restatement of the Puritan principle of the gradual revelation of the covenants of grace. The variety of the Bible is better understood in relation to its unity, and when the genesis of its revelation of redemption is made more prominent.

Francis Roberts already states the principle admirably:

"Still remember how Jesus Christ is revealed in Scripture, gradually in promises and covenants, till the noon-day of the gospel shined most clearly. . . . For (1) God is a God of order; and He makes known His gracious contrivances orderly. (2) Christ, and salvation by Him are treasures too high and precious to be disclosed all at once to the church. (3) The state of the church is various; she hath her infancy, her youth, and all the degrees of her minority, as also her riper age; and therefore God revealed Christ, not according to his own ability of revealing, but according to the churches capacity of receiving. (4) This gradual revealing of Christ suits well with our condition in this world, which is not perfect, but growing into perfection, fully attainable in heaven only. Now this gradual unveiling of the covenant and promises in Christ, is to be much considered throughout the whole Scripture; that we may see the wisdom of God's dispensations, the imperfections of the churches condition here, especially in her minority; and the usefulness of comparing the more dark and imperfect with the more clear and complete manifestation of the mysteries of God's grace in Christ."2

1 l. c., p. 10.

CHAPTER XIX

THE PRACTICE OF INTERPRETATION OF HOLY SCRIPTURE

HOLY SCRIPTURE is composed of a great number of different kinds of literature. As such it is a part of the literature of the world, having features in common with all other literatures, and also features peculiar to itself. From these circumstances arise the fundamental principles of interpretation. Biblical interpretation is a section of general interpretation. Here all students of the Bible are on common ground. Rationalistic, evangelical, scholastical, and mystical, they should all alike begin here. This is the broad base on which the pyramid of exegesis is to rise to its apex. It is the merit of Schleiermacher that he clearly and definitely established this fundamental relation. From general interpretation arises:

I. GRAMMATICAL INTERPRETATION

Holy Scripture is written in human languages. These languages contain the scripture which is to be studied. There is no other way than to master them, and thoroughly understand their grammar.1

"Only the philologist can be an interpreter. It is true that the office of interpretation requires more than mere philology, or an acquaintance with language; but all those other qualifications that may belong to it are useless without this acquaintance, whilst on the contrary, in very many cases nothing more than this is necessary for correct interpretation." 2

Others than philologists may become interpreters of Scripture by depending upon the labours of philologists in the trans1 See Chap. III.

2 Planck, Introduction to Sacred Philology and Interpretation, trans. and edited by S. H. Turner, Edin., 1834, pp. 140-141.

lations and expositions that they produce- but without these the originals of Scripture would be as inaccessible as the Hamathite inscriptions, which still defy the efforts of scholars to decipher them.

The great defect of ancient and medieval interpretation was in the neglect of the grammar of the Bible, and in the dependence upon defective texts of the Septuagint and Vulgate versions. Hence the multitude of errors that came into the traditional exegesis through the Fathers and schoolmen, and became rooted in the history of doctrine and the customs of the Church as evil weeds, so that it has taken generations of grammatical study to eradicate them. It is the merit of Ernesti in modern times that he so insisted upon grammatical exegesis as to induce exegetes of all classes to begin their work here at the foundation. Grammatical exegesis is, however, dependent upon the progress of linguistic studies. There has been great progress in the knowledge of the New Testament Greek: in the study of the dialects, in the comparison of the Greek with its cognates of the Indo-Germanic family of languages, in the science of etymology of words, and still more in the history of the use of words in Greek literature. In the study of the Hebrew language there has been still greater progress. When one traces the history of its study in modern times, and rises from Levita and Reuchlin, through Buxtorf and Castell, Schultens and John Taylor, to Gesenius, Rödiger, and Ewald, Kautzsch, Stade, König, Buhl, Driver, and Francis Brown, one feels that he is climbing to greater and greater heights. The older interpreters, who knew nothing of comparative Shemitic philology, who did not understand the position of the Hebrew language in the development of the Shemitic family, who were ignorant of its rich and varied syntax, who relied on traditional meanings of words, and had not learned their etymologies and their historic growth, lived almost in another world. modern Hebrew scholars are working in far more extended relations, and upon vastly deeper principles, and we should not be surprised at new and almost revolutionary results.

