trary in their nature, modern in their invention, or unexampled in the days of the writer. Still farther, the Bible is written for men, and accordingly in the language of common life, not in the special terminology of science or art. Hence the following rules are obvious:

Rule I. The usage of common life determines the meaning of a word or phrase; not that of philosophy.

Rule II. The usage of the time and place of the writer determines the meaning; not that of any other time; not modern usage.

Rule III. If a word or phrase had several meanings, the context determines which it bears in a given passage. The more common meaning of the writer's day is to be preferred, provided it suit the passage; not that more common in our day.

Rule IV. If the author have occasion to employ a new word, or an old word in a new signification, his definition or his usage must determine the meaning; not any other author's usage.

Rule V. The direct or literal sense of a sentence is the meaning of the author, when no other is indicated; not any figurative, allegorical, or mystical meaning.

Rule VI. Passages bearing a direct, literal, or fully ascertained sense go to determine what passages have another sense than the literal, and what that other sense is; not our opinions.

2. The Bible treats of God in relation with man. It is obvious that this circumstance will afford occasion for new words and phrases, and new applications of the old ones. It brings into view such peculiar figures of speech as are called anthropomorphism and anthropopathism. It gives a new expansion to all the previous rules. It is needful to specify only one additional rule here.

Rule VII. A word, phrase, or sentence belonging primarily to the things of man, must be understood, when applied to the things of God, in a sense consistent with his essential nature; not in a sense contradictory of any known attribute of that nature.

3. There is a growth in the Bible in two respects. 1. There is a growth in the adding of document to document

for at least sixteen hundred years.

Hence the simple or

primary meaning of any part of speech will appear in the earlier documents; the more expanded and recondite may come out only in the later. 2. There is a growth also in adding fact to fact, and truth to truth, whereby doctrines that at first come out only in the bud are in the end expanded into full blow. At its commencement the Bible chooses and points out the all-sufficient root from which all doctrine may germinate. That root is God. In him inhere all the virtues that can create and uphold a world, and therefore in the knowledge of him are involved all the doctrines that can instruct and edify the intelligent creature. Hence the elementary form of a doctrine will be found in the older parts of Scripture; the more developed form in the later books. This gives rise to two similar rules of interpretation.

Rule VIII. The meaning of a word or phrase in a later book of Scripture is not to be transferred to an earlier book, unless required by the context.

Rule IX. The form of a doctrine in a subsequent part of the Bible must not be taken to be as fully developed in a preceding part without the warrant of usage and the context.

4. The Old Testament was composed in Hebrew, the New in Greek. Each must be interpreted according to the genius of the language in which it was originally written. The interpreter must therefore be familiar with the grammar of each, in which the particulars which constitute its genius are gathered into a system. The writers of the New Testament were, moreover, Hebrews by birth and habit, with the possible exception of Luke. Their Greek therefore bears a Hebrew stamp; and their words and phrases are employed to express Hebrew things, qualities, customs, and doctrines. Hence they must receive much of their elucidation from the Hebrew parts of speech of which they are the intended equivalents. Two rules of interpretation come under this head.

Rule X. The sense of a sentence, and the relation of one sentence to another must be determined according to the grammar of the language in which it is written.

Rule XI. The meaning of New Testament words and

phrases must be determined in harmony with Old Testament usage; not by Greek against Hebrew usage.

5. The Bible is the word of God. All the other elements of our fundamental postulate are plain on the surface of things, and therefore unanimously admitted. This, however, some interpreters of the Bible do not accept, at least without reserve. But notwithstanding their rejection of this dogma, such interpreters are bound to respect the claims of this book to be the Word of God. This they can only do by applying to its interpretation such rules as are fairly deducible from such a characteristic. In doing so they put themselves to no disadvantage. They only give the claimant a fair stage, and put its high claim to a reasonable test. Now God is a God of truth. His Word is truth. Hence all Scripture must be consistent with truth and with itself. It contains no real contradiction. This gives rise to the following rules:

Rule XII. All Scripture is true historically and metaphysically not mythical or fallible.

Rule XIII. In verbally discordant passages that sense is to be adopted which will explain or obviate the discrepancy; not a sense that makes a contradiction. To explain is positively to show the harmony of the passage to obviate is negatively to show that there is no contradiction.

