image, as it occurs in the order of the vision. Unable to find, in history, any thing correspondent to all the separate and detached images there presented to the mind, some of them have rejected the whole as a sealed book; while others, of keener optics, and more confidence in their own imaginations, have seen, in the history of the world, from the fall of Jerusalem to their own time, a gradual and exact developement of the prophecy. One has found in it all the particulars of the life of the apostate Julian; another, a circumstantial history of the French revolution; and should another arise about this time, and adopt the same principles of interpretation, he would probably be able to direct our eyes to some part of the vision which was fulfilled in the recent subjugation of Poland, or in the abolition of slavery in the West Indies.

Now, although we are not prepared to say, with Eichhorn, and some others, that the whole of this book is a regular drama, yet we do not hesitate to hazard the assertion, that a few simple truths only lie at the foundation of this book, and that the specific, definite statements of the writer, in the minor parts of his descriptions, are intended simply to give vivacity and interest to the general representation. Like those parts of the prophetic writings, to which we have referred, the whole piece is symbolical. The sacred seer had a vision in Patmos; this vision he has presented to us, not through the medium of literal painting, addressed to the bodily eye, but through verbal description, adapted to meet the eye of the mind, and adorned with imagery, which, regarded according to its original design, renders the whole most impressive and delightful. No one can look up at the picture which he has drawn, without confessing that his strokes are those of a master hand, and his colouring rich and gorgeous, altogether beyond the creations of a modern, or western imagination.

It appears strange to us, that it has so seldom occurred to interpreters that it is possible to paint by words, on the page of a book, as well as by the pencil on the canvass, and that the symbolical representations of scripture are intended to teach historical and moral truths, in the same way in which they would be taught by a Raphael, were he inspired to teach them by his own art. Once conceive that the prophets saw, in mental vision, the events which they were directed to describe, and you can easily believe that they would naturally labour to present the picture, that was before their own minds, to the minds of their readers. In order to gain their object, and make others see what they saw, they would, of course, be obliged to combine, in their verbal descriptions, all the minutia which the painter would throw into his picture, to give it completeness and verisimilitude.

When the commentator has become well skilled in the rules for interpreting figurative language, he must next seek for some principles, by which he may determine whether a word, or a succession of words, is to be taken in a literal, or in a figurative sense. This is a matter of great practical importance; since, if we regard, as literal, words or passages which, in themselves, are intended to be figurative, or as figurative, such as are intended to be literal, the pure words of truth may be, to us, a prolific source of error. The heresy of the Anthropomorphites, of the tenth century (if in opposition to Schlegel, we may call it a heresy), consisted in a mistaken adherence to the letter of scripture. They regarded the Almighty as possessing a human form, and sitting upon a golden throne, and his angels as winged men, clothed in white robes. They made heaven, not a sensual, but a material paradise, and, of course, limited the future blessedness of the righteous to the capabilities of a material existence. The Gnostics, and more particularly the Manicheans, who were properly a branch of this sect, afford an instance of the opposite error. It was a doctrine of their philosophy, that every thing concrete and corporeal was intrinsically and essentially evil; whence they were compelled to deny the real humanity of Christ, and the doctrine of a future resurrection of the body. They supposed the Saviour to have been man, and to have suffered and died only in appearance-construing, figuratively, a large class of texts, which the inspired writers designed should be understood in their literal sense. We know not that there is a very great tendency to this error, at the present day; but when we see certain commentators allegorizing the whole story of Eden, from the planting of the garden to the expulsion of man from this home of primeval innocence and joy, we cannot but feel that there is danger of falling into this, as well as into the other extreme.

In ordinary cases, a few simple rules, such, for instance, as are given by Ernesti, will enable one to determine whether a single word or phrase is to be taken in a literal, or in a figurative sense. But when we ascend from single words and phrases to extended combinations, and inquire whether this or that passage, which is, perhaps, a narrative, was intended to be understood literally, or allegorically, we may find greater difficulty in deciding. Judging from the past history of commentary, we should say, that in nothing is the interpreter more likely to fail, than in his attempts to find the happy medium in this matter. The excess to which the ancient allegorists carried the business of spiritualizing the sacred text, is a warning to the student of the Bible, not rashly to depart from the literal, or grammaticohistorical sense; and the unwillingness of many modern inter

preters to allow any other than this sense, should put him on his guard against trusting too much to the letter.

Origen, and the school of Christian mystics who succeeded him, often manifest great contempt for the literal meaning of scripture; and, what the Christian allegorists of the preceding century, among whom were Pantænus and Clemens Alexandrinus, did not venture to do, they turned a great part of biblical history into fables, and many of the laws into allegories. This practice they probably learned, in part, from the school of Ammonius, which explained Hesiod, Homer, and the whole fabulous history of Greece, allegorically. It is easily seen, that such a mode of interpretation, subjecting, as it does, every part of the sacred oracles to the crucible of one's own imagination, must often transmute the original meaning into the absurdest fantasies, and convert the word of God, a rock to those who rest upon it, into floating clouds, at which one may look and gaze himself away into a dreamy or ideal existence, but which can afford no solid support amid the trying exigencies of actual life. From the time of Origen, to the present, there have always been those who attached great importance to the spiritual meaning of many parts of scripture, which others have understood literally. The name of Cocceius will readily occur to the mind of the reader, as the founder of a school of interpreters of this class, in the seventeenth century.

