WE have promised to devote a chapter to the distinction which we conceive to exist between the province of Rules and that of Method in Biblical Interpretation. And the consideration of this subject alone, unless we have wholly misapprehended it, will justify us before the reader in writing a treatise on Methods, notwithstanding the number and value of the works which have been given to the public on Rules.

      Webster's definition of method is: "1. A suitable and convenient arrangement of things, proceedings, or ideas; the natural or regular disposition of separate things or parts; convenient order for transacting business, or for comprehending any difficult subject. Method is essential to science, and gives to knowledge its scientific character. 2. Way; manner. 3. Classification; arrangement of natural bodies according to their common characteristics." Perhaps the following definition, expressed in general terms, will serve to show the sense in which the word is used in this work. The way or manner of proceeding in the investigation of the causes or explanations of phenomena.

      This definition permits us to use the term false, (which we may frequently have occasion to do,) as descriptive of method; which could only be allowed in strictness of the [34] second of Webster's definitions. For, though we might speak of false classifications, or false arrangements, it is evident that they could not be at the same time "false," and, as the definition says, "suitable and convenient," "natural and regular," made "according to their common characteristics," i. e. upon their true principle.

      By a rule is meant, " That which is established as a principle, standard, or directory; that by which anything is to be adjusted or regulated, or to which it is to be conformed; that which is settled by authority or custom for guidance and direction." And by rules or canons of Biblical Interpretation, we mean those principles or standards which are established for our government in determining the sense of Scripture. These also may be true or false--general or special.

      With these definitions laid down, we proceed to consider the relation existing between method and rules. And this may be expressed in the proposition, that method exerts a controlling influence over rules; determines when, where, and to what extent, they are to be employed; and modifies the results obtained by them to suit its own purposes. While, therefore, the immediate result is obtained by the instrumentality of rules, the ultimate conclusion--that which is the object of the whole proceeding--is dependent upon the method which presides over them. Hence, whatever be the nature of the rules employed, as is the method so the final conclusion. If different persons pursue different methods they will require the use of different rules in the interpretation of the same passage. They may perfectly [35] agree as to the correctness and importance of each one of the whole system of rules contained in the standard works on hermeneutics, while every man proves by established and recognized principles of exegesis that his interpretation is right; and this he can continue to do, so long as the application of those principles is left to chance. Correct rules, therefore, without the concurrence of a correct method, or, what is the same thing, with the predominance of a false method, so far from leading to truth, do but give plausibility and confirmation to falsehood.

      Hence, in all scientific inquiries, the ascertainment and pursuit of the true method of investigation, is justly regarded as the first consideration; for, this being settled, all the rules and principles necessary to aid in carrying it out will spring up spontaneously, as it were, while each one occupies its natural place, and exerts its legitimate force. Thus a sort of governmental system is formed, comparable to that of the military, in which method is the General, and the various special laws and canons the subordinate officers, which, in obedience to the General, govern the individual facts, while all concur in carrying out the same plan and accomplishing the same object.

      Being thus, in practice, uniformly associated and co-operant, it may be difficult, without improperly anticipating our subject, aptly to illustrate their separate influence and distinct office. We shall, perhaps, however, be understood if we say that, in the collection and observation of individual facts, their classification and arrangement, though it is all done in obedience to the direction of method, rules are the [36] immediate agents. These being servants, act only in harmony with the requirements of the master. And hence we look finally to this all-pervading and predominant method, as the genius that determines where facts are to be sought, what particulars are to be collected, and what order and arrangement are to be given to them. If this be false, it places individual facts in false relations, destroys or disregards their natural connections, forces them to unite by artificial ones, and all this by the aid, it may be, of correct rules falsely applied. But if the method be the true and natural one, drawn from a careful study and comparison of the facts themselves, it not only leaves them to speak their own clear and unbiased language, but points out kindred facts which support their testimony, until, having weighed with accuracy and fairness their several communications, it conducts us to general truth and scientific knowledge.

      Rules, then, are immediate and special, methods ultimate and general in their application. According to the rules of cutting, sawing, hewing, and splitting, we provide ourselves with the materials for a building. Method, which has been directing all the while, now takes these and constructs the edifice. It may form them into a barn, a kitchen, or a residence; a house of one story or two; with few windows or many; adapted to this purpose or that and, in any case, we use the same rules of measurement and mechanics; place the posts perpendicularly, the sleepers horizontally, the boards and shingles in a certain established order--and all is done regularly and according to rule. But it is the method which controls the rules, [37] determines when and where this or that one shall be employed, directs the shape and arrangement of the materials, and, in short, constructs the building.

