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the great learning and acute discrimination, within a certain radius, which it displays. He makes no distinction between symbolic and figurative language, except in regard to style. On this subject he has the following remarks:

"Among all the earlier prophetic annunciations respecting the future kingdom of heaven, however, none are to be found where symbol is employed in the manner in which Ezekiel, Daniel, Zechariah, and the author of the Apocalypse employ it. Figurative language is, indeed, everywhere employed. From the very nature of the case, this was absolutely necessary; for how could an attractive picture of things in the distant future be drawn, without borrowing the costume of the age in which the prophetic author wrote? How could he form a picture both animated and striking, unless he addressed the imagination and fancy through the medium of imagery or tropical language? The 2d Psalm, the 45th Psalm, and most of the predictions in Isaiah, are notable examples of what I here mean to designate. No part of the Scriptures is more full of trope and imagery than these Messianic compositions; none requires more rhetorical discrimination and taste, in order to make a correct interpretation.

"But with all this abundance of metaphor and animated imagery, how different still is the manner of these predictions, from the general tenor of those contained in the book of Ezekiel, Daniel, and Zechariah! I do not now speak merely of the Messianic predictions in these books, but of the general manner of the entire compositions of these prophets. From the time of the captivity downwards, the taste of the Hebrew writers in general seems to have undergone a great change. I know of nothing more dissimilar in respect to style and method, than Isaiah, for example, on the one side, and Ezekiel, Daniel, Zechariah, Haggai, and Malachi, on the other. Jeremiah is an example of a kind of intermediate tone between the two. But he was educated in Palestine, and spent most of his life there. His style exhibits some points of surpassing excellence, in regard to which he has not been outdone by any writer, perhaps never equalled. But his writings afford us only a few examples of the symbolic method of

representation; such as those of the linen girdle, ch. xiii.; the potter and his marred work, ch. xviii.; the potter's earthen bottle, ch. xix.; the two baskets of figs, ch. xxiv.; and the bonds and yoke put on his neck, ch. xxvii. In Isaiah, I find but a single instance of a similar nature; (unless indeed we add to this the representation in ch. viii.) This is in ch. xx., where the prophet is commanded “to walk naked and barefoot for the space of three years." I do not understand this, however, as any thing more than an emblematic picture exhibited indeed in language, but not literally carried through in action. Still, in its nature it is symbolic. In the same manner I understand the symbolic transaction exhibited in Hosea i. ii. Amos has one example of symbol also, in chap. viii., viz., a basket of summer fruit.

"Let the reader pass now from an attentive examination of these early prophets, to the careful perusal of those who wrote during and after the Babylonish exile. Ezekiel, from beginning to end, is almost an unbroken series of symbolical representation. His preaching or prophesying stands, in almost every case, connected intimately with representations of such a nature.

"The book of Daniel is, if we except a little of it which is occupied with historic narrative, nothing but symbol from beginning to end. Dreams, visions, sensible representations, in which that is acted out, in view of the prophet, which he is to record as a prediction, constitute the whole of his prophecies. In these respects, he is the exemplar of the Apocalypse, whose author, although indeed no imitator in a servile sense of any other writer, would seem still to have given a decided preference to Daniel's method of representation above that of other prophets.

"The book of Zechariah, again, is one continuous strain of symbols, until we reach ch. vii.; this, with ch. viii., resembles very much the manner of Haggai and Malachi, his contemporaries. "Here then are plain and palpable facts before us. A great change took place in the prophetic style and method, from and after the date of the Jewish captivity. Jeremiah presents this matter to us, in its transition-state; which is what we might naturally expect. Ezekiel, who is carried into a foreign country

when young, fully adopts the method of the prophets during and after the exile. The taste for this mode of writing, introduced by such men as Ezekiel, Daniel, and Zechariah, seems to have been widely diffused among the Jews everywhere, and to have come down, with augmented sway, to the apostolic age and the times which immediately succeeded it."

These observations, and some others of a similar kind, by no means exhaust the subject, and give a view of prophecy which is scarcely compatible with any rational conception of its inspiration.

CHAPTER VI.

DEFINITENESS OF THE SENSE OF THE PROPHETIC ALLEGORY.

OUR object has been hitherto to show that the hieroglyphic language in which the Revelation is couched is a distinct language; is a language within itself; can only be interpreted by itself, and that nothing but confusion can arise from explications drawn from that which is another and a different language.

It has been our object to contrast it with figurative language, and to show that while this is clear, it is dark. To exhibit this essentially dark quality of it may be thought to have been a supererogatory task, since the Revelation which is composed in it is still obscure, after the lapse of eighteen centuries. But what is the main reason of this? Why, that the attempt, which must be vain, has been made to illuminate it by submitting it to the effects of a clear language, which is, however, another; the result has been, that its darkness has been rendered more intense, and made more profound. It is possible to strike sparks of fire by bringing two hard bodies into contact; but the effect will hardly be produced if the ex

periment be tried between a hard and a soft body. It is as rational to expect that a clear language will explicate a dark. This cryptogrammic language then ought to be its own interpreter. By assiduous labor it may be made to yield sparks of fire, and it cannot be questioned that the light which has as yet emanated from the hieroglyphic language has arisen from scintillations struck from itself.

But this language, though at first dark, contains within itself the elements of light; it is designed afterwards to be clear, and for this object it is constructed with precision and armed with definiteness.

We have already considered two principles which tend to give it this definite power. The first of these is the unity of the allegory.

We have also alluded already to two other most important features of the prophetic allegory, as it is developed in Scripture, which tend in no small degree to extract the real sense from the obscurity of enigma, and to confirm it with demonstrative power when it is eliminated. These are, on the one hand, the duplication of the allegory, and, on the other, that notable feature of it which consists in its structure with four subjects in it, forming nevertheless a unity in the group. The first of these, the double version, has the same effect in clearing and confirming the sense, which two copies, in different tongues, of one and the same document expressed in literal language necessarily exert on the interpretation of the sense, however dark and obscure, however involved and perplexed the phraseology of either tongue may be.

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