TWO SERMONS 
 
 
 INTERPRETATION OF PROPHECY, 
 
 PREACHED IN THE 
 
 CHAPEL OF RUGBY SCHOOL. 
 
 WITH NOTES. 
 
 BY 
 
 THOMAS ARNOLD, D. D, 
 
 
 
 HEAD MASTER OF RUGBY SCHOOL. 
 
 OXFORD, 
 
 JOHN HENRY PARKER : 
 
 B. FELLOWES, LUDGATE STREET, LONDON: 
 
 COMBE AND CROSSLEY, 'RUGBY. 
 
 MDCCCXXXIX. 
 
6 
 
 BAXTER, PRINTER, OXFORD. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 THE great difficulty of the subject ofjScrip- 
 ture Prophecy may be ^sl^tlj^tated^ We 
 find throughout the New Testament refer- 
 ences made to various passages in the Old 
 Testament, which are alleged as prophetic of 
 Christ, or of some particulars of the Christian 
 dispensation. Now if we turn to the context 
 of these passages, and so endeavour to dis- r l 
 cover their meaning, according to the only 
 sound principles of interpretation,^ will often 
 appear that they do not relate to the Messiah 
 or to Christian times, but are either the 
 expression of religious affections generally, 
 such as submission, hope, love, Sec. or else 
 refer to some particular circumstances in the 
 life and condition of the writer, or of the 
 Jewish nation, and do not at all show that 
 any thing more remote, or any events of a 
 more universal and spiritual character, were 
 designed to be prophesied. 
 
 b 
 
 955658 
 
11 
 
 For instance, in the account of our Lord's 
 temptation, he is represented as allowing the 
 application of Psalm xci. 11, 12. to himself, 
 as a prophecy of God's miraculous care of 
 the Messiah. Whereas, on referring to the 
 whole Psalm, it appears to be a devout ex- 
 pression of the Psalmist's sense of the happi- 
 ness of those who serve and love God ; a 
 sense which is expressed very strongly after 
 the oriental manner in descriptions at once 
 figurative and hyperbolical, although when 
 divested of this colouring their meaning is 
 perfectly discernible. 
 
 Again, the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah is 
 well known as the passage w r hich Philip 
 interpreted to the Ethiopian eunuch as a 
 Christian prophecy, and which led to the 
 eunuch's conversion. Yet, when taken along 
 with the context, the passage, although un- 
 doubtedly difficult, seems to refer to events 
 more closely connected with the return of 
 the Jews from the Captivity, as that with its 
 accompanying blessings appears to be the 
 subject of the writer's prophecy. 
 
 Now, first, if we take these and many other 
 similar passages to be Christian prophecies, 
 jsolely on the authority of the writers of the 
 
Ill 
 
 New Testament ; it is manifest not only that 
 we cannot urge them to those who denyjthat 
 Authority, but that our own use and applica- 
 tion of the prophecies must be limited to /~Z 
 those citations which we find already applied n b * 
 for us in the Newf Testament. For unless 
 we understand the principle on which they 
 are applied, we can understand no more of 
 the Old Testament than is explained in the 
 Christian Scriptures, and if we attempt at 
 random to explain other passages in the same 
 way, that way appearing to be at variance 
 with the ordinary rules of interpretation, and 
 having been accepted by us in certain par- 
 ticular cases solely on the authority of those 
 who have adopted it, a door will be instantly 
 opened to the wildest fanaticism, and no man 
 will have any right ^^reproachjbhe comments 
 of the Jewish Rabbies with any peculiar 
 degree of extravagance. 
 
 Qrjsecondly, if we at once cut the knot, and 
 say that these passages have not really the 
 meaning which the writers of the New Tes- 
 tament attach to them, that they are either 
 referred to as affording some remarkable 
 coincidence with the circumstances of the 
 Christian times, or when quoted as expressly 
 
IV 
 
 speaking of those times, are so quoted merely 
 in compliance with a fanciful system of Scrip- 
 ture interpretation then prevalent amongst 
 the Jews ; we shall then, to say nothing of 
 the pain of so judging of the writers of the 
 New Testament, destroy a great part of our 
 interest in the Old ; we shall^lo^ away with 
 the harmony and continuity of God's several 
 dispensations, and deprive Christianity of a 
 testimony which Christ himself no less than 
 his Apostles delighted in appealing to, as one 
 of the most satisfactory proofs of its divine 
 
 origin. 
 
 Now if, on the one hand, the applications of 
 the Old Testament made by the writers of 
 the New can be maintained as just and true ; 
 and, on the other hand, a principle can be 
 discovered which explains them and warrants 
 them ; which takes them out of the range 
 of capricious and arbitrary quotation, and 
 enables us to read the Old Testament in the 
 same spirit as the Apostles read it, and to 
 apply safely and surely to Christ and Chris- 
 tian things passages which are not noticed in 
 their writings ; then it will be probable that 
 the principle so answering all the conditions 
 required is the true key to the difficulty, and 
 
If .' 
 
 flb 
 
 we shall need no further evidence to convince 
 us that it is so. 
 
 And if such a principle presents itself to o 
 us in the first place as the result of an j J 
 priori inquiry into the nature of Prophecy, f^ 
 and then when applied practically to the case ' 
 
 i 1 T~~ & i t *i ftv ti' n<Jr Oi^s G- 
 
 before us be found to^solve its difficulties; , 
 
 then the double proof thus afforded would^^ 
 seem to be as complete as we can possibly~~7^ i 
 
 require, and we cannot doubt that, t 
 
 and experience at once concurring in the 
 same conclusion, that conclusion may com- 
 mand our assent as certainly true. 
 
 The principle here alluded to has been set 
 forth in the two Sermons now presented to 
 the reader. I have considered it during a 
 period of many years ; and it has continually 
 appeared to me to be more and more true, 
 and has enabled me to read the prophetic 
 parts of the Old Testament with a feeling 
 that I could really understand them. I have 
 thought that it might prove satisfactory to 
 other minds also ; or at any rate that it 
 might have so much ofTruHl ~in~~if, as to A 
 suggest the whole truth to others, however 
 
 it might itself fall short of it. And if it be 
 wholly fanciful and erroneous, still it appeared 
 
VI 
 
 incapable of weakening or disturbing the faith 
 of any one, or of adding to the existing 
 difficulties of the question. The publication 
 of these Sermons therefore cannot, I would 
 hope, do harm, even if it fails of doing good. 
 Nay, I would even hope that it may do good, 
 although the view contained in the Sermons 
 should be ever so erroneous. I am quite 
 unable to do justice to the subject of Pro- 
 phecy; but I should be thankful if my 
 errors, being at any rate harmless, shall 
 provoke attention to the question, and excite 
 some one to write upon it who may discharge 
 the task more worthily. For that it does 
 actually need to be set in a clearer light, and 
 that the general understanding of the pro- 
 phetic Scriptures is very imperfect, must, 
 I suppose, be evident to every one. 
 
 The general principle of interpretation here 
 maintained, that of an uniform historical or 
 lower, and also of a spiritual or higher, sense, 
 has been adopted by commentators in all 
 ages of the Church, And I hope also that 
 the more detailed points which I have tried 
 to make out are not new, although I am not 
 aware of having been led to them by any 
 thing but a study and comparison of the 
 
Vll 
 
 prophecies themselves. I have found with 
 pleasure a great agreement with all the views 
 contained in this volume, in Tholuck's first 
 Appendix to his edition of the Epistle to the 
 Hebrews. And in one of the volumes of the 
 Theologische Studien und Kritiken there is a 
 notice of a German work on the Psalms, 
 where the application of the passages relating 
 to God in the Old Testament to the Person 
 of our Lord, is explained nearly on the same 
 grounds as in the present volume. But the 
 explanation was not suggested to me by that 
 notice, but had long before appeared to me 
 to be the true solution of the apparent diffi- 
 culty. 
 
 RUGBY, 
 October, 1839. 
 
NUMBERS xxiii. 9. 
 
 LO, THE PEOPLE SHALL DWELL ALONE, AND SHALL NOT BE 
 RECKONED AMONG THE NATIONS. 
 
 IT is a striking thing to observe, as we turn over the 
 records of past times, what various subjects have at 
 different periods occupied the attention of mankind. 
 But it is no less striking to notice what falls 
 actually within our own experience, how many 
 various subjects engage the attention of different 
 persons in the same generation and the same 
 country. How different are the objects of general 
 interest at a University, for instance, from those 
 most regarded in a great commercial city; how 
 different again are the views most familiar to 
 different classes or sects of persons within the very 
 same town. Following this up still farther, and if 
 we come even to subjects connected with Chris- 
 tianity itself, what different degrees of interest are 
 awakened by the same points in different minds. 
 Some dwell principally on the doctrines of 
 tianity, others on its practical lessons ; with 
 the success of missions is the point nearest their 
 heart; with others it is the unity of the Church, and 
 the customs and opinions of Christian antiquity; 
 while others again turn with especial fondness to 
 
thb'- Question :<>f: Prophecy, and endeavour to trace 
 qut,X^hM-h^ actually been fulfilled, and what still, 
 as they think, remains to be so. Now it is not an 
 evil, but a great good, that all these subjects should 
 be studied ; neither is it to be regretted, much less 
 to be blamed, that some of them should be pecu- 
 liarly followed by some persons, and others by 
 others. But it is to be regretted, that men should 
 ever follow any one of these so peculiarly, as to 
 forget the claims of the rest ; for then their view 
 and their spirit become narrow, and they under- 
 stand their own favourite subject the worse, because 
 they look at it in one light only. 
 
 Of all these divisions to which I have been 
 alluding, the class of persons who bestow their 
 peculiar attention on the subject of Prophecy, 
 receive perhaps in general the least sympathy from 
 the rest. They themselves regard their subject 
 indeed with intense interest, but they cannot pre- 
 vail on many others to study it. But there is this 
 peculiarity in the subject of Prophecy, that where it 
 as not been studied, men's notions respecting it are 
 even more than commonly vague. They may have 
 snatches of notions respecting it here and there, 
 yet even to themselves they are conscious of their 
 unsatisfactoriness. They talk about the evidence 
 of Prophecy, yet I believe it is very rare^ indeed to 
 meet with any one whose faith rests much upon 
 that evidence, or indeed who has ever really tried 
 its 
 
The subject of Prophecy, however, is one which 
 ought, I do not say to be predominantly, far less 
 exclusively, studied, but certainly not to be alto- 
 gether neglected. If it were only for the sake of 
 the many appeals made to it by our Lord and his 
 Apostles, it would have a just claim on our atten- 
 tion. Besides, the Prophets form no inconsiderable 
 portion of the volume of the Scriptures, and the 
 prophetic parts of Scripture are often, as in the 
 first Lesson of this morning's Service, read publicly 
 in the Service of the Church. It is well, therefore, 
 even if we do not follow up the subject minutely, 
 that the ideas which we have respecting it should 
 be clear and edifying. 
 
 Now first of all, it is a very misleading notion of - </ 
 Prophecy, if we regard it as an anticipation of 
 History. History, in our common sense of the term, 
 is busy with particular nations, times, places, 
 actions, and even persons. If in this sense, Pro- 
 phecy were a history written beforehand, it would fa a 
 alter the very condition of humanity, by removing 
 from us our uncertainty as to the future ; it would 
 make us acquainted with those times and seasons 
 which the Father hath put in his own power. It is 
 anticipated History, not in our common sense of the 
 word, but in a another and far higher sense. Com- 
 mon History, amid a vast number of particular facts 
 and persons, can hardly trace the general principles 
 which are to be deduced from them. Nay, the 
 1 See Note 1, at the end of the Sermons. 
 B2 
 
imperfection of the characters with which History^ 
 deals, naturally embarrasses its general conclusions : 
 we can trace the rise and fall of such a nation or 
 such a city; but this is not the rise or fall of any 
 one principle, either good or evil ; but of many 
 principles, which are partly good and partly eviL 
 Our sympathy with the prosperity and adversity of 
 any one people must be qualified ; there is an evil 
 about them, which triumphs in their triumph; there 
 is a good about them, which suffers in their over- 
 throw. 
 
 wnat History does not and cannot do, that 
 fa> JkM^Prophecy does, and for that very reason it is very 
 different from History. Prophecy fixes our atten- 
 on principles, on good and evil, on truth and 
 
 'falsehood, on God and on his enemy. Here, there 
 is no division of feeling, no qualified sympathy ; the 
 one are deserving of our entire devotion and love, 
 the other of our unmixed abhorrence. 
 
 Prophecy then is God's voice, speaking to us 
 Respecting the issue in all time of that great struggle 
 which is the real interest of human life, the struggle 
 between good and evil. Beset as we are by evil 
 
 
 Vithin us and without, it is the natural and earnest 
 cMirj question of the human mind, what shall be the end 
 ><juv.at last? And the answer is given by Prophecy, 
 hat it shall be well at last ; that there shall be a 
 time when good shall perfectly triumph. But the 
 answer declares also, that the struggle shall be long 
 and hard ; that there will be much to suffer before 
 
 : ^t 
 

 the victory be complete. The seed of the woman 
 shall bruise the serpent's head, but the serpent not- 
 withstanding shall first bruise his heel*. So com- 
 pletely is the earliest prophecy c recorded in Scrip- 
 ture, the sum and substance so to speak of the 
 whole language of Prophecy, how diversified soever 
 in its particular forms. 
 
 History, we have said, is busied with particular 
 nations, persons, and events ; and from the study of 
 these, extracts, as well as it can, some general 
 principles. Prophecy is busied with general prin- 
 ciplesjj and inasmuch as particular nations, per- 
 sons, and events, represent these principles up to a 
 certain point, so far it is concerned also with them. 
 But their mixed character as it embarrasses .and 
 qualifies the judgment of the historian, so it must 
 necessarily lower and qualify the promises and 
 threatenings of the prophet. The full bliss which 
 he delights to contemplate, because his eye is fixed 
 chiefly upon God and perfect goodness, is not 
 equally suited to the most imperfect goodness of 
 God's servants. The utter extremity of suffering 
 which belongs to God's enemy must be mitigated 
 for those earthly evil-doers, whom God till the last 
 great day has not yet wholly ceased to regard as 
 his creatures. 
 
 Now then, to take examples of this both ways, 
 Israel, the people of Israel, their kings, and their 
 prophets, stand forth in the history and in the 
 b See note 2. c See note 3. 
 
prophecy of Scripture as the representatives, so to 
 speak, of the cause of God and of goodness. But 
 the History shows that they were very imperfect 
 representatives of it, and therefore they can only 
 be imperfectly the subject of the promises of Pro- 
 phecy. So far as they belonged to God, the 
 blessing is theirs ; so far as they fell short of what 
 God's servants should be, the blessing is not theirs ; 
 for they are not the real subjects of the prophecy. 
 For it is History, and not Prophecy, which deals with 
 the twelve tribes of the land of Canaan, their good 
 and evil kings, their fallings away, and final re- 
 jection of Christ their Saviour : the Israel of 
 Prophecy is God's d Israel really and truly, who 
 walk with him faithfully, and abide with him to the 
 end. 
 
 Thus, as in the text, Balak king of the Moabites 
 calls upon Balaam the prophet to curse Israel. 
 This is the History ; on the one hand there was one 
 people, on the other there was another. Moab was 
 not all evil ; Israel was not all good ; but mere 
 History can find no difficulty in determining, that 
 so opposed to one another in that wilderness be- 
 tween Egypt and Palestine, the highest good to 
 unborn generations of the- human race was involved 
 in the preservation of Israel. It is this comparative 
 good and evil which History can discern in the two 
 nations, which determines their respective characters 
 as the representatives at that time and place of 
 d See note 4. 
 
that real good and evil, whose contest is the en- 
 during subject of Prophecy. They are their repre- 
 sentatives, but only imperfectly; signs of ideas 
 which Prophecy uses, as Revelation avails itself of 
 human language; a shadow of the reality, but not 
 ItiTsubstance. 
 
