There is no subject connected with our religion that requires more care in its interpretation than that of types; and few that yield more instruction and pleasure, when handled with due regard for the Word of God. Few Bible readers will question that we have a system of types in the Old Testament, but there has been so reckless a method of interpretation applied to it, and so absurd conclusions drawn from it, that many have turned away from this delightful theme, and many more persist in a refusal to investigate it at all.
We propose a few short essays on the subject, rather suggestive than exhaustive, in the hope that our readers will examine for themselves the law and the gospel; the tabernacle “made with hands,” and that which “God pitched, and not man,” in the relation of type and antitype, shadow and substance, letter and spirit, which form such an important and instructive contrast in the writings of the apostles, especially in the epistles of the teacher of the Gentiles, the disciple of Gamaliel, the man so well qualified by nature, education, and the inspiration of God, to give the church an authoritative exposition of those wonderful prefigurations found everywhere in the Patriarchal and Jewish Scriptures. We maintain that a full-orbed view of the Sun of Righteousness, such a one as shall bring healing in his rays, can only be had by him who sees that sun rising from the shadows of the east, while the starlight, moonlight, and twilight of the patriarchs, Moses, and the Baptist, insensibly disappear in the richer effulgence of that “true light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.”
We acquire much of our knowledge in nature, art, and religion by comparison, showing resemblances and contrasts. Were we to take away from literature the allegories, parables, and analogies with which it abounds, we should be amazed at the poverty of what was left; and surely we need not be told what would be the effect of such a course with the writings we hold most dear—the memoirs of Christ, and the epistles of Paul. Who can read the letters of this distinguished apostle to either the Galatians or the Romans, and not be struck with the constant reference to the Jewish polity and ritual, its economy and worship, abounding everywhere with type and symbol, pattern and outline, analogon and similitude? And who can study the Epistle to the Hebrews, with profit and pleasure, without an intimate knowledge of the great fonts of types set up and stereotyped by Moses?
The epistles of Paul, if we had no other, are enough to encourage us in an attempt to examine this most extensive and instructive subject; with him as our guide, we may enter “the tabernacle of witness,” and reverentially listen while he shows the nature and explains the [203] meaning of courts and furniture, sacrifices and ablutions, propitiations and benedictions, that all were “a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things.”
If we carefully note our feelings while reading the Scriptures, or any book of a typical or emblematical character, we shall discover that the Author of our being has established an intimate correspondence between typical systems and our intelligence. The child delights in his illustrated primer, and must have the picture for the eye, as well as the word for the ear, before he can master with facility the prima elementa of human knowledge. The youth seeks the aid of diagrams and figures, in demonstrating the theories of abstruse science, and can make but little advance without these adjuvants to the mind in scaling the alpine hights of pure abstraction. The mechanician and the architect draw from nature the models after which they form the machines and erect the structures that serve the necessities and contribute to the comforts of social life. We all take great pleasure in tracing the resemblances and discovering the meaning of those rites and ceremonies of preceding and adumbrative dispensations that prepared the world for “the bringing in of a better hope, by the which we draw nigh unto God.” Often a single word spoken by Christ, or leaping from the pen of an apostle, will, to mind instructed in the forms of the Jewish worship, send conviction to the heart, or image forth a world of beauty, that, without this instruction, would be lost.
We contend, that, beside the pleasure arising from a familiar acquaintance with the typical system of the Old Testament, no one can for a moment, call into question the divine origin of Christianity, when it is studied in the light of that system. As the student of nature reads the silent, but none the less convincing prophecies of the approaching better epoch in the fossil, flora, and fauna of the preplanned order of the cosmos, controlled by the mighty forces necessary to bring beauty out of chaos, and directed all things to a grand consummation; so, also, the student of God’s system of grace and mercy is assured of an omniscient God, who saw the end from the beginning, and who, by type and symbol, has stamped on the sacred page, prefigurations of Christ’s kingdom, that shall forever speak the same language, while the ever-changing forms of human speech are falling into desuetude.
And herein we find another and important advantage of types and symbols, in communicating to men the mind and will of God. Words are ever changing, just as change the customs and costumes of succeeding generations. We need revisions of the Scriptures, in process of time, to bring the thoughts of God into the phrases of living men; but to the eye of humanity, of every tribe, and age, and clime, the pictures which patriarchs, prophets, and apostles have drawn on the walls of “the temple made with hands,” will signify the same, will [204] always convey the same ideas concerning the service and worship of God, and his dealings with men and nations in the government of the world. A bleeding lamb, smoking altar, brazen laver, golden lamp, and a table with bread thereon, will never cease to teach men unmistakably the essence of revealed religion, under every dispensation. We can not become well acquainted with the manner in which blood, water, and oil were used in the tabernacle service, without learning much about the atonement, purification, and sanctification brought to us by Christ, and the way in which we are to obtain these inestimable benefits.
