briefly two independent grounds of reason on which the practice of mystical interpretation ultimately rests.

Now it might be fairly argued that the very fact that the Jewish mind displayed a tendency to allegorize points to the presence of a considerable element of allegory in the Hebrew writings themselves. But in order to escape a possible charge of petitio principii it is better to defend the method now in question by other considerations. And first, there evidently underlies it a sense of the inexhaustible significance of language when applied to subjects of spiritual contemplation, or when employed as a medium of divine selfcommunication to man. Human language is obviously inadequate as a vehicle of the thoughts of God; it is at best a sign pointing to the thing signified and leading us back at one step to the sphere of nature and human life, in which God reveals Himself by means of the concrete language of outward fact1. The fault of the rabbinical methods of dealing with the letter of Scripture-methods which culminated in the system of the Cabbala-was twofold: on the one hand they ignored the human element in the Old Testament, forgetting that the letter was human though the spirit was divine; on the other, they were content with the manipulation of the letter instead of passing beyond it into the broad fields of nature and history. The extravagances of mystical interpretation have in some instances perhaps been due to these mistakes; in others, doubtless, to a defective perception of the progressive character of revelation. Moreover, extravagance was closely allied to arbitrariness, which even Origen appears to recognize in his admission that the mystical sense is not always certainly or safely ascertainable. The fact is that the study of the

1

Cp. Newman, University Sermons, p. 268, and the suggestive remarks of Mozley, University Sermons, pp. 134 foll.

2

3

Cp. Briggs, op. cit. p. 302.

e. g., Aug. de doc. iii. 12 insists that the morally defective actions of Old Testament characters are all figurative.

* de Princ. ix ὅτι μὲν οἰκονομίαι εἰσί τινες μυστικαὶ δηλούμεναι διὰ τῶν

written word, regarded as a revelation of the divine mind, needs to be supplemented by devout contemplation of the things and facts which human language only imperfectly symbolizes. Augustine, after carefully distinguishing between signa propria and signa translata, that is, between language literal and language metaphorical, insists that a deeper knowledge of things is. necessary for comprehending the significance of scriptural terms. Rerum ignorantia, he says, facit obscuras figuratas locutiones. In the language of Scripture a real though imperfect impression is conveyed to man of the works in which the eternal power and godhead of the Creator are made known. And possibly one of the reasons why our Lord adopted the parable as His chosen method of instruction was that while His words were often perverted or misunderstood owing either to the malignity or to the literalistic habit of mind of His different hearers, His parabolic teaching was calculated to direct attention to the correspondence between two classes of facts, between the processes of nature and the operations of grace. It implied that all the works of God are words, and that nothing is unspiritual or void of signification in a universe the Creator of which is a living spirit 2.

A sacramental view of the universe, then, seems to be everywhere presupposed in Scripture, the visible

θειῶν γραφῶν, πάντες καὶ οἱ ἀκεραιότατοι τῶν τῷ λόγῳ προσιόντων πεπιστεύκασι. τίνες δὲ αὗται οἱ εὐγνώμονες καὶ ἄτυφοι ὁμολογοῦσι μὴ εἰδέναι.

1 de doc. ii. 16. Cp. T. Aquinas, Summa Theol. i. q. 1, art. 10: 'Auctor sacrae scripturae est Deus in cujus potestate est ut non solum voces ad significandum accommodet (quod etiam homo facere potest) sed etiam res ipsas.'

2 Cp. Trench, Notes on the Parables, Introd. p. 18. I cannot refrain from quoting a striking statement of a divine whose cautious and scholarly temperament inclined him to distrust anything like the play of imagination in the exegesis of Scripture. The late Dr. Hatch in his Hibbert Lectures, pp. 83, 84, points out the permanent principle which underlies the method of mystical or allegorical interpretation. It is based,' he says, 'upon an element in human nature which is not likely to pass away. Whatever be its value in relation to the literature of the past, it is at least the expression in relation to the present that our lives are hedged round by the unknown; that there is a haze about both our birth and our departure, and that even the meaner facts of life are linked to infinity.'

creation being a type of the spiritual world. Thomas Aquinas indeed finds the rationale of different senses in Scripture not in the nature of the written letter, but in the concrete realities behind them. Ipsae res significatae per voces, he says, aliarum rerum possunt esse signal. The Cabbalistic manipulation of the written word is not only discredited by the stubborn facts of textual criticism; it is based upon a shallow and unphilosophical view of the nature of language. The curiosities which it brings to light are of that unprofitable kind which minister questions rather than godly edifying which is in faith 2.

A second justification of mystical interpretation is to be found in the relation subsisting between Judaism and Christianity. The new religion clearly has an organic connexion and essential continuity with the old. Both rest on the same foundation, namely, a selfrevelation of God resulting in new religious experiences and a new standard of human duty. Both are dominated by the idea of the kingdom of God as the consummation of history and the goal towards which nature tends. In both the divine requirement is the same. Faith is essentially the same quality in both dispensations, in spite of the fact that the object-matter of faith is not in all respects identical 3. Finally, the idea of salvation is the same in both, with the difference that in the Old Testament God condescends to moral immaturity by embodying His promises in material and transitory forms. From the unity of the Author of

1 Summa, i. q. 1, art. 10. Cp. Waterland, pref. to Scripture Vindicated (Works, vol. vi. p. 7): The words properly bear but one sense, and that one sense is the literal one; but the thing expressed by the letter is further expressive of something sublime or spiritual.'