 Was it indeed that murmuring rebellious people, 
 rebellious against God from the time when Moses 
 brought them out of Egypt, of whom Prophecy 
 declared, that God had not beheld iniquity, nor 
 seen perverseness ? Or that camp, in which f every 
 man did that which was right in his own eyes; that 
 camp, pitched amid the sands of the wilderness, 
 beside such a narrow strip of green watered country 
 as is all that can be found by the traveller in the 
 
 *- c 
 
 desert ; did it really contain the goodly tents and 
 tabernacles which Prophecy saw spread forth as 
 gardens by the river side, as cedar trees beside the 
 waters ? Was it the Israel of History, whose short 
 term of greatness in the days of David and Solomon 
 was so soon overcast by internal division and ex- 
 ternal invasion, sinking down gradually into long 
 centuries of subjection, humiliation, or exile, that 
 was to rise up as a great lion, and lift up himself as 
 a young lion, not to lie down till he should eat of the 
 prey and drink the blood of the slain ; from which the 
 Star should come and the Sceptre arise, that should 
 smite all the corners of Moab, and destroy all the 
 children of Sheth? Prophecy spoke without reserve 
 of the triumph of God and God's servants ; if Israel 
 
8 
 
 belonged to God only imperfectly, her share in the 
 triumphs of God must in that same proportion be 
 imperfect also. 
 
 But, on the other hand, the Israel of History was, 
 comparatively with other people, the chosen of God ; 
 and for that very reason she was appointed to the 
 honour of representing God's true people in the 
 language of Prophecy. As far as she represented 
 them imperfectly, the language of Prophecy belongs 
 not to her ; but so far as she did represent them, 
 she received their blessing ; and if there was a 
 triumph too high for her to obtain because of her 
 imperfections, there must be also a blessing upon 
 her for the sake of him whose name she bears, and 
 whose cause she is permitted to represent before 
 the world. And so we shall find it ; " The people 
 shall dwell alone, and shall not be reckoned among 
 the nations." Nor have they been. For where is 
 Moab now, or Amalek, or Ammon, or Babylon? 
 They are vanished out of history. Not as if the 
 places e were accursed for ever; or as if the language 
 of utter vengeance, which we find in prophecy, was 
 really applicable to the soil of Mesopotamia or 
 Edom ; but the people, the race, the language, the 
 institutions, the religion, all that constitutes national 
 personality, if I may so speak, are passed away 
 from the earth. And if Mesopotamia were to be 
 civilized and fertilized to-morrow, and Babylon 
 again rebuilt, yet it could not be the old Babylon, 
 e See note 5. 
 
for that has become extinct for ever. So with 
 Egygt,jwhich now is flourishing as a country: it is 
 not the Egypt of old times ; there is a chasm not 
 to be filled up, between the people who built the 
 
 pyramids, and engraved their hieroglyphics on the 
 obelisks, and the new nation that may occupy their 
 land. So it is even with Greece. Christian Athens 
 is divided, and must be, by one deep and impassable 
 barrier, from the heathen Athens of old. But Israel 
 exists still unchanged ; still God's people in every 
 land carry back their sympathies unbroken to the 
 age of the first father of the faithful ; the patri- 
 archs and prophets are the spiritual ancestors of 
 the Apostles and of ourselves ; their prayers are 
 ours, their cause was ours, for their God was ours. 
 And if Israel after the flesh were to return unto the 
 Lord, what has she lost of her old identity ? Place 
 does not make a nation, but the sameness of sym- 
 pathies ; and in this respect there is nothing of 
 Israel in the earliest times, which would be dead to 
 Israel now. This can be said of norother nation </ 
 upon earth ; and thus has Israel endured, because 
 she was, though imperfectly, the representative of 
 the cause of that God, who alone endureth for ever. 
 
 tfUr 
 
 tt 
 
ST. MATTHEW iv. 6. 
 
 IB' THOU BE THE SON OF GOD, CAST THYSELF DOWN: FOR IT 
 IS WRITTEN, HE SHALL GIVE HIS ANGELS CHARGE CON- 
 CERNING THEE J AND IN THEIR HANDS THEY SHALL BEAR 
 THEE UP, LEST AT ANY TIME THOU DASH THY FOOT 
 AGAINST A STONE. 
 
 IN what I said last Sunday on the subject of 
 Prophecy, I endeavoured to lay down what ap- 
 peared to be its general object and character; 
 namely, to assure man amidst the existing evils of 
 the world, that the cause of good would be finally 
 and entirely triumphant. And this being so, as it 
 is most certain that no people on earth has ever 
 either perfectly served the cause of good, or utterly 
 opposed it, so it follows, that no people can, if I may 
 so speak, fully satisfy the mind of Prophecy, be- 
 cause no people purely represents those unmixed 
 principles of good and evil, with which Prophecy is 
 alone properly concerned. And thus it has hap- 
 pened, that those who have attempted to trace an 
 historical fulfilment of the language of Prophecy 
 with regard to various nations, have never done 
 their work satisfactorily^ nor on^ their systemjvas 
 itpossible_tp do it. For the language of Prophecy 
 on these subjects could not be literally accom- 
 
12 
 
 plished Jor two reasons ; first, because, as I have 
 said before, it was not properly applicable to any 
 earthly nation from the imperfection of all human 
 things ; and, secondly, because even that character 
 of imperfect good or evil which made certain 
 nations the representatives, so to speak, of the prin- 
 ciples of good and evil themselves, was not and 
 could not be perpetual ; there are in the course of 
 generations changes in the character of every 
 people, both for the better and for the worse. Now 
 where such a change took place either for good or 
 for evil, there the prophecy could not be fulfilled at 
 all ; as in the case of^Jonah's prophecy of the 
 destruction of Nineveh ; and they who under such 
 circumstances would require the fulfilment, in order 
 to save, as it were, the honour of the prophecy, are 
 rebuked beforehand in the language addressed to 
 Jonah, when he indulged a similar feeling. God's 
 prophecies are not against Nineveh, but against 
 sin : if Nineveh turns from her sin, she is no longer 
 the subject of any prophecy of vengeance. Thus 
 there may be cases where no historical fulfilment of 
 national prophecies is to be found at all :_ but in all 
 cases, the fulfilment will fall short of the full strength 
 of the language, because, to say it once again, the 
 language in its proper scope and force was aimed 
 at a more unmixed good and evil than have ever 
 been exhibited in the character of any earthly 
 people. 
 And here then, arrived at this view of Prophecy, 
 
13 
 
 and seeing on the one hand the largeness of its 
 promises, and on the other the necessary incom- 
 pleteness of their fulfilment, howjshall the truth of 
 God's word be reconciledwith the laws of his moral 
 government ? must he stint for our sin's sake the 
 abundance of his mercy, or impair for his promise's 
 sake the perfection of his justice ? Surely here too, 
 as in other respects, the creation was groaning and 
 travailing in pain together; the children were come to 
 the birth, but there was not strength to bring forth : 
 hope and disappointment were struggling together; 
 the promise was still of blessing, but the experience 
 was of sin, and therefore not of blessing, but of 
 judgment. 
 
 And look around even now, and does it fare 
 better with the historical interpretation of Prophecy 
 than it did in times past? Does the Christian 
 Israel answer more worthily to the expectations of 
 Prophecy, than the Israel after the flesh answered 
 to them of old ? Grant that Rome in later times 
 is in some sense and in some degree the Babylon of 
 Christian Prophecy, yet who that knows the history 
 of the Roman Church from first to last, can pretend 
 that its character is of such unmixed or such in- 
 tense evil, as to answer to the features of the mystic 
 Babylon of the Revelation ? As truly might it be 
 pretended that any historicarChurch7^protestant or 
 primitive, was a faithful image of the heavenly 
 Jerusalem. 
 
 But where then is the consolation of Prophecy to 
 
14 
 
 the heart of man ? What becomes of the assurance, 
 that it shall be well, infinitely well, with God's 
 people, if no such people are to be found ? Pro- 
 phecy may be true in the abstract, true it may be 
 for other worlds ; but how to us and to this world 
 can the magnificence of its promises of blessing be 
 more than the exact measure of the extent of our 
 enemy's triumph ; it shows us of how great things 
 sin has deprived us. 
 
 Thus there is a mass of prophetical language, 
 which, according to the view we have now taken, 
 may seem to be indefinitely waiting for its fulfil- 
 ment. And so it is, and must be, according to the 
 view which we have taken, for it was not and is_not 
 ~in man to be^he worthy subject of God's Prophecy;! 
 Not in man merely. But what shall we 
 
 
 '--/say, if there was one who was man truly, man in his 
 temptations, man in his sufferings, but who was 
 God in his holiness, God in his strength and power! 
 Then there is one who is the true subject of Pro- 
 phecy; then there is victory for man final and 
 complete ; then the cause of good must infinitely 
 triumph as far as this earth is concerned, or else 
 indeed there can be no truth in Prophecy. 
 
 . 
 
 > We see then, how that our Lord Jesus Christ is 
 the real subject of all Prophecy for good. We 
 see how his resurrection and ascension into heaven 
 
 ^ ^ are its entire fulfilment. All the promises of God 
 
 4^<-* , . j i.- A 
 
 * ^ m him are yea, and in him Amen. 
 
 For now what is the case before us ? Our ex- 
 
15 
 
 perience of life tells us, that it has many troubles ; 
 that good, such as we see it, has constantly its por- 
 tion of affliction. This Prophecy recognized ; there 
 are pictures of suffering frequently joined to the 
 most exalted pictures of triumph. And so it was 
 with Christ. He bore the troubles which are the 
 portion of man : he turned not back even from that 
 death which seems most to prove the enemy's con- 
 quest over us. When he was taken down from the 
 cross and laid in the sepulchre ; he in whose life 
 there had been no sin, he who speaking of his 
 human nature merely had been so truly the child 
 of God ; when his disciples, in the sorrow of their 
 hearts, said, f{ We trusted that it had been he who 
 should have redeemed Israel ;" we did trust so 
 once, but behold our hope is buried in his grave ; 
 then was there, if I may so speak, the trial moment, 
 the agony of Prophecy : what could be any more 
 hoped from its promises, if evil and death had 
 triumphed even over him, in whom there was no 
 sin? And so, when the third morning came, and 
 death's triumph was broken, and he rose from the 
 dead to die no more, then was there the justifica- 
 tion of all Prophecy ; for it was well at last with 
 
 the righteous, well infinitely, well eternally; all 
 power was given to him in heaven and in earth; 
 all things were put under his feet ; death was 
 swallowed up in victory. 
 
 And now we see that it was not arbitrarily or 
 capriciously that so many passages in Scripture are 
 
16 
 
 applied to our Lord by himself and by his Apostles ; 
 passages which, according to the undoubted evi- 
 dence of their context, were historically and literally 
 spoken of some imperfect prophet, or king, or priest f , 
 or people, in whom they had found, and could find, 
 no adequate fulfilment. For God had provided 
 some better thing for us than their imperfect righ- 
 teousness and imperfect blessings. Look at the 
 91st Psalm, from which the words of the text 
 are taken. How largely does the prophet speak 
 of the security and happiness of the children of 
 God! Our ears are familiar with its words of 
 promise, " There shall no evil befal thee, neither 
 shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling ; thou 
 shalt tread upon the lion and adder, the young lion 
 and the dragon shalt thou trample under feet. God 
 shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee 
 in all thy ways ; they shall bear thee up in their 
 hands, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone." 
 Nor may we rob God's servants in every age of 
 their share in these promises : Moses and Aaron 
 stood unhurt amidst the plague ; Paul shook off the 
 adder from his hand, and felt no harm : chariots 
 and horsemen of fire watched round the hill of 
 Dothan to guard the prophet Elisha. But their 
 full and entire fulfilment was in him, and him alone, 
 who had truly made the Most High his habitation 
 even from the beginning ; over whom all evil at all 
 times was powerless, save so far as for our sakes 
 f See note 6. 
 
17 
 
 he vouchsafed to bear it ; who said to the sea, 
 Peace, be still ; and who even in yielding to death, 
 laid down his life of himself, which none could have 
 taken from him ; who had power to lay it down, 
 and had power to take it again. 
 
 See also how in him, and in him alone, were 
 fulfilled those remarkable ^promises to David, which 
 otherwise seem incapable of fulfilment, without a 
 violation of God's laws of righteous government. 
 God declared to David, that his house and his king- 
 dom should be established for ever ; that even 
 though his sons should sin, yet his mercy should 
 not finally depart from them. What then, shall 
 God clear the guilty, and shall he prolong the line 
 of any one man for ever, though it is sure that in 
 the course of many generations it will become 
 unworthy to continue any more ? No. God has 
 punished the guilty ; David's posterity did sin, and 
 were cut off. It was said by the prophet Jeremiah 
 of the last king, Coniah or Jehoiachin, " Write ye 
 this man childless, a man that shall not prosper in 
 his days ; for no man of his seed shall prosper, 
 sitting upon the throne of David, and ruling any 
 more in Judah." But yet God's promise to David 
 has stood sure : the Son of David has reigned for 
 more than eighteen hundred years, owned over all 
 the earth as King and Lord ; and of his kingdom 
 there shall be no end. 
 
 Christ is thus the true and complete fulfilment of 
 Prophecy : no promise of exaltation to the good is 
 
 c 
 
18 
 
 expressed in higher language than has been, and is, 
 and will continue for ever to be, in him accom- 
 plished. We can turn, as our fathers have done, to 
 Christ's resurrection, and say, There is our warrant 
 for the truth of Prophecy; good has triumphed 
 over evil. But 'still we see not yet all things put 
 under Christ ; the last enemy is not yet destroyed ; 
 the state of Israel now, no less than of Israel of 
 old, is no state of perfect peace, and love, and joy. 
 It is not that we need be concerned for the honour 
 of Prophecy; we see clearly enough, conscience 
 tells us too plainly, why its promises are not fulfilled 
 amongst us to the letter ; the promises were for the 
 righteous, and we are not righteous. But for our- 
 selves there is great need of our being concerned, 
 lest Christ's triumph extend not to us, and lest we, 
 like the Israel of old, should in the last great day 
 be found not to be amongst his people. He wills 
 that those whom God has given him shall be with 
 him where he is ; that he and his redeemed shall for 
 all eternity fulfil the promises of Prophecy, and 
 prove that there is indeed a glory for the righteous. 
 We need not fear for the truth of this : God is able 
 of the stones to raise up children unto Abraham ; 
 there will be guests enough found to sit down at 
 the marriage-supper of the Lamb. Twice has God 
 willed to mark out these guests here ; that all who 
 belonged to his Church on earth, all who were 
 circumcised, all who were baptized, should be the 
 heirs of the promises of Prophecy. But twice man's 
 
19 
 
 sin rendered this impossible : the seal of Baptism 
 has proved no surer a mark than the seal of 
 Circumcision ; again have the people whom he 
 brought out of Egypt corrupted themselves. Still 
 there is, and ever has been, a remnant ; still there 
 are those whom Christ owns now, and will own 
 for ever. Theirs are the promises in all their 
 fulness ; not that their own righteousness is propor- 
 tioned to such blessings, but because they are 
 Christ's, and Christ is God's. In us there is still 
 as in times past the same incapability of answering 
 to the language of Prophecy ; but the kingdom 
 which Christ has gained is for his sake given to his 
 true people. It is given to those whom, at the last 
 great day, when he shall judge to whom all hearts 
 are open, he shall acknowledge to be his. 
 
 So then the promises and the consolations of 
 Prophecy may all be ours. Christ's triumph is not 
 for himself alone ; we all may partaETin it ; to us^ 
 all may, through him, be given the full extent of 
 blessing which the 91st Psalm and other similar 
 passages contain. Those passages may be a dead 
 letter to us, but they may also be life and reality. 
 If, looking on the world as God looks on it, we feel 
 keenly the struggle which is going on between good 
 and evil, and fain would take our part in it to the 
 death under Christ's banner ; then along with all the 
 anxieties and the sufferings of the contest we have 
 our portion besides in the hopes of the final issue. 
 Then, as we become more deeply interested in it, 
 
 c2 
 
20 
 
 the language of Prophecy becomes more welcome ; 
 the pledge of its truth, the fact of Christ's resur- 
 rection, becomes more unspeakably precious. With 
 such anxieties, such efforts, and such hopes, we 
 have the Christian's sure seal; not that outward 
 seal of baptism, which is too often broken, but the 
 seal of God's Spirit, that ' as Christ was, so are we 
 in this world. Blessed are they, in whom the hopes 
 and fears, which are the common portion of us all, 
 are directed to those objects, which Christ's true 
 people hope for and fear ; to whom Prophecy is no 
 empty language about matters of other days or 
 other persons, but the answer given by God to the 
 earnest questionings of their nature, " Has God 
 cast me* off for ever, or shall it be a blessing to me 
 to have been born ?" 
 
