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fectly justified in superimposing on each word and sentence a burden of mystical senses; but if the opposite be more consonant with truth, then is the oblation spurious. Fullness of meaning depends on rightness of meaning. The correct sense is the only sense; and although it may seem lean in the eye of a luxuriant fancy, yet it is truly richer than if it were decked with a bundle of visions, dignified with the name of senses.

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In a few cases, some prominent philosophical division has been the chief inducement to resort to several senses. soon as men imbibe a system of philosophy, they are prone to carry its peculiarities into every inquiry. Its very vocabulary impregnates their conceptions regarding scripture interpretation. Such was the case of Origen.

But the principal cause of the frequent manifestations of such interpretation is found in our common humanity. Its ordinary appearance in the history of Christianity is based on the feelings of our nature. Most of the ancient interpreters exhibit its various phases, while the moderns are not free from its influences. The question therefore naturally arises—why do we witness so much of its exhibition?

Mankind are obviously divided into two great classes-the unreflecting and the meditative. The former are occupied with the outward and visible; the latter, with the inward and invisible. The former move on amid the world's panorama, pressed by objects of sense, or immersed in the business of external life; the latter look behind and beneath outward scenes. They converse with the spiritual. They are not accustomed to rest in things temporal. They live in the world of mind and intelligence more than in the world of matter. They hold intercourse with spirit and spiritual beings. Material substances and processes the sublime operations of nature-the workings of Almighty agency are viewed, not so much in their outward phenomena, as their secret springs and source. This habitude of mind is allied to allegorizing. Phenomena in the world of sense are made to tell of phenomena in the world of spirit. They are brought to bear upon the soul by speaking words of exhortation or of comfort. They are employed in educing and communicating truths more or less abstract. It is right to turn to profit every circumstance of life even the most trifling--to find a tongue, not only in the mute creation, but in the acts and exercises of daily life with all its drudgery. It is part of the cultivated man to philosophize upon the dullest occurrences, and so convert them into teachers. He who does not so, lives on the outside of life, ignorant to a great extent of the mighty wonders within and around him. It is the characteristic of true wisdom to look with spiritual eye on all the

objects and events with which man comes in contact, educing from them a moral that may serve to admonish or to console amid the varieties of life. The mental temperament which we have just characterized is closely allied to the religious. Let it be supposed to exist in connexion with piety, and then applied to revelation. What will be the result? Some parts of the Bible are less attractive than others to the spiritual and reflective mind. They are comparatively barren of nutriment. Such as deal with events and facts afford little scope for the fancy. Thus the gospel history has seemed to some. Incidents are narrated which partake of the character of common life. Hence some spiritual truth is extracted from them. A sermon is discovered in them. They furnish forth lessons of wisdom. Nor is this process other than commendable, provided it be considered aright. There is no necessary connexion between it and what is properly called allegorical interpretation. Yet the one has laid a foundation for the other. Useful as the practice is of educing instruction from many portions of scripture where it is not obvious, or of drawing lessons from histories and narratives, it has largely led to another which cannot be approved. The lesson derived has been constituted, it may be insensibly, a part of the meaning. From being regarded as an inference, it has come to be exalted into one of the senses of the text. Probably it was not presumed at first to have been really intended by the inspired writer, but was simply looked upon in the light of a useful deduction. But it afterwards lost the character of a deduction, and was considered inherent in the text as a spiritual meaning which should be carefully sought out. Thus an active imagination obtains scope for its powers; and the world of spiritual analogies supplies recondite truths, so that several additional meanings are intruded into the hallowed region of scripture itself. Wherever piety exists in union with reflectiveness, we may look for such interpretation. The emotions which have been cultivated and sanctified by Divine grace, give rise to it naturally and almost unavoidably. It is an insinuating offshoot of personal religion, cajoling the feelings into a province where they may find ample play, and flattering the understanding with the idea of a higher spirituality as it ranges in quest of a more refined aliment. It is marvellous to observe how much the dictates of judgment are influenced and swayed by the imaginative faculty -how rapidly their sound decision fades away before the melting breath of the emotions. Reason loses its hold and renounces the reins. Then appear a thick crowd of meanings evoked from airy regions, and tending to please a certain pietism by the garb in which they are arrayed. Harmless in themselves, and pos

sibly conveying some instruction, they cease to be harmless when put forth as part of the sense of holy scripture. In this way, the one divine sense which the Holy Spirit willed to communicate, gives place to others of man's device, and the authority of the Bible is deteriorated by the ingenuity or misjudging piety of the expositor.

If the elements of allegorical interpretation have so much alliance with humanity, it is natural to look for its appearance in early times. The Jews were addicted to it. In their view, mysterious and sublime truths lie concealed in the law and the prophets, for which the Rabbins have always been eager in searching. This disposition, however, may be traced in part to the influence of Grecian philosophy. After the times of Alexander the Great, the cultivated Jews became enamoured of Greek learning, which they mingled with the Old Testament, especially with the writings of Moses. They extracted from the latter a wisdom resembling that of the cultivated heathen sages. In this there was an accommodation to the Gentile philosophers. The more sagacious of the Jews clearly perceived that many minute and apparently trifling regulations contained in the Old Testament were looked upon with contempt by philosophic minds. Desirous, accordingly, to remove such disdainful feelings towards their religion, they affirmed that sublime and spiritual truths were couched beneath the simple garb on which the Greeks, and themselves too in part, imbued as they were with a foreign philosophy, looked with disesteem. They hoped to commend the divine books, particularly the law, to the attention of the learned heathen, by expounding them agreeably to the precepts of a current philosophy. The practice of allegorizing was most prevalent among the Jews of Alexandria, because Platonism variously modified was long fashionable in that place.

