IN offering some remarks on "pro | interpretation, they taught, was opposed phetical interpretation," we are natu- to official interpretation-to interpretarally led first to consider the true import of the apostolic maxim on the subject. "No prophecy," says St. Peter (2nd Epist. i. 20), is of any private interpretation." The explanations which have been given of this sentence have been more than as numerous as the words which compose it; but of these it will be only worth our while to notice such as carry some degree of probability with them. Three centuries ago, it would appear by the commentary of Calvin on the passage, this was a text on which the Papists relied much to explode the right tion emanating from the church's recognized guides. Now, while it may be allowed that the use of the word private in thispassage makes it a convenient missile (to borrow Mr. Hall's image*) for Romish controversialists, no serious argument of the kind, we need hardly say, is derivable from it. A glance at the context will show that it is anything but the apostle's aim to discourage the study of revealed truth in private Christians; nor will the word private, we may add, in its fair use bear the ecclesiastical application here sought to be forced upon it. Privacy, in the An exposition of the passage which has of late years found much acceptance among thoughtful men, and which even now numbers a large proportion of suffrages in its favour, is that which makes the word private synonymous with separate or detached, and understands the apostle to say that every single prophecy is but part of a scheme or system. This is the celebrated exposition of Bishop Horsley, who renders "No prophecy of scripture is of self-solution." He represents the apostle as teaching that no prophecy is intelligible from a scrutiny of its own terms, but must either be elucidated from the general body of prophecies, or wait for light from the event which shall constitute its fulfilment. In order to understand any prophecy thoroughly, he insists, we must have the whole of prophecy before us, and accept no exposition which does not quadrate with the general scheme. The bishop has devoted no less than four sermons to the illustration and defence of this theory. His arguments seem to have wrought conviction on the mind of the late erudite Dr. Pye Smith, who more than once refers with approbation to the discourses.* Now even allowing that the canon thus advocated and adopted may be true, we cannot satisfy ourselves that it is the truth taught in this particular connection. Criticism which it ought to do, v which follow. The divi of prophecy which is the in ver. 21, is no argumen intelligibility of detache No reference can be found either to a known body of to the facts which prop plates. Its two statem regard the origin of the prophecies of scripture, no of one prophecy to the re on what grounds can t obscurity of every detach be asserted? Why must w our eyes a prophecy again before we can understand against Babylon? Why mu spicuity of a "burden of depend on a knowledge of a Tyre?" Why must we c gether the prophecies resp the time and place of ou birth before we can interp Why, in a word, must we pa can decipher the whole su Messianic prophecies befor expound any? The ancien of scripture do not appear to shackled or embarrassed in th That Jeremiah's prephecy the seventy years was righ stood we have already seen, may believe, was Daniel's the seventy weeks. The pr Isaiah respecting Cyrus was susceptible of misapprehensi Isa. xliv. 28; xlv. 1.) Even mon people in our Lord's learned from their propheti that their Messiah was to 1 family and from the town (See John vii. 42.) We see, i stronger reason against the rather as a reserve aid to interpretation | doubtless the widest difference as to the than as a preliminary. It cannot be illuminations which they afford between intended to preclude investigation at the natural and the artificial light; but the outset, but may be a reason for sus- no one would despise the latter as pending judgment or decision at the valueless. No one would say that we close. It may be allowed the force of must forbear passing any opinion on a veto on conclusions we are coming objects by the inferior light till we can to, but can have no right to lay an have the benefit of the superior. For a embargo on deliberations we are con- multitude of uses and of judgments the ducting. inferior light is amply sufficient, and thus we believe that many prophecies of scripture are of self-solution, enriching us with glimpses, at least, into future times, if they do not preclude all uncertainty. We are content accordingly to be students of prophecy without expecting ourselves to become prophets; to catch the shadows of coming events as they approach us, without thinking that we can fill up the outline; to "give good heed" to the light which has been granted us, and yet wait till the fuller day" arise on our hearts." It is said that the intention of prophecy was not to enable us to pry into the future, but to discern the hand of Providence through the medium of the past. But if prophecies awaken no expectation, what is to engage the attention to their fulfilments in Providence, or who shall fix the limits to the future and the past? To pry is to search curiously into forbidden secrets; it is not easy to see why those portions of the future should be so branded respecting which God has vouchsafed us information. Such outlying tracts of time are rather among the "revealed things" (see Deut. xxix. 29) which reverence and gratitude bid us to explore. It does not appear why these, more than other revelations, should be given either to moulder in neglect for ages, or to baffle all attempts at research. The presumption is rather that they were meant as landmarks for our faith; to preserve to our hearts some degree of composure while other men's are "failing them through fear." (Luke xxi. 26.) The presumption is that they would so temper obscurity with clearness as amply to reward patient inquiry without superseding it. It seems to us that this is the view given of ancient prophecy in the context of our passage. The apostle compares it 'ver. 19) to a mat that A remaining explanation of the apostle's words, and the only further one which we shall notice, is that which treats the epithet private as little differing from human, and understands the writer to say that the prophets did not propound their own views or conclusions. This is substantially the view taken by Dr. Henderson, in his Lectures on Inspiration, who appeals with great felicity to a passage in Philo,* where a very similar expression occurs. Philo says that a prophet declares nothing