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fore the reader's mind. He will bear me witness, then, that I am not disposed to avoid the question which such passages bring up, nor by any management to keep it out of sight. If he hesitates to explain the New Testament quotations as I have done, I can only solicit him to study thoroughly the whole subject of quotations, and then to take also into view the usual ancient and Jewish method of quoting and applying Scripture, as exhibited in the Mishna, the Gemara, and the writings of the Rabbins. If he does not come to the same conclusion, at last, which I have now developed, I can only say, that his views and his modes of reasoning must be exceedingly different from those which the great mass of well informed interpreters have of late exhibited,

I can find, then, no warrant in the New Testament for giving a double sense to the words of the Old Testament. And if it be a fact that the apostles have so interpreted the Hebrew Scriptures, it is no warrant for me, or any other uninspired person, to interpret them in such a way, beyond what the apostles have already done. Plainly, a meaning not discoverable by any of the laws or principles of language, (and surely such is the vnóvoca in question), can be discovered with certainty only by the guidance of inspiration. All short of this must be conjecture merely; and on conjecture we cannot establish either doctrine or prophecy. We wait then for proof, among all the mystic interpreters of former or latter days, of supernatural divine guidance and illumination as to their exegesis. We are aware, that Bengel believed he had found such guidance in respect to the meaning of the beast in the Apocalypse whose number is 666; but we are also aware, that his grand climacteric of A. D. 1836 has passed by without any of the confidently expected events. We are aware that thousands, with incomparably less of piety and learning than John Albert

Bengel, have laid claim to the like, and even to greater disclosures, through the special influence of the Spirit. But we have still to learn, from what quarter credible testimony to such alleged supernatural aid is to come. It is not enough that a man spiritualizes; nor even that he is expert and eloquent in spiritualizing. It does not suffice, that he can make the unlearned and the lovers of fancy and romance to stare and wonder at his talent for evoking spirituality from any and every part of the Old Testament, and specially from prophecy. It is not enough, that he can look down with scorn on those who make little or no account of claims to such gifts at the present time; or that he contemplates with disdain a want of power to understand the Bible in any other way than through the medium of the intellect, and compares such persons with the devils who believe and tremble. All this, and more of the same tenor, has been said so long and so often, that the ear listens to it now only as the usual monotony; and the diligent inquirer, who is resolved to make his way to his own heart through the medium of his intellect, makes up his mind to be included under the category of Intellectualists, whatever may be the loss of popularity which this will occasion him among the Mystics.

With an open face then we ask: Where is the proof, that either prophecy, or any other part of the Old Testament, or of the New, conveys a double sense? Where is the authority for deciding what the occult sense is, or must be? Where is the defence for trampling upon the laws of interpretation applicable to all other books, when we come to expound the Scriptures? Where are we, when we once give the rein, without control, to mere fancy and imagination? By what wonder-working process shall we make a genealogical table as significant and doctrinal as the 19th Psalm, or the Sermon on the Mount? By what power

of transformation shall the list of furniture for the temple become as instructive to us as the ten commandments, or as Paul's summaries of Christian morality and piety in his epistles?

In the name of all that is grave, serious, rational, intellectual, respectful to God's eternal truth, or intelligible in propounding the way of salvation to men, I protest against such an abuse of reason, of the holy Scriptures, and of all the established principles of language. It is not enough that men mean well, to entitle them thus to sport with the Bible. That book is no toy for the sport of fancy and caprice. He who is in the proper attitude for hearing an address of the King of kings, is not in a frame of mind to unravel charades, and conundrums, and enigmas which are more skilfully ambiguous than that of Edipus. The Majesty of heaven does not expect trifling with his messages.

Tell me not, I would say again, that the Bible can be rendered more useful, by admitting a second or spiritual sense. Whose office is it to mend what God has done? To whom does it belong to supply the defects of his revelation? Who shall decide, that he has not communicated what he meant to communicate, and all that he meant to communicate, by the Scripture interpreted agreeably to the common laws and principles of language and of the human mind in reference to language? Authority must come from above, in order to entitle any man to undertake this. And as to those who do undertake it-what is their rule or limit? The more sober among them dare not venture to make an occult sense out of a passage, which may serve as the basis of a single doctrine or precept. The analogy of plain Scripture must come in aid of the second sense, before they can even venture upon it. Of what use then can all this spiritualizing and allegorizing be to the church? The most to which it can lay claim is, to please the fancy

and gratify the imagination.

But with what?

Plainly

with the mere ingenuity of the preacher or writer; for this is all which comes fairly into the account. To aim at making God's word more significant and profitable than he has made it—is not an undertaking in which men should lightly engage.

In whatever light the matter is viewed, it will not bear the test of rigid scrutiny. At all events, let those who have a predominant inclination to this fancy work, go no further than they themselves will venture to maintain that the writers of the New Testament have led them. The ground is too dangerous and uncertain to be occupied an inch beyond this mark, even as the matter appears to them. There is one simple principle that should run through all preaching and all expositions; which is, that the mind of the scriptural writer should be given as it was originally expressed by his language. The meaning of any book, is simply what the writer had in his own mind and intended

to express. This being given, the work of interpretation is done. For the rest, the process is easy. Manente ratione manet ipsa lex includes the whole. So far as our circumstances and relations are like those of the persons to whom the Scriptures were originally addressed, so far what was said to them is binding upon us; but no farther. It is thus that the Scriptures are indeed profitable for doctrine to all; for all have the like relations to God, and the like relations to their fellow beings; and nothing, therefore, in the Bible can be a mere dead letter to us. But to make all parts of the Bible equally significant and instructive, under pretence of piety and spirituality and reverence for the Scriptures-is not this to abuse the gift of reason, to take away all respect on the part of intelligent men for the advocates of scriptural religion, and to do a violence to the laws of interpretation and to the first principles of lan

and

guage, for which no alleged edification can in any measure compensate? Nothing short of renewed inspiration can make sure our footing, while standing upon such a ground as this.

I might now quit this topic, were it not that when the subject comes to a point like that which has now been before us, a new direction is given to it, which needs some further attention.

When we say, that the Scriptures mean what the authors of them designed they should mean, we are not unfrequently arrested here by questions such as the following: Who then is the proper Author of the Scriptures? And if God be that author, by his Spirit, then may we not well suppose that the words of Scripture are more significant than the common laws of language would allow them to be?

I will not allege, that the subject, as presented by these questions, is attended by no difficulties. Yet it seems to me, after the most careful attention which I have been able to bestow upon it, that these difficulties are not insuperable.

When God speaks to men, in the way of a revelation, he speaks by men, and through the medium of human language, or by symbols which are equivalent to language. In either case, the object is to reveal something, or to teach something. We will suppose now that he addresses them "with the language of angels;" what revelation is in reality made by the address? Just as much, we may reply, as would be made, should we now address one of our peasants in Hebrew or Arabic; and no more. To speak in an unknown language, without interpreting it, or furnishing means to interpret it, is of course making no revelation at all; it is teaching nothing.

To

The Bible furnishes abundant evidence that the real mode of divine revelation is very different from this. the Hebrews, Hebrew discourse was addressed; to the

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