death, they are often weak and temporary, when they have to set forth things strong and eternal. A sinful element is evidently mingled with them, while they yet appear as symbols of what is entirely pure and heavenly. They break down under the weight that is laid upon them. The father chastens after his own pleasure, instead of wholly for the child's profit; in this unlike that heavenly Father, whose character he is to set forth. The seed which is to set forth the word of God, that Word which liveth and abideth for ever, itself decays and perishes at last. Festivals, so frequently the image of the pure joy of the kingdom, of the communion of the faithful with their Lord and with one another, will often, when here celebrated, be mixed up with much that is carnal, and they come to their close in a few hours. There is something exactly analogous to all this in the typical or parabolical personages of Scripture the men that are to set forth the Divine Man. Through their sins, through their infirmities, yea, through the necessary limitations of their earthly condition, they are unable to carry the correspondencies completely out. Sooner or later they break down; and very often even the part which they do sustain, they sustain it not for long. Thus, for instance, few would deny the typical character of Solomon. His kingdom of peace, the splendor of his reign, his wisdom, the temple which he reared, all point to a greater whom he foreshowed. Yet this gorgeous forecasting of the coming glory is vouchsafed to us only for an instant; it is but a glimpse of it we catch. Even before his reign is done, all is beginning to dislimn again, to lose the distinctness of its outline, the brightness of its coloring. His wisdom is darkened, the perfect peace of his land is no more; and the gloom on every side encroaching warns us that this is but the image, not the very substance, of the things. Again we see some men, in whom there is but a single point in their history which brings them into typical relation with Christ; such was Jonah, the type of the Resurrection: or persons whose lives at one moment and another seem suddenly to stand out as symbolic; but then sink back so far that we almost doubt whether we may dare to consider them as such at all, and in whose case the attempt to carry out the resemblance into greater detail would involve in infinite embarrassment. Samson will at once suggest himself as one of those. It is scarcely possible to believe that something more was not meant than is contained in the letter when out of the eater he brought forth meat, and out of the strong sweetness (Judg. xiv. 14), or when he wrought a mightier deliverance for Israel through his death than he had wrought in his life (Judg. xvi. 30). Yet we hesitate how far we may proceed. And so it is in every case, for somewhere or other every man is a liar: he is false, that is, to the divine idea, which he was meant to embody, and fails to bring it out in all the fulness of its perfection. So that of the truths of God in the language of men (which language of course includes man's acts as well as his words), of these sons of heaven married to the daughters of earth, it may truly be said, "we have this treasure in earthen vessels." And it must only be looked for, that somewhere or other the earthen vessel will appear, that the imperfection which cleaves to our forms of utterance, to men's words and to their works, will make itself felt either in the misapprehensions of those to whom the language is addressed (as John iii. 11), or by the language itself, though the best that human speech could supply,-by the men themselves, though the noblest, it may be, of their age and race,-yet failing to set forth the divine truth in all its fulness and complete ness. No doubt it was a feeling, working more or less consciously, of the dangers and drawbacks that attend all our means of communication, a desire also to see eye to eye, or, as St. Paul terms it, face to facet * It is now rather ἐκ μέρους, ἐν αἰνίγματι, δι' ἐσόπτρου (1 Cor. xiii. 9, 12), ἐν παpoulais (John xvi. 25). Cf. BERNARD, In Cant., Serm. 31. 8. A Persian mystical poet has caught this truth, which he has finely expressed. (See THOLUCK'S Blūthensamm. aus d. Morgenl. Mystik, p. 215.) Die Sinnenwelt ein Schatte ist der Geistwelt, Doch nimmer ist das Abbild je vollkommen, Nur Selbstverständniss kann dir wahrhaft frommen. Musst hier du Vieles wegthun, dort ergänzen. John Smith (Select Disc., p. 159), observes that the later Platonists had three terms to distinguish the different degrees of divine knowledge, κατ' ἐπιστήμην, κατὰ νοήσιν and κατὰ παρουσίαν. If we assumed these into Christian theology, and they very nearly agree with the threefold division of St. Bernard (De Consid., 1. 