to be; the historic narrations are histories; the psalms are songs of praise; the proverbs are maxims or apothegms; the plans of the tabernacle and temple, with all their apparatus, are plans for building sanctuaries and furnishing them; prophecy is prediction; preaching is homiletic; allegory is allegory, and parable is parable. If there be any thing that is certain, as to the general principles of interpretation respecting the Scriptures, all this is certain. If the Bible is not to be interpreted in such a manner, i. e. in accordance with these positions, then we must give up all hope of coming to the knowledge of any rules by which it can be interpreted.

It is well that the public taste is at last putting its hand more and more upon the extravagance of days that are past, in respect to the occult sense of many portions of the Scrip

tures. But in the department of prophecy, with which I am particularly concerned at present, there is yet great latitude given and taken in regard to this matter. In the Psalms, and indeed in a multitude of passages in the Prophets, the Pentateuch, and all parts of the Scripture, there are expositors even now who defend the iлórowa, i. e. they find a literal and historic sense which answered in former days a temporary purpose, and also an occult sense, wrapped up or involved in the drapery of the historic sense, and discernible only when this is unrolled and laid aside. They are serious in the belief that they have a right to interpret in this manner; and although few will venture to meet a discussion of the subject on the ground of simple hermeneutics, (for on this ground their cause must surely fail), yet they appeal, one and all, to the usage and authority of the New Testament writers, and aver, that whatever difficulties may be made out on the grounds of hermeneutical science, as applicable to writings merely of human origin, yet it is clear that the Evangelists and other writers of the New Testament did admit and adopt a double sense of the Hebrew Scriptures, and consequently, we are at liberty to do the same.

This for substance has been so long and so often alleged, in the way of defending the occult sense of the Old Testament Scriptures, and it is moreover, apparently, so weighty an argument in its favor, that I must of necessity take it into serious consideration.

I might remark at the outset, that were the facts true, in the sense in which they are usually alleged, it would not follow of course, that we are entitled to assign an occult sense to any and every passage of Scripture, where we may merely of ourselves think it proper to do so. We take the ground that the New Testament writers were inspired; and if they were, then it is possible that they might be en

lightened by inspiration so as to give a meaning to some parts of the Old Testament Scripture, which is and must be occult in itself to all who are uninspired. We may indeed now follow in their steps, in those cases where they have given us an occult sense; we may give credit to their authority, and so trust them as our guides; but we can go, in such a case, no further than they lead the way. Inspiration was necessary to reveal an occult sense to them; and as we are not inspired, so we cannot give an occult sense to passages which they have not explained. In the case supposed, it was not fancy, imagination, conceit, which led them to play upon words and to give to them mysterious and conjectural meanings. If they have actually exhibited the occult sense in any case, it must of course have been by virtue of light from above.

It would be gaining not a little, if even so much should be admitted by all. We should then, at least, be kept within bounds very narrow, in comparison with those which many interpreters have set up. One simple rule would suffice; and this would be, that we must merely follow on in the same path in which the New Testament writers have taken the lead, and not strike out new ways or bypaths for ourselves.

But a more important view of this subject remains to be taken: Have the New Testament writers made out, in any case, a DOUBLE sense to the words of the Old Testament Scriptures?

A moderate volume could be easily filled with the discussion of this question; but necessity obliges me to comprise what I now have to say in a few paragraphs.

I do not find but two ways in which the Jewish Scriptures are employed in the New Testament, so far as the subject of prediction or prophecy is concerned. The first is too plain to need any particular comment; it is where a

passage in the Old Testament is simply and directly prophetic, and is appealed to or cited as merely prophetic. Such are the passages, as I must believe, cited from Is. LIII. Ps. II. XVI. XXII. XLV. CX., and many other places. We need not, with Cocceius, bishop Horne, and other writers of this description, find Christ every where in the Old Testament; nor need we, as has been said of Grotius, come to the conclusion that he is to be found no where in it. There is some middle path between these extremes. If the Old Testament Scriptures have not predicted a Messiah, and have not indeed often predicted him, then the persuasion and the reasoning of Christ and his apostles, in respect to this subject, have no good foundation on which they can rest. If they have foretold a Messiah, why not leave them to speak out this great truth plainly, simply, without any vлóvoa or occult sense? For example; why, in the second and 45th Psalms, should we suppose the coronation of David and the marriage of Solomon to be described or sung, by the first and literal sense of the words, and then that the Messiah is obscurely hinted at in the way of an occult sense? Is not one greater than David to be found in the second Psalm, and greater than Solomon in the forty-fifth? So I must think. David was not crowned king on the holy hill of Zion; nor was he begotten of God on the day of coronation; nor had he the uttermost parts of the earth for his possession; nor were his enemies broken in pieces like a potter's vessel; nor are all men invited to put their trust in him. Solomon was not most mighty in war; nor did his right hand teach terrible things; nor was his throne forever and ever; nor was he addressed by the title God (□); nor did his children become princes in all the earth; nor are all people exhorted to praise him forever and ever. Truly a greater than David or Solomon is here. No double sense is needed;

none is even admissible. What advantage, in any respect, can be gained by the admission of one?

All that can with strict propriety be said of these, and of many other like cases, is simply, that the sacred writers of ancient times, when they come to disclose a future king Messiah and his extended and peaceful reign, borrow the costume of their picture from objects then before their own minds and those of their readers. From David and Solomon traits of resemblance are borrowed, in order to complete the sketch of a future and spiritual king. Not mere choice, but absolute necessity dictated this. How could the future be disclosed, except by language selected from that in present use, and by likenesses drawn from present objects? It is surely no good reason for finding a double sense, that a prophet has undertaken to disclose the future, by presenting it through similitudes of the present ?

This leads me to consider a second method in which the New Testament writers have cited and employed the language of the Old Testament, viz. by suggesting resemblances between past and future events.

This includes all which is properly called type in the Old Testament. Type means a resemblance of two things, not an occult sense of words. The epistle to the Hebrews has shown us, that many things under the old dispensation were, and were designed to be, typical, i. e. they bore a resemblance to objects or transactions of the new dispensation. It is through the medium of this epistle that we come more fully to learn, that many of the Jewish religious rites were typical. Indeed, we cannot well conceive how it should be otherwise. God has no pleasure in rites, forms, ceremonies, and sacrifices, in themselves considered, and for their own sake. To be worthy of him, they must shadow forth something of the future and Messianic dispensation. Thus the paschal-lamb was a type of the Lamb

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