But while we contemplate the great advantage resulting from this study, and the pleasure to be derived from such an employment of our rational powers, let us not be unmindful of the dangers of the proposed voyage, and the peculiar qualifications needed in the pilot who is to give us safe passage over shoals, where many have been shipwrecked. Let us take warning from the mistakes and failures of others. So many have become intoxicated, and have staggered out of the way here, that not a few think the whole subject noxious, and that the spirit of such studies turns the head, and disqualifies for sober thought. Because Jewish cabalists sought to extend the boundaries of the typical, so as to embrace the most puerile fancies and extravagant analogies, and Origen among early Christians, and Swedenborg in latter times, have careered over the fields of the allegorical and symbolical without check, interpreters not wanting in the elements of vigorous thought, analytical power, and just discrimination, have been frightened from the investigation of the principles that should guide us in this most interesting department of Biblical literature.
We are not at liberty to regard as typical, whatever resemblances, far-fetched and often imaginary, we may fancy to exist between the details of Jewish and Christian worship. As there have been many expositors who held that in any given passage of God’s revelation, every word has as many meanings as can be brought out of it. So another class, like them in many respects, have made the types to signify a thousand things unknown to the Scriptures, and often in direct contradiction to them. Witness the long and seemingly endless controversy about baptism coming in the room of circumcision, which language, if it have any meaning at all, simply imports that circumcision is a type of baptism, in direct opposition to the apostle who says, in effect, that it is a type of the spiritual circumcision of the heart; “the putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ.” Now this is effected by immersing the penitent believer in water, and has no more to do with sprinkling a few drops of water on the face of an innocent and unconscious babe than with any other pagan or papal rite.
While we thus enter our protest against the wild and licentious [205] method of many exploiters in their treatment of Scripture types, we can not subscribe to the statement of another class, who will not allow anything to be a type in the preceding economies but what is affirmed in the New Testament. We regard this latter opinion as the necessary recoil from the extreme of the former class. Both are wide of the mark; both are extremes, and therefore to be avoided.
“In media via tutissimus ibis.”
There can be no canons of criticism and Bible-interpretation given that will supersede the necessity of good sense, caution, and reverence in handling “the things of the Spirit.” Religion, like any other of God’s works, will reveal its wonders only to the diligent, the prudent, and the devout. She loves to meet in her temple gates those who come in spirit and truth to worship at her altars and learn her mysteries; and these alone will be able to understand the meaning of these strange devices that meet in every niche and recess, and look down on them from every pane and panel in God’s glorious cathedral.
Next to a mind free from party bias, we need a sound judgment in order to a correct interpretation of Old Testament types. There is so much to dazzle the imagination and allure the fancy, so much to delight the mind and draw it aside into forbidden paths, that we need sound and discriminating judgment, and a firm resolution to disregard fine-spun theories to secure us against the vagaries and extravagances of mystics.
Along with reverence for the Scriptures and a sound judgment, we must have correct and well-established principles of interpretation, if we hope to come to rational conclusions in this important field of inquiry. Nothing must be left to caprice. There are rules in this department framed by men of leaning and pious industry, from broad inductions to deep study which will guide us aright in what, without them, would be a labyrinth without a thread.
We invite particular attention to the fact that in these essays we shall speak of Scripture types, rather than theological. The difference is simply this: theological types, as this phrase is used by divines, include only prefigurations of Christ. They would restrict all types to him, and look only at the prefigurative character of such types. They lose sight of the fact that there is more in the word type than prefiguration, and that many types refer to the things of his religion as well as to Christ himself. We wish to treat of types as defined by Paul where he says: “Now all these things happened unto them for ensamples (types), and they are written for our admonition upon whom the ends of the world (ages) have come.” (1 Cor. x., 11.) In thus treating them we shall find that Christ and his religion, God’s government over nations, and his method of saving the penitent and punishing the rebellious, as well as the grand consummation of all in the downfall of antitypical Babylon, the mother of harlots, are all foreshadowed in the Old Testament.
G. [206]
[Volume III: January, 1866.]