I am glad to quote these words, not only as containing a pretty strong statement of the claim which is made in behalf of the allegorizing system, but because, under their protection, I hope I may offer some further remarks without encountering the usual retort. If, without something of the kind, I had ventured to say that even supposing this allegory not to outrage truth or falsify scripture, yet I did not see the expediency of making it, or the profit to arise from it, I should have expected to be sneered down as an utilitarian-a mere cui-bono man-one who, when heavenly wisdom was offered, had the brutish soul to ask "what is to be got by it?" Now, however, there is no fear of any such thing. Mysterious as the matter may be in itself, its object and use is plainly declared. The church was probably suffering from great and astounding calamity, and these disclosures were "for the consolation and establishment of the faithful." This is, undoubtedly, a very high object, a very great practical good; and it is admitted that, without being a mere cui-bono man, or a rationalist, or anything of the kind, we may suppose that this good object formed a sufficient reason for what was not only unusual, but "irregular." This is, as I have said, taking high ground, and making a high claim. Now let us, if we can, for a moment cast aside our belief that the allegories about Moses and Abraham, to which I have called your attention, are mere fictions contrary to the word of God, and let us suppose them to be all true, what was there in them calculated to console and establish Christians suffering under great and astounding calamity? Suppose the "disclosure" all true, what does it amount to? What is the esoteric truth thus irregularly delivered" to Christian men and women without distinction," because the circumstances of the time called for unusual comfort? I really do not know whether the author means the disclosure of these particular truths about Moses, Abraham, &c., or the disclosure of the fact that there was a species of allegorical interpretation in use among certain persons in the church which they kept secret from "Christian men and women in general." I suppose the latter is his meaning, and that we are to consider the consolatory fact to be, the annunciation that such allegories had been made out of the Old Testament, and were known to persons who, like the author of the epistle, could, if they would, reveal them to those who were "worthy;" and that we, and they to whom the epistle was addressed, are only to regard the allegories which it contains as specimens of what might be done in that kind.

I do not mean to argue about this. It might be so; and perhaps the suffering church was comforted; and if it was, we have no right to judge Him, who works out his own pleasure by his own means. It might be so, and there may be many "Christian men and women" in the present day who would tell me that they found these allegories most edifying, and peculiarly conducive to the consolation of their minds and the establishment of their faith. It is to such a degree a matter of taste and feeling and circumstance that it would be absurd to attempt to argue it on any general grounds; but I will beg leave to make one observation respecting it. I will suppose, for the sake of argument, that the epistle had its intended effect, and that the suffer

ing church was consoled and established by it; but then, I cannot but add my conviction that the church must have been in a very unhealthy state. Nor can I help forming the same opinion respecting the mind of every man who prefers hunting about in uncertain allegory to taking plain truth as he finds it. I am not speaking against the lawful use of poetry and riddles and the like, but I believe that in all serious matters the desire and object of the mind should be the apprehension and perception of truth. I cannot but imagine that a suffering church of Israelite Christians in a healthy state would have been more comforted by calling to their remembrance the plain truth, that when Amalek would have destroyed their fathers, the uplifted rod of God, in the hands of Moses had given them strength and victory; or by reminding them of their Saviour's pregnant declaration, that their father Abraham had seen his day with rejoicing, than by disclosing to them the hidden mystery that the body of Moses was put into the form of a cross, or that the number of the persons circumcised by Abraham would make a cypher of the name of Jesus and the cross. I do not, I repeat, deny (for who can prove?) that the church in astounding calamity was comforted by these disclosures, but I also repeat my persuasion that a proneness to seek out such allegories, and to feed upon them, far from being a high attainment, is a symptom of a mind either naturally weak or debilitated by dabbling with fiction. I cannot reverence it. Even when it puts on its most imposing air of mystery, I cannot feel veneration. I feel that I ought not to respect it, because it is not founded in truth, and it leads to the disrespect and undervaluing of truth. Of this I gave such instances in my former letter as warrant my thus speaking.

It may be worth while to offer a few suggestions as to the cause of this; and to account, if we can, for the production of an effect so surprising and so lamentable in persons not only endowed with high intellectual powers, but with a strong sense of morality and religion.

