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ON THE RULES OF INTERPRETATION-No III..

LET us now, for a moment, imagine ourselves to stand in the place of those who were addressed by the prophets. Of course we must suppose ourselves to have the same understanding of the Hebrew language, to have been educated within the same circle of knowledge, and to be familiar with the same objects both in the natural and spiritual world. Should we need lexicons, grammars, and comcommentaries, in order to understand Isaiah, or any other prophet? The supposition is, upon the very face of it, almost an absurdity. Are our common people, who have the first rudiments of education, unable to understand the popular preachers of the present day? If it is so, it is the egregious fault of the preacher, and not of his hearers. It is because he chooses words not contained in the usual stores of language from which most persons draw, and which he need not choose, and should not select, because he must know that such a choice will make him more or less unintelligible. But who will suppose the prophets to have acted thus unwisely? The inspiration by the aid of which they spake and wrote, surely enabled them to speak and write intelligibly. If so, then were we listeners to them, and in the condition of those whom they actually addressed, we could of course understand them, for just the same reasons, and in the same way, that we now understand the popular preachers of our time. All our learned apparatus of folios and quartos, of ancient and modern lexicographers, grammarians, and critics, would then be quietly dismissed, and laid aside as nearly or altogether useless At the most we should need them no more than we now need Johnson's or Webster's Dictionaries, in order to understand a modern sermon in the English language.

All this needs only to be stated, in order to ensure a spontaneous assent to it. But what follows? The very thing, I answer, which I am laboring to illustrate and establish. If the persons addressed by the Hebrew prophets, understood them, and easily and readily understood them, in what way was this done? Plainly by virtue of the usual principles of interpretation, which they applied in all the common intercourse of life. They were not held in suspense about the meaning of a prophet, until a second interposition on the part of heaven took place, i. e. a miraculous illumination of their minds in order that they might perceive the meaning of words new and strange to them. Such words were not employed. They were able, therefore, at once to perceive the meaning of the prophet who addressed them, in all ordinary cases; and this is true throughout, with exceptions merely of such a nature as still occur, in regard to most of our preaching. Now and then a word is employed, which some part of a common audience does not fully comprehend; and now and then a seutiment is developed, or an argument employed, which the minds of some are not sufficiently enlightened fully to comprehend. But in such cases, the difficulty arises more from the subject than it does from the language.

The prophets indeed complain, not unfrequently, that the Jews did not understand them. But this complaint always has respect to a spiritual perception and relish of the truths which they delivered to them. They heard, but understood not; they saw, but perceived not.' The fault, however, was the want of spiritual taste and discernment; not because the language, in itself, was beyond human comprehension.

'Admitting then that the prophets spoke intelligibly, and that they were actually understood by their cótemporaries, and this without any miraculous interposition, it follows of course, that it was the usual laws of interpretation which enabled their hearers to understand them. They applied to their words, and spontaneously applied the same principles of interpretation which they were wont to apply to the language of all who addressed them. By so doing, they rightly understood the prophets; at any rate, by so doing, they might have rightly understood them; and if so, then such laws of interpretation are the right ones, for those laws must be right which conduct us to the true meaning of a speaker.

I can see no way of avoiding this conclusion, unless we deny that the prophets were understood, or could be understood, by their contemporaries. But to deny this, would be denying facts so plain, so incontrovertible, that it would argue a desperate attachment to system, or something still more culpable.

In view of what has just been said, it is easy to see why so much study and learning are necessary, at the present time, in order to enable us correctly to understand the original Greek and Hebrew Scriptures. We are born neither in Greece nor Palestine; we have learned in our childhood to read and understand neither Greek nor Hebrew. Our condition and circumstances, our course of education and thought, as well as our language, are all different from those of a Jew in ancient times. Our government, our climate, our state of society and manners and habits, our civil, social, and religious condition, are all different from those of Palestine. Neither heaven above nor earth beneath, is the same in various respects. A thousand productions of nature and art, in the land of the Hebrews, are unknown to our times and country; and multitudes of both are familiar to us, of which they never had any knowledge. How can we then put ourselves in their places, and listen to prophets and apostles, speaking Hebrew and Greek, without much learning and study? It is plainly impossible. And the call for all this learning and study is explained by what I have just said. All of it is designed to accomplish one simple object, and only one, viz. to place us, as nearly as possible, in the condition of those whom the sacred writers originally addressed. Had birth and education placed us there, all this study and effort might be dispensed with at once; for, as has been already stated, we could then understand the sacred writers, in, the same way and for the same reason that we now understand our own preachers. When we do this, we do it by spontaneously applying the laws of interpretation which we have practised from our childhood; and such would

have been the case, had we been native Hebrews, contemporary with the prophets and apostles.

When the art of interpretation, therefore, is imagined or asserted to be a difficult and recondite art, dependent on great learning and high intellectual acuteness, the obvious mistake is made of confounding with it another sort of learning, which is only preparatory and conditional, but does not constitute the principles themselves of hermeneutics.

It seems to my own mind, that we have arrived at the conclusion which it was proposed to examine and confirm, in a very plain, natural, and simple way. The substance of all is, the Bible was made to be understood; it was written by men, and for men; it was addressed to all classes of people; it was for the most part understood by them all, just as our present religious discourses are; and of course it was interpreted in such a way, or by the aid of such principles, as other books are understood and explained.

But there are objectors to this position. Some of them, too, speak very boldly, and with great zeal and confidence. Candor requires that we should listen to them, and examine their allegations.

Obj. 1. 'How can the common laws of interpretation apply to the Scriptures, when confessedly the Bible is a book which contains revelations in respect to supernatural things, to the knowledge of which no human understanding is adequate to attain?"