5, c. 3), the opinio, the fides, and the intellectus (intuition),—we might say of the first, that it is common to all men, being merely notional, knowing about God: the second is the privilege of the faithful now, the knowing God; the third, the auropáveia of the same school, the Arcanum facierum of the Jewish doctors, will be their possession in the world to come, the seeing God, the reciprocity of which is finely indicated by Augustine, when he terms it, Videre Videntem. It was this, according to many of the Jewish interpreters, which Moses craved when he said, "I beseech Thee, show me thy glory," but which was denied him, as being impossible for man in this present life; "Thou canst not see my face, for there shall no man see me, and live." (Exod. xxxiii. 18-20.) Yet he too, they say, came nearer to this than any other of the Lord's prophets. (See MEUSCHEN'S N. T. ex Talm. illustr., p. 373.) It is a striking Mohammedan tradition, according to which the (1 Cor. xiii. 12), which caused the mystics to press with such earnestness and frequency that we should seek to abstract ourselves from all images of things; that to raise ourselves to the contemplation of pure and naked truth is the height of spiritual attainment, towards which we should continually be struggling.* But in requiring this as a test and proof of spiritual progress, in setting it as the mark towards which men should strive, they were not merely laying unnecessary burdens on men's backs, but actually leading astray. For whether one shall separate in his own consciousness the form from the essence,-whether the images which he uses shall be to him more or less conscious symbols, does not depend on his greater or less advance in spiritual knowledge, but on causes which may or may not accompany religious growth, and mainly on this one,-whether he has been accustomed to think upon his thoughts, to reflect upon the wonderful instrument which in language he is using. One who possesses the truth only as it is incorporated in the symbol, may yet have a far stronger hold upon it-may be influenced by it far more mightily-may far more really be nourished by it than another, who, according to the mystic view, would be in a higher and more advanced state. It is true, indeed, that for them who have not merely to live upon the truth themselves, but to guard it for others, not merely to drink of the streams of divine knowledge, but to see that the waters of its well-heads be not troubled for their brethren -for them it is well that they should be conscious, and the more conscious the better, of the wonderful thing which language is, of the power and mystery, of the truth and falsehood, of words; and as a part of this acquaintance, that the truth, and that which is the vehicle of the truth, should for them be separable; but then it should be even for them as soul and body, not as kernel and husk. This last comparison has been often used, but when pushed far, may be pushed into an error. It has been said that, as when the seed is cast into the ground, after a time the kernel disengages itself from the outer coating, and alone remains and fructifies, while the husk decays and perishes; so in the seed of God's word, deposited in man's heart, the sensible form must fall off, that the inner germ releasing itself may germinate. But the image, urged thus far, does not aptly set forth the truth-will lead in the end to a Quaker-like contempt of the written word, under pretence of having Lord convinced Moses how fearful a thing it would be to comply with his request, "Show me thy glory,"-by suffering a spark of that glory, the fulness of which Moses had craved to see, to fall upon a mountain, which instantly burst into a thousand pieces. * Thauler, for instance, is continually urging-Ut ab omnibus imaginibus denudemur et exuamur.-Fenelon the same; and indeed all the mystics, from Dionysius downward, agree in this. the inner life. The outer covering is not to fall off and perish, but to become glorified, being taken up by, and made translucent with, the spirit that is within. Man is body and soul, and being so, the truth has for him need of a body and soul likewise it is well that he should know what is body and what is soul, but not that he should seek to kill the body, that he may get at the soul. room. Thus it was provided for us by a wisdom higher than our own, and all our attempts to disengage ourselves wholly from sensuous images must always in the end be unsuccessful. It will be only a changing of our images, and that for the worse; a giving up of living realities which truly stir the heart, and getting dead metaphysical abstractions in their The aim of the teacher, who would find his way to the hearts and understandings of his hearers, will never be to keep down the parabolical element in his teaching, but rather to make as much and as frequent use of it as he can. And to do this effectually will need a fresh effort of his own; for