NOTES. 
 
 Note I, page 3. 
 
 " It is anticipated History, not in our common sense of 
 the word, but in another and far higher sense." 
 
 This, according to 
 sense of the famous 
 
 1 . -, 
 
 a very common interpretation, is the *, - 
 words in St. Peter's second Epistle, j> 
 
 9ra<ra TrgoQyTsiot, ygcttyyc JS/aj STrih.vG'scas ou ylverou. History is * 
 
 especially ftiots evi*.u<recos : that is to say, what the his- 2-4^ 
 torian relates of Babylon, is to be understood of Babylon 
 only ; of the city so called on the banks of the Euphrates, 
 and not of any other place more or less morally resembling 
 it. But what Prophecy says of Babylon is xoivys 
 
 it does not relate exclusively, nor even principally, to the 
 Babylon of History ; but to certain spiritual evils of which 
 Babylon was at one period the representative, and Rome 
 at another, and of which other cities which may have 
 succeeded to the greatness of Babylon and Rome, may be 
 the representatives now. And thus the Babylon of History 
 is only for a limited time, and in an imperfect degree, the 
 Babylon of Prophecy. It is so for a limited time only, 
 because the historical Babylon has long since perished ; 
 but the Prophecies in the Old Testament against it have 
 been repeated in the New, almost in the very same words; 
 so thaTthe prophetical Babylon must have been in exist- 
 ence long after the historical Babylon had been destroyed. 
 And only in an imperfect degree, because the language 
 used respecting it is the exact opposite to that used with 
 
22 
 
 respect to Jerusalem; and as the historical Jerusalem 
 never came up to the pictures of the holiness and happi- 
 ness of the prophetical Jerusalem, so neither have we any 
 reason to believe that there was any such peculiar and 
 unmixed wickedness in the historical Babylon^as to make 
 it the proper and ultimate subject of the denunciations 
 uttered against the Babylon of Prophecy. Not the proper 
 and ultimate subject, but the subject of them partially 
 and in the first instance ; as Rome was partially also in 
 the second instance ; and as other places may be, and I 
 believe are, in the third instance : so that the Prophecies, 
 j\ ,, as I believe, will go on continually meeting with a typical 
 * and imperfect fulfilment, till the time of the end; when 
 L { /or they will be fulfilled finally and completely in the destruc- 
 tion of the true prophetical Babylon, the World as opposed 
 to the^Church. 
 
 In the case of Babylon, it is easy to perceive what is the 
 prophetical idea, if I may so speak, of which the historical 
 Babylon is made the representative. Whether this could 
 be discovered with regard to all the cities or nations which 
 are the subjects of Prophecy, I will not venture to pro- 
 nounce an opinion. In some instances it seems to be 
 discernible; as, for example, the curse upon Amalek, 
 Deuteronomy xxv. 17 19. appears to be illustrated by 
 the woe denounced by our Lord upon those who shall 
 " offend one of the little ones who believe in him." 
 St. Matthew xviii. 6. Amalek smiting the hindmost and 
 the feeble of the host of Israel, when they had been just 
 redeemed out of Egypt, and were faint and weary, belongs 
 surely to the general idea of hindering weak Christians on 
 their way towards heaven, instead of assisting and en- 
 couraging them. And the same sin appears to constitute 
 in great measure the idea of the prophetical Edom. 
 Ezekiel xxxv. Psalm cxxxvii. 7. 
 
23 
 
 I wish it to be remembered, that I am by no means 
 Denying the literal and historical sense of the Prophecies 
 relating to different cities or nations, but only contending 
 that the historical sense is not the highest sense : and that 
 generally the language of the Prophecy will be found to 
 be hyperbolical as far as regards its historical subjects, 
 and only corresponding with the truth exactly, if we 
 substitute for the historical subject the idea of which it is 
 the representative. Babylon, in the Prophecies of the Old 
 Testament, means undoubtedly the city so called in 
 Mesopotamia ; Amalek means the historical Amalek : 
 Edom or Mount Seir signifies the historical people of 
 Edom. And as it was a great blessing to belong to the 
 Israel of History, because she was chosen to represent the 
 idea of God's true people ; so it was a great calamity to 
 belong to the historical Babylon, or Amalek, or Edom, 
 because they had certain points in them which made them 
 be chosen to represent under its various forms the idea of 
 God's enemies. But in neither case was the representative 
 or symbol of the idea, the full and adequate expression of 
 the idea itself, 
 
 Note 2, page 5. 
 
 " The seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent's head, 
 but the serpent notwithstanding shall first bruise his heel." 
 
 In their first and literal sensejthese words are true, and 
 perfectly intelligible. They describe the relations existing 
 between man, and a class of inferior and noisome animals; 
 whom he can destroy or keep under, but who are able in 
 their turn to inflict some pain and injury on him. 
 
 But in proportion as our notions of other parts of the 
 story of the Fall become raised above the literal meaning, 
 so also must they be raised with respect tojhis particular 
 verse. 
 
24 
 
 The instant that we understand by the serpent that 
 tempted the woman, not a literal serpent, but a being 
 morally evil, by whose arts the world has been ruined, 
 then of course we understand by the serpent between 
 whose seed and the woman's seed there was to be per- 
 petual enmity, that same being of moral evil, with whom 
 man's life throughout the history of the world would be 
 perpetually struggling. 
 
 And when we read, that in this struggle the seed of the 
 woman should bruise the serpent's head, while it should 
 bruise his heel, it is no less clear that here also the literal 
 I sense of the words head and heel is no longer to be 
 thought of, but that in this great contest between man and 
 evil the triumph should be with man, although it should 
 not be won but at the price of some loss and suffering. 
 
 Now taking it jn this sense, j>artially, and up to a certain 
 point, the fulfilments of it have been many. All those 
 good men of whom the Scripture speaks, from righteous 
 Abel downwards, all who by God's grace lived in God's 
 faith and fear, all found that in their struggle with evil 
 they were conquerors, that it was good for them and not 
 bad that they had ever been born. And all found also 
 
 a )> 
 
 that if saved, they were saved as by fire, their experience 
 could enough tell them that evil was not without power to 
 do them hurt. 
 
 Yet it is no less manifest that none of these cases come 
 up to the full extent of the comfort required. At the Fall, 
 evil had triumphed over the whole race of mankind, the 
 state of things had become evil which had before been 
 good. If evil that had done this were to be crushed and 
 destroyed, it must be by the restoration of all things, the 
 human race must be recovered, which in its first struggle 
 had been lost. And this could only be by a far greater 
 and more perfect victory over evil than ever man had won : 
 
25 
 
 by such a triumph over labour and over death, as should 
 indeed shew that the latter end of the human race should 
 be better than its beginning. 
 
 Such a triumph was achievedjby Jesus Christ, the 
 proofjof it being his resurrection. For thus it was shown 
 manifestly that death had been overcome; that evil had 
 been vanquished in all its parts outward and inward ; that 
 man was again restored to his original righteousness ; and 
 that being in the person of Christ no longer lost to God, 
 but one with God, suffering and death could have no 
 dominion over him, but that his portion was the fulness of 
 joy at God's right hand for ever. 
 
 In this same manner it is that so many passages of the 
 Old Testament are applied to Christ in the New Testa- 
 ment, which taken in their original place seem to refer to a 
 subject much less exalted. And the reason of the applica- 
 tion of them to Christ Js this ; that whereas all Prophecy 
 is addressed to the hopes of the good and to the fears of 
 the evil, so the perfect fulfilment of it, that is, the perfect 
 satisfying of these hopes, and the perfect realizing those 
 fears, is to be formed only in the perfect triumph of good, 
 and the perfect destruction of evil ; of both which we have 
 the pledge in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and in his 
 exaltation to the right hand of God, thence to come at the 
 end of the world to judge the quick and the dead. 
 
 So that if we would fully satisfy the highest sense of all 
 Prophecy, if we would give it its entire fulfilment, we must 
 seek fbTTTnecessarily in Him, in whom alHhe promises of 
 God, as St. Paul says, are found to bejtrwvwho being 
 alone perfectly righteous, has alone shown to us by his 
 resurrectiori~7rom the~ dead, that good" shall perfectly 
 triumph, and the restoration of the seed of the woman 
 shall be complete. 
 
 This of course might furnish us with matter to engage, 
 
26 
 
 not minutes only, but hours and days. I can but notice 
 now in conclusion how it illustrates the great stress always 
 I/ laid by the Apostles upon the fact of Christ's resurrection. 
 
 That fact was the real fulfilment of all Prophecy; the 
 great assurance of all hope ; the great proof that evil 
 should not triumph, that the serpent's head should be 
 bruised indeed. 
 
 Other events, lesser mercies, earthly deliverances, are in 
 part the subject of Prophecy, and in part its fulfilment. 
 But its language, the language of hope in God, naturally 
 goes beyond these ; it assumes a tone of unmixed confi- 
 dence, it speaks of such an over measure of good, as far 
 surpasses man's virtue, on the one hand, or his earthly 
 prosperity on the other. And therefore it seeks elsewhere 
 its real fulfilments ; it tarries not on those lower heights 
 which would receive it on its first ascent from the valley, 
 but ascends and aspires continually to the mountain of 
 God, to rest only at his right hand, when it has found Him 
 who is there for ever exalted, Jesus Christ, both God and 
 man." Extract from an unpublished Sermon on the Text-) 
 Gen. iii. 15. 
 
 Note 3, page 5. 
 
 " So completely is the earliest Prophecy recorded in 
 Scripture the sum and substance, so to speak, of the whole 
 language of Prophecy." 
 
 " The_Spirit of Christ in the prophets," says St. Peter, 
 " testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the 
 glory that should follow." And so our Lord reproves the 
 two disciples who were going to Emmaus, " for being 
 slow of heart to believe the prophets ;" and he then asks, 
 " Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to 
 
27 
 
 enter into his glory ?" That is, " was it not to be expected 
 from the language of the prophets that Christ should first 
 suffer, before he was finally victorious." And the Evange- 
 list then adds, " And beginning at Moses and all the 
 prophets, he expounded unto them in all the Scriptures 
 the things concerning himself." Some verses afterwards 
 the language is yet stronger, as being more particular; 
 " All things must be fulfilled which are written in the 
 Law of Moses, and in the Prophets, and in the Psalms, 
 concerning me." These words forbid us to look for the 
 Prophecies relating to our Lord in some detached passages 
 only of the Old Testament; they imply that they run 
 through the whole volume, and are to be found in each of 
 its divisions, the Law or Pentateuch, the Prophets, and 
 the Psalms. Now it seems to me that from examining 
 the above words of our Lord and his Apostles carefully, 
 we shall be led to conclude, that the prophetic witness of 
 the Old Testament to Christ here spoken of, consists in 
 the frequent recurrence of the same idea, namely, that of 
 the union of suffering and glory in the persons of God^s 
 true servants, an idea, be it observed, which expresses 
 the two great points in the history of man, his Fall and his 
 Redemption. Because he had fallen, there was to be 
 suffering; because he was redeemed from his fall, there was 
 to be final glory. 
 
 Now as this union of suffering and glory constitutes, so 
 to speak, the idea of man ; for the Lamb having been slain 
 from the foundation of the world, the_redemption may be 
 said to have been cotemporary with the fall; and man, 
 therefore, has never been a fallen creature simply, but at 
 once a fallen and^ a^ redeemed creature^ so it was to be 
 represented perfectly in the person of Christ, who himself 
 bore the whole human race in himself in his relations with 
 God. In him who was the perfect image of man, that is, 
 
28 
 
 of a being fallen and redeemed, there was to be therefore 
 the extreme of suffering and the extreme of glory ; but as 
 he was the perfect image of God also, that is, of One all 
 perfect, and the Author of all redemption, therefore the 
 suffering which he endured as belonging to man's nature, 
 became the cause and instrument whereby the glory 
 belonging to God's nature was bestowed also upon, and 
 had been from the beginning foreordained for, man ; that 
 God having borne man's sufferings, man might be ren- 
 dered capable of partaking God's glory. 
 
 But although redeemed in the divine counsels even from 
 the period of the Fall, and even pennitted in some^im- 
 perfect measure to look forward to that redemption, yet so 
 long as the redemption was not yet revealed, man retained 
 more of the character of a fallen than of a redeemed 
 creature, and therefore the suffering of his condition w r ould 
 much overbalance the glory. Thus although sparks arid 
 even flashes of the promised glory, if I may so speak, 
 were seen from time to time to burst forth in the world, 
 yet the evil was greatly predominant ; and He who should 
 faithfully represent the state of man as it had been ever 
 since the Fall, must therefore be a man of sorrows. 
 
 In this respect then all history, profane no less than 
 sacred, contained in some sort a prophecy of Christ, inas- 
 much as it represented man in a state of suffering. But it 
 was a much more near prophecy, or, if we like to call it by 
 another name, a much closer prophetic resemblance, when 
 not merely men in general, but those who bore in a 
 manner God's mark -upon them, when God's own people 
 and God's own prophets were also sufferers, some of 
 whom, by the offices which they held with respect to other 
 men, shadowed forth also, though in an infinitely im- 
 perfect measure, the act of redemption, and the character 
 of a redeemer. 
 
29 
 
 In such persons was exhibited the nearest possible 
 approach of mere humanity to the likeness of him who 
 united humanity with the Godhead; while at the same 
 time they expressed most perfectly the actual evil of man's 
 condition, and the need of a redemption. As men they 
 were full of infirmities and sorrows, but as being in some 
 measure brought near to God, and invested with a 
 semblance of the character of Mediator and Redeemer, 
 they had also their portion of the blessings of redemption, 
 and their language was even amidst all the acknowledged 
 evil of their condition, the language of faith and hope, 
 sometimes even of assured victory. 
 
 Setting aside then the records of profane Histoiy, or of 
 those persons in sacred History who have no nearer re- 
 semblance to Christ than as being partakers of man's 
 nature; let us see wjiat is the picture, contained in the 
 Scripture, of those~~who were more properly types of 
 Christ ; and whether the story of their lives, and the 
 expression of their ^language when it has been preserved 
 to us, does not present that union of suffering even with 
 the liveliest hope, or the greatest actual prosperity, which 
 shows that he who took upon himself man's nature, must 
 endure as well as conquer. Historical instances of this 
 are, Abel, the Patriarchs, Moses, David, Elijah ; and the 
 whole peopie^bTTsrael, who although they were chosen by 
 God to be His own inheritance, yet endured the long evils 
 of the house of bondage before they could enter into the 
 promised land. In all of these was abundantly exhibited 
 the prophesied condition of humanity, that the serpent 
 should bruise the heel of the seed of woman. 
 
 But instances perhaps still more striking are afforded 
 by theTanguage of God's people, expressing their own 
 'sense of their own condition. It is in this way that the 
 book of Job, the books of the Prophets, as often as they 
 
30 
 
 express the personal feelings of the writers, and above alj_ 
 the Book of Psalms, contain such a lively image of the life 
 of Christ. Most remarkable is it to see in the Prophets 
 and in the_Psalms the confident anticipation of future 
 triumph, which in the human writers individually was 
 never verified. But by this very circumstance their in-^ 
 complete and typical character is fully manifested; it is by 
 this especially that they in a manner point to Christ; that 
 they stretch out their arms to Him, imploring Him to fulfil 
 what they could but faintly shadow, the whole condition 
 of fallen and redeemed man : sufferings first, but afterwards 
 glory; the serpent bruising man's heel; but man finally 
 crushing the serpent's head. It is thus that the language 
 of many of the Psalms, necessarily hyperbolical when 
 used by their human writers, finds its perfect application 
 in Him alone, who was the true image of humanity in 
 both its appointed conditions ; in its sufferings first, and 
 afterwards in its glory. 
 
