or death-is a figure of the perpetuity of Christ's priesthood. (3) Melchizedek's superiority over Abraham and over the Levitical priests is made to suggest the exalted dignity of Christ. (4) Melchizedek's priesthood was not, like the Levitical, constituted by formal legal enactment, but was without succession and without tribe or race limitations; so Christ, an independent and universal priest, abides forever, having an unchangeable priesthood. Much more is said in the chapter by way of contrasting Christ with the Levitical priests, and the manifest design of the writer is to set forth in a most impressive way the great dignity and unchangeable perpetuity of the priesthood of the Son of God. But interpreters have gone wild over the mysterious character of Melchizedek, yielding to all manner of speculation, first, in attempting to answer the question "Who was Melchizedek?" and second, in tracing all imaginable analogies. Whedon observes sensibly and aptly: "Our opinion is, that Melchizedek was nobody but himself; himself as simply narrated in Gen. xiv, 18-20; in which narrative both David, in Psa. cx, and our author after him, find every point they specify in making him a king-priest, typical of the king-priesthood of Christ. Yet it is not in the person of Melchizedek alone, but in the grouping, also, of circumstances around and in his person, that the inspired imagination of the psalmist finds the shadowing points. Melchizedek, in Genesis, suddenly appears upon the historic stage, without antecedents or consequents. He is a king-priest not of Judaism, but of Gentilism universally. He appears an unlineal priest, without father, mother, or pedigree. He is preceded and succeeded by an everlasting silence, so as to present neither beginning nor end of life. And he is, as an historic picture, forever there, divinely suspended, the very image of a perpetual king-priest. It is thus not in his actual unknown reality, but in the Scripture presentation, that the group of shadowings appears. It is by optical truth only, not by corporeal facts, that he becomes a picture, and with his surroundings a tableau, into which the psalmist first reads the conception of an adumbration of the eternal priesthood of the Messiah; and all our author does is to develop the particulars which are in mass presupposed by the psalmist.":

ences and con

2. The points of difference and of contrast between type and Notable differ- antitype should also be noted by the interpreter. The trasts to be ob- type from its very nature must be inferior to the antiserved. type, for we cannot expect the shadow to equal the substance. "For," says Fairbairn, "as the typical is divine truth on a lower stage, exhibited by means of outward relations and Commentary on New Testament, in loco.

1

terrestrial interests, so, when making the transition from this to the antitypical, we must expect the truth to appear on a loftier stage, and, if we may so speak, with a more heavenly aspect. What in the one bore immediate respect to the bodily life, must in the other be found to bear immediate respect to the spiritual life. While in the one it is seen and temporal objects that ostensibly present themselves, their proper counterpart in the other is the unseen and eternal:-there, the outward, the present, the worldly; here, the inward, the future, the heavenly.”1

1

Christ.

The New Testament writers dilate upon these differences between type and antitype. In Heb. iii, 1-6, Moses, considered Moses and as the faithful apostle and servant of God, is represented as a type of Christ, and this typical aspect of his character is based upon the remark in Num. xii, 7, that Moses was faithful in all the house of God. This is the great point of analogy, but the writer immediately goes on to say that Jesus is "worthy of more glory than Moses," and instances two points of superiority: (1) Moses was but a part of the house itself in which he served, but Jesus is entitled to far greater glory, inasmuch as he may be regarded as the builder of the house, and much greater honour than the house has he who built or established it. Further (2), Moses was faithful in the house as a minister (ver. 5), but Christ as a son over the house. Still more extensively does this writer enlarge upon the superiority of Christ, the great High Priest, as compared with the Levitical priests after the order of Aaron.

Christ.

In Rom. v, 14, Adam is declared to be "a type of Him who was to come," and the whole of the celebrated passage, Adam and verses 12-21, is an elaboration of a typical analogy which has force only as it involves ideas and consequences of the most opposite character. The great thought of the passage is this: As through the trespass of the one man Adam a condemning judg ment, involving death, passed upon all men, so through the righteousness of the one man, Jesus Christ, the free gift of saving grace, involving justification unto life, came unto all men. But in verses 15-17 the apostle makes prominent several points of distinction in which the free gift is "not as the trespass." First, it differs quantitively. The trespass involved the one irreversible sentence of death to the many, the free gift abounded with manifold provisions of grace to the same many (TOÙÇ TOλλοús). It differs also numerically in the matter of trespasses; for the condemnation followed one act of transgression, but the free gift provides for justification from many trespasses. Moreover, the free gift differs

'The Typology of Scripture, vol. i, p. 131. Philadelphia, 1867.

qualitatively in its glorious results. By the trespass of Adam "death reigned ”—acquired domination over all men, even over those who sinned not after the likeness of the transgression of Adam; but through the one man, Jesus Christ, they who receive the abundance of his saving grace will themselves reign in eternal life.

types

hended only by

3. The Old Testament types are susceptible of complete interpreOld Testament tation only by the light of the Gospel. It has too often appre- been hastily assumed that the ancient prophets and the Gospel. holy men were possessed of a full knowledge of the mysteries of Christ, and vividly apprehended the profound signifi cance of all sacred types and symbols. That they at times had some idea that certain acts and institutions foreshadowed better things to come may be admitted, but according to Heb. ix, 7–12, the meaning of the holiest mysteries of the ancient worship was not manifest while the outward tabernacle was yet standing. And not only did the ancient worshippers fail to understand those mysteries, but the mysteries themselves-the forms of worship, “the meats, and drinks, and divers washings, ordinances of flesh, imposed until a time of rectification" (diopdwoɛwc, straightening up),' were unable to make the worshippers perfect. In short, the entire Mosaic cultus was, in its nature and purpose, preparatory and pedagogic (Gal. iii, 25), and any interpreter who assumes that the ancients apprehended clearly what the Gospel reveals in the Old Testament types, will be likely to run into extravagance, and involve himself in untenable conclusions.

