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LECTURE XXIV.

THE SOUND INTERPRETATION OF THE RECORDS

OF REVELATION.

2 TIM. ii. 15.

Rightly dividing the word of truth.

HAVING considered the faith with which the divine records of Christianity are to be received, it is necessary, in the next place, to offer some remarks on the just method of interpreting the meaning of those records which such a faith implies.

For, in an age of literary innovation and intellectual daring, men may admit, generally, the Christian religion, and even pass over, without remark, the description of a true faith; and yet may evade the whole design of Christianity, by a false system of interpretation. For as in the dark ages an excessive superstition bowed to the mere authority of the church; so, in the present day, a bold and hazardous licentiousness may throw all the peculiar doctrines of the Bible into doubt and uncertainty. We have now the corruptions of eighteen hundred years flowing together. We have a secret infidelity, under the name of Christianity. It is important, therefore, to consider what clue we may find in the principles laid down in our former Lectures, to guide us on our way.

Now, the observations already offered on the nature, reasonableness, and extent of faith, imply all, and more than all, that we can require. Indeed, we might throw ourselves back upon the Lectures on Inspiration,' where we found that every thing was simple, human, ordinary, as to the manner in which the sacred writers conveyed to us those instructions which were inspired and superintended by the Divine Spirit. But the class of young persons, whom I have especially in my eye in these discourses, require details.

Let us, therefore, consider the right method of interpreting Scripture, as SPRINGING DIRECTLY FROM A TRUE FAITH; as AIDED BY COMMON SENSE AND THE ORDINARY LAWS OF HUMAN LANGUAGE; and AS SUGGESTED AND AMPLIFIED BY THE PARTICULAR CHARACTER OF AN INSPIRED BOOK.

I. Let us consider how a right method of interpreting Scripture SPRINGS DIRECTLY FROM A TRUE

FAITH.

1. For such a faith implies an HONEST APPLICATION OF OUR NATURAL UNDERSTANDING to the sacred Scriptures as a revelation from Almighty God. The key to all sound interpretation, is a due reverence for the divine writings, in opposition to levity, to human fancies, to a scornful spirit, to attempts to force a meaning on the holy word. The very essence of faith is submission to the testimony of God. Reason closes her reign, as to the matter before her, when she opens the book of God; and faith ascends the throne-leaving to reason her proper province, the subordinate ministration of arranging and expounding the new and majestic truths thus brought before her.

Faith in Christianity is nothing more nor less than faith in the things of which Christianity consists— faith in the matter of Revelation-that is, in the real

1 Lecture XII. and XIII.

and honest meaning of the words and sentences, conveying these matters to reasonable and accountable beings. This speaks for itself. Is faith merely a pretence, which allows, generally, a submission to divine Revelation, and then rejects, by piece-meal, the particulars of which that Revelation consists? Is that faith? Or, is it faith to pretend plausibly to receive the Bible as the unerring word of God, and then to bring our own opinions, our own notions, our own prejudices, and impose them on that word? Is it faith to profess an unreserved obedience to the statute law of heaven, promulgated by the great Sovereign of the universe-and then to cavil, to elude the plain sense, to alter all the provisions of that statute law? What! is natural religion to be the limit of our faith in revealed, and all beyond to be explained away or exscinded? No. A true belief involves, in its very first exercise, an honest application of our natural understanding to the matters of the divine Record, as resting on the testimony of Almighty God.

2. Faith includes, in the next place, a THOROUGH

WILLINGNESS TO SUBMIT OUR UNDERSTANDING AND HEART TO ALL THE TRUTHS WHICH GOD IS PLEASED TO REVEAL. In fact, without an unprejudiced, and docile temper of mind, no book on morals or religion can teach; much less can the Bible. False interpretations spring from man's perverse resistance to the matter which a simple and obvious rendering would bring out. Now, this is intolerable. The least true and lively faith will produce something of that humility before the infinite Creator, that sense of ignorance, that conviction of the immeasurable distance between God and man, which bow the whole soul before the discoveries of Revelation. A natural interpretation of the Bible follows, of course. student comes to it to be taught; he sits as a scholar to receive instruction; he presents his understanding and heart as a plain, unwritten tablet for the divine

The

Author of Revelation to inscribe therein whatsoever he pleases. This is the very essence of faith.

In fact, the whole of our present subject is merely the working out of the particular habit of mind of which faith consists, and to which it leads. "The Bible," says Thomas à Kempis, "must be read in the same spirit in which it was written." This temper will not, indeed, enlarge the powers of the understanding or discernment beyond the reach of man. Mysteries will be mysteries still; but it will give a sincere and unreserved desire to know God's will, to receive from Scripture, and not to bring to it, the truths of religion; and to interpret the divine word according to its own principles and discoveries, and the analogy of its doctrines; and not according to preconceived opinions, natural religion, the reasonings of men, the notions of the world, the prejudices of a sect, the prescriptions of a church, or the standard of theology which may happen to prevail in any particular place or time.

3. Again, faith PUTS US IN POSSESSION OF MANY of the BLESSINGS of which the Scriptures treat, and gives us a just apprehension of the great subject of divine Revelation. Even a work of human literature and science, can only be understood by those who know something of the general matter treated of. He who loves the science, and enters into it, will be the best interpreter; will take the greatest pains; will have the largest share of self-distrust, when difficulties arise; will take things in their order, and apply them for the opening of his way to further advances. Whereas, a man who knows little of the matter treated of, or who has no delight in it, or is possessed with an hypothesis contrary to its first principles, will make out very little to purpose.

Thus in the Bible, interpretation to one who is in possession of the blessings treated of, is in many cases rather intuition than reasoning. Ninety-nine things out of a

hundred, which puzzle the merely learned theologian, are to him obvious and clear. In reading, for instance, the epistles of St. Paul, if he has obtained the chief blessings there delineated, and is in the practice of the duties enjoined; if he has felt the discoveries made of man's fallen and sinful state; if, by the particular application of the principle of faith, he has reposed a humble trust in the propitiation of the Son of God, and has received the blessing of a free justification; if he has been led to love God by the influences of the Holy Spirit, and is delighting to walk in his commandments-if he has all these things, of course he has a key to the interpretation of most of the language relating to them.

But if in studying these epistles, a man sets out with a high opinion of his own understanding and his own merits; if he has no perception of his fallen and guilty state; if he has no view of his need of a Saviour, no reliance upon his sacrifice, no love to him, no desire to obey him ;-what can he make out of the language of St. Paul? What will he do as an interpreter ? He will, he must perplex himself and others; he will use terms without meaning; he will bring down the divine doctrine to his standard; he will put things out of their place; he will be inconsistent and obscure, and perhaps contradictory, in his expositions; he will be a far worse interpreter than the simplest Christian that has true faith to perceive the scope and tendency of the matters treated of. The simple Christian may sometimes be formally wrong, he may mistake a particular argument, he may push a point beyond its bearing; but he will be substantially right. No man thoroughly understands a practical subject, except he has experienced it so far, as to be able to compare what he reads or hears with what he finds in himself or knows to be found in others. The possession of the things treated of is the best clue. Other men make truth, this man obeys it.