 Note 4, page 6. 
 
 " The Israel of Prophecy is God's Israel, really and truly, 
 who walk with him faithfully, and abide with him to the 
 end." 
 
 Whatever scheme of interpretation we adopt for Pro- 
 ~l ^ phecy, it is at any rate necessary that it should proceed 
 upon some fixed principle, and not be varied according to 
 the supposed meanings of particular passages. It is con- 
 sistent to follow throughout and exclusively an historical 
 interpretation ; it is consistent also to follow exclusively 
 a spiritual interpretation ; or again it is consistent to adopt 
 always the two together ; and to say that every prophecy 
 
31 
 
 has its historical sense, and also its spiritual sense. But 
 it is not consistent to interpret the same Prophecy partly 
 historically and partly spiritually: to say that in one verse 
 David is spoken of, and in another Christ : that Jerusalem 
 here means the literal city in Palestine, and there signifies 
 heaven: that Israel in one place signifies the historical 
 people of the Israelites, and in another place the people of 
 God, whether Jews or Gentiles. This is absolutely foolish, 
 and is manifestly a mere accommodation of the prophetical 
 Scriptures to certain previously 7 conceive<l notions of our 
 own. 
 
 The interpretation of the Prophecies which speak of the 
 restoration of Israel depends on the general interpretation 
 
 _^_ , i . - _ _ ~ _ _ __ A/>l 
 
 of all the prophetic language of which Israel is the subject. 
 But it seems to me impossible to deny, that the Israel of 
 Prophecy is sometimes the historical Israel, and also that it 
 is sometimes the spiritual Israel. Now if we interpret it in 
 the former sense exclusively, in those places where it is cer- 
 tain that the literal Israel must be intended; and in the latter 
 sense exclusively, where it is certain that the spiritual 
 Israel must be intended ; we have no sure guide for that 
 great mass of passages, which may apply either to the 
 literal or spiritual Israel, but which do not certainly signify 
 either one of them. And thus the controversy as to the 
 historical or spiritual sense of these passages must remain 
 so far as I can see interminable. 
 
 But considering again, that the general form and cha- 
 racter of the Prophecies which are certainly literal, and of 
 
 those which are certainly spiritual, is altogetherjhe JJa 
 we are led to ask, whether in fact one and the same rule of 
 interpretation does not apply to all of them ; and whether, 
 as we are sure that some must be understood literally, and 
 others spiritually, we may not conclude that all may and 
 ought to be understood both literally and spiritually. 
 
32 
 
 We open then the Books of the Prophets, and we find 
 them full of exhortations, instructions, threatenings, and 
 promises, addressed to the people of Israel. Let us 
 consider all these as addressed in the first instance to the 
 historical Israel; and we shall find the exhortations and 
 instructions which relate to things present and actual 
 suiting exactly to its condition ; because they partake of 
 the character of History, and History, as we have seen, 
 treats only of actual persons, and particular events. _But 
 when we come to the ^language of threatening and of 
 promise, we shall find that even where we can trace an 
 historical fulfilment, as in the prophecies that speak of the 
 restoration of Israel from the Babylonian captivity, that 
 fulfilment is yet only imperfect; it is a fulfilment of 
 Prophecy, but not the fulfilment : there is nothing of that 
 exact agreement with any historical reality, which had 
 existed so strikingly in the historical parts of the same 
 Prophecy. Nor is this wonderful ; for the true subject of 
 pure Prophecy as distinct from History is not any human 
 person or persons, fact or facts, but ideas and principles 
 which in no merely human persons or actions have ever 
 been embodied perfectly. Thus as the historical part of 
 Prophecy found its exact application in the historical 
 Israel, so the purely prophetical part finds its exact 
 application in the spiritual Israel; because the spiritual 
 Israel is a pure idea, such as is the subject of pure 
 Prophecy. It finds its exact application, because it finds 
 a real, full, and adequate accomplishment, although it may 
 not be an accomplishment according to the letter of the 
 prophecy. We must carefully distinguish between a 
 different and an inadequate accomplishment ; for the first 
 Inay very well be a substantial fulfilment of a prophecy, 
 which the other cannot be. If it be prophesied that 
 Israel shall offer his burnt offering without interruption, 
 
33 
 
 and acceptably, it is a full and adequate accomplishment 
 of this if Israel offers his prayers freely and acceptably, 
 jnipposing that under an altered state of things, prayers 
 shall have become what sacrifice was in the time of the 
 propfiets. But if it be prophesied that Israel shall tread 
 on the necks of his enemies, and Israel's condition is only 
 so far improved that he is restored to his own land, and to 
 the enjoyment of a nominal independence, but remains 
 still in a state of real subjection; then although this 
 may be a partial fulfilment, or a first dawning and 
 pledge of the fulfilment, yet if there be nothing more 
 than this, the prophecy receives no adequate accom- 
 plishment. 
 
 Again, if in the course of years the historical Israel 
 becomes manifestly in a different relation to God and to the 
 world from that in which it existed formerly ; if, for instance, 
 it is no longer God's people exclusively, but other nations 
 are incorporated with it, and are made sharers in all its 
 privileges; then it is quite clear that the language addressed 
 to the historical Israel in its old state cannot by possibility 
 be applicable to it in its changed state. For in its old 
 state it stood in decided opposition to all other nations ; it 
 alone was the people of God, and all other nations were 
 strangers. In its old state a prophecy is delivered, that 
 Israel shall have dominion over Tyre, or Egypt, or Chittim. 
 But in its altered jj>tate, Tyre and Egypt and Chittim are 
 ^become themselves^, jpart of Israeli, and how can Israel 
 have dominion over itself? The very necessity of the case 
 demands a different fulfilment; for the historical Israel 
 being no longer what it was formerly, and other nations 
 having changed their condition also, what was spoken 
 of them in their old relations, cannot literally be fulfilled 
 of them in their new, without involving a contradiction to 
 its own principle. 
 
 D 
 
34 
 
 Now let us consider the prophecies in the_ thirtieth 
 chapter of Deuteronomy, which promise to the Israelites 
 a restoration to their own land, after they have been led 
 into captivity, and the enjoyment of all manner of hap- 
 piness in Canaan, if they should repent and walk faithfully 
 in God's commandments. Take these promises in their 
 historical sense as addressed to the historical Israel. 
 They are as yet, it_ is said, unfulfilled, but they will 
 be fulfilled hereafter. But it seems to me that they have 
 been fulfilled already, so far as it was possible that they 
 could be fulfilled to the historical Israel; but because 
 such a fulfilment was, and must have been, imperfect, 
 God has provided another Israel, in and for whom they 
 can and will be fulfilled perfectly. For what is the 
 promise ? Is it not substantially the promise of the Law, 
 
 " that lie who doeth these things shall live by them ?" If 
 Israel in his captivity turns faithfully to God, Israel shall 
 return to his land, and shall enjoy the blessing. Now if 
 
 Israel obtained righteousness and life by the Law, so 
 also might he have obtained the restoration and the 
 blessing spoken of in this prophecy. But he never 
 obtained or could claim either, for he never performed 
 the required conditions. He did in some imperfect 
 measure turn to God in the Babylonian captivity; and 
 _to show that the non-fulfilment^ of Prophecy is never to 
 be imputed to a want of power or faithfulness in God, the 
 promise was in a like imperfect measure fulfilled, and 
 
 Tsrael was restored, though in a very poor and humbled 
 condition, to his own land. But then another Israel was 
 provided by God which might, through the redemption 
 and the power vouchsafed to it, perform the conditions, 
 and so enjoy the promise. The idea of the Israel of 
 Prophecy was represented in a purer form than before, 
 in the Christian Church. But the Church which was 
 
35 
 
 now the representative of the true Israel, proved to be, 
 like the nation which had been its representative before, 
 an imperfect and unworthy image of it ; again, the 
 historical and the spiritual Israel differed from each 
 other. Yet as there are now and ever have been in 
 the Christian Israel those who have fulfilled in and 
 through Christ the conditions required of them, so there 
 are and ever have been some who should obtain the 
 promises. God has promised his true Israel that he shall 
 return to his own land, and shall fall away no more, and 
 shall be crowned with abundance of blessing. And as 
 surely as Christ has died and risen again, so surely shall 
 God's true Israel return in multitudes, which no man can 
 number, to their own city and their own country, to their 
 own heavenly Jerusalem; and there shall they be safe 
 from sin and temptation, and enjoy the fulness of joy for 
 ever. And then can we say that God's promises are not 
 kept, and that the voice of Prophecy has spoken in vain, 
 unless the remnant of the historical Israel be brought back 
 from countries little inferior at any rate to Canaan, and be 
 settled once more in Palestine. 
 
 It seems impossible to maintain, that the restoration of 
 the historical Israel to the land of Canaan is the complete 
 and real fulfilment of such prophecies, unless we are 
 prepared to say, that the horizon of man's hope has never 
 been enlarged beyond the limits of earthly blessing. 
 Canaan was the highest promise to the historical Israel ; 
 is it the highest likewise to the Israel of God? And in 
 like manner as God's people were once confined to a 
 single one of the nations of the earth, now they belong to 
 a great multitude of nations, and their border stretches 
 from one extremity of the globe to the other. ^Surely^h is 
 acknowledged extension of Israel requires a corresponding 
 extension of Canaan. If Israel were indeed to attempt to 
 
 D2 
 
36 
 
 dwell between Jordan and the sea, between Lebanon and 
 the river of Egypt, well might he exclaim in the words of 
 the prophet, " TheTplace is too strait for me ; give place 
 to me, that I may dwell." 
 
 But although the full and real completion of the 
 prophecies relating to Israel belongs neither to the first 
 historical Israel, nor yet to the second, the visible Church 
 of Christ ; but to those only who shall be found to have 
 been true Israelites, children of God in the Spirit, whether 
 they belonged to the Jewish or to the Christian Israel 
 according to the flesh ; yet if any one urges, that over and 
 above this real and adequate fulfilment there may be also 
 a lower fulfilment again vouchsafed, even to the old 
 
 historical Israel, whenever he shall turn to the Lord; 
 then I will not attempt to deny this position, provided 
 it be allowed that such a fulfilment is by no means 
 necessary to the truth of Prophecy ; that it is given ex^ 
 abundanti; and that as in no one case we have a right 
 to expect it, so if it be withheld, we ought neither to feel 
 surprise or perplexity. Instances of such a fulfilment of 
 Prophecy are certainly to be met with in Scripture. When 
 our Lord said of his own Disciples in his last solemn 
 prayer, " Those whom thou gavest me I have kept, and 
 none of them is lost, save the son of perdition :" we cannot 
 doubt but that the highest and adequate fulfilment of 
 these words is to be found in the love which Christ 
 showed to the souls of his Apostles, that they had been 
 kept by him from their worst enemy. Yet St. John 
 recognizes a fulfilment of them also in the care which 
 Christ took of their bodily safety, when he said to the 
 soldiers who came to take him,"" If ye seek me, let these 
 go their way." So again the words in the fifty-third chapter 
 of Isaiah, which in their highest sense must relate to 
 
 Chrisfs Atonement, St. Matthew regards as having been 
 
37 
 
 fulfilled in a lower sense by Christ's miraculous curesj 
 " He healed all who were sick, that it might be fulfilled 
 which was spoken by the prophet Isaiah, saying, Himself 
 took our infirmities and bare our sicknesses." And a third 
 example of the same kind may be found in the literal 
 fulfilment of the words of the twenty-second Psalm, 
 " They parted my garments among~thenT, and~loF my 
 vesture they did cast lots." No one could reasonably 
 have thought that Christ's death and resurrection were 
 not the real and sufficient fulfilment of this Psalm, even 
 if his hands and feet had never been literally pierced, and 
 the soldiers had never literally divided his garments 
 among them, or cast lots for his coat. But because 
 there were persons who would be more struck by such r~ 
 ajninute fulfilment than by that 
 
 to us seems so far more satisfactory,' therefore God was 
 pleased that they also should Have the satisfaction which 
 they desired, and over and above the great and substantial 
 fulfilment of the prophecy, he provided also those instances 
 of minute agreement, which however thankful we may be 
 
 _to trace now that they have been given, we could not I 
 think have ventured to expect beforehand.^ 
 
 With these examples before us, I would not dare to 
 say that God may not be pleased to vouchsafe some great 
 
 ~~ and special blessings to the remnant of the historical 
 Israel, when they shall again be grafted in to the Israel 
 of God. But even if none such are granted to them, the 
 prophecies relating to the future and final blessing of 
 Israel seem to my mind to have their abundant a fulfilment 
 
 It may be asked, what spiritual fulfilment can possibly be given to the 
 latter chapters of Ezekiel's prophecy, which speak in such detail of the plan 
 of the new Temple, of the rules to be observed by the Priests, and of the 
 portioins~oTIand to be enjoyed by the several tribes ; particulars, all of which, 
 it may be said, can be only understood of the literal and historical Israel. 
 
38 
 
 in the rest reserved for the people of God. If God's 
 people shall live in his presence for ever in perfect safety, 
 and crowned with glory, I cannot conceive what more can 
 be wanting to the adequate fulfilment of the most magni- 
 ficent language of Prophecy relative to the future triumphs 
 of Israel. 
 
 Note 5, page 8. 
 
 " Not as if the places were accursed for ever," &c. 
 If any man discerns an agreement between certain 
 existing facts and the literal language of Prophecy, it may 
 seem ungracious to tell him that this agreement is not the 
 real fulfilment of Prophecy : and we may be asked at any 
 rate, why we should disturb a belief in which error, even 
 
 Ajpartial answer to this question may be given, by referring to the description 
 
 of the heavenly Jerusalem in the book of the Revelation. There it is quite 
 
 v - certain that the prophet ia not speaking of any historical Israel, or of any 
 
 literal temple ; and yet we find much minuteness of detail, even to an 
 
 enumeration of the several precious stones which form the foundations of 
 
 the wall of the city. But if it be urged that the length of Ezekiel's vision 
 
 forbids us to look upon all its descriptions as mere fanciful embellishment, 
 
 and that the question still remains, for what end we can conceive those 
 
 chapters to have been written, if they are merely a figurative expression of 
 
 the simple truth, that God's people shall have a land, and a temple, and 
 
 a Priest, which shall never pass away ; the only answer to be given seems to 
 
 be a simple confession of our ignorance. , We cannot tell now, but perhaps 
 
 we may know hereafter, what the real meaning and object of Ezekiel's vision 
 
 tj are. But the example of the Revelation, and the actual impossibility of 
 
 If understanding some parts of the vision literally, as they speak of such parts 
 
 \\ of the Jewish worship as have been most surely done away in Christ, may 
 
 **' " \ justify us in not allowing our ignorance to disturb our knowledge'; in not 
 
 giving up a system of interpretation which explains the prophecies of 
 Scripture generally, because there is one prophecy to which we cannot see 
 how to apply it; although that same prophecy repels no less any other 
 system of interpretation, and cannot indeed be understood on the scheme of 
 a mere literal fulfilment, any more than the others which on the scheme of a 
 spiritual fulfilment are intelligible. 
 
39 
 
 if it be error, may be more welcome and more edifying 
 than truth. I suppose, however, that no thinking man 
 who believes in God will seriously maintain that error can 
 be more edifying than truth ; for it is one of the blessings 
 of faith in God, that no truth which he permits us to 
 discover can greatly perplex us ; for if it be a truth existing 
 In his world, we may be sure that it is not there but by 
 his permission; and if it be a truth wholly evil, as for 
 instance tKatTsin exists, yet he can and has provided 
 a remedy^forltTsoTHarif we cleave to him we need not 
 be afraid of it. But 1 quite allow, that if one opinion be 
 clearly edifying and not clearly erroneous, while another 
 is certainly mischievous but not certainly true, then there 
 should be a respect entertained for the former, and we 
 should not advance the latter except on the most urgent 
 necessity. The conditions however of this second case 
 are not easily to be met with : there is something of a 
 contradiction in believing a tenet to be certainly beneficial, 
 and yet possibly false ; to be certainly mischievous, and yet 
 possibly true. The question after all is one of jDrobabi- 
 litiesj^to one man's mind the apparent usefulness of an 
 opinion so commends it, that he does not like to suspect 
 its falsehood ; while another is so impressed with a belief 
 of its falsehood, that he cannot consent to believe that it is 
 really useful. And the^ only rule to be given is, that the 
 former should have sufficient faith to allow his opinion to 
 be questioned without fear, whilst the latter should have 
 sufficient reverence for seeming goodness, to withhold him 
 from attacking it lightly or wantonly. 
 