while all language is, and of necessity must be, more or less figurative, yet long familiar use has worn out the freshness of the stamp (who, for example, that speaks of insulting, retains the lively image of a leaping on the prostrate body of a foe); so that to create a powerful impression, language must be recalled, minted and issued anew, cast into novel forms as was done by him, of whom it is said, that without a parable (rapaßoλý in its widest sense) spake he nothing to his hearers; that is, he gave no doctrine in an abstract form, no skeletons of truth, but all clothed, as it were, with flesh and blood. He acted himself as he declared to his apostles they must act, if they would be scribes instructed unto the kingdom, and able to instruct others (Matt. xiii. 52); he brought forth out of his treasure things new and old by the help of the old he made intelligible the new; by the aid of the familiar he introduced them to that which was strange; from the known he passed more easily to the unknown. And in his own manner of teaching, and in his instructions to his apostles, he has given us the secret of all effectual teaching,-of all speaking which shall leave behind it, as was said of one man's eloquence, stings in the minds and memories of the hearers. There is a natural delight* which the mind has in this manner of teaching, appealing as it does, not to the understanding only, but to the feelings, to the imagination, and in short to the whole man; calling as it does the whole man with all his powers and faculties into *This delight has indeed impressed itself upon our language itself. To like a thing is to compare it to some other thing which we have already before our natural, or our mind's, eye: and the pleasurable emotion always arising from this process of comparison has caused us to use the word in a far wider sense than that which belonged to it at the first. That we like what is like is the explanation of the pleasure which rhymes give us. pleasurable activity: and things thus learned with delight are those longest remembered.* Had our Lord spoken naked spiritual truth, how many of his words, partly from his hearers' lack of interest in them, partly from their lack of insight, would have passed away from their hearts and memories, leaving scarcely a trace behind them. But being imparted to them in this form, under some lively image, in some short and perhaps seemingly paradoxical sentence, or in some brief but interesting narrative, they awakened attention, excited inquiry, and even if the truth did not at the moment, by the help of the illustration used, find an entrance into the mind, yet the words must thus often have fixed themselves in their memories and remained by them. And here the comparison of the seed is appropriate, of which the shell should guard the life of the inner germ, till that should be ready to unfold itself-till there should be a soil prepared for it, in which it could take root and find nourishment suitable to its needs. His words laid up in the memory were to many that heard him like the money of another country, unavailable it might be for present use, of which they knew not the value, and only dimly knew that it had a value, but which yet was ready in their hand, when they reached that land and were naturalized in it. When the Spirit came and brought all things to their remembrance, then he filled all the outlines of truth which they before possessed with its substance, quickened all its forms with the power and spirit of life. Not perhaps at once, but gradually, the meanings of what they had heard unfolded themselves to them. Small to the small, they grew with their growth. And thus must it ever be with all true knowledge, which is not the communication of information, the transference of a dead sum or capital of facts or theories from one mind to another, but the opening of living fountains within the heart, the scattering of sparks which shall kindle where they fall, the planting seeds of truth, which shall take root in the new soil where they are cast, and striking. their roots downward, and sending their branches upward, shall grow up into goodly trees. Nor is it unworthy of remark, when we are estimating the extent of the parabolic element in Scripture, how much besides the spoken, there * Thus Jerome (Comm. in Matt., in loc.) describes the purpose of the parable: Ut quod per simplex præceptum teneri ab auditoribus non potest, per similitudinem exemplaque teneatur. It was no doubt from a deep feeling of this that the Jewish Cabbalists affirmed, Lumen supernum nunquam descendit sine indumento; with which agrees the saying of the pseudo-Dionysius, so often quoted by the schoolmen, Impossibile est nobis aliter lucere divinum radium nisi varietate sacrorum velaminum circumvelatum. Bernard: An non expedit tenere vel involutum, quod nudum non capis? |