2 1 Tim. i. 4; cp. vi. 4.

3 Cp. Riehm, ATI. Theologie, p. 34.

4

Aug. de pecc. mer. et remiss. i. 53: 'In illis [libris V. T.] quod occultatur sub velamento velut terrenarum promissionum, hoc in Novo Testamento praedicatione revelatur.' Cp. c. duas epp. Pelag. iii. 13: 'Ideo in illo sunt promissa terrena, in isto promissa coelestia: quia et hoc ad Dei misericordiam pertinuit ne quisquam vel ipsam terrenam qualemcumque felicitatem nisi a Domino creatore universitatis putet cuiquam posse conferri.'

revelation follows the New Testament principle that no prophecy is of private interpretation1. It has been repeatedly made manifest in the course of redemptive history that Scripture has successive applications which correspond to different stages in the work of God. Spiritual laws declared by prophecy, or set forth in typical institutions, or in the personal discipline of Hebrew saints and heroes, were seen to be continuously in operation, and from time to time working themselves out afresh. Accordingly, what had been originally spoken of the chosen nation, such as thepassage Out of Egypt have I called my son, found a fresh and ideal fulfilment in Him who embodied in His representative humanity the people from which, as touching the flesh, He sprang, and who recapitulated in His own life the experience of all the ancient saints. And what was truly accomplished in Him necessarily had a mystical reference also to the true spiritual Israel of God of which He was the founder and archetype 2. Finally, the individual Christian, in so far as he realizes his union with Christ, discerns in the narrative of Israel's fortunes and in the institutions of its polity or worship.a kind of picture, writ large, of his own spiritual course, and of the truths by which he lives. He recognizes the application of the history to himself in his own religious experience. He finds that 'it is true of himself in virtue of his relation to the Church, and as one member of that redeemed body. Indeed, the very

1 2 Pet. i. 20.

2 Valeton, Christus und das A. T. p. 25, makes a striking remark: 'Ich glaube, die Schriften werden nie mit mehr unmittelbarer Anwendung auf den Leser selbst gelesen und durchstudiert worden sein als von dem Herrn. Was nach Ausweis der Schriften Gott zu verschiedenen Zeiten und auf mancherlei Weise in und mit dem israelitischen Volke gethan hat, an sich selbst sieht er es erst zur vollen Verwirklichung herangereift;

was Israel sein sollte, Jesus ist sich bewusst es wirklich zu sein: er ist der Messias, der Menschensohn, derjenige, der da kommen soll,Gottes Ratschluss ist in ihm erfüllt.'

3 This principle is of course recognized by Augustine in his discussion of the Rules of Tichonius'; see especially de doc. iii. 34. Cp. Jukes, The Mystery of the Kingdom, pp. 17, 25. Observe, the application of Scripture

distinction between Israel after the flesh and Israel after the spirit, between the seed of Abraham literally understood and the children of Abraham by promise, implies that there is a necessary spiritual application of the Old Testament to those who constitute the spiritual Israel1. What in the letter belongs to the ancient people can only be figuratively or mystically applicable to the Church. That it is so applicable is warranted by the express teaching of the New Testament and attested by the universal experience of Christians. The mystery of solidarity in the kingdom of grace is the basis and justification of the mystical interpretation of Scripture. The facts of redemptive history point beyond themselves in so far as they illustrate living laws of the divine government and self-manifestation; in so far as they are moments in the forthcoming of the eternal Word 'whose path is and ever must be one 2.' If the Incarnation was indeed a great recapitulation' of the past 3, the manifestation in its fullness of a divine purpose predestined from the beginning, it is not surprising that the actions and experiences of ancient prophets, saints, priests, martyrs, and kings should have been prophetic; that in these should have been foreshadowed different aspects of Christ's office and person. Such partial and fragmentary indication of good things to be fully revealed in the future is consistent with all that we know of the divine character and methods.

Again, the typical element in the Old Testament dispensation seems to follow from the constancy of spiritual

to the individual soul seems to constitute the moral or tropological sense, or 'soul' of Scripture. Thus Orig. hom. i. in Exod. § 4 (speaking of Joseph's history) says: 'Sed et moralem in his non omittamus locum; aedificat enim animas auditorum.'

Gal. iv. 29. Aug. enarr. i. in psalm. xxi. § 25 explains 'semen Israel' as 'omnes ad novam vitam nati, et ad visionem Dei reparati.'

2

Cp. Jukes, The Mystery of the Kingdom, p. 18: 'Whether it be Israel of old, or one of Israel, or Christ, or the Church, or the believer, each, if faithful to his calling, is or has been a vessel for the manifestation of the Word whose path is and ever must be one.'

3 Eph. i. 10.