 But on the present occasion, if it be edifying to believe 
 that God's prophecies have their sure and adequate 
 fulfilment, that is a belief which so far from shaking, 
 I would earnestly labour to encourage and confirm. 
 Nay, farther, if it be edifying to believe that they have 
 
40 
 
 in some instances their minute and literal as well as their 
 large and substantial fulfilment, this too I do not deny, but 
 fully allow ; only it seems to me to bejlangerous to rest too 
 much upon these as on the great fulfilment of Prophecy, 
 lest we should be shocked and our faith be troubled if in 
 any case they are not to be found. With this preface 
 I shall venture now to make a few remarks on some of the 
 supposed literal fulfilments of Scripture prophecies, in the 
 case of Babylon, Edom, and Egypt. 
 
 It will not I suppose be denied, that, speaking now of 
 the historical sense of a national prophecy, the subject of 
 the prophet's blessings or curses is what I may be allowed 
 to call the personality of the nation ; that is, the people as 
 exhibiting a certain character, which character they have 
 derived in part at least from their institutions, their race, 
 and their prevailing tone of moral opinion. When, for 
 instance, a prophet at a given period denounces woe 
 against Babylon, the object of his denunciation is the 
 Babylonian people as it then exists, and its institutions, 
 race, and prevailing opinions, so far as they tend to make 
 the people what it is. And the woe denounced against 
 Babylon must be considered I think to be substantially 
 fulfilled, if the Babylonian people then existing, and the 
 things which helped to give it its peculiar character, be 
 put down and gradually extinguished. 
 
 Now this it seems to me has been actually accomplished. 
 Babylon as a sovereign empire was put down for ever by 
 the Persian conquest. Its influence as an active element 
 in determining the fate of other nations was stopped at 
 once. Moral and intellectual results in Asia have been 
 effected only through the action of physical power; 
 " Grsecia capta ferum victorem cepit" is one of the_ 
 peculiarities of the history of Europe. Babylonian 
 Science, or art, or religion, whatever they may have been, 
 
41 
 
 became powerless over the world when the sceptre of 
 Babylonian dominion was broken. The genius of Babylon 
 received a deadly wound ; he drooped for a while, and 
 died. 
 
 The capture of Babylon by Cyrus took place in the 
 year 538 before the Christian sera. But a hundred years 
 afterwards, when Herodotus visited Babylonia, tfie~cHy"~ 
 was still populous, and the surrounding country was the 
 richest in the Persian empire. Nearly forty years later, 
 when Xenophon followed the younger Cyrus in his 
 expedition against his brother Artaxerxes, Babylon was 
 still a great city, and the canals which communicated 6 
 between the Euphrates and Tigris were in good repair, 
 and navigated by corn barges. Seventy-five years after- 
 wards the same state of things still existed: when 
 Alexander entered Babylon after the battle of Arbela, he 
 found the temples indeed in ruins c , but the Chaldaean 
 priests still inhabited the city as formerly, and it was 
 still a great and wealthy capital. Alexander, as is well 
 known, ordered the temples to be restored, and planned 
 the construction of a great harbour or wet dock in the 
 Euphrates, with the intention of making Babylon the 
 centre of commerce between the West and the Indian 
 ocean. His early death prevented the accomplishment 
 of his purpose ; and afterwards the foundation of Seleucia' 1 
 on the Tigris, which was the capital first of the Greek 
 Syrian kings, and afterwards of those of Parthia,_drew_ 
 away the population from Babylon, and caused it gra- 
 dually to fall into decay. In the Augustan age^more 
 than fiveTiuhdred years after its conquest by Cyrus, it 
 
 b Xenophon, Anabasis, i. 7. . 15. 
 e Arrian, iii. 16. vii. 16. et seqq. 
 
 d SfrnVin riri n 738 
 
 7 
 
 Strabo, xvi. p. 738. 
 
42 
 
 was 6 still partially inhabited; but a hundred and fifty 
 years later, in the time of the Antoniiies^Pausanias says f , 
 that nothing was remaining of it except the walls and the 
 temple of Belus. This, however, appears to have been an 
 exaggeration, or else it must have been peopled again at 
 a subsequent period; for in the fourth century of the 
 Christian aera, Ammianus Marcellinus, writing from his 
 own personal knowledge of Mesopotamia and Assyria, 
 classes 8 Babylon, Ctesiphon, and Seleucia, together, as 
 the three greatest and most famous cities of all that 
 neighbourhood : he also speaks of the fertility of Assyria in 
 the highest terms; describes the Euphrates' 1 as divided 
 into three branches, all of which were navigable, and as 
 watering a highly cultivated country ; and mentions in 
 particular one branch that watered the heart of Baby- 
 i Ionia 1 , " tractus Babylonios interiores," " benefitting the 
 'lands and the surrounding cities." Thus, during a period 
 of more than eight hundred years from its conquest by 
 Cyrus, Babylon existed as an inhabited city, and the 
 i country around it continued to be fertile and populous. 
 
 Now shall we say that during all this time the historical 
 sense of the prophecies concerning Babylon was not 
 fulfilled, but that they waited for a still later period; 
 and were only completely accomplished when Babylon 
 fell into a state of utter ruin, and the country around it 
 became a desert ? But then we must say, that so long as 
 there remained any vestiges of the old historical Baby- 
 lonians, their land was not cursed; but when they had 
 vanished altogether, and other races, and languages, and 
 
 * Diodoms, ii. 9. 
 1 viii. 33. 
 
 8 Splendidissimee et pervulgatse hse solas sunttres. Ammianus, xxiii. p. 251. 
 ^. Vales. 
 
 h Ammianus, xxxii. p. 250, 252. 
 Id. xxiv. p. 266. 
 
43 
 
 manners, and religions, had come into their place, then 
 the land was visited with desolation. Surely we may 
 rather say, that the historical sense of the prophecy was 
 substantially fulfilled when the empire of Babylon fell, 
 when its temples were spoiled and overthrown, and its 
 people lost their national existence, and became the mere 
 subjects of the great king. And the hand of God as it 
 had wrought this work, so it would not suffer it to be 
 undone. Had Alexander accomplished his purposes, and 
 made Babylon the seat of his empire, it is likely that the 
 national personality of Babylon, if I may so speak, would 
 have revived under a Greek sovereign; and that Alex- 
 ander's successors might have become Babylonians, as the 
 Ptolemies did in fact become Egyptians. But this was 
 not to be: Alexander died in the vigour of life; his 
 attempt to revive the imperial state of Babylon was as 
 fruitless as that of Julian to revive the temple- worship of 
 Jerusalem ; and his successors the Seleucidae, instead of 
 restoring the Babylonian empire, contributed even to the 
 fall of the mere city, by founding a new capital at 
 Seleucia. 
 
 Again, the historical Babylon of Prophecy having been 
 put down when the national personality of Babylon had 
 perished, it seems contrary to the general course of God's 
 dealings that the curse should attach itself to the mere 
 __SOJLQ the country when possessed by a new people, and 
 yet should not have been felt so long as the people, for 
 whose sake it is supposed to have been cursed, remained 
 in existence. But this is not mere matter of speculation. 
 Babylon was at one time the seat of a Christian Church. 
 'Ao-7raerat vpoi$ y ev BajSuAwv* o-yvsxAexTvj, says St. Peter at the 
 close of his first Epistle. It is wholly unwarranted to 
 fancy that in such a passage, where the languageTis of tie 
 simplest kind, the term Babylon is used allegorically.^ 
 
44 
 
 We know that Babylon was at that time an inhabited 
 city, and there seems no reasonable doubt that St. Peter's 
 Epistle was written in it. But if Babylon were the seat 
 of a Christian Church, God himself was there ; and no 
 place is or can be accursed where God dwells. It seems 
 to me almost shocking to conceive a Christian Church 
 existing in a spot, the very soil of which was accursed. 
 The sin of the old Babylon could not be so much more 
 powerful than the grace of Christ's presence. 
 
 As therefore the prophecies respecting the historical 
 Babylon were really and substantially fulfilled, when the 
 Babylonian people ceased to be sovereign, and became 
 subject, and thus exercised no farther influence on the 
 course of events or the character of nations; as the 
 desolation of the city, and still more of the surrounding 
 country, did not take place for many centuries, and has 
 been at its height after the actual extinction of that 
 Babylonian people against which the judgment was 
 denounced ; as, thirdly, Babylon has been the seat of 
 a Christian Church, and thus could no longer have been 
 accursed ; and as if we regard the present desolation of 
 the country round Babylon to have been necessary to the 
 fulfilment of the prophecies respecting it, we must also 
 jreguire a similar literal fulfilment in all other cases, which 
 it is impossible to find; it seems to me wiser and safer 
 to say, that the real and complete fulfilment of the 
 prophecies respecting Babylon is to be found in the 
 complete destruction of the Babylonian power and nation- 
 ality ; and that those prophecies would have been accom- 
 plished as truly, if the city had continued to be inhabited, 
 and the country had been still fruitful and populous, as it 
 was for nearly eight hundred years after the overthrow of 
 the empire : that therefore if any look upon the present 
 state * of the city and country to be a fulfilment of the 
 
 
45 
 
 , prophecies, they should regard it as a fulfilment ex abun- f 
 . danti_; as OBJB of those instances, not to be drawn into a 
 general rule, in which God has been pleased to grant an 
 agreement of a minute and literal kind between the pre- 
 diction and the event, as if for the satisfaction of those 
 who could not appreciate agreement in more general and 
 essential points : but that they must by no means consider 
 the truth of Prophecy as involved in the continuance of 
 such a minute fulfilment, nor conceive that if Mesopotamia 
 were again to become fertile and habitable, and a new 
 town were to be built on the site of Babylon, that it would 
 be a revival of that Babylon against which God's judg- 
 ments were denounced. 
 
 But if it be asked, why then was the language of Prophecy 
 so strong, if it was not meant to be literally fulfilled ? I 
 answer, that the real subject of the prophecy in its 
 highest sense is not the historical but the spiritual 
 Babylon ; and that no expressions of ruin and destruction 
 can be too strong when applied to the worldjvhich is to be 
 dissolved, and utterly to perish. And it will be found, f 
 ~TT think, a general rule in all the prophecies of the 
 Scripture, that they contain expressions which will only 
 be adequately fulfilled in their last and spiritual fulfil- / 
 ment : and that as applied to the lower fulfilments which 
 precede this, they are and must be hyperbolical.^ 
 
 I now proceed to notice the prophecies which relate to 
 Edom. These are to be found chiefly in Jeremiah xlix. _ v 
 
 7 22, Ezekiel xxxv, and in the Prophecy of Obadiah ; 
 and their substance is, that because Edom had oppressed 
 and insulted over Israel in the day of his calamity, it 
 should be visited with heavy judgments, and laid waste, 
 and be left desolate. The historical fulfilment of this 
 seems to be, that Edom as a nation soon became extinct; 
 that the Edomites who dwelt near the southern frontier of 
 
46 
 
 Judaea were conquered by Hyrcanus k , and were obliged to 
 adopt the rites and customs of the Jews, while the larger 
 portion of the people who lived to the south and east of 
 the Dead Sea were confounded with the Arabian tribes, and 
 were known by the name of Nabataeans. Petra, which 
 was afterwards so famous, is called a Nabafaean city by 
 Pliny i and by Strabo ; and Strabo describes even the 
 Idumgeans on the south of Judaea as having been origin- 
 ally Nabataeans; but owing to quarrels amongst them- 
 selves, they left their old country, he says, and came over 
 to the Jews, and adopted their customs. Beyond this it 
 does not seem possible to trace the exact fate of the 
 Edomites; and Jerome, after briefly noticing the historical 
 sense of the prophecy in general terms, dwells on it in 
 detail only in the higher or spiritual sense. Indeed the 
 prophetic idea of Edom, the sin of those who offend one 
 of Christ's little ones, fully explains the severity of the 
 language employed in the prophecies respecting.it; but 
 as far as relates to the historical Edom, the language here 
 too is hyperbolical, nor can its fulfilment be insisted on 
 farther than this, that while Israel continued to exist as 
 a nation, Edom, like Amalek, and Ammon, and the other 
 neighbouring people, gradually has perished out of his- 
 tory. But since the recent discovery of the ruins of 
 Petra, it has been contended that the desolate state of that 
 
 country is a confirmation of the prophecies concerning 
 Edom, that it should be laid waste for ever. To this 
 I think the objections are_twofold ; first, that it does not 
 appear that Petra was ever regarded in the days of its 
 greatness as an Edomite city, but as belonging to Arabia, 
 and to the Arabian tribe of the Nabataeans ; and, secondly, 
 that the splendour of Petra, as appears by the existing 
 
 fe Josephus, Antiq. xiii. 9. $. 1. 
 
 l Pliny, Hist. Nat. vi. sect. 32. ed. Sillig. Strabo, xvi. p. 760, and 780. 
 
47 
 
 remains, belonged to a period long subsequent to the 
 prophecies against Edom ; and it cannot surely be con- 
 sidered as an exact fulfilment of the severest denunciations 
 of vengeance, that after those denunciations, the country 
 which was the object of them should rise to a degree of 
 wealth and splendour far greater than it had ever known 
 before, that this prosperous condition should last for 
 several centuries, and then should only yield to that 
 common fate which has consigned so many cities of the 
 East to utteT~3esolation, after the dominion or the com- 
 
 merce to which they owed their greatness have been 
 transferred elsewhere. The ruin of Petra has not been 
 more complete than that of Palmyra. 
 
 The prophecies relating to Egypt are remarkable for^\ -; j 
 
 their tempered severity; agreeing in this respect with 
 the language of other parts of Scripture, which exhibits 
 in speaking of Egypt a striking mixture of condemnation 
 and of favour. We could understand this better, if we 
 could make out what is the^prophetical idea of Egypt. 
 Israel was not to hate an Egyptian because he had been 
 a stranger in his land ; although historically his sojourn in 
 Egypt did not seem fitted to make him look back on it with 
 any feelings of tenderness. Can it be that as Babylon is v 
 
 the idea of the world in a bad sense, the world at enmity 
 with God, and opposed to his Church ; so Egypt is the 
 world in a milder sense, as needing God's graceTBut not 
 as resisting or opposing it ; the natural world out of which 
 the Church was taken, but which with all its imperfections 
 and corruption retains a sense of right and wrong, and 
 admires and practises many virtues ? It cannot be denied 
 I think that the world is represented in the Scripture in 
 these two different lights ; sometimes it is painted in the 
 harshest colours, as wholly opposed to God ; and then 
 the language used towards it is that of the severest con- 
 
Dl 
 
 [I f " 
 m 
 
 48 
 
 demnation; it is then the prophetic Babylon. But at 
 other times the picture is somewhat softened ; the world 
 by wisdom knew not God, yet the times of this ignorance 
 God winked at; the Gentiles had not the law, yet they 
 shewed the work of the law written on their hearts, in that 
 they sometimes did by nature the things contained in the 
 law. Thus represented, it is not the guilty world which 
 Christ will come to judge; but the lost and darkened 
 world which he came to save, and which his Church must 
 regard with kindness, because she was once a stranger in 
 its land : God's redemption only has brought Christians 
 out of that state of natural light in which they were once 
 living. And this milder view of the world appears in 
 some respects to correspond with the prophetic idea of 
 Egypt. 
 