1 See pp. 219, 456.

The

II. LOGICAL AND RHETORICAL INTERPRETATIONS

The second stage of our pyramid of exegesis is logical and rhetorical interpretation. Here also there are general features in common with other literatures, and also features peculiar to Biblical Literature.

(a) The laws of thought are derived from the human mind itself. These enable us to determine the value of all thought, to discriminate the true, close, exact reasoning from the inexact and fallacious. It is assumed by some that the Bible is divine in such a sense that it corresponds with these laws of thought exactly and is faultless in its logic. If this be so, it is astonishing that we find so little that is technical, or in the form of logical propositions, in the Bible. Here was the fault of the Jewish Halacha, and the mediæval dialectic, and the modern scholastic use of proof texts. The Bible has been interpreted by the formulas of Aristotle in the Middle Age, and then by the logical methods of the different philosophies in the modern age. These scholastic and philosophical logicians overlook the fact that pure logic is one thing, applied logic another, and the history of its application a third. There are differences in logic as in other things. Human logic is far from infallible. Our modern logic has not remained in the state of innocence, nor has it reached the state of perfection. Certainly there are few, if any, dogmatic divines and philosophers who do not violate its principles and neglect its methods as stated in our logical manuals. Every race has, indeed, its own methods of reasoning. The German and the French minds move in somewhat different grooves. Still more is this the case when we consider the Hebrew and the Greek and the Anglo-Saxon. The biblical writers wrote for the men of their own time and used the forms of thought of the men of their time. It is not sufficient, therefore, to apply logical analysis to the text of the Scripture, as is so often done.1 The proper use of logical interpretation is to seek for the method of reasoning of the biblical author,—his plan, his scope, his course of argument, and the relation of his methods to those of his contemporaries.

1 Lange, Hermeneutik, p. 43.

"The Scripture doth not explaine the will of God by universal and scientific rules, but by narrations, examples, precepts, exhortations, admonitions, and promises; because that manner doth make most for the common use of all kinde of men, and also most to affect the will, and stirre up godly motions, which is the chief scope of divinity." 1

I

"Language is not the invention of metaphysicians or convocations of the wise and learned. It is the common blessing of mankind, framed for their mutual advantage in their intercourse with each other. Its laws therefore are popular, not philosophical, being founded on the general laws of thought which govern the whole mass in the community. . . . Scarcely will we hear in a long and serious conversation between the best speakers, a sentence which does not need some modification or limitation in order that we may not attribute to it more or less that was intended. Nor is the operation at all difficult. We make the correction instantly, with so little cost of thought that we would be tempted to call it instinct did we not know that many of our perceptions which seem intuitive are the results of habit and education. It would be an exceedingly strange thing, if the Bible, the most popular of all books, composed by men, for the most part taken from the multitude, addressed to all, and on subjects interesting to all, were found written in language to be interpreted on different principles. But, in point of fact, it is not. Its style is eminently, and to a remarkable degree, that which we would expect to find in a volume designed by its gracious Author to be the people's book-abounding in all those kinds of inaccuracy which are sprinkled through ordinary discourse; hyperboles, analogies, and loose catachrestical expressions, whose meaning no one mistakes, though their deviation from plumb, occasionally makes the small critic sad." 2

Again, it is an abuse of logical interpretation to regard the biblical writers as all alike logical. Those who take the logical methods of St. Paul as the key to the New Testament, and interpret, by the apostle to the Gentiles, the practical St. Peter and St. James and the mystic St. John, and above all our blessed Lord Jesus Himself, the Son of man, embracing in Himself all the types of humanity for the redemption of all, do violence to these other writers, rend the seamless robe of the gospel, and do not aid the proper understanding of St. Paul himself. Those

1 Ames, Marrow of Sacred Divinity, London, 1643.

2 McClelland, Manual of Sacred Interpretation, N.Y., 1842, pp. 61–63.