      We are now prepared to account for the fact previously alluded to, that, notwithstanding the valuable contributions which have been made to hermeneutical science, but little has been done toward the ultimate object of that science. It is because those contributions have been made in the form of rules alone,--which, as we have seen, are subservient to method; and hence the results of their employment, even allowing them all to be correct, must be as diverse as the methods which apply them. They resemble a treatise on book-keeping, in which the author, with much learned amplification, lays down and illustrates rules for judging the quality of paper, pens, and ink; introduces a chapter on the importance of accuracy in keeping accounts, to aid in which he gives a clear statement, with numerous examples, of the rules of addition, multiplication, subtraction, and division; then some important observations on acquiring the habit of neatness, and of being strictly honest and faithful, brings him, by a graceful peroration, to the end of the work. Such a work would be filled, we may suppose, with nothing but truth; and all its rules and observations would be pertinent and valuable. It would be deficient in but one thing--the method of book-keeping! And a thousand such works, brought to the utmost perfection of their plan, would leave the subject just where they found it; that is, every man would observe the rules given, and keep books according to his own method. [38]

      I have no serious objections to the exegetical canons that the wisdom and piety of Christendom have handed down to us. Most of them are but the obvious conclusions of ordinary intelligence. I think they have been needlessly multiplied, and that many of them could be improved in their phraseology, while not a few have been called into existence by some false method, or laid down to serve a partisan purpose. Still, in the main, they are obviously correct. Through their influence much has been done in determining the meaning of words, the sense of particular texts, the signification of parables and figures; in short, in supplying all men with the materials or individual facts of revelation. And on these, as individual facts, most earnest students are agreed. It is only when we come to adjust these materials to their place in the great temple of truth that we are made painfully sensible of the utter insufficiency and incompleteness of our science. Then every builder has his own method, and immediately there springs up an interminable controversy about the design of this, the location of that; the use of one thing, and the non-essentiality of another.

      Every one uses the Scripture materials, and honestly believes that he is building the veritable temple of God. And, by rejecting what he cannot use, as non-essentials, and supplying what the Scriptures do not furnish, under the warrant of expediency, every one succeeds in giving to his edifice an air of perfection and finish, and in fitting into it a large number of the most excellent of the divine materials. These serve to support and beautify the structure, [39] while they furnish to its friends the standing proofs that it is indeed the house of the Lord. And in this, mark you, he has applied correct rules to the texts he has employed. He has been careful in this matter. True, he has not needed all the rules that one might suppose belonged to the subject--and why? Because there was a method above, that controlled him in the selection of them. Thus a second, a third, and a fourth--thus, in fact., a hundred different structures might be reared out of the Scripture materials, and each one claim to be supported by the best-established principles known to our hermeneutics!

      What we need, therefore, is not rules of interpretation, nor yet more laborious study or profounder intelligence, but the discovery and establishment of the true method indicated by the nature of the Scriptures themselves.

      At the risk of being thought tedious, I must introduce one more illustration, as well to show the point we have previously been considering, as to indicate how this method is to be drawn from the Bible itself.

      Solomon's temple, we are told, was "built of stone made ready before it was brought thither; so that there was neither hammer nor ax nor any tool of iron heard in the house, while it was in building." If now, while those stones or blocks were all spread out upon the ground, before the building was commenced, as, for the sake of the illustration we may suppose them to have been, a skillful architect had gone with rule in hand, and carefully measured and compared every several piece, he could have determined with accuracy the place of every stone in the future [40] building.And if he had been employed to superintend its erection, he could have had the work carried on according to the method or plan which was indicated by the stones themselves. Every piece had an appropriate place, and the marks upon it showed what was that place; and when they were all arranged agreeably to those indications, the structure was Solomon's Temple.