 Historically, the most remarkable prophecies respecting 
 Egypt speak of itsjudgment as not perpetual; and in 
 this they differ wholly from those which relate to Babylon 
 and Edom. They are to be found in Ezekiel xxix to 
 xxxii. and they declare, that inasmuch as Egypt had been 
 a faithless support to Israel, it should be overthrown and 
 laid desolate, but that after forty years it should be 
 restored again m , though not to its former greatness. Now 
 the historical fulfilment of this is sufficiently manifest. 
 Egypt has had her periods of conquest and degradation, 
 
 This is a striking instance of the hyperbolical language of the pro- 
 es as far as regards the historical sense of them. The prophecy says, 
 " I will make the land of ^gypt utterly wasteland desolate, from the tower 
 of Syene even unto the borders of Ethiopia. No foot of man shall pass 
 through it, nor foot of beast shall pass through it, neither shall it be inha- 
 bited forty years." It is perfectly evident that we are to seek for no literal 
 fulfilment of this : but I think also that the expression " forty years" is no 
 more to be taken literally than the other expressions ; and indeed it is incon- 
 sistent to seek chronological exactness where there is evidently no historical 
 exactness intended. 
 
49 
 
 first under the Babylonians, and then under the Persians; 
 but she revived after each of these visitations, first in the 
 reign of Amasis after the Babylonian conquest; and, 
 secondly, during the dominion of the Ptolemies, when she 
 was again independent, powerful, and flourishing, yet 
 never rose to that pitch of greatness to which she had 
 attained under the empire of the Pharaohs. 
 
 The higher sense of these prophecies must depend on 
 the higher or spiritual meaning of the term Egypt. Jerome 
 interprets it as signifying simply an evil power, the power 
 of Satan; and its inhabitants are those ^who have been 
 subjected to the evil power, but are taken away from it, 
 and dispersed, and winnowed, and then brought back 
 and planted, as it were, in the Church, but are now stripped 
 of their pride, and humbled, and obedient. But the 
 Prophet expresses that they shall be planted again in 
 their own land, the land of their birth or origin ; and it 
 is hard to understand how this can mean the Church. 
 Nor does Jerome's interpretation rest on any other found- 
 ation so far as appears, that the supposed etymological 
 meaning of the word Pathros, which he explains as signi- 
 
 fying " Panis conculcatusV' " ubi panis ille qui dixerat, 
 
 n Jerome merely says, " Phatures, quse interpretatur panis conculcatus." 
 Did he connect the word with D^S pedibus calcare, and "HR panis albus ? 
 The first of these Gesenius connects with several words in the Indo-Germanic 
 languages, observing " Pedibus calcare plurimis in linguis syllaba Pat ex- 
 primitur varie inflexa, v. Sanscr. pati via, Zend, petho, pate semita, Gr. vu.-? , 
 farta, Germ. inf. padden^ pedden, trartTv. Pfad, Fuss, Angl. path, foot, ab 
 Hebrseis t in sibilum verso pas, bos." This etymology, and the allusion to 
 hseretiea pravitas, afford a specimen of the characteristic faults not of Jerome 
 only, but of many others of the Christian writers of the first five centuries; 
 faults so obvious that there would be no use in ever noticing them, were it 
 not for the_unwise admiration which makes these writers idols, and calls upon 
 the Church to fall down and worship them. The Hebrew DVTTIQ is merely 
 an Egyptian name for Upper Egypt, Pathoures in Egyptian signifying the 
 Land of the South. See Gesenius on Isaiah xi. 11. who has taken his inter- 
 
 pretation of the Egyptian word from^Jablonsky. It is added in a note on the 
 article Pathros in Jablonsky's work,"" Collectio et ExplicatioVocum 
 
 E 
 
50 
 
 ego sum pants qui de ccdo descendi, pravitate haeretica 
 conculcatus est." If Egypt may be taken as the world 
 in that milder sense which I have noticed above, the 
 peculiarity of the prophecy may be supposed to consist 
 in the declaration, that God's judgments denounced upon 
 it are corrective, and not simply penal. (Ezekiel xxix. 
 13 15. Compare Jeremiah xlvi. 26.) The world is 
 judged, and its greatness brought low, not for its utter 
 destruction, but that it may "remember itself, and be 
 turned unto the Lord." Psalm xxii. 27. Compare also 
 Isaiah xxvi. 9. " When thy judgments are in the earth, 
 the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness." 
 
 Finally I may observe, that those passages in the 
 prophecies which speak of the conversion of Egypt and 
 of Assyria, and of their union with Israel, appear to me 
 decisive proofs that it is not the literal Babylon, or Edom, 
 or Egypt, which is the real subject of the denunciations 
 of prophecy in their full extent. For as on the one hand 
 we have in the case of Babylon and Edom denunciations 
 of utter and hopeless destruction,^) on the other hand 
 we find also in some instances a language of mercy which, 
 if addressed to the same subject as the threatenings of 
 extreme vengeance, would seem to involve a contradiction. 
 Thus in the eighty- seventh Psalm, the fourth verse is 
 interpreted almost by common consent as signifying, 
 " I will make mention of Egypt and Babylon, as being 
 amongst those who know me :" that is, as being no more 
 strangers and enemies, but as being fellow citizens with 
 God's people, and of the household of God. And no less 
 remarkable are the concluding verses of the nineteenth 
 chapter of Isaiah, " In that day shall Israel be the third 
 with Egypt and with Assyria, even a blessing in the 
 
 acarum," &c. Lugdun. Bat. 18041813, that Upper Egypt is called the Land 
 of the South by the Arabian geographers, by Abulfeda, and Abulpharagius. 
 
51 
 
 midst of the land ; whom the Lord of Hosts shall bless, 
 saying, Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work 
 of my hands, and Israel mine inheritance." __It seems to 
 me that this language absolutely forbids us to apply the 
 extreme threatenings of Prophecy to the literal Babylon or 
 to the literal Egypt. In both Christ's Church was 
 planted, and both therefore, as the prophet expresses it, 
 received the blessing of the Lord of Hosts. " Tune et 
 opus manuum Domini erit in Assyriis," says Jerome, 
 " hae enim vel maxime gentes monachorum florent exami- 
 nibus, ^Egyptus et Mesopotamia, et pari inter se pietate 
 contendunt." From that hour_the threatenings against 
 Babylon and Egypt lost their historical sense altogether ; 
 the literal Egypt was become Israel, the literal Babylon 
 was become Israel ; the Egypt and Babylon of Prophecy 
 were from henceforth exclusively what they had always 
 been predominantly, the world which knew not God, 
 and the world which was his enemy. 
 
 Note 6, page 16. 
 
 " Passages which, according to the undoubted evidence 
 of their context, were historically and literally spoken of 
 some imperfect prophet, or priest, or king," &c. 
 
 The notion of a double sense in Prophecy has been treated 
 by some~persons with contempt. Yet it may be said, that it L it- 
 is almost involved necessarily in the very idea of Prophecy. 
 
 Every prophecy has, according to the very definition 
 of the word, a double source ; it has, if I may venture so 
 to speak, two authors, the one human, the other divine.^ T. V. 
 For as, onTheone hand, the word implies that it is uttered 
 by the tongue of man, so it implies, on the other hand, that 
 its author and origin is God. Again, if uttered by the 
 
 E2 
 
52 
 
 tongue of man, it must also, unless we suppose him to be 
 a mere instrument, in the same sense in which a flute or 
 a harpjutter sounds without understanding or conscious- 
 ness, be coloured by his own mind. The prophet ex- 
 presses in words certain truths conveyed to his mind; 
 but his mind does not fully embrace them, nor can it ; 
 for how can man fully comprehend the mind of God ? 
 Every man lives in time and belongs to time ; the present 
 must be to him clearer than the future ; and if the future 
 were fully laid open before him so that he could understand 
 it as he understands the actual world around him, he 
 would cease to partake of the conditions of man's nature. 
 But with God there is no past nor future ; every truth is 
 present to Him in all its extent, so that his expression 
 of it, if I may so speak, differs essentially from that which 
 can be comprehended by the mind or uttered by the 
 tongue of man. Thus every prophecy as uttered by 
 man, that is by an intelligent and not a mere mechanical 
 instrument, and at the same time as inspired by God, 
 must have as far as appears a double sense ; one the 
 sense entertained by the human mind of the writer, and 
 the other the sense infused into it by God ; nor can we 
 venture to say in any case_that the prophet understood 
 or meant to convey all the mind of God, or that God 
 designed to declare nothing more than was apprehended 
 by the mind of the prophet. 
 
 But although a double sense of prophecy appears thus 
 to be a necessary condition of the very idea of prophecy, 
 yet it is a jgreat question to what degree the prophet was 
 blind to the divine meaning of the prophecies whiclThe 
 uttered, and how far his human meaning coincided with 
 that divine meaning or fell short of it. And here the 
 conceivable difference is exceedingly greatj__ for we may 
 suppose the prophet, on the one hand, to be totally ignorant 
 
53 
 
 of the divine meaning of his words, and to intend to 
 express a meaning of his own quite unlike God's meaning ; 
 or, on the other hand, we may suppose him to be so aware /\ 
 of their divine meaning, as actually to give an appearance 
 of incongruity to his language, so that his words under 
 this con victiorT shall at times rise "out of all propoFtion to 
 _their ordinary tenor, as expressing the meaning com- ^ 
 monly, and as it were naturally, present to his own mind. 
 
 Of these two extremes, the first is exemplified in the 
 well-known words of Caiaphas. " It is expedient," he said, 
 " that one man should die for the nation." " But this," 
 says St. John, " he spake not of himself, but being high 
 priest that year, he prophesied that Jesus should die for 
 that nation." That is, the words which he spoke in one 
 sense, God, speaking by him as the High^Priest of IsraeV 
 uttered as it were in another sense. Here we see the 
 two meanings of the human and of the divine author- 
 of a prophecy, and they differ from one another not in 
 degree only, but in kind. 
 
 But we should not be warranted, I suppose, in ex- 
 tending this case to any of God's willing prophets, who 
 gave themselves up obediently and gladly to utter his 
 word. We may believe that their minds did not embrace 
 the full extent of the truths which they declared, but we 
 cannot think that they were wholly blind, much less that 
 they were actually adverse to them. 
 
 Here however we have a declaration from one of our 
 Lord's Apostles, which authorizes what we might of our- 
 selves have conjectured. " Of the salvation of your souls," 
 says St. Peter, " the prophets have enquired and searched 
 diligently, who prophesied of the grace that should come 
 unto you: searching what or what manner of time the 
 Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it 
 testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glory 
 
54 
 
 that should follow. Unto whom it was revealed, that not 
 unto themselves but unto us they did minister the things 
 which are now reported unto you by them that have 
 preached the Gospel unto you with the Holy Ghost sent 
 down from heaven ; which things the angels desire to 
 look into." 1 Peter i. 10, 12. This passage is so full 
 and so important, that we may fitly take it as our guide 
 in our farther enquiries into the accordance of the human 
 sense of the prophecies with that designed by God. 
 
 It will be observed, that St. Peter represents the Pro- 
 phets as having knowledge on one point, and searching 
 for it on another. They knew, that not to themselves but 
 to future ages, they were ministering the things which 
 they were speaking ; they were searching diligently what 
 and what manner of time that should be when the 
 fulfilment of their prophecies should be perfected. They 
 searched what the time should be, e'i$ Tim xuigov iftjAou TO 
 ev otvTol$ Tlveupoi XgurroS, that is, I suppose, when it should 
 happen, at what period, whether men would have to wait 
 for it many years or few. But they searched also what 
 manner of time it should be, el$ TTOIOV xotigov ISyjAou TO Hvsvpot, 
 that is, in what state men would then be, whether in such 
 an one as that under which they themselves were living, 
 or in one more or less different. When it is said that 
 they searched for these things, it is implied of course that 
 they did not know them at first, but whether by searching 
 they werejn any case enabled to discover them, "this 
 the words of St. Peter do not indeed affirm, but yet 
 neither do they deny it. 
 
 Following then the guiding points here given to us, we 
 should suppose that the prophets' language would speak 
 of blessings greater than they could reasonably anticipate 
 in their own generation, but that at the same time having 
 no distinct knowledge when these good things would 
 
55 
 
 come, or in what state mankind would be when they 
 did come, they should blend the distant prospect, not 
 unfrequently, with the nearer, ancTinvest it with the^same 
 forms with which their experience was already 
 not knowing how to paint it more exactly. Thus the 
 greatest anticipated glory of the days of the Messiah is 
 made to form part of the picture of the restoration from 
 Babylon: and thus also transferring to the unknown 
 future the features of the well-known present, they repre- 
 sent the triumph of the future Israel over its enemies 
 according to the pattern of the triumphs of the existing 
 Israel ; and when the knowledge of God is jspread over 
 the earth, still itls described as connected with the actual r v 
 Jewish forms, with a temple at Jerusalem, with Priests 
 and L^vites, and a daily sacrifice. And yet they foresaw 
 that there would be a change even in these points; for 
 they speak of a new covenant to be made hereafter 
 between God and Israel., which should cause the old 
 covenant of Mount Sinai to be forgotten. 
 
 But farther, when the image of the Messiah had once 
 been presented to their minds, and they looked forward to 
 him as to the perfect fulfilment of hope, and therefore of 
 prophecy, they seem to have felt themselves at times 
 transformed into his image, so that the language whether 
 of hope or of devotion which they uttered in their own 
 persons, beginning in a tone suited to their own condition, 
 as God's servants indeed, but yet as compassed about with 
 sin and infirmity, swelled gradually into a fuller and higher 
 strain, such as became God's perfect servant and him only. 
 It isjhusjthat St. Peter, in his speech to the people of 
 Israel on the day of Pentecost, justifies, if I may so speak, 
 the strong expressions of triumphant confidence which 
 form the^conclusion of the sixteenth Psalm. " David 
 being a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with 
 
56 
 
 an oath to him, that of the fruit of his loins according to 
 the flesh he would raise up Christ to sit on his throne ; he 
 seeing this before spake of the resurrection of Christ, that 
 his soul was not left in hell, neither his flesh did see 
 corruption." 
 
 And now we see why the language of the Prophets, as 
 applied to those nearer events which occupy, so to speak, 
 the foreground in their vision, is and must be hyper- 
 bolical. Beginning with those near events, beginning 
 amidst all familiar objects and images, Israel, Jerusalem, 
 the Law, the Temple, Babylon, Egypt, Edom, or Tyre, 
 defeat and victory, captivity and deliverance, famine and 
 plenty, desolation and prosperity, other and higher hopes 
 possess their minds almost immediately, distinct in their 
 greatness, undiscemed in their particular forms. Thus 
 into the human framework there is infused a divine spirit, 
 far too vast for that which contains it. The names are the 
 same, but the meaiiingjs different; and thus there arises 
 a necessary inequality 'between the prophecy and its 
 historical fulfilment, which if we do not understand how 
 it has arisen, must be a source of extreme perplexity. 
 And some finding that the historical fulfilment has as 
 yet borne no proportion to the greatness of the prophecy, 
 look for another fulfilment with the same forms as the 
 former, which shall accomplish what is yet wanting. 
 Thus, because the restoration of the Jews from Babylon 
 no \^ay answered to the greatness of the prophetic picture 
 which announced it, there are some who look for another 
 historical restoration, which shall place the Jewish nation 
 in Canaan under all those forms of happiness described by 
 the Prophets; that is, in the enjoyment of plenty, of peace, 
 and of dominion. But the greatness of the prophecy never 
 really belonged to the historical forms with which it was 
 connected, and can find its answer only in that which 
 
57 
 
 indeed was thejmginal subject which called it forth, the 
 triumph of perfect good, or, in other words, the_j*lpry of 
 jChrist and of his kingdom. 
 
 Thus the inspired Prophets may be supposed to have 
 been themselves conscious that their prophecies had a 
 twofold character; the form of them belonging to their 
 own times, the spirit of them to times that were to come. 
 When St. Peter says, that " it was revealed to them that 
 not unto themselves but unto us they did minister the 
 things now reported unto us," he does not surely mean 
 to deny that they ministered to their own generation also, 
 although not exclusively nor in the highest degree. The 
 Prophets never cast themselves as it were into the midst 
 of the ocean of futurity ; their view reaches over the ocean, 
 their hearts it may be are set on the shore beyond it, but 
 their feet are on their own land, their eyes look upon the 
 objects of their own land, there is the first occasion of 
 their hopes, and there lie theirjluties. They are Prophets 
 in both senses of that term, preachers of righteousness to 
 
 their own generation, as well as foretellers of blessing for 
 generations to come. Their words therefore have an 
 historical sense, clear and distinct in all its forms, but 
 imbued with a spirit so mighty, that the earthly frame is 
 too weak to bear it. And they have a spiritual sense also, 
 worthily answering to the magnificence of their language, 
 but in its details of time, place, and circumstance, in- 
 distinct to them, nay, as we still see through a glass darkly, 
 indistinct, when it rises highest, even to us. 
 