We may appropriately add the following words of Cave: "Having apprehended that the divine revelation to the human race had been made at successive times and by successive stages, the doctrine of types gave utterance to the further apprehension that these revelations were not incongruous and disconnected, but by numerous links, subtle in their location, and by concords prearranged, were inseparably interwoven. To the belief that holy men had spoken things beyond the limits of human thought, the doctrine of types superadded or testified to the addition of the belief that these holy men were moved by one Spirit, their utterances having mysterious interconnexions with each other, this explaining that, and that completing this. . . . It is this community of system, this fundamental resemblance under different forms, which the doctrine of types aids us to apprehend. Nor, when once the conception of the historical development of the Scriptures has been seized, is it

'That is, says Alford, "when all these things would be better arranged, the substance put where the shadow was before, the sufficient grace where the insufficient type." Greek Testament on Heb. ix, 10.

any longer difficult to fix the precise significance of the type. Type and antitype convey exactly the same truth, but under forms appropriate to different stages of development."

It remains for us to inquire into the validity of the principle, maintained by many writers, that only those persons Limitation of and things are to be regarded as typical which are ex- types. pressly declared to be such in the New Testament. A leading authority for this view is Bishop Marsh, who says: "There is no other rule by which we can distinguish a real from a pretended type, than that of Scripture itself. There is no other possible means by which we can know that a previous design and a preordained connexion existed. Whatever persons or Bishop Marsh's things, therefore, recorded in the Old Testament, were dictum. especially declared by Christ, or by his apostles, to have been designed as prefigurations of persons and things relating to the New Testament, such persons and things so recorded in the former are types of the persons or things with which they are compared in the latter. But if we assert that a person or thing was designed to prefigure another person or thing, where no such prefiguration has been declared by divine authority, we make an assertion for which we neither have nor can have the slightest foundation. And even when comparisons are instituted in the New Testament between antecedent and subsequent persons and things, we must be careful to distinguish the examples, where a comparison is instituted merely for the sake of illustration, from the examples where such a connexion is declared as exists in the relation of a type to its antitype."

2

This principle, however, is altogether too restrictive for an adequate exposition of the Old Testament types. We Marsh's rule too should, indeed, look to the Scriptures themselves for narrow. general principles and guidance, but not with the expectation that every type, designed to prefigure Gospel truths, must be formally announced as such. We might with equal reason demand that every parable and every prophecy of Scripture must have inspired and authoritative exposition. Such a rigid rule of interpretation could scarcely have been adopted by so many excellent divines except under the pressure of the opposite extreme, which found hidden meanings and typical lessons in almost every fact of Scripture. The persons and events which are expressly declared by the sacred

1 The Scriptural Doctrine of Sacrifice, p. 157. Edinb., 1877.

? Lectures on Sacred Criticism and Interpretation, p. 373. This extreme view is in substance, affirmed by Macknight, Ernesti, Conybeare, Van Mildert, Horne, Nares, Chevalier, Stuart, Stowe, and Muenscher.

ciple.

writers to be typical are rather to be taken as specimens and examples for the interpretation of all types. For it will hardly be deemed reasonable or satisfactory to affirm that Moses and Jonah A better prin- were typical characters and deny such character to Samuel and Elisha. The miraculous passage of the Jordan may have as profound a typical significance as that of the Red Sea, and the sweetened waters of the desert as that of the smitten rock in Horeb. Our Lord rebuked the two disciples for having a heart so dull and slow to believe in all things which the prophets spoke (Luke xxiv, 25), clearly implying the duty of seeking to apprehend the sense of all the prophetic Scriptures. A similar reproof is administered to the Hebrews (Heb. v, 10-14) for their incapacity to understand the typical character of Melchizedek, "thus placing it beyond a doubt," says Fairbairn, "that it is both the duty and the privilege of the Church, with that measure of the Spirit's grace which it is the part even of private Christians to possess, to search into the types of ancient Scripture and come to a correct understanding of them. To deny this is plainly to withhold an important privilege from the Church of Christ, to dissuade from it is to encourage the neglect of an incumbent duty."1

Such Old Testament persons and events as are cited for typical lessons should always, however, possess some notably exceptional importance. Some have taken Abel, as a keeper of sheep, to be a type of Christ the great Shepherd. But a score of others might as well be instanced, and the analogy is, therefore, too common to be exalted into the dignity of a prefiguring type. So, also, as we have said, every prophet, priest, and king of the Old Testament, considering merely their offices, were types of Christ; but it would be improper to cite every one, of whom we have any recorded history, as a type. Only exceptional characters, such as Moses, Aaron, and David, are to be so used. Each case must be determined on its own merits by the good sense and sound judgment of the interpreter; and his exegetical discernment must be disciplined by a thorough study of such characters as are acknowledged on all hands to be scriptural types.

1 Typology, vol. i, page 29. See this subject more amply discussed by this writer in connexion with the passage above quoted (pp. 26-32) where he ably shows that the writers belonging to the school of Marsh "drop a golden principle for the sake of avoiding a few lawless aberrations." He observes that their system of procedure "sets such narrow limits to our inquiries that we cannot, indeed, wander far into the regions of extravagance. But in the very prescription of these limits it wrongfully withholds from us the key of knowledge, and shuts us up to evils scarcely less to be deprecated than those it seeks to correct."