accuracy, and learned acumen of the Jews? What can equal their minute care in the transcription of the law; or what literary exactitude can be mentioned with the herculean and unparalleled labours of the Masorah? Had a literal knowledge, or a literal obedience to Scripture availed, who, among Christians, could ever have exceeded or has ever equalled the Jews? Yet the catastrophe of the destruction of Jerusalem, and the modern state of the Jews, indisputably proves that all these observances were of no avail, since they do not in all their reading fix their eye upon Christ, who is the end, the soul, and the spirit of that law they so literally, so diligently, so laboriously, but, without him, so fruitlessly study.

He then who attaches himself to the literal, to the exclusion of the spiritual sense of Scripture, may be said to remain an unbelieving Jew in heart, whilst he is a Christian by profession. He might be said to value the Scripture with a superstitious, and not with a religious reverence; seeing that the value of Scripture consists not in the natural truths it conveys, which is rather the province of natural science, but in the spiritual truths which it reveals, which are the object of revealed religion. Nor would there have been any use in bestowing a revelation to teach those

natural truths, which human reason and experience would have enabled man to attain without her aid; and which, when attained, being not spiritual truth, could consequently be of no religious or spiritual value.

We must, indeed, greatly undervalue and degrade the teaching of the Holy Spirit before we can think otherwise. If St. Paul in his Epistle to the Corinthians, explains, in a spiritual sense, a passage in the law, saying, "Doth God care for oxen," &c. what shall we think of modern critics, who imagine the Holy Spirit to have bestowed inspiration on the writers of the Old Testament, merely to commemorate the quantity of oil, wine, or flour used in unmeaning sacri. fices; or the composition of ointments for an unmeaning unction; or for the purpose of entertaining us, at the distance of nearly three thousand years, with the events and incidents in the reigns of petty kings, long since dead; and who, when alive, would have been of no importance to us.

Whilst, however, we wish to establish the reality of the spiritual sense of Scripture, we ought to limit ourselves to the most exact bounds of truth, giving each passage its real and appropriate spiritual interpretation, and not allowing our minds to excurse in a vast variety of

spiritual reflections; which, though true and beautiful, are yet certainly not contained in the text. The literal sense should first be strictly ascertained, and then the spiritual senses should be solidly given, after which any adaptations may be added; but then they must be carefully distinguished from the intended sense, and must be given only as what they are, namely, as the effusions of some pious mind, awakened by the subject in hand. For a sound spiritual, as well as a sound critical, interpretation, should seek the precise spiritual meaning that was designed, and not excurse into those merely pious applications the subject might suggest; and which, though edifying and pleasing as the fruit of the pious author, are yet not the object of sound biblical interpretation, not being the object of faith presented to us in that passage by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit himself.

Amongst many other rules which might be laid down for the just spiritual interpretation of Scripture, the following immediately occur:

All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.

In order to this, all Scripture teaches us the fall of man, and all Scripture brings to light that Saviour who is the means of his recovery

from the fall; and without a sense of which no man would see his value.

Christ then, the Saviour, is, as he himself declares, the grand end of all Scripture. He is that living temple in whom all the avenues of Scriptural truth terminate.

Hence, as every step in an avenue conducts to the temple at its termination, so in the Scripture does every part lead to Christ.

The first rule then of sound spiritual biblical interpretation is to look in every passage to find Him, who is the end of every part of revelation; resting thoroughly assured that until we do see Him in any passage, our spiritual eyes are shut to the highest sense of it, just in the same way as he who does not perceive the light of the sun reflected in the colours of every thing around, may know that he is blind or in the dark.

Secondly, we should do well to commence a diligent study of the Gospels, Epistles, and Acts, with a view to trace the almost innumerable passages from every part of the Old Testament, which are there applied and explained. Now all these passages we may set down as interpreted, in their essential signification, by divine truth itself. Where then these are ap plied to Christ, we know that the whole passage of which that is a part is to be interpreted

according to the same analogy. As for example, if we are told that the brazen serpent means Christ, we also know from the connection that the fiery serpents and their bites must typify the evil one and sin.

Thirdly, when we find a passage explained by our Lord, or by an evangelist, in reference to Christ, if we find the same passage carried on or alluded to, or the same image, or type, or custom taken up by another prophet, and amplified or carried on in allusion to the first (as is the case, for example, with Isaiah and Hosea), then we may be assured that the whole of the second instance is concerning the same as the first; and that both are to be unlocked with the same infallible key already presented by the evangelists.

Fourthly, we should consider the apostolic interpretation as a precedent by which to interpret all parallel passages; which, without specific verbal allusion, are yet precisely similar.

Fifthly, we should consider that whilst our Lord and the apostles have opened to us such a rich variety of passages in the Old Testament, by an infallible interpretation, yet their object does not seem to have been so much that of giving us a complete comment, as that of touching upon the grand and principal and obscure