 Generally speaking, therefore, we shall find all prophecy 
 tcThave a double sense according to these principles ; the 
 one hisloricaTrand^distinctly comprehended by the Pro- 
 phet and his own generation in all its particular features, 
 but never fulfilled answerably to the magnificence of its 
 language, because that language was, properly speaking, 
 
58 
 
 inspired by a higher object; the other spiritual, the 
 proper forms of which neither the Prophet nor his 
 contemporaries knew, and therefore he invested it with 
 those which he did know: but fulfilled adequately, or 
 even more than adequately, in Christ and his promises to 
 his people, and his judgments upon his enemies. 
 
 And thus the study of Prophecy divides itself naturally, 
 . as Jerome saw and practically followed the division in his 
 commentary, into two branches ; nor should either of these 
 be neglected. First of all, looking upon the Prophet as 
 a preacher of righteousness to his own generation, as 
 belonging to a particular time and nation, and as speaking 
 in the first instance to his own people, we should study 
 him as we would any other ancient writer, endeavouring 
 to obtain a clear view of the state of things around him ; 
 to understand the political relations of the several coun- 
 tries of which he speaks ; to discover the principal vicissi- 
 tudes of their history ; to enter into the way of thinking 
 peculiar to his time, to know what evils physical and 
 moral were most prevalent, and by what means and with 
 what success they were combated. But if we stop here, 
 it is not possible but that we should regard the Prophets 
 as visionaries, who indulged in dreams of happiness and 
 glory which never have been realized. To stop here, 
 however, is to leave half our work undone. There 
 remains the second branch of the study of Prophecy, 
 no less real and sober than the first, no less instructive, 
 but far more consolatory. Approaching the prophecies 
 now from a different side, looking at them not from the 
 time and country of their human writer, but from our 
 own, from that period which the Scripture speaks of as 
 the age to come, from the period of Christ's kingdom, we 
 learn to substitute the realities of the spiritual world in 
 the place of their historical symbols or images ; sacrifice, 
 
59 
 
 priesthood, temple, the holy city, the Israel of God, 
 Israel's enemies, Israel's prophets, kings, and deliverers, 
 shake off as it were the earthly garments which had 
 concealed their true nature, and stand forth before us as 
 they are. Then the language of Prophecy appears no 
 longer hyperbolical ; no tongue of man has described 
 nor heart of man conceived such a holiness, or such a 
 glory, but that a greater than either is here. Then 
 looking at the pictures of human suffering, so true an 
 image of our actual condition, and of human exaltation, 
 so lively an echo to our instinctive hopes, and finding 
 that both were combined and both more than realized 
 in the death and resurrection of Christ our Lord; we 
 understand how the prophecies have in their highest 
 sense been fulfilled already, and we perceive through 
 the declaration of Christ's Gospel how we ourselves may 
 hope to have our portion also in this fulfilment ; for it is 
 Christ's will that those whom God has given him should 
 be with him where he is, and should behold and share his 
 glory. 
 
APPENDIX I. 
 
 IN order to illustrate the view of the interpretation of 
 Scripture prophecies offered in the foregoing Sermons, 
 I have taken some of the most remarkable of those which 
 are quoted in the New Testament as referring to our Lord, 
 or to his Kingdom; and have endeavoured _to see how 
 their application can be explained on the principles above 
 laid down ; so that the reader will thus be enabled to 
 judge for himself of the soundness of the system which I 
 have followed. 
 
 For this purpose I have selected those prophecies or 
 those parts of the Old Testament, which have been~appiied 
 to the jimes of the Messiah by our Lordjhimself. 
 
 These are, 
 
 Malachi iii. 1. 
 iv. 5. 
 
 Isaiah vi. 9, 10. 
 xxix. 13. 
 Psalm xxxv. 19. 
 Psalm viii. 2. 
 
 Psalm xli. 9. . 
 
 Psalm cxviii.22, 23. 
 ex. 1. 
 xxii. 1. 
 
 Zechariah xiii. 7- 
 Isaiah Ixi. 1. 
 
 Applied to John the Baptist. j St. Matt. xi. 1014. 
 
 Applied to the Jews of our $ St - Matt. xiii. 14. 
 Lord's own time, ? xv. 7. 
 
 St. John xv. 25. 
 St. Matt. xxi. 16. 
 
 Applied to Judas Iscariot. St. John xiii. 18. 
 
 ISt. Matt. xxi. 42. 
 St. Matt. xxii. 43. 
 St. Matt, xxvii. 46. 
 St. Matt. xxvi. 31. 
 St. Luke iv. 21. 
 
 Applied to our Lord himself. 
 
 Of these passages, three, m all probability, Isaiah vi. 9, 
 10. xxix. 13, and Psalm viii. 2. may be regarded as 
 
62 
 
 merely describing similar feelings to those which our 
 Lord saw in the men of his own generation. Isaiah was 
 told to say to the Jews of his time, " Hear ye indeed, but 
 understand not," &c. and this might be addressed with 
 equal truth to the Jews in the time of our Lord. These 
 
 I passages then do not seem to be referred to as being 
 
 ; strictly speaking prophetical. 
 
 Psalm xxxv. 19, requires, however, to be noticed more 
 particularly. The Psalmist says, " Let not them that are 
 mine enemies wrongfully rejoice over me, neither let them 
 wink with the eye that hate me without a cause." Our 
 Lord's words are, " If I had not done among them the 
 works which none other man did, they had not had sin ; 
 but now have they both seen and hated both me and my 
 Father. But this cometh to pass, that the word might be 
 fulfilled that is written in their law, They hated me 
 without a cause." That is to say, " I have dealt with 
 this people as the prophets my forerunners, and in a 
 certain degree my representatives, dealt with them for- 
 merly. As they offered good and received in return evil, 
 so that the hatred shown to them was without a cause, 
 thus, but much more perfectly, was it to be with me. 
 I was to fulfil that example which the prophets set in 
 old times, and therefore I spake as never man spake, and 
 did works such as no other man did, that I too might be 
 hated without a cause as they were." With equal pro- 
 priety our Lord might, I conceive, have referred, if he had 
 so chosen, to the hundred and twentieth Psalm, where 
 there is a similar sentiment, " I am for peace, but when 
 I speak, they are for war ;" or to any other passages in 
 which the prophets expressed a similar language. And 
 our Lord's meaning^ in saying, " This cometh to pass, that 
 the word might be fulfilled that is written in their law," 
 is merely this, that as he was to fulfil all righteousness, so 
 
63 
 
 in whatever respects the prophets had duly performed their 
 work, in these they were but types of him, and he also was 
 to do as they had done. 
 
 A somewhat similar explanation may be given of the 
 reference to Psalm xli. 9.__ " 1 know whom I have 
 chosen," said our Lord, " but I did it that the Scripture 
 may be fulfilled, He that eateth bread with me hath lifted 
 up his heel against me." That is, " in choosing such 
 a man as Judas to be my disciple, it is not that I did not 
 know what he was and would be ; but that in this respect 
 also I might be as the prophets were who went before me ; 
 that with me as with them, my foes should be they of 
 mine own household." One of the bitterest of innocent 
 sufferings is to be betrayed by those to whom we have shown 
 kindness and confidence; and as this was the portion of 
 God's imperfect servants the prophets, so also Christ was 
 pleased that it should be his portion also. And as our Lord 
 referred to the forty-first Psalm, so might he equally I 
 believejiavejeferred to the fifty-fifth Psalm, ver. 12, 13, 14, 
 where the Psalmist again speaks of the peculiar misery 
 of being persecuted and injured by those whom he had 
 regarded as his friends. 
 
 But having noticed one passage of the Psalms which 
 has been applied to Judas in the New Testament, I may 
 perhaps here anticipate the mention of two others, which 
 are applied also to him by St. jPeter, "ActeirgQ. These 
 are, Psalm Ixix. 25, and cix. 8. They are both taken 
 from Psalms which contain the strongest denunciations of 
 evil against the enemies or persecutors of the Psalmist ; 
 denunciations so strong, that many persons, as is well 
 known^hrinkTr^in^epeating them, when they occur in 
 the Service of the Church. And if we regard merely the 
 mind of the human writer of these Psalms, it is probable 
 that his feelings did partake of those of the men of old 
 
64 
 
 time, who said, " Thou shall love thy neighbour and hate 
 thine enemy." But that vehemence of denunciation, or 
 of imprecation as we may truly call it, which God's 
 servants in a more perfect dispensation could not have 
 repeated in their own persons without sin, expresses in 
 no hyperbolical language what is the extremity of judg- 
 ment reserved for the enemies of God. For the human 
 enemies of the imperfect servants of God there were 
 probably circumstances of extenuation which made the 
 curses, as applied to them historically, only applicable par- 
 tially and with abatements. But for those who are the 
 enemies of God's perfect servant, and whom his unerring 
 judgment shall declare to have been so, the fearful lan- 
 guage of these Psalms is not exaggerated ; and Judas had 
 been so marked out by Christ's own sentence as being 
 a son of perdition, that St. Peter considered the curses of 
 Scripture to belong to him, no less than its blessings 
 belonged to those who through Christ were become the 
 sons of God. 
 
 The passages from Malachi, which our Lord applies 
 to John the Baptist, offer I think a remarkable contrast 
 to most of the other prophecies referred to in the New 
 Testament. Generally speaking, the prophecies are ap- 
 plied in their highest sense, distinct from the first and 
 lower meaning, which may be supposed to have been 
 more immediately present to the mind of their human 
 author. But the passages in Malachi appear to have 
 been fulfilled in John the Baptist in their first and im- 
 mediate sense : and therefore, according to the^general 
 analogy of Scripture, there would be an higher sense in 
 which John was not their fulfilment, but in which they 
 will be fulfilled hereafter. JFor_toJVIalachi, writing after 
 Israel had been restored from Babylon, and closing as 
 he did the volume of ancient prophecy, the immediate 
 
65 
 
 object of hope was the coming of our Lord in the flesh ; 
 there was no temporal deliverance intervening, as with 
 those who prophesied during the Captivity, which might 
 in the first instance awaken hope, although it was unable 
 to satisfy it. The day of the Lord was first of all Christ's 
 coming in the flesh, and the messenger, who in this sense 
 prepared the way before him, was John the Baptist. But , 
 as there is yet to come a day of the Lord in a yet higher 
 sense, a great day and a dreadful, when Christ shall come 
 again and shall finally establish his kingdom, so it is to 
 be expected that Elijah the prophet will again prepare 
 his way before him ; that preachers of repentance, whe- 
 ther one or more, in the spirit and power of Elijah, shall 
 arouse men to a livelier sense of the depth and breadth 
 of the Christian law, lest Christ come and smite the earth 
 with a curse. ^ 
 
 Five passages in the Prophets are applied by our Lord 
 to himself. One of these is Isaiah IxT. 1, in which the~ 
 prophet declares himself to be anointed and commissioned 
 to proclaim a period of deliverance and of blessing. Now 
 allowing that here, as in other similar prophecies, the 
 prophet did not know distinctly " what or what manner 
 of time the Spirit of Christ which was in him did signify," 
 so that he connected the period of highest blessings with 
 that of the return of Israel from Babylon; yet the language 
 is so magnificent, so applicable in its full meaning to the 
 one perfect Saviour and to Him only, that we can well 
 understand how justly our Lord might say after reading 
 these words in the synagogue at Nazareth, tf This day 
 is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears." 
 
 A second passage is Psalm ex. 1. This our Lord quotes 
 as being understood by the Jews generally to refer to 
 the Messiah. It is the fashion, I believe, with the modern 
 Jews to suppose it to be addressed by the Psalmist, whom 
 
 F 
 
66 
 
 they do not allow to have been David, either to David or 
 to some other of their kings, whom he calls his lord. 
 If we consider the language of the forty-fifth and seventy- 
 second Psalms, and of the promise made to David, 2 Sam. 
 vii. 12, 16, it is not impossible that this Psalm also may 
 have been applied to an earthly king, whether David or 
 Solomon, and addressed to him as by his earthly subjects, 
 whilst the King himself may have used it in another and 
 truer sense, as referring to him who was his own Lord, 
 no less than his people's. Nor is the language, if taken 
 in the historical sense, more hyperbolical than that of 
 Isaiah ix, which undoubtedly I suppose refers in its lower 
 
 meaning to the reigrTof a merely~human sovereign. But 
 the question remains, what is the real and worthy subject 
 of that language which, as applied to its human subject, 
 is so exceedingly hyperbolical ? And if we allow the fact, 
 that hopes of a Messiah did exist as early as David's time, 
 it is difficult not to believe that such very high and 
 magnificent expressions must have had reference to him, 
 however indistinctly, and however much other and nearer 
 subjects may have in part suggested it. 
 
 A^third passage, applied by our Lord to himself, is 
 Psalm cxviii. 22, 23. Neither the date, nor the author, 
 
 nor the immediate subject, of this Psalm can be fixed 
 beyond vague conjectures. It is the language at times 
 of one of God's prophets, at other times of his whole 
 people ; but it expresses only the relations which they 
 have in common, not those in which they differ from each 
 other; and both the prophets and the people of Israel, 
 so far as they are alike ay/eu, or God's chosen, are equally 
 types of Christ ; that is, they are the representatives im- 
 perfectly of the good cause in human nature which Christ 
 represented perfectly. They therefore have the portion 
 of redeemed human nature, evil struggling with good, 
 
67 
 
 but good triumphant. In this Psalm the Prophet is 
 persecuted, (ver. 5. 10 13.) is chastened, (ver. 18.) is 
 rejected, (ver. 22.) but he is also supported, delivered, and 
 exalted. What particular rejection and exaltation in the 
 case of the human writer of the Psalm gave occasion to the 
 twenty-second verse, it is impossible for us to discover : 
 but we know that in the fullest sense the expression of 
 both is applicable to Christ ; and this union of humilia- 
 tion and victory, which belongs essentially to all God's 
 servants, was manifested most entirely in his Son ; and 
 every notice of it in the ancient prophets belongs therefore 
 to him even more than to them. 
 
 But most strikingly is this union exhibited in the 
 twenty-second Psalm ; a Psalm of which the human and 
 historical origin is also unknown : but of which we may 
 be perfectly sure that it follows the great law of Prophecy, 
 inasmuch as its language must have been hyperbolical 
 as applied to its immediate and human subject, but is 
 barely just, and finds a perfect accomplishment if applied 
 to its divine and final subject. We cannot so much as 
 conjecture to what circumstances in the life of the human 
 jiuthorj ver. 16 IS^were intended to allude ; but we are 
 
 quite certain that he never could have witnessed within 
 his own experience the consummation of glory and hap- 
 piness to which the Psalm points at its cloggy We may 
 justly look upon this whole Psalm therefore as written 
 e$ XgiOTov, that is to say, as adapted to his person far more 
 than to that of the human writer, although doubtless the 
 human writer's own circumstances formed the ground- 
 work of it, and it was the very mixture of suffering and 
 of hope in his own proper person, which, making him in 
 a manner a type or image of Christ, fitted him to express 
 the likeness in words far more closely than he could do in 
 his life and actions ; so that he who lived, and suffered 
 
 F2 
 
68 
 
 and hoped, only in his own human and imperfect measure, 
 was yet in his words by the power of God's Spirit enabled 
 to be, if I may so speak, as Christ himself. 
 
 The last of the passages applied by our Lord to himself 
 is Zechariah xiii. 7. So great is the obscurity which hangs 
 over the latter chapters of Zechariah in all points relating 
 to them as human writings, that the immediate and 
 historical sense can scarcely in any place be discerned 
 with certainty. But whoever was in a lower sense the 
 shepherd smitten, by whose fall the sheep were scattered, 
 and severely tried, but afterwards comforted and brought 
 near to God, yet all these circumstances so suit the great 
 Shepherd of the sheep, and any other in whom they might 
 have been partially fulfilled were so evidently but imperfect 
 types of him in these relations, that he rightly applied 
 them to himself. 
 