private, i. e. nothing whatever of his own, but is [simply] an interpreter, another suggesting to him all that he brings forward. Henderson would make the parallelism of the two passages so complete as to explain the apostle's interpretation by the Jewish author's interpreter-that is to say, he refers the interpretation to the prophet, not to the reader of prophecy. His paraphrase is, "No prophecy of scripture is [the result] of private [or uninspired] disclosure,"* i. e. of the divine purposes. But it is an objection to this that the term interpretation is nowhere else employed in Scripture in this sense, which Henderson himself admits, and we think further that had the apostle designed such a statement, he would have used the past tense instead of the present one-No prophecy of scripture was of private or uninspired disclosureinterpretation. We hold it therefore more safe to adhere to the ordinary sense of the latter word, and to explain, "No prophecy of scripture is to be interpreted as if the prophet's own," or, more generally, "No prophecy is to be interpreted as if of human authorship." We are to attribute to every single prophecy and to the whole body of prophecies a direct divine origin, thankfully discerning in the whole the communications of divine knowledge, wisdom and benignity. This sentiment, it will be instantaneously perceived, is in the fullest accordance with what follows, "Prophecy came not in old time by the will of man ;" it was not at any time of the prophet's own origination; it did not flow from ideas of his own; he was not its author but its organ; he neither spoke nor wrote except as he was moved by the informing Spirit. whether it does not, in some measure, diminish the credibility of the existence of such predictions. Our former paper will sufficiently show that we are no advocates of such double sense in any portion of scripture as should imply aught that would be ambiguous or equivocal. We utterly repudiate everything like a duplicity which should tamper with the anxieties and expectations of mankind-which should, e. g. :— "Keep a word of promise to the ear which should apparently guide an earnest inquirer in one direction, when his true course would be in another. All equivocation of this sort we should hold to be equally derogatory to the Most High's natural and to his moral attributes. It would impeach his sincerity and be a confession of his ignorance. It would show him reduced from the enviable supremacy he might occupy to the miserable case of one who has to prop up his credit by paltry shifts and subterfuges. Such subterfuges and shifts the Author of Scripture prophecy solemnly disclaims, "I have not spoken in secret, or in a dark place of the earth; I said not to the seed of Jacob, Seek ye me in vain: I the Lord speak righteousness; I declare things that are right," i. e., upright, straightforward. (Isaiah xlv. 19.) We understand by double predictions, or predictions which are susceptible of a double sense, those which, in the language of the illustrious Bacon, receive "a springing and germinant accomplishment;"* those which have a primary reference to a proximate and a secondary reference to a remote event; those which expect one fulfilment under the Old dispensation, and another under the New; those consequently in * See Bacon on Advancement of Learning. (Montagu's Ed. 1838,) p. 124. which the first fulfilment is premonitory of the second; in which the circumstances and lessons of the former event are, on a small scale, what the circumstances and lessons of the later event are on a large one. It is justly observed by Bacon (see reference below) that such fulness and latitude in prophecies is agreeable to the nature of their Author, with whom "a thousand years are but as one day;" it will also readily be perceived to have the general course of analogy in its favour. An observation or two may here not be misplaced on the plain and everdeveloping analogy which obtains between the material and the spiritual world. There is, probably, not a phenomenon in the kingdom of mind which has not its corresponding phenomenon in the kingdom of matter. There is not an operation in our mental or moral frame which has not light shed upon it by some analogous operation in our physical frame. There is not an agency or influence which can be brought to bear on the world within us which may not be paralleled and illustrated by some agency in the world without. It is in their power of tracing and exhibiting such parallels that the genius of great writers consists. It is in the welcome surprise with which such analogies burst on our own perceptions that half our own pleasures of imagination are found. No inconsiderable argument in behalf of the identity of the Author of Creation and Providence is derived from the coincidence of such analogies. Can we believe that we are under two different jurisdictions when we are surrounded every where by such symmetries? Is it credible that it is owing to mere fortuitous combination that one system of objects full of correspondences; nor is there a product, animate or inanimate, in one department of his works, which does not derive some extraneous dignity from its aptitude to illustrate or to accredit some formation in the other. But what concerns us now more nearly is that just the same sort of correspondence obtains between the Old economy of revealed truth and the New. It can need no proof with those who reverence the authority of scripture that the Old dispensation, in all its grander features, so far especially as that dispensation was legal or Mosaical, was typical of the New. All the great institutions of the Mosaic law were symbolical of others under the gospel. The legal solemnities had all their evangelical meaning. The ordinations both of sacred places and sacred times were settled with an eye to something still more sacred. Even the dignity of the great personages who then administered affairs was but the reflected lustre of a far superior dignity-even of His who was "in all things to have the pre-eminence." Moses, Aaron,and Joshua were all types of him-the first as a lawgiver and prophet, the second as a priest and intercessor, the third as a deliverer and captain. The reigns of David and Solomon were both prefigurative of his. The whole apparatus of means and observances, we have apostolic warrant for saying (see Heb. viii. 5), served but for "patterns and shadows of spiritual things." Now, if we have thus, under former times, a confessed number of typical ordinances, why is it improbable that we should have a number also of typical events? If many of the precepts given had a further reference than their primary one, why not many of the occur 1X71 |