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enforce or illustrate principles of moral conduct and laws of divine action. In these cases passages of the Old Testament are employed not strictly speaking as predictive, but as illustrative of New Testament facts or truths. A great number of St. Paul's references to the Old Testament are of this description: for instance, the argument in the Epistle to the Galatians which turns upon the use of the phrase Abraham and his seed 2, or the quotation from the 68th Psalm in Eph. iv. 7, 8. St. Paul is not here using the Old Testament passage as a proof-text, but as a free illustration of a particular principle of the Christian system3. It should be added that in one passage of St. Paul and in two other passages of the New Testament we find reference made to legends supplementary of the Old Testament history and probably already embodied in extra-canonical books 4.

In view of the fact that the parable (mashal) is commonly found in the ancient Midrashim, it may be questioned whether our Lord's habit of teaching in parables may not be regarded as a particular application and transfiguration of the Haggadah method; for His aim ever appears to be didactic, the parables and the direct references to the Old Testament being intended to illustrate the redemptive action of God, or laws of His moral government. Such is his reference to the story of the flood and the fate of Lot's wife, which are used to enforce a solemn spiritual lesson. Indeed, generally speaking, our Lord's references to the incidents of Old Testament history do not enable us to judge how far He lays stress on their historical importance. He is not concerned with

1 See especially Rom. x. 18 (Ps. xix. 4), and Rom. x. 6 foll. (Deut. xxx. 11 foll.).

2 Gal. iii. 16 (Gen. xvii. 7). Cp. Driver in Expositor for Jan. 1889, pp. 18 foll.

3 See Driver, Sermons on the O. T. pp. 198, 199.

4 I Cor. x. 4; 2 Tim. iii. 8; 2 Pet. ii. 4; Jude 9 foll. Cp. Acts vii. 22, 53; Gal. iii. 19; Heb. ii. 2. So Gal. iv. 29, 'persecuted' seems to be based on a Midrashic development of Gen. xxi. 9. See Lightfoot, ad loc.

5 Matt. xxiv. 37; Luke xvii. 32.

history as such; and the analogy of His silence on points of science would suggest that He neither endorses nor repudiates the ordinary conceptions of His time in regard to the quality of the ancient narratives. In any case it is clear that He only employs them homiletically for purposes of spiritual edification. He does not apparently intend to teach positively on points which belong to the domain of scientific criticism1. But there is something significant in the fact that the employment of the Old Testament history by Christ is supplemented by the system of parabolic instruction, while His perfect simplicity in teaching tacitly discountenances the extravagance which often characterized the Haggadah of the scribes. He avoids such subjects as would divert the minds of His hearers without instructing them; He has an eye to their moral and spiritual needs; He uses that form of teaching which is best adapted to make great truths understood by the meanest capacity 2.

The freedom of the New Testament writers in their use of the Old is most strikingly displayed in their tendency to employ the method of Sodh or allegorism, a point which needs passing illustration. Instances in St. Paul's epistles will immediately occur to our minds; we shall recall the Hellenistic colour of the

1 On this difficult subject the writer would practically agree with the following statement: 'He who came from heaven in order to reconcile us to God, speaks in regard to the things of ordinary earthly life-and to these belongs the formal side of Old Testament knowledge-the speech belonging to His earthly environment, to His time and to His people. He does not move at an inaccessible height above the heads of men, but lives in their very midst. The eternal becomes a child of His time.... He had a task quite other than that of busying Himself, or instructing men, in regard to questions which are discussed in the schools and for the specialist may be of the highest importance, but which are unprofitable for the life of the soul, and in view of His life's work are so infinitesimally small, indeed are scarcely worth even mention.' Valeton, Christus und das A. T. pp. 28 foll.

2 See some wise and beautiful thoughts on preaching in Bp. Wilson's Sacra Privata (ed. Oxford, 1840), pp. 243 foll.

3 St. Paul uses it specially in the Epistles to Corinth, possibly owing to the connexion of that Church with Apollos. See e. g. i Cor. x. I foll. Cp. Gal. iv. 22 foll.

Epistle to the Hebrews, with its skilful treatment of the figure of Melchizedek, and its insistence on the symbolic structure and ceremonial of the ancient sanctuary; we shall remember the predominance of symbolism in the Apocalypse. Our blessed Lord may be thought to give sanction to this method in the general tenour of His teaching, which implies that the whole of the Old Testament is prophetic and figurative, foreshadowing the mysteries of His person and kingdom. But it cannot be said with truth that He freely employs the method of allegory as generally understood. He rather confines Himself to setting before the Church an open door, in pointing to the essential mystery of Scripture as the work of the Wisdom of God; and in accepting or ascribing to Himself titles bearing far-reaching Old Testament associations, such as Lamb of God, King of Israel, Son of David, Prophet of Nazareth, Son of Man, the Good Shepherd, the True Vine, the Corner-Stone, the Messiah, the Wisdom of God. It is indeed sometimes difficult to distinguish between the allegorical use of the Old Testament to illustrate a fact, and the Haggadistic use of it to enforce a spiritual law. Augustine only gives one instance of allegorism from our Lord's own teaching: namely the reference to Jonah's deliverance as a sign or type of the resurrection 1. But no writer is more conscious of the typical and symbolic character of the Old Testament viewed as a whole.