      But suppose it does not occur to this architect who is to superintend the building, that its plan can be ascertained from the materials themselves, but must be gathered from the various rumors and traditions which are in circulation on the subject; or, if you please, we may imagine that, as he stands looking at and admiring those stones, he frames in his mind the plan of a building which he thinks equal or superior to that they are now fitted to produce; in either case, having decided upon his method of proceeding, i. e. the arrangement he will give to the materials, he begins operations. Everything goes on bravely for a time, for he is engaged on a part of the work which must be the same in any method. But after awhile, when the proportions of the building begin to come out, he finds places that not a stone on the ground will fit; and now commences an infinite series of changes. He cuts off a tenon here, fills up a mortise there, leaves out this block, places that on the side opposite to its intention, turns this one over, changes the ends of that one, and after all his powers of change and adaptation have been exhausted, he sees whole piles of marble lying around which he cannot use, while his building is still unfinished. Hence, he must send to the quarry [41] and procure other materials to supply places that nothing in the original design can be made to fit; and so, at length, he finishes the edifice; and, doubtless, it is a very fine and beautiful one, but--it is not Solomon's Temple!

      It is thus in the Scriptures. The materials of the Temple of Truth are accurately fitted, marked, and numbered, and spread out before the reader, it may be in some confusion, enough to arouse him from indifference to careful examination; and now if he will earnestly consider and carefully compare these materials, it is next to impossible for him to mistake their method, or to fail to arrange them in the precise order designed by their Author and Giver. And simple as it may seem, this just and natural arrangement of the facts or materials of the New Testament, without adding to or subtracting from their number--assigning to every fact, precept, promise, doctrine, blessing, and privilege its own exact place in the collection of the whole--will conduct us in the most direct manner to the clear, full, and correct understanding of Christianity. For the entire business of interpretation consists properly in the careful observation and comparison of the phenomena of revelation, preparatory to the determination of their respective places and relative bearings in the grand synthesis of the whole. The rules, therefore, by which we come to a just understanding of individual facts, and the method which controls the operation of those rules, and arranges those facts into the true Christian system, must be drawn from the nature of the subject as presented in the Bible itself.

      If there be any soundness in the reasonings which have [42] gone before, it is now established--1. That actual or practical skepticism everywhere prevails. 2. That the principal cause, and certainly the main obstacle to the removal of this skepticism, is found in the differences of Christians respecting the practical requirements of the gospel. 3. That these differences are not the result of deficient intelligence or vitiated morals, nor yet of causes inherent in the word of God, but alone of the perverseness and insufficiency of the methods pursued. 4. That these methods must produce such results in spite of correct and well-established rules of exegesis.

      Our future course is, therefore, plain. We must examine and expose in the clearest light those methods which have hitherto been pursued, and show, from their own nature as well as from their history, their necessary tendency to perversion and deception. This will occupy a large part of the present work. But as the evil is deep-seated and formidable, and as the results to be anticipated from the general adoption of the one true method are of the happiest and most important kind, it is hoped that the reader will not rush impatiently over what is deemed necessary as a preparation for it--the exposure of the germ and radix of all our mistakes. It should not, however, be supposed that the methods to be examined are as numerous as the errors that have grown out of them, for in that case we should indeed have before us a wearisome and hopeless task. Fortunately, we know that one initial error may be the parent of a thousand, and one or two false methods give birth to any number of untrue systems. And, excepting [43] the perversion of the Inductive Method, which will be considered in its proper place, we think the thoughtful reader will find that all false methods of interpretation, however numerously they may have been developed, are resolvable into these two--the Mystic, and the Dogmatic Method.¹ Dwelling upon these sources of error, we shall be relieved of the otherwise ungracious necessity of exposing denominational peculiarities, as these, in so far as they may be false, will all be included in the original error which underlies and supports them.

      In order that the reader may have a clear appreciation of these methods, I shall deem it expedient to conduct him back to their origin, far beyond present influences and prevailing prejudices, that he may there first gaze upon them as they exert their pernicious and unqualified influence. After viewing them thus in their pristine vigor when they rule without a rival, we shall trace their history in a rapid sketch through the intervening periods down to our own times; and then attempt to show to what extent they are now employed by Protestants, with the various modifications and qualifying influences which accompany them. Having thus thoroughly examined and exposed them, and [44] having shown their utter insufficiency, and their inevitable tendency to error and delusion, the way will be prepared for considering the only remaining and true method, to which we shall devote the second book of the present work. [45]

[TOOS 34-45]