The oldest Alexandrian allegorist of whom we find any mention, is Aristobulus, preceptor of Ptolemy Philometor. He is said to have composed an allegorical commentary on the law, dedicated to the king, a few fragments of which have been preserved. But the most remarkable representative of the allegorical system among the Jews is Philo, who having adopted the philosophy of Plato, and united with it the most essential parts of the Jewish theosophy, expounded the Mosaic religion in such a manner as to harmonize it with his peculiar tenets. This learned Jew, whom many Christian fathers did not scruple to follow in his expositions even when they were most fanciful and trifling, greatly augmented the love of allegorizing which previously existed. It is natural to suppose, that he would subordinate the literal to the spiritual sense, as his subsequent imitators also did; but he even went so far, on some occasions, as to pervert the

truth of sacred history, where he thought the literal sense improper or unworthy. The spirit of allegorizing seems to have passed, in some degree, from the Alexandrian to the Palestinian Jews, as their cabbalistic books and parts of the Talmud sufficiently attest. Of Josephus we know little as an interpreter; but from a passage in the preface to his 'Jewish Antiquities,' it seems not improbable that he was partially addicted to the same method with Philo.

We shall now trace the history of allegorical interpretation, as it may be gathered from the writings of the principal fathers and their successors to the present day. Those who lived immediately after the apostles are generally designated the apostolic fathers, not because their style or doctrines closely resembled those of the inspired writers, but solely on account of their proximity in time to the infallible teachers selected by Christ. They are Barnabas, Hermas, Clement of Rome, Ignatius, and Polycarp. There are few specimens of exposition in their remaining productions; so that their merits or defects as interpreters of the Bible can scarcely be described with accuracy. There is ground however for believing, that they were as far from having just ideas respecting the mode in which the Holy Scriptures should be treated, as they were chronologically near apostles and evangelists. There was, in truth, an immense distance between them and the New Testament writers-a distance all the more perceptible, in proportion as they are closely ranged by the side of the latter. The influence exerted on the minds of those who were prompted to convey the will of God in writing to the most distant ages must have been of a specific character, to render the interval between them and other authors so wide.

The following specimen of interpretation is from the sixth chapter of the epistle ascribed to Barnabas. After quoting Exodus xxxiii. 1-3, in which Jehovah promises to the Israelites the land of Canaan for a possession-a land flowing with milk and honey-the writer proceeds to give the spiritual meaning of the promise. It is, as if it had been said, Put your trust in Jesus, who shall be manifested to you in the flesh. For man is the earth which suffers; forasmuch as out of the substance of the earth Adam was formed.' Hence, by the goodly land, Barnabas understands Christians who flow with milk and honey-that is, are kept alive by the belief of God's promises and word, and so have dominion over the land externally. Other parts of the epistle exhibit similar mysticism and show that the writer was addicted to allegorizing, which he designates by the name Tvis. The Shepherd' of Hermas has no scripture quotations, but consists of a series of visions. It is difficult, therefore, to affirm what mode of interpretation that writer

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followed. Clement of Rome seldom gives an explanation of the passages to which he alludes. But it is probable that he inclined to the allegorical method, as may be inferred from the twelfth chapter of his first epistle to the Corinthians, in which he praises the faith and hospitality of Rahab, supposing that by the scarlet rope suspended from her house was signified redemption by the blood of our Lord to all that believe and hope in him. In the Epistle of Polycarp, numerous passages are adduced from the New Testament, without explanation. As to the letters attributed to Ignatius, there is good reason to doubt whether they proceeded from himself. He may have written some parts of the shorter edition; but the greater part of the larger must be pronounced unauthentic, since it bears decided marks of a later age. In whatever way their authenticity or spuriousness be disposed of, they furnish no contribution towards a history of Bible interpretation.

It would appear strange to find in the apostolic fathers so little exposition of scripture, were it not largely owing to the character of the time in which they lived, and the adverse circumstances to which Christianity was exposed. These faithful men had to struggle against a host of difficulties; and they naturally clung to the great realities of the new religion-the life and death of the Redeemer-without seeking to apprehend the other truths which stand in connexion with them. They had not leisure to sit in calm contemplation, to open up the meaning of the written word, especially as the separate portions of the New Testament had not yet been collected into one volume. And even had they enjoyed sufficient time and leisure, it may be doubted whether they were competent to the task of interpretation. The indications of allegorizing which appear in their writings render it probable, that if they had attempted much in the way of exposition, they would have indulged in a wayward course, and failed to apprehend the true sense. The current of allegorical interpretation had already set in-and they were not the men to stem it, even had they wished to do so.

We proceed to Justin Martyr, the first of that class of writers who are known as the apologists of Christianity. This father certainly belongs to the allegorizing interpreters. Imbued with Grecian philosophy and conversant with the Greek poets, he was accustomed to attach to them a spiritual sense. After embracing Christianity, he wished to mould into a united system the quintessence of Grecian wisdom, Jewish learning, and Christian doctrine. This could only be effected by spiritualizing the Old Testament, which he accordingly did, especially in the dialogue with Trypho. In applying a certain principle which

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