We see, says the author of the tract," how meanly even respectable persons allow themselves to think of the highest sort of poetry;" I do not know what is referred to as the highest sort of poetry, nor do I know in what manner the opinion of respectable people has been expressed on the subject; but I believe that poetry, like everything else, will be, and should be, degraded in the eyes of wise men when it gets out of its place; and that it does get out of its place when it interferes with the interpretation of Scripture. I shall probably expose myself to ridicule, but I will go further, and express my belief that whenever it so mixes what is real and what is imaginary, or to speak more plainly, truth and falsehood, as that the one is liable to be taken for the other, it is mischievous. Poetry has, I doubt not, a sphere of truth-that is, it is not out of the power, or out of the legitimate province, of poetry to deal with pure truth, whatever may be the strength of its temptation to adorn and adulterate it with fiction. Such work would probably require high powers, get few readers, and be thought rather dull even by "respectable persons." Well then, there is the whole world of imagination open to him; let him soar through the infinite space of fiction, explore it, and bring back its treasures; or, if he has not strength of wing for this, let him minister his gift to his fellow-sinners, who are

looking to him to express the feelings for which they have no language, affections which swell their bosoms and fill their eyes, but which they have no skill to utter; let him be the interpreter of their hearts to each other and to God. Or if this is not enough, and he sighs for more worlds-if nothing will satisfy him but mixing up truth and fiction, let him displace all geography and derange all chronology, and play his pranks with all the kingdoms of the earth, their monuments, and their chronicles, and make them just what he pleases. It matters comparatively little to mankind whether Constantinople was taken by the Turks under Cæsar, or the Tartars under Wellington; and if one way of representing the matter is more commodious than the other to the wayward bard, or if a nice eclecticism in history enables him to bring together the heroes and exploits of all ages, with picturesque and poetical effect, he must have his way. It is making him a great concession. It is reluctantly yielded because we are willing that he should take all we have, if he will but spare our lives; if he will but keep his hands off the oracles of God-if he will but be contented without mixing up his own imaginations with the sacred revelation of truth. Strange indeed it seems to me that any man, who believes the Bible to be the word of God, should approach it in such a humour and for such a purpose, and should take it as the subject on which to use his invention.

ON THE LATE DR. ARNOLD'S TWO SERMONS ON PROPHECY. SIR,-One of your correspondents in the British Magazine for the present month (April) has called the attention of your readers to the opinions of the late Dr. Arnold. Perhaps you will allow me, an original subscriber to the British Magazine, to follow up the subject, and to offer a few remarks upon the views which that singular man entertained upon the interpretation of Scripture prophecy. If those views really were, as Dr. Arnold supposed, (Sermons on Prophecy, p. 7,) at least harmless, even though erroneous, it would be an ungracious task to attempt a refutation of them; but if, as the writer of these lines is of opinion, they are fraught with most dangerous consequences, and betray that tampering with truth which is so earnestly and ably deprecated in the fifth paper upon Modern Hagiology, it then behoves every lover of the truth to enter his protest, however feeble, against such doctrines, and to expose, as far as he is able, their fallaciousness and evil tendency.