 What I have thus attempted to do with the prophecies 
 applied in a Christian sense by our Lord himself, might 
 be done also with those applied by his Apostles or Evan- 
 gelists. But the reader, if he finds any satisfaction in the 
 method liere given, may easily adapt it for himself to each 
 particular prophecy. 
 
 As, however, I have endeavoured to explain tbe principle 
 on which the prophecies applied by our Lord to himself 
 are applicable, so I w r ould wish to see whether the same 
 principle will not also explain that great prophecy of 
 which he was not the interpreter, but the author the 
 prophecy contained in the twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth 
 ^chapters of St. Matthew's Gospel. 
 
 Now if any persons are inclined to condemn one parti- 
 cular point in the foregoing system of interpretation ; the 
 
69 
 
 supposition, namely, that every prophecy may be expected - 
 to have at least two senses ; and that as scarcely any are ' - 
 purely historical, so scarcely any are purely spiritual; 
 I would request them to observe how entirely this sup- 
 position is confirmed by the prophecy now before us. 
 It cannot be doubted that it proceeds from an immediate 
 historical occasion ; that it was addressed primarily to the 
 hopes and fears of the men of the then living generation ; 
 that it speaks of the approaching siege and destruction of 
 the historical Jerusalem. Nor yet can it be doubted that 
 it does not rest long within the narrow limits of its 
 historical subject; that the language rises almost im- ^ 
 mediately, and the vision magnifies ; that the outward and ' *' 
 historical framework bursts as it were and perishes, while 
 
 the living spirit which it contained alone supplies its 
 place ; that Jerusalem and the Romans becomlTtEe whole 
 human race and God's true heavenly ministers of judg- 
 ment ; that the time fixed definitely for the fulfilment of 
 the historical sense of the prophecy melts away and 
 becomes an ineffable mystery, when it would in fact be 
 no other than the date of time's being swallowed up in 
 eternity : that the coming of the Son of man, imperfectly 
 shadowed forth in the power which visited Jerusalem with 
 destruction, is in its full verity the end of all prophecy, 
 which can only find its accomplishment when prophecy 
 shall cease, and knowledge and faith and hope, the guides 
 and supports of our earthly life, shall all pass away 
 together. 
 
 There is no doubt that the prophecy relates historically 
 to the destruction of Jerusalem. The false Christs, the 
 wars and rumours of wars, the famines, pestilences, and 
 earthquakes, the persecution of Christ's servants, the great 
 spread of the knowledge of his Gospel, have been all 
 recognized as fulfilled up to a certain point in the actual 
 
70 
 
 history of the period between our Lord's resurrection and 
 the year 70. So the grievous calamities of the Jewish 
 war, and of the siege of Jerusalem, the manifestation of 
 Christ's power in the utter destruction of the people who 
 were the bitterest enemies of his kingdom, and the 
 accomplishment of all this within the lifetime of the men 
 of that very generation, may all be traced, as they have 
 been often, historically. All these circumstances can be 
 traced historically, yet it was long ago remarked, that the 
 history of the first century does not produce their adequate 
 Julfilment. " There were not many men in the time of 
 the Apostles," says Origen n ,_" who said that they were 
 Christ; there was perhaps Dositheus of Samaria, the 
 founder of the Dositheans, and Simon, of whom the Acts 
 of the Apostles make mention, who called himself the 
 great power of God: but besides these there have been 
 none within my knowledge either before or since." And 
 again, " Not yet have many in the Church itself become 
 traitors ; not yet have there arisen false prophets to deceive 
 many : nor as yet have Christ's servants been hated by all 
 nations, even to the very extremities of the earth for his 
 Name's sake : nor has the Gospel of the kingdom been 
 yet preached in the whole world. For no one says that 
 the Gospel has been preached amongst all the Ethiopians, 
 especially amongst those beyond the River : nor yet 
 amongst the Seres; nor have they in the East heard 
 the word of Christ's religion. What are we to say of the 
 Britons, or of the Germans on the shores of the Ocean, 
 or of the Barbarians, Dacians, Sarmatians, and Scythians, 
 of whom very many have not yet heard the word of the 
 Gospel, but will hear it at the very end of the world ?" 
 " Many, not of the Barbarian nations only, but even of 
 those of our own world, have not to this day heard the 
 
 n Comment, in S. Matt. 
 
71 
 
 word of Christ's religion." Thus Origen wrote in the 
 jiretjaart of the third century : and what was true between 
 200 and 250 A. D. must have been much more true 
 between A. D. 33 and 70. Or what shall we say of the 
 appearance of the sign of the Son of man in heaven, 
 coming in the clouds with power and great glory, and 
 gathering his chosen from one end of heaven to the other, 
 before that generation which witnessed his death and 
 resurrection had altogether passed away ? It is clear then 
 that we can so far trace in our Lord's own prophecy the 
 same rule which we have supposed to exist in all the older 
 prophecies ; namely, that it arises out of, and in its first 
 sense relates to, something historical ; but that when taken 
 in this sense, its language is not adequately, but only 
 partially and typically, fulfilled by the historical event. 
 
 We have, however, laid it down as a rule no less 
 general, that there is in the prophecies, besides this first 
 and historical sense, another sense^ not historical but 
 spiritual; that is, not relating to particular places, per- 
 sons, and times, but to pure good and evil in all times and 
 every where; and that taken in this sense the language 
 does not go beyond_the fulfilment, but almost, if it mayl)e, 
 falls short of it. And this rule also seems to be observed 
 in this prophecy of our Lord. What now is Jerusalem 
 and its temple in this sense, and what is meant by their 
 destruction? Jerusalem simply must be God's people; 
 corrupt and rejected Jerusalem must be God's apostate 
 people; those who belonging nominally to his Church 
 are in heart his enemies. By these his true people are 
 ever vexed, hindered, persecuted ; they cannot enter into 
 their perfect rest till the false Jerusalem shall be destroyed. 
 Meanwhile, ere the destruction take place, all evils prevail 
 in the world as heretofore ; wars have not ceased, nor is 
 the curse taken off from nature, nor is truth, though 
 
72 
 
 declared to all, followed by all. Iniquity abounds, and yet 
 the knowledge of Christ is spread more and more widely 
 over the world. Temptations of unbelief are multiplied, 
 and temptations of superstition, growing in their power to 
 seduce, as the end^raws nearer. Thus far the experience 
 of eighteen hundred years has illustrated the spiritual 
 sense of the prophecy. To attempt to follow it to the end 
 were presumptuous, still more presumptuous to seek to 
 know when that end shall be. But surely there will be 
 a real and adequate fulfilment of the remainder of the 
 prophecy, as there has been of its beginning. The false 
 Jerusalem will perish, and then the true Jerusalem, the 
 real and perfect kingdom of God, will succeed. It may be 
 V that this great truth may be again partially and typically 
 fulfilled, nay, that it may be so fulfilled many times over, 
 the fulfilment becoming continually more and more ade- 
 quate to the prophecy, till the last and perfect fulfilment 
 There may be judgments more or less complete executed 
 upon the false Jerusalem, and after each judgment the 
 condition of God's true people may become more secure. 
 But though heaven and earth will pass away, yet Christ's 
 words will not pass away : and as surely as he rose from 
 the dead, and is now at the right hand of God, so surely 
 may we expect a full and perfect fulfilment of his promise, 
 that he will put down all his enemies, Babylon, Jerusalem, 
 sin itself, and the last enemy death, and that he will reign 
 visibly amongst his true people in life eternal. 
 
APPENDIX II. 
 
 ALTHOUGH not strictly belonging to the subject of 
 Prophecy, yet as closely connected with it, and as pre- 
 senting some considerable difficulties, I may notice here 
 the application of passages in the Old Testament to our 
 Lord, which we might judge to refer simply to God the 
 Father, and of which we might not see why they should 
 be selected rather than any other parts of the Scriptures 
 where mention is made of God, or of Jehovah. 
 
 Of such passages there is a remarkable collection in the 
 first chapter of the Epistle to~the Hebrews. Another 
 instance occurs in St. John xii. 41. and another in xix. 37. 
 others in 1 Corinthians x. 4, 9. Ephesians iv. 8. Romans 
 x. 13; xiv. 10, 11. and another, according to Lachmann's 
 reading, in Jude 5. These will be, I think, sufficient to 
 show the principle on which such applications are made. 
 
 The places in the Old Testament referred to in the above 
 passages are severally as follows : ttth~(~ 
 
 Deuteronomy xxxii. 43. (Sept.Vers.) . referred to in Hebrews i. 6. I ^r ' f - 
 
 Psalm xlv. 6, 7. . . . . Hebrews i. 8, 9. 
 
 Psalm cii. 2527. .... Hebrews i. 1012. 
 
 Isaiah vi. 110. .... St. John xii. 41. 
 
 Zechariah xii. 10. .... St. John xix. 37. 
 
 Exodus xiii. 21, 22. Deut. xxxii. 4. 15, 18, 30, 31. . c ,_ q 
 
 and other passages in Exodus and Numbers. $ 
 
 Psalm Ixviii. 18. . . . . . Ephes. iv. 8. 
 
 Joel ii. 32. ..... Romans x. 13. 
 
 Isaiah xlv. 23. . . . . . Romansxiv.lO, 11. 
 
74 
 
 And Jude 5. runs in Lachm aim's edition thus, " Jesus, 
 having saved the people out of the land of Egypt, after- 
 ward destroyed them that believed not." 
 
 i/ Now I believe the principle on which all these applica- 
 tions are made is one and the same ; namely, that where- 
 ever the Old Testament speaks of God as manifesting his 
 glory, or showing himself in any visible form to his people, 
 or descending to visit his people, or to judge their enemies, 
 it is to be understood as speaking of the Word or Son of 
 *~Y /"'God, who afterwards was manifested in the flesh in the 
 Person of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. 
 
 This jirinciple rests on the notion, that God the Father 
 is and ever has been invisible to man, " dwelling in light 
 inaccessible, whom no man hath seen or can see." " No 
 man hath seen God at any time : the only -begotten Son 
 who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him." 
 God thus reveals himself to man only in his Son, he 
 communicates with man only by his word. 
 
 Thus in Deuteronomy xxxii. 43. the Lord is spoken of 
 as about to judge his people, and to take vengeance on their 
 enemies, attended by his holy angels. At his appearance 
 the heavens rejoice with him, and all the angels of God 
 bow down before him ; then he executes his work of 
 judgment, and thoroughly cleanses the land of his people. 
 But all these expressions indicating One who is not veiled 
 in light inaccessible, but who descends on earth, and is 
 manifested to men and angels, are therefore understood to 
 be applicable only to God the Son. 
 
 So in Psa^m xlv^_6. the Person there addressed as God 
 is described as a King going forth to war, as conquering, 
 as reigning visibly amongst his people. This can only 
 be the Son of God, and therefore he is in the Psalm itself 
 distinguished from God the Father : the Psalmist says to 
 him, " God even thy God hath anointed thee with the oil 
 of gladness above thy fellows." 
 
75 
 
 Again, in Psalm cii. the Lord there spoken of " arises to 
 have mercy upon Zion," (v. 13.) and comes down to earth, 
 " when the Lord shall build up Zion, he shall appear in 
 his glory" Here therefore is an appearance ewi^avefo, of 
 the glory of God ; and therefore he who appears is God 
 the Son. 
 
 Isaiah vi. 1 10. contains a description of a vision in 
 which God manifested himself to the prophet Isaiah. 
 " I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, 
 and his train filled the temple." " Mine eyes have seen 
 the King, the Lord of Hosts." But no man hath seen 
 God at any time ; that is, God the Father. And therefore 
 St. John, quite naturally, if I may so speak, observes of 
 the words which he had just before quoted from the tenth 
 verse of this chapter, " These things said Isaiah, when he 
 saw his (i.e. Christ's) glory, and spake of him." 
 
 So again in Zechariah xii. 10. God describes himself as 
 taking vengeance on the enemies of his people, and re- 
 storing Jerusalem ; using the words, " they shall look on 
 me whom they have pierced." Here again is a visible 
 manifestation of the Godhead, and therefore St. John 
 understands it of him, who was pierced visibly before his 
 own eyes with the Roman soldier's spear. 
 
 When St. Paul says that the Israelites " drank" in the 
 wilderness " of that spiritual Rock which followed them, 
 and that Rock was Christ," and when St. Jude speaks of 
 " Jesus who delivered his people out of Egypt," the notion 
 seems to be the same. He w r ho delivered the people out 
 of Egypt was the same who appeared to Moses in the 
 burning bush, and whose glory in a visible form was 
 manifested on the tabernacle. And therefore he who led 
 and supported his people in the wilderness w r as Christ. 
 
 In Psalm Ixviii. 18. he who ascended on high, is the 
 God who dwelleth in Zion, and who " went before his 
 
76 
 
 people" in the wilderness : " whose chariots are twenty 
 thousand, even thousands of angels." (ver. 7, 16, 17.) And 
 the very word " ascended" can be only applicable" to God 
 on the supposition of his being on earth. But God visiting 
 mankind on earth is Christ. 
 
 Joel ii. 27. speaks of God being " in the midst of Israel;" 
 and of" the great and terrible day of the Lord." (ver. 31.) 
 The great day of God is the day of God's appearing, to 
 judge the wicked, and to raise up the good. What 
 St. Paul calls our blessed hope, " the glorious appearing 
 of the great God," (Titus ii. 13.) St. Peter calls " the day 
 of God." (2 Peter iii. 12.) And therefore when Joel, after 
 speaking of the coming of " the great and terrible day of 
 the Lord," goes on immediately to say, (ver. 32.) that 
 " whosoever shall call on the Name of the Lord shall be 
 delivered," it is evident that he means that Lord whose 
 " great day" or whose " appearing" should then have 
 taken place. But God appearing to judge mankind is 
 Christ. 
 
 Finally, Isaiah xlv. 23. must be connected with the 
 beginning of the prophecy in chap. xl. where God, who 
 avenges his people upon Babylon, is expressly said to 
 " visit the cities of Judah," and they are called upon to 
 ^Jbetiold their God." (xl. 9.) And in chap. xlv. also, in 
 the verse immediately preceding that to which St. Paul 
 refers, God says, "^Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the 
 ends of the earth." (ver. 22.) And in ver. 24. it is added, 
 " To him shall men come." Here then we have again the 
 notion of God coming down from heaven, and being 
 present among his people, and therefore he to whom 
 " everjr_knee shall bow," (ver. 23.) is rightly understood 
 by St. Paul to be Christ the Lord, at whose judgment-seat 
 we shall all stand. 
 
77 
 
 IT has been my earnest endeavour in the foregoing 
 pages to avoid as much as possible all such questions as 
 might be likely to engender strife ; that is to say, such as 
 are connected with the peculiar opinions of any of the 
 various parties existing in the Church. If these are not 
 touched upon, men can differ without hostility, they can 
 analyse a book fairly, can disapprove of some things in it, 
 and yet approve of others ; nay, can think its main con- 
 clusions erroneous, without condemning it as unsound and 
 mischievous. I have tried so to write on the subject of 
 Prophecy, as not to shock even those from whom on many 
 other points I differ widely. Once or twice I found my- 
 self on the very edge of debateable ground : but as my 
 argument did not oblige me to enter on it, I was glad not 
 to cross its boundaries. At the same time I need not, 
 I trust, say, that what I have written is in no respect 
 coloured for the purpose of conciliation : if any one agrees 
 with the views and language of this volume, let him be 
 assured, that so far the agreement between us is real ; that 
 I hold these views and use this language as sincerely and 
 .as earnestly as he could do himself; and let him share 
 with me the comfort of believing, for surely a great 
 comfort it should be to Christians, that there are other 
 points over and above the main articles of our common 
 faith, on which we can truly have the same mind and 
 speak the same thing. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 BAXTKR, PRINTER, OXFORD. 
 
1 "V" 
 
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