The German rationalists, to whom as philologists and laborious students of antiquity we are ever ready to acknowledge our obligations, appear to us to be quite as far from the true medium, as were Origen and his followers. They stand at the opposite extreme. They see no deep spiritual significancy in any part of the sacred volume; no deep from beneath its surface calls unto a hidden deep in their own souls, to waken, by its sympathetic voice, a thousand dormant energies of the immortal spirit, which struggle upward, striving after spiritual perfection. All with them is literal-letter-letter-letter. They study the book of God as they study Homer or Aristotle, as a book of words. And well may they do it; for they believe the bible to be simply the word of man. It will be understood, that we here use the term literal, as opposed to spiritual, and not to allegorical, in the common rhetorical sense of the word. No writers find more figurative language in the bible than the rationalists, but they allow no spiritual meaning either to the figures or to separate words of scripture.

We are sorry to say that, among modern interpreters, not a few whose religious creed is entirely opposed to that of the neologist, and who give evidence of a truly pious intention, have fallen into the error of overlooking or denying much of the spiritual import of the sacred oracles. They allow

nothing to be typical in the Old Testament, which is not expressly declared to be so in the New; and in the words of Christ and his apostles, they find little that addresses itself to the deeper and more rudimental feelings of humanity. They are too exclusively philologists, and commenting with them is too mechanical a business. A dread of mysticism has seized them, and rather than approach even the borders of the region where a burning imagination may impair or overcome the judgment, they choose to dwell in the frosty land of mere verbal explanation. This is a fault, which in our opinion, is characteristic of the works of some German commentators, whose sentiments are known to be evangelical, and too much so of the works of the father of biblical criticism in America. We had intended to say something on the present state of biblical interpretation, both in Europe and in this country, but the length to which this article is already extended, admonishes us to be brief. We cannot, however, refrain from saying, that we believe, that both the science and the art of interpretation have reached a point, in their ascending progress, which they never before attained. In Germany, the fountain head of biblical learning, the true principles of scripture exposition are better understood, and more generally adopted, than they have been at any former period. Not a few of the neological critics are approaching more nearly to the standard of evangelical sentiment, and their explanations of the bible becoming more and more conformed to the spirit which actuated the sacred writers. The exact critical method of interpretation, which, in the hands of men no less distinguished for their infidel philosophy than for their philological acumen, has converted the bible into a frozen ocean, and left the soul of the reader to contract and perish from the cold of the surrounding atmosphere, has begun to be successfully employed in subservience to the high and more divine purpose of eliciting from the sacred volume the pure and living meaning of the spirit by whom its writers were guided. Such men as Neander, Hug, Tholuck, Hengstenberg, Havernick, and Olshausen, are rearing a magnificent spiritual superstructure, on the critical foundations which the neological commentators have contributed largely in laying.

With the present state of biblical interpretation in England, we do not profess to be minutely acquainted. The fact, however, that we so seldom receive a work on the bible of an evangelical character from the booksellers of our mother land, or see one announced in their quarterly advertisements, is evidence, that British genius and industry are not, to any considerable extent, directed to the critical investigation of the scriptures. While we are occasionally presented with a work like Dr. Blomfield's

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Critical Digest of Sacred Annotation on the New Testament, or his Compendious Commentary on the same, which indicates a progress in biblical interpretation, we believe that little comparatively is now doing, either in the established church or among the dissenters, in the way of critical and learned exposition. The extensive work of the late excellent Dr. Adam Clarke, is in some respects an advance on preceding writers, but it cannot be called a good commentary. With great apparent depth and copiousness of learning, it contains much that is really superficial. Professor Pusey of the university of Oxford, in a letter addressed a few years since to Professor Tholuck, in which he gives a brief account of the state of theological literature in England, says, "in these branches" (interpretation and criticism) "but little has been done." According to the same authority, the exegetical works most commonly used by the English clergy, are Lowth, Whitby, Hammond, etc. while some few resort to German commentators, or perhaps to Chrysostom and Theophylact. Doddridge on the New Testament is, we presume, in use among the dissenters.

From what English mind could do, were it to direct its energies that way, for the cause of biblical interpretation, and from the recent critical labours of such men as Professor Lee and Thomas Hartwell Horne, who are preparing the way for a more thorough and correct understanding of the sacred text, we cannot but hope that, ere long, we shall be able to import from our mother country and in our own tongue, as valuable helps to the critical study of the bible as we now receive from the continent. Not that we suppose that the English commentator will soon be changed into the German, or become as laborious and patient a philologist; but we think that the good sense of the former, taking advantage of the critical labours of the latter, may produce exegetical works of greater merit than the world has yet seen.

In the present state of biblical literature on this side of the Atlantic, there is much to gratify and encourage the American scholar and divine. Considering the recent date of the first efforts among us to promote a critical and thorough knowledge of the scriptures, we are rather surprised at the progress we have made, than at our present deficiency in biblical learning. We do not wish to draw comparisons, but we believe it is generally admitted that the standard of theological education, and particularly in the department of sacred literature, is higher in America than in England. We have our professional semina-. ries, at some of which, at least, candidates for the christian ministry are expected to reside several years previously to their entering upon official duties. During this term of residence, considerable attention is given to the Greek and Hebrew scrip8

VOL. XX.--No. 39.