Rule XIV. Scripture explains Scripture. Hence the clear and plain passages elucidate the dark and abstruse: not anything foreign to Scripture in time, place, or sentiment; not our philosophy.

Rule XV. Of rules that cross one another, the higher sets aside or modifies the lower.

VII. THE PENTATEUCH.

I. ITS AUTHOR.-The Pentateuch is a work presenting at first sight all the ordinary marks of unity. Its five parts stand in a natural relation to one another. Genesis contains the origin of the present constitution of nature, of man, of the Sabbath, of many of the primary arts and customs of human society, of the covenant of works, of sin, of the covenant of grace, of the promise, and of the chosen people. Exodus records the growth of the chosen family into a nation,

the departure of Israel from Egypt, the giving of the law, the directions for the construction of the tabernacle and its appurtenances, and the carrying of these directions into effect. Leviticus treats of the ritual under the heads of the various offerings, the consecration of the priests, the removal of uncleanness, the means of purification, and the regulations concerning festivals and vows. Numbers recounts the first census of the people, the sojourning in the wilderness, the conquest of the country east of the Jordan, the second census, and certain other arrangements preparatory to the crossing of the Jordan. Deuteronomy contains a recapitulation of the great deliverance the people had experienced, an admonitory address to them by Moses on the eve of his departure, with certain additional pieces designed for their instruction and encouragement. The book is then closed with a chapter giving an account of the death of Moses, which is due to the continuator of the sacred history. A literary work exhibiting such marks of connection and order it is natural to ascribe to one author. Moses was a man of learning (Acts vii. 22), a writer (Exod. xvii. 14; xxiv. 4), a poet (Exod. xv.; Deut. xxxii.), a lawgiver and a public leader. He was also a witness and a chief mover in all the events recounted from the second chapter of Exodus to the last of Deuteronomy. It is therefore antecedently most probable that he was the author of the Pentateuch.

Close and critical examiners, however, of this work have found certain passages, sentences, and words, which seem to come from a later hand. Various modes of explaining this appearance have been adopted according to the circumstances of the interpreter. Either the divinely authorized reviser, transcriber, and continuator of the sacred volume, made, by the Divine direction, the needful additions in writing to the written work of Moses, or the author must have been as late as the supposed latest event or allusion recorded in the book. Either of these suppositions is possible. But the antecedent probability is in favour of the former. Apart from the few passages which have the appearance of a later date, the work remains still a perfect whole from the beginning to the death of Moses, when it closes. It is also expressly affirmed in the book itself that Moses wrote certain parts of it, if not the

B

whole (Exod. xvii. 14; xxiv. 4; Num. xxxiii. 2; Deut. xxxi. 9, 22, 24-26). Hence the probability is, that the whole work, being complete in itself, is the production of him to whom great part of it is by itself ascribed. As the whole book is also the first part of a progressive work, to be continued for many ages, it is natural that certain explanatory notes may have been inserted by the direction of the Divine Author. As Moses may have elucidated the documents that came down to him by a few verbal changes and additions, so may his continuator have added a few notes of explanation to his finished work for the benefit of a later generation. But the date of a work is that of the first edition, so to speak, not that of its final retouching. Though an author may have lived to publish ten editions of his work with slight modifications in each, yet the date of it is at least as far back as that of the first edition. So, though the Almighty may have employed a subsequent prophet to add the last chapter of Deuteronomy, and insert a few explanatory clauses or parentheses, yet the book of the law is still to be dated from its first complete draft by the original author.

But

Some critics also find discrepancies of statement and style in the Pentateuch, and have endeavoured to explain these phenomena by distributing the work among several authors, each of whom contributed his own part to the whole performance. If this were carried merely to the extent of presuming that certain historical pieces of composition came down to Moses, which he retouched and fitted into the first part of his own work, and that this again was retouched by a subsequent sacred writer, it could do no harm, and might be attended with some advantage to the interpretation of the book. the hypothesis that a work with obvious marks of substantial unity was fabricated out of several works of different authors and ages is improbable in itself. It rests mainly on an overrefinement of critical acumen, and has proved a failure in other instances of its application. And it is unavailing as a means of explaining discrepancies of statement, since it merely succumbs to these difficulties, leaves them where it found them, thinks only of adding to their number and force, and simply ascribes their occurrence to the inadvertence of the compiler. This is a mode of dealing with a work of antiquity to which