Symbolism means types of the Old Testament applicable to things in the New. Both concur in stating that this is so. Moses was commanded to make the tabernacle according to the pattern seen in the Mount. Now if God made such a system, ought we to expect no more in it than gowns and curtains? The whole language through Scripture is framed on such a symbolical use, and the great facts of the New are the plain counterpart to the symbols of the Old. You must tear the warp out so that it ceases to be a texture before you undo this. Altars, tabernacles, the dwelling place of God, sacrifices, priesthood, the rock, the water, the anointing, the holy place, the mercy-seat, the blood shedding. I should go through every element in its whole structure of thought before I had closed the list of facts and objects presented in the Old Testament and taken up in the New, and which have entered (and this according to Scripture) into the conception of our religious thought. It is not a way of interpreting, but Scripture itself. Christ is the Lamb of God. He is a great High Priest entered into the holiest. And Paul goes further, telling us as to the history itself-" Now all these things happened unto them for types, and they are written for our admonition, on whom the ends of the world are come" (1 Cor. 10:1111Now all these things happened unto them for ensamples: and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come. (1 Corinthians 10:11)). One, and only one, true meaning therefore is not the fact in this case.
Say Moses was foolish, and Paul foolish; but if you so interpret Scripture, you interpret it contrary to its nature and positive directions; that is, you do not interpret it, you correct it. I have the facts—important, very important, in the history of the people—important as a history of God's dealings with the people; and I get them avowedly pattern facts. Keep the imagination in check-all quite right. Look for doctrines in doctrinal passages, and here for details and illustrations-all right. But do not pretend you are teaching us to interpret Scripture rightly when you are directly contradicting it, and saying to it, You are wrong. It is not the Fathers who have said that Sarah and Hagar were an allegory. We do not follow them in such a point as saying, Does God take care for oxen?
If I use Scripture at all, and on the weightiest subjects, the rationalist's principle becomes impossible: It breaks down, the whole structure of Scripture itself. And I see that he does not merely check the indulgence of imagination in it, which is quite right, but rejects the idea of more or less. He declares that, " in whatever degree it is practiced, it is equally incapable of being reduced to any rule." I do not know whether he rejects the Epistle to the Hebrews; but evidently that book is gone wholly if his principle be true, and countless passages throughout the-whole New Testament.
' Temporal and spiritual Israel, as commonly used, I give him freely up. It is a mere abuse of words. I say, as commonly used; because, in the common adaptation of prophecies, prophecies explicitly referring to Israel are applied to the assembly, where the subject-matter and principles are completely opposed. Ordained forms, and facts of history, may have a symbolical application; but moral addresses refer to the objects and moral state of those addressed, and do not give us objects to interpret, but persons addressed. Zion means Zion when she is prophesied about. The prophecy concerns her, because it speaks to her on the moral ground she is on, and the arbitrary application to the assembly is entirely false, because the principal of relationship with God is different. A general principle, as that God is faithful or good, may be of course applied, with just care to see how it is used; yet the people addressed are not symbolical objects, but moral persons, and the facts to happen, real. If we are to speak of the Lord's prophecy as to Jerusalem, apply the same principle, but I deny wholly that in Matthew, Titus, etc., are spoken of at all. There may have been something analogous; but its only direct application is to dealings yet to come, immediately after which the Lord will appear. I believe this because it says so. In Luke I have the siege of Jerusalem, and the language is carefully altered. I believe what is said in both passages. In Luke, whose gospel always looks out to Gentiles,' the times of he Gentiles after the siege are distinctly spoken of before the signs that are to come.
Remark here how doubt is thrown on all. It is asked, Is the application of types "to be regarded as the meaning of the original text, or an accommodation of it to the thoughts of latter times?" Now, note that the Lord instituted the Last Supper as taking the place of the Passover. The apostles apply in every passage these figures, so that the question is not if we are interpreting right.; it extends to this, If the Lord and the apostles are merely accommodating, these figures or not? What does the rationalist think? He says, " Our object is, not to attempt here the determination of these questions, but to point out that they must be determined before any real progress can be made." The answer is, for every Christian the matter is determined, They believe in the Lord's and the apostles' use of them-man's uses now they judge by Scripture to see if they be just.
The use of any given type now is, of course, to be judged of when it is used. They are most instructive; and, fitting in with positive doctrines which warrant what is drawn from them, they become living pictures and illustrations of what otherwise would escape you. They may not, in our hands, serve to found a doctrine as a first revelation of it; but as a vivid illustration and suggestion of truth they are invaluable.
The rationalist insists on this because " The Old Testament will receive a different meaning accordingly as it is explained from itself or from the New. In the first case, a careful and conscientious study of each one for itself is all that is required; in the second case, the types and ceremonies of the law, perhaps the very facts and persons of the history, will be assumed to be, predestined or made after a pattern corresponding to the things that were to be in the latter days." Now all this is confusion from beginning to end. it ignores the positive statements of the volume pretended to be interpreted. And further, if the book be inspired, one Mind has formed it from beginning to end, and we must look for a co-ordinated system. If it be not, we find there is an end of predestinating facts or even statements. But we have seen that, if it is a true history, the whole system of the tabernacle was made after a pattern, which the Epistle to the Hebrews largely and specifically declares to be a heavenly one, and the tabernacle a pattern of things in the heavens. But we have this even more specifically defined. The law was a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image, There were sacrifices; so Jesus was a sacrifice. But the Jewish were repeated, proving that sin was not forever put away for him who came by them; Jesus' was not repeated, because it was. There were many priests, because they died; for us, but One, because He ever lives. There was a veil, and no one could go into the holiest; now the veil is rent, and we have boldness to enter. The high priest stood, because his work was never finished; Jesus is set down at the right hand of God, because His work is finished forever, and so on. These were the outlines of this vast exhibition of God's ways, to be a key, so to speak, near the eye. But neither Testament is simply to be explained by the other. In some points there is contrast, as law and gospel; in others, analogies; in others, common principles; in others, prophetic announcements. The only point we learn to have been hidden was the assembly. This could not be revealed, because it was based on the casting down of the middle wall of partition, as the Jewish system was on its being strictly kept up.
But, if God he the Author of the sacred volume, it is monstrous to suppose there was not a preparatory leading on to the full revelation of God Himself; or that He revealed something which was wholly unconnected with and no way introductory to what followed. It was necessary to make distinct the difference between man's standing on the ground of his own responsibility, and grace—between requiring, however justly, and giving. And this, though prophets point to the giving, there is. But promises came before law; and even under law (a ministration of condemnation and death) there were ordinances which prefigured the way of grace, while the exacting of righteousness, which man had not, led him to the sense of the need which grace met. The understanding of all this rests on this: " They shall be all taught of God." Each part, as to its statements, is to be understood in itself; but, when simply understood, the correspondences and differences will appear, and rich instruction for man's soul be acquired out of them.
All his division of the rationalists, with its consequences, is in the air, and written without any kind of reference to the facts of the case. We do not assume anything about it. We take what is said in the book itself about itself, and find it verified in the richest and most instructive manner.
One would think the rationalist had never read St. Paul's Epistles, or the Hebrews, or indeed any part of the New Testament; for, as I said, he does not reason on its interpretation here, but against its contents. And man's fancies, and scriptural (that is, divine) expositions, are thrown together as of equal weight.