The fact alleged I cheerfully concede. But the inference drawn from it, I do not feel to be at all a necessary one, nor in fact in any measure a just one. So far as the Scriptures are designed to make known a revelation to us, respecting things that are above the reach of our natural understanding, just so far they are designed to communicate that which is intelligible. If you deny this, then you must maintain that to be a revelation, which is not intelligible; or, in other words, that to be a revelation, by which nothing is revealed.

If you say that a new interposition on the part of heaven is necessary, in order that any one may understand the Scriptures, then you make two miracles necessary to accomplish one end; the first, in giving a so called revelation, which after all is unintellgiible; the second, in supernaturally influencing the mind to discern what is meant by this revelation. The reply to this has been already suggested above, viz. it contradicts experience, and it is contrary to the analogy of God's dealing with us in all other respects.

As far then as any revelation is actually made in the Scriptures, so far they are intelligible. But, perhaps, some one will here make another objection, viz.

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Obj. 2. Intelligible to whom? A man must be enlightened in a spiritual respect, before he can understand the Scriptures. How then can the usual laws of interpretation enable him to understand and to explain them?".

The fact here alleged is rather over-stated; I mean to say, the assertion is too general. That there are parts of the Scriptures which no unsanctified man can fully understand and appreciate, is and must

be true, so long as the fact is admitted that there are parts which relate to spiritual experience. "The natural man receive h not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned." Most freely and fully do I concede what is here meant to be affirmed. How can any man fully understand what is said of religious experience and feelings, who is not himself, and never has been, the subject of such experience and feelings?

After all, however, there is nothing new or singular in this, at least so far as the principle itself is concerned. The same principle holds true, in regard to other things and other books. Before a man can

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understand them, he must be in a condition to do so. Newton's Principia or Mecanique Celeste of La Place, and understand them, unless he comes to the study of them with due preparation? Who can read any book of mental or moral science, and enter fully into the understanding of it, unless he is himself in a state which enables him throughout to sympathize with the author, and to enter into all his feelings and views? Who, for example, can read and fully understand Milton and Homer, without the spirit and soul of poetry within him which will enable him to enter into their views and feelings? Who can read intelligently even a book of mathematics, without sympathizing with the writer?

The answer to these questions is too plain to need being repeated. How then does the principle differ, when I ask, 'Who can read the Scriptures intelligently, that does not enter into the moral and religious sympathies of the writers? I agree fully to the answer which says, 'No one." The thing is impossible. But is equally impossible in all other cases to read intelligently, without entering into the the sympathies of the writers.

Those then who are solicitous for the honor of the Scriptures, have in reality nothing to fear from this quarter, in respect to the principle which I have been advocating. A demand for religious feeling, in order fully to enter into the meaning of the sacred writers, rests on the same principle as the demand for a poetic feeling in order to read Milton with success, or a mathematical feeling in order to study intelligibly Newton and La Place, How can any writer be well and thoroughly understood, when there is not some good degree of community of feeling between him and his reader? This is so obvious a principle, that it needs only to be stated in order to be recognized,

But still, it would be incorrect to say that Newton or Milton is unintelligible, They have both employed language in its unusual way: or if not always so, yet they have furnished adequate explanation of what they do mean. The laws of exegesis are the very same, in reading and explaining Milton, as they are in reading and explaining Pope or Cowper; they are the same in respect to La Place, that they are in respect to Day's mathematics. But in both these cases, higher acquisitions are demanded of the reader in the former instance than in the latter.

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It is incorrect, therefore, to say that the Bible is unintelligible, or to say that the usual laws of interpretation are not to be applied to it, because an individual's feelings must be in unison with those of the writers, in order to understand all which they say.

Let me add a word also by way of caution, in regard to the subject now under consideration. There is a way of inculcating the truth, that "the natural man receiveth and knoweth not the things of the Spirit," which is adapted to make a wrong impression on the minds of men. They are prone to deduce from certain representations of this subject which have sometimes been made, the conclusion that natural men can understand no part of the Bible, and that they must be regenerated before they can have any right views of the Scriptures. But this is carrying the doctrine much beyond its just limits. A great part of the Bible is addressed to intelligent, rational, moral beings as such. All men belong to this class; and because this is so, they are capable of understanding the sacred writers, at least so far as they designed originally to be understood by all, and so far as the great purposes of warning and instruction are concerned. It is the condemnation of men, that light has come into the world, and they love darkness rather than light, because their deeds are evil." Our Saviour could not have said, that if 'he had not come and spoken to the Jews, they would not have had sin,' except on the ground that the light which he communicated to them, rendered them altogether inexcusable, Let the preachers of the divine word take good care, then, that they do not so represent the ignorance of sinners as to diminish their guilt. When this ignorance is represented as involuntary, or as a matter of dire necessity, then is this offence committed.

Obj. 3. But is it not God who speaks in the Bible, and not man? How can we expect the words of God himself to be scanned by the rules of human language?"

The answer is brief, and like to that which has already been given. When God speaks to men, he speaks more humana, in human language; and this, in condescension to our wants. Does he expect us to understand the language of angels? He does not. The Bible is filled with the most ample illustrations of this, Every where human idioms and forms of speech, common to the Jewish nation and to individuals, are employed by the sacred writers, All the varieties of style and expression are observable in these writers, which we see any where else. The same figures of speech are employed; the same modes of address and instruction. We have historic narration, genealogical catalogues, prose, poetry, proverbs, addresses, sermons, parables, allegories, enigmas even; and all this in a way similar to that found in the works of uninspired writers. It is the matter rather than the manner, which characterizes the superiority of the Scriptures, The manner indeed is sublime, impressive, awful, delightful. But this is intimately connected with the elevated matter, the high and holy contents of the Bible. After all due allowances for this, we may say, that the manner is the manner of men; it is by men and for

men

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