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foreign nature, and construe it as a prediction of the march of the Romans into Judea to the siege and destruction of Jerusalem nearly eighteen hundred years ago. No construction could involve a grosser violation of the figure and the passage. It is impossible, from the nature of the comparison, that the Son of Man's coming can denote anything else than his literal personal coming; precisely as it is impossible that the lightning's flashing from the east unto the west can denote anything but the flashing of that element in that manner. Christ's coming, moreover, in the dazzling pomp of deity, darting avenging fires from his chariot wheels, is to present a vivid resemblance in conspicuousness, though it is immeasurably to transcend it, to a shaft of lightning that leaps from a midnight cloud, and darting to the west fills the whole scene for a moment with a noonday effulgence; but no such resemblance is presented to it by a slow marching army of Romans, who could have no general visibility like a brilliant object in the heavens, but must have been absolutely invisible to all who were not in their immediate vicinity. A just understanding of the figure would have withheld these writers from such a misconstruction of it, and such a violation of the prophecy.

A strict adherence to the laws of figures in the

interpretation of the Scriptures will set aside a vast number of similar misconstructions that are now current, and restore the perverted passages to their

true sense.

CHAPTER XV.

THE RESULTS OF THE LAWS OF FIGURES IN THE
INTERPRETATION OF THE SCRIPTURES.

ANOTHER, though less frequent error, is the assumption, as shown chapter XI., that narrative, or commemorative portions of the sacred volume, in which the rhetorical figures are employed in the usual manner, are nevertheless themselves taken in the whole as narratives, tropical; and that the events therefore which they relate or describe are not those which they actually denote; but that they are used representatively, and signify a different and analogous class. The effect is, accordingly, on a mere fanciful and arbitrary assumption, to set aside the true meaning of such passages, and force on them a foreign and false sense. It is most unjustifiable, therefore, and dangerous, as it enables the interpreter, under the pretence of a law of language, to reject the revelation God has made in any portion

of the Scriptures, and substitute a lawless dream of his fancy in its place.

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There is an example of this in the interpretation many writers put on the xviiith Psalm, in which David commemorates a personal visible interposition of Jehovah, to deliver him from the hands of his enemies who were plotting his assassination. Thus Professor Stuart treats that representation of the appearance of the Almighty in his cloudy chariot, and extrication of the psalmist from danger, as a mere drapery of thoughts, or occurrences of a wholly different kind, fabricated by the writer, for the purpose of giving dignity and beauty to the poem. What those thoughts or events were, however, he does not show; nor could he have presented any statement of them, had he attempted it, that would have possessed the least air of probability; for if, as he asserts, the acts of God which are gratefully and adoringly commemorated are purely fictitious and representative, the gratitude and adoration which they are exhibited as exciting must, on the same principle, be held to be representative also; and the whole is turned into an inexplicable enigma; for what merely resembling sentiment and act can gratitude and adoration be supposed to represent? It is rather, indeed, a trifling and impious farce; for why should acts be

fabricated as grounds of adoration, unless it be that none that are real can properly excite those affections, and be made the theme of commemoration? In setting aside what the hymn actually commemorates, he thus rejects its whole meaning, and exhibits it as a mere empty and heartless pageant.

Other writers have also treated the interposition of God celebrated in that Psalm as representative of a different act. Jerome regarded it as prophetic, instead of commemorative, and as having had its accomplishment chiefly in the miraculous events that attended Christ's death and resurrection. He says: Totus hic Psalmus sub persona David ad Christum pertinet. "The whole Psalm under the person of David refers to Christ." He accordingly treats all the elements of the theophany, v. 6-16, as representative. The trembling of the earth prefigured Christ's passion. The mountains symbolized the proud, and their foundations demons; the fire denoted compunction; the water tears; and the coals of fire man's fallen nature illuminated at Christ's coming through baptism or repentance. Whether he supposed the Psalmist had himself been the subject of such a miraculous deliverance as he describes, he does not indicate. Several commentators also of the seventeenth century referred the Psalm to Christ.

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