Dr. Arnold seems to have framed his scheme upon the fundamental notion, that all the prophecies in holy writ may be reduced to one measure, and interpreted upon one general principle. I must transcribe his own words, because there is an ambiguity about them, which cannot but confuse the reader, as it evidently perplexed the author himself. He says in the notes, (p. 41,) "Whatever scheme of interpretation we adopt for prophecy, 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 consistent 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 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 conceived opinions of our own." What does Dr. Arnold mean here by the words "throughout and exclusively"? From the former part of the extract, we should naturally apply them to the whole range of Scripture prophecies, and infer that the author was contending that predictions of every kind should be explained after one manner; and this is plainly his meaning, as he professes in his scheme (p. 7), to maintain "one general principle of interpretation" for all propheciesnamely, "that of an uniform historical, or lower, and also of a spiritual, or higher, sense." But when he wishes to prove the inconsistency and folly of other schemes, he shifts his ground, and confines the words "throughout and exclusively," to the several parts of the same continuous prophecy. "It is not consistent to interpret the same prophecy, partly historically, and partly spiritually;" and again, "to say that in one verse David is spoken of, in another Christ, &c." This is nothing but a literary sleight of hand, of which, however, I believe the author to have been himself perfectly unconscious. But surely there is nothing either inconsistent or foolish in asserting that some prophecies are of a purely historical character, and admit only of one literal interpretation, while others are capable both of the historical or lower sense, and also of the spiritual, or what I would rather call the final, fulfilment, of which an earnest may have been given in several partial accomplishments. Of the purely historical prophecies I would give instances in Noah's predictions touching his three sons, in the promise given to the house of Rechab, in Joshua's curse against the future builder of Jericho, in the prophecy of the man of God concerning Josiah and the altar in Bethel, in Ahijah's prediction to Jeroboam that he should reign over ten of the twelve tribes of Israel, in Jeremiah's prophecy of the defeat and captivity of Zedekiah, and in many similar examples. Surely the interpretation of these and the like predictions belongs exclusively to history, nor is there any room left for the mystical expositor. On the other hand, there are many prophecies touching the Israel of God, which certainly as yet have received no literal fulfilment, either in God's ancient people or in the Christian church. We may give these a spiritual sense, if we please; yet even so, we shall be compelled to acknowledge (as Dr. Arnold does, p. 47) that the complete fulfilment is still among things future. Neither literally nor figuratively has the world yet seen that state of perfect peace and tranquillity described in Isaiah, chap. xi. 6, &c., and in the many parallel passages. But there are also many historical prophe

cies concerning the historical Israel, which can be applied only to the seed of Abraham according to the flesh. Take for example God's declaration to Abraham, that his seed should sojourn in a strange land, and be in servitude, and be afflicted four hundred years. (Gen. xv. 13, &c.) Or look at the temporal blessings and curses spoken respecting Israel by Moses, in Deut., chap. xxviii. Will not history furnish an adequate fulfilment of every word? Or can we apply to any but the historical Israel, Jeremiah's prophecy of the seventy years' cap-. tivity in Babylon? (Jer. xxv. 11.) It is needless to multiply instances in a case so plain. And I therefore ask again, Where is the inconsistency in giving an exclusively historical interpretation to prophecies, which are expressed with historical circumstances of time and place, while, at the same time, as members of the one universal church of the redeemed, we may humbly claim to have a share and inheritance in those general assurances of peace and prosperity and endless glory which are bestowed in language of general acceptation upon the ransomed of the Lord, and the citizens of the true Zion?

Dr. Arnold, indeed, attempts to confirm his view of the double sense pervading all prophecies, by the words of St. Peter in his 2nd Epistle, chap. i. 20, "No prophecy of the Scripture is of any private interpretation:" which he explains as though the word private meant single. Prophecy, he says, (p. 12,) "is anticipated history, not in our common sense of the word, but in another and far higher sense." And he adds in his note upon this assertion-"This, according to a very common interpretation, is the sense of the famous words in St. Peter's Second Epistle, πᾶσα προφητεία γραφῆς ἰδίας ἐπιλύσεως οὐ γίνεται. History is especially idías iniλvoews: that is to say, what the historian relates of Babylon is to be understood of Babylon only; of the city so called upon the banks of the Euphrates, and not of any other place more or less morally resembling it. But what prophecy says of Babylon is kolvñs kπiλúσews: 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." We shall see presently how Dr. Arnold has employed this dangerous doctrine in reducing the historical fulfilment of prophecy, even in the plainest instances, to a mere empty shadow. But first let us inquire, whether this very common, and very convenient, interpretation of St. Peter's words is the correct one. Is not the sense of the passage more truly and (I believe) more generally understood to be to this effect, that no prophecy of the Scripture was of the prophet's own invention, and, therefore, that the circumstantial solution of a prophecy, in all its details, did not rest with the prophet himself? This is the view taken by the commentators in Poole's Synopsis, by Drs. Hammond and Whitby, and Bishop Pearson in Mant's Bible, and is forcibly maintained by Macknight. It is in perfect agreement with the context, and does no violence to truth, which Dr. Arnold's interpretation of the words most assuredly does, inasmuch as several prophecies admit only of one fulfilment. But of no prophecy can it be