2. Enough has been said to illustrate the freedom of the New Testament in its references to the Old. The next point that claims our attention is the moral import of the quotations. Our Lord, it has been said, deals with the words of Scripture as 'living words of God to man bearing upon human conduct. It is scarcely accidental that His first recorded quotation is from Deuteronomy viii. 3: Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the Matt. xii. 39, 40; xvi. 4. Cp. Aug. de util. cred. 8. 2 Briggs, Biblical Study, p. 315.

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mouth of God'. In the hands of the scribes the Old Testament religion was not indeed a dead thing, but it had lost any capacity of further development and expansion. It could not in any way satisfy the desire of the true Israel for a new word of God, a fresh revelation of truth. Our Lord and His apostles, on the other hand, quickened the very letter of Scripture by pointing to the living personality behind it. The words of the living and eternal God were shown to be full of enduring vitality and continuous significance. The phrase It is written in our Lord's mouth implies that each scripture appealed to is not a lifeless formula of law, but the revelation of a living personality and character 2. What the living God inspires lives in Him, lives unto Him, lives for all who abide in communion with Him. St. Paul even speaks as if Scripture were endued with personality. From the first it foresaw the purpose of God; it preached the gospel beforehand unto Abraham 3. It accompanies the people of God through the ages as a monitor and witness, sustaining the spirit of patience, quickening expectation, and kindling hope. Like the incarnate Word Himself, the written word reveals its true character only to those in whom faith lives and the sense of need has been awakened. To the Pharisee and the scribe Scripture was practically a fetich; to the cold and critical wisdom of this world it is a dead thing to be dissected and analyzed, or a common thing that may be rejected and despised, or approved and patronized; to faith and the spirit of prayer Scripture is the very voice of God which warns or encourages, the very eye of God which watches and guides the soul. As employed indeed by our Lord and His apostles, the function of Scripture

1 Matt. iv. 4.

2 Cp. Valeton, Christus und das A. T. p. 18: 'Durch ihn jedes Teilchen der Schrift auf seinen rechten Platz kommt: das Kleine, vielleicht lange überschätzt, wird klein: das Grosse, vielleicht wie der von Gott ausersehene Eckstein (cp. Matt. xxi. 42), lange von den Menschen verachtet, wird gross. Er bringt Leben und Bewegung er bringt κpious; die Schriften werden "erfüllt.""

3 Gal. iii. 8.

Rom. xv. 4.

stands in close relation to their entire system of dealing with human souls. The tendency of Pharisaism was to bring men into leading-strings, 'to leave as little as possible free to the individual conscience, but to bring everything within the scope of positive ordinance. The free play of individuality, the development of personal character, was utterly remote from the range of their ideas. Even the ideals of prophecy were to them of secondary interest. Their one aim was to secure by a comprehensive discipline the principle of technical holiness. They were blind leaders of the blind inasmuch as they had lost all sense of proportion in their estimation of Scripture. They clung to what was temporary and transient; they made what was little great, what was morally indifferent all-important, while they overlooked the broad tendency of Scripture as a whole, and thus lost any sense of a continuous divine utterance, and of a law written not on tables of stone but in the heart of man. Of our Lord, on the contrary, it is a truism to say that He cherishes and reverences personality, that He ever aims at awakening and cultivating individuality. He founded a Church that was to be a school of individual character, in which the diversified capacities of each soul were to be freely developed 3. And the usage of the New Testament generally, to say nothing of the explicit teaching of Christ, shows that in the work of moral and spiritual education the study of the Old Testament discharges a necessary function. It is the light of the individual conscience; it ministers to individual needs; it is an aid to individual perfection. But such a use of Scripture presupposes a living relationship to God, correspondence with the gift of His Spirit, and an earnest purpose to ascertain His mind and will. And thus the ulti

1 Wellhausen, Sketch of the History of Israel and Judah, p. 186. 2 Matt. xv. 14; xxiii. 16. Cp. Col. i. 28; Eph. ii. 10.

2 Tim. iii. 17.

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5 Aug. de util. cred. 13: Quidquid est, mihi crede, in Scripturis illis altum et divinum est: inest omnino veritas, et reficiendis instaurandisque animis accommodatissima disciplina; et plane ita modificata, ut nemo

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