Of the numerous kinds of figures used in Scripture there are four most frequent, of which the characteristics should be remembered. The simile is any case where a resemblance is drawn between two objects; as “the righteous shall flourish like the palm tree.” The metaphor is the putting of one thing, because of its analogy, to express another, as “Ephraim is a cake not turned.” The symbol is the designed use of one object to represent some other object or thought to which it has an affinity, as baptism to represent death and resurrection. And the type is the same as the symbol, except that the type relates to some future thing (called the antitype), whereas the symbol relates to something past or present. There are about a dozen others figures: but I think most of them explain themselves, and the distinction between them (metonymy, synecdoche, and so forth) are chiefly of interest to grammarians and rhetoricians.
It will therefore be apparent that we have no right to call a thing a type or symbol, unless there be some evidence of a divine intention that it should be so regarded, since the design is what characterizes these two figures.
It is consequently oftentimes accurate to say such and such a thing is a figure, simile, or illustration, where it would not be safe to call it a type or symbol. It is well to be careful in such matters; but we may be sure there is a “via media” of truth lying somewhere between the extremes of mysticism and hard literalism. If God uses figures, He wishes to teach us something by them. We should consider them attentively and reverently, desiring to discover what His meaning is. This meaning generally consists of some broad primal truth connected with the most striking features of each figure; and then subordinate features of more or less interest will be found to reveal themselves as details are examined.
To apply this to the figures referred to in a former paper—what does “Light” signify? The broad grand truth in 1 John 1:5 is “God is light;” and the symbolism of creation discloses how that, as light shone into the chaotic darkness of a world-ruin physically, so God was to interpose in the spiritual darkness (evil ignorance) of the world for its instruction and salvation (light and life). Such is the grandparent meaning, evident to all, of this figure. But consider for a moment some of the collateral meanings; how that it is by the word that light comes (Gen. 1:3), and John 1, because the Word was God. Nothing is more truly a part of an intelligent being than his word which expresses his mind. So Christ is called the Word—and therefore the Light in instruction—because He reveals the Father, or expresses personally what is in the mind of God (2). The light makes day and separates it from night; so those who are illumined by Christ are called children of day (1 Thess. 5:5), separated from the influence of darkness. And here notice “the evening and the morning,” that is, the order of God's diurnal cycle, and thus the Jewish day was reckoned; while the world generally took its day-time before its nighttime. With God night-time precedes His day-time; the good wine is kept for the last. With Christ and His followers the time of darkness, anguish, pain and death comes first; and then the deliverance. “Hail, holy light, offspring of darkness, first-born!” but with the world it is the reverse (4). The diffusion of light is at first without visible agency (Gen. 1:3); and then by the visible agency of a central source of great majesty which is to rule the day, and by attendants which, when he is invisible to the world, look on his face and reflect his light. And so in the new dispensation (5) the invisible source of light takes different aspects. Just so with Christ, who is spoken of as the “Morning Star” to those (the church) who wait now, and as “the Sun of Righteousness” to those who shall wait in the succeeding dispensation (6). Light reveals, and thus God by His word reveals the nature of everything, not only of sin—which thought seems to cling in our natural minds, always attributing a severe aspect to “God is Light” —but of everything right and lovely and of good report also, which aspect is seriously overlooked. “Verily the light is sweet and pleasant,” Eccl. 11:7, not merely severe. Into the horror of perilous darkness its celestial beams bring comfort and healing on their wings, revealing beauty as well as deformity judging all things. Final judgment is outer darkness. As the ancient Arctic dwellers would assemble on their bill tops to greet the sun's return after their long, long winter night, hailing his beams with plans of joy; so should the world have hailed the advent of spiritual light, heavenly truth; “but their eyes were blinded.” (7) The mystery of light cannot be explained (as might be expected in any symbol of deity); but the undulatory theory generally accepted is the same theory in principle as explains the progress of sound, thus giving us another association between the ear and the eye, the word and the light. (8) Light not only reveals colors—as Lord Bacon writes, “all colors will agree in the dark” —but creates all color; for it is the separation of light into elementary parts, and the absorption of some of these parts, that is the cause of colors. If light be broken on a prism, as in the case of falling raindrops, it separates into different colors, whence the rainbow; and again, if all the colors be put gradually on a disc and the disc revolved, they will blend into white (called technically the recomposition of light). So the divine character is not seen in its full beauty until it comes as revealed in Christ into contact with the weeping clouds of earthly misery, and then the different attributes of God are seen in the transcendent majesty of their stronger, and in the ineffable grace of their more tender, elements. And it is in this sense that Joseph's “coat of many colors,” received by him from his father, represents the eternal character of Christ, as also the blue and purple and scarlet of the tabernacle curtains.
Many other analogies may be found in this figure; but the foregoing at least flow naturally, and without straining. They suggest something of the appropriateness of the figures used by the Holy Ghost; and the amplitude and opulence of the divine imagery.
J. C. B.