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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, and 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 language, for which no alleged edification can in any measure

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UNIVERSITA

DOUBLE SENSE OF PROPHECY

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. Το 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.

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

and Gentiles, when both could read and understand Greek, Greek discourse. Why? For the simple and most cogent of all reasons, viz., that what was revealed might be understood. But if the common laws of interpretation were not applicable to what was said, then of course it could not be understood. But inasmuch as the whole tenor of the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures shows that the usual laws of language are observed, we must have some new and special revelation in order to authorize us to believe, that the Bible is to be exempted from these laws. Or if a part is to be interpreted by the usual laws of exegesis, and a part to be exempted from them, who will show us where the line of distinction is to be drawn between these two very diverse portions of the divine word? No one has yet solved this question. The mode of proceeding in respect to the vлóvοia has been, that what was right in his own eyes." in such a condition as this? Are we, after all, left in the dark; and this too, when we are launched on a boundless ocean without rudder or compass?

66 every one has done But are we indeed left

There must be some very important purposes to be answered by occult Scripture, if it be indeed true that it is in and of itself occult. Most readily do I concede, for my own experience teaches me every day, that many portions of Scripture are in a measure occult to me. But why? Merely because I am not so familiar with the original languages of Scripture and the objects there referred to, that the bare reading or hearing of it will suffice to make me understand it. It is occult to me, merely and only because I am wanting in knowledge appropriate to the right understanding of it. But was it so dark originally, to those who were addressed by the sacred writers? How can we credit this? The prophets were preachers in part. Indeed their main business was preaching. Prediction, in

the strict sense of the word, belongs to but quite a subordinate part of their works. Was their preaching then intelligible? I need not stop to prove this; for the bare statement of the case does of itself make it incontrovertible. God does not mock men by addressing them in an unknown language, and then making them responsible for disobedience to his commands delivered in that language. The preaching of the prophets must have been intelligible to their contemporaries, in the same manner as well-composed gospel-sermons are now intelligible to the great mass of the Christian community among us. It was doubtless true in ancient times, as it is now, that there were some individuals too ignorant to comprehend all which the prophets uttered in their sermons; still it was then as it is now, i. e. the language of preaching must have been intelligible to all intelligent people.

If now we could in all respects place ourselves in the condition of those who were originally addressed by the sacred writers, we should then understand at once nearly every thing in the Scriptures without any difficulty; just as easily as we now understand religious instructions from our pulpits. All the dictionaries, grammars, commentaries, and learned exegetical essays of our libraries might at once be dispensed with; at all events we should need them no more than we need Lowth's English Grammar, and Johnson's Dictionary, in order to understand our common mother tongue.

So far, I think, all my readers will be ready to agree with me. When God addresses men, in order to instruct, or reprove, or console, he will of course speak what is intelligible.

But there is another and somewhat different view, which is sometimes taken of various predictions of the Old Testament, and also of the New. This is, as its abettors

allege, that they are, from the nature of the case, not only somewhat obscure, but are in fact, i. e. they were originally, designed to be obscure. Not only are many of them clothed in language which is highly figurative, but the diction is even of design enigmatical. God, as it is alleged, had undoubtedly a definite meaning in his own mind, which he attached to the language that was employed, but this meaning was designedly veiled from men in general, and sometimes even from the prophets themselves.

That, when the Holy Spirit inspired the prophets and led them to utter predictions, he himself attached a wider and fuller and more definite extent of meaning to the words employed, than the prophets did or could, I cannot doubt. All the future was perfectly known to the Spirit of God. It is, indeed, an easy matter to illustrate this. When Newton or La Place used the word sun, it recalled to their minds all the astronomical views of that luminary which they had acquired by study; while the peasant, who employs the same word, means only the apparent luminary of the skies which rises and sets and scatters light and warmth over all the earth. But if Newton or La Place were to converse with any persons destitute of astronomical knowledge, they would of course employ the word sun only in a sense intelligible to them. On any other ground they could not expect to be understood.

Like to this, now, must be the case in regard to prophetic revelation. If God reveals the future to men, then he must speak so as to be understood. The things suggested by the words employed, are, beyond all question, understood by him incomparably better than they can be by men.

But the question before us is, not what knowledge God possesses, but what has he designed to reveal? Now if he employs words as the medium of a revelation respecting the future, then those words are to be interpre

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