ALL writings must be either literal, or figurative, or a mixture of both. The Holy Scriptures, like most, and, perhaps, all other productions, are of this last kind. Some of their communications are delivered in language wholly free from metaphor, simile, or figure of any sort; while others abound in these beautiful adornments of speech. In order, then, to determine whether either of these classes of texts is to be interpreted according to the Mystic method, we have resolved to consider them separately. Now, therefore, we are to be occupied with the literal parts of Scripture. And for the sake of a nucleus round which to collect [85] our observations, we will begin by submitting the following proposition:--

      That Literal texts of Scripture have that meaning, and no other, which their words fairly import or necessarily imply, when viewed in the light of all their circumstances.

      If this proposition can be established, it will effectually supersede the employment of the Mystic method, so far as the texts embraced in it are concerned. It might be thought necessary for us to give rules for ascertaining what texts are literal; but this will be determined indirectly when we get to the next chapter, in which we shall have occasion to show what texts are figurative; when, from the nature of the case, it will follow that all others are literal. We will proceed at once, therefore, to the proof of the proposition.

      1. And first, we argue that its truth follows from the nature of human language. All the confidence a writer can have that he will be properly understood, and all the assurance obtainable by a reader that he has grasped the true meaning of a writer, are based upon the tacit agreement that both will be governed by the principle of this proposition--the writer in the use of words, and the reader in the interpretation of them. If I could bring myself to believe that the authors whose works are on my shelf, had violated this compact, Í should lose, all confidence in the things which have hitherto been most surely believed by me. I should be in doubt whether a battle were really fought at Waterloo or Bunker's Hill--whether Newton discovered [86] the law of gravitation--whether the planets move in elliptical orbits--or, in short, whether anything is as it has been represented to me. May not many or all the words have been used in some peculiar sense which I cannot certainly know from the circumstances, but which I am to guess at? No. Language is regulated by laws as fixed as any in nature. It may change, indeed, but not arbitrarily. The change must be in obedience to rule. An author may, if he please, use a word in a sense never given to it before; but if he do, be is bound by law to explain that sense. And if he fail to comply with the law, he fails to make himself understood. I may tell my servant to feed the horse, when I mean the cow just as I can violate the laws of the land; but in either case I suffer, and for the same reason, because law is violated. We may, by mutual agreement, resolve to apply the name horse to a certain convenience for sawing wood; but we must indicate by signs or circumstances when that application of the word is intended. And when I thus indicate it, by telling my servant to saw wood on the horse, he is not at liberty, according to our paction, to disregard the signs or circumstances connected with the word, and to understand me in this case to mean the animal horse. Thus the whole apparatus of verbal communication, however arbitrarily it may have been formed, is regulated by a principle as fixed and certain as anything else, viz.: That words are to be understood in their usual and most obvious signification – that which men have agreed to give to them--and which agreement is indicated by custom--except where circumstances [87] necessitate a change, in which case the amount and kind of change is to be measured and determined by the circumstances.

      But our proposition says, not only that literal texts have that meaning which their words fairly import or necessarily imply when construed as above, but that they have no other. The truth of this also will be best seen at first in human compositions. When we read and comprehend the plain account of all the events, circumstances, and results of the battle of Waterloo, we conclude that we have the full meaning of the narration. Other things connected with, and bearing upon it may also be true; but unless they are introduced or alluded to, or necessarily implied by what is said, they form no part of the signification of the story as narrated. We might interpret the whole matter according to the Mystic method, and say that by Bonaparte is meant the Devil, by Wellington the Prince of Peace, and by their respective armies the angels of darkness and of light; while St. Helena might be held to signify Tartarus, and London or England, Paradise; and the only objections to this interpretation would be: 1. That it is unauthorized; and 2. That it is false. It would, however, have as much authority, as much reason, and as much truth, as many Mystic expositions of Scripture history.

      The reader will admit, then, that in human compositions there are fixed and necessary laws; that they are written in obedience to these laws; and consequently, that they must be interpreted by them. If so, the Mystic method, whose very nature is that it is above law and independent [88] of it, can have no place whatever in their interpretation. But the Bible is written in human language--by human beings--for the benefit and instruction of human beings; therefore, it must observe the laws of human language. They regulated its composition, and must necessarily, therefore, regulate its interpretation. Hence, this argument alone disproves the applicability of the Mystic method to the Scriptures.

      2. But not only is this shown from the nature of language in general; it follows also, and with even greater force, from the nature of the Bible in particular. It purports to be a REVELATION in human language; to have been written for the purpose of making known those things which are necessary to our enjoyment here and our salvation hereafter. Now, unless it mean what it says, when construed as human language requires to be construed, it is not a revelation. It may be a convenient medium through which we are to derive a revelation, but in itself, it is an anomaly--an enigma--an unmeaning jargon. We may guess at its sense; but we might have guessed at the truth without a line of Scripture. It does not make known what we so much need to know; it merely shows us our ignorance, excites our curiosity, worries our patience, and leaves us to the tender mercies of chance. If it does not mean what it says, it must, if it have a meaning, mean something that it does not say. What is that something? How shall we learn and understand it? Not from revelation--for we have, by the hypothesis, confessed that it is not revealed. All idea of a revelation in words is given [89] up as impossible, when we exclude such revelation from dependence upon the laws of words. This something, then, is not revealed--for no truth is revealed; and if we ever find it out, it must either be by shrewd guessing, or by obtaining personal and miraculous inspiration to enable us to explain inspiration! Mysticism, therefore, renounces all pretension to accuracy of interpretation, except upon the claim it necessitates to fresh inspiration; while its principle, necessarily and from the nature of things, abandons all belief in the Scriptures as a revelation. This is the goal to which it inevitably conducts. Hence, perceiving this fact, we' have felt justified in saying that those who were deluded by it, were "wrecked upon the rocks of a specious infidelity."

      From the nature of human language, therefore; from the fact that the Bible is written in human language; from its special province as a revelation of truth; and from the consideration that the opposite leads directly, though insidiously, to infidelity, we conclude that our proposition is true; or, that literal texts have that meaning, and no other, which their words fairly import or necessarily imply, when viewed in the light of all the circumstances.¹

      Here the subject might safely and properly be left, to dissipate by its own light such objections as may be urged against it; for, certainly, none can be half so strong, in the judgment of a devout Christian, as the reasons exhibited [90] in its favor. It may serve, however, to give double assurance of the truth of the proposition submitted, if we pause here to show that such opposing arguments as have heretofore been introduced, are really confirmations of what they would overthrow.

      1. The first objection is based upon the fact that the Scriptures contain the word mystery. It is urged, and truly, that they expressly declare, that, "without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness;"² that deacons are to be men "holding the mysteryof the faith in a pure conscience;"³ hat the Apostles "spoke the wisdom of God in a mystery;"⁴ with other passages of similar import; and hence it is inferred that all our reasonings are clearly opposed to the plain teachings of Scripture.

      And for one moment let us admit, for the sake of argument, the justness of the inference deduced from these texts. What follows? Evidently just what we attributed to the Mystic Method, that the Scriptures do not reveal the gospel--they merely make known our ignorance of it by telling us of its existence, while they declare it to be a mystery. It appears, too, that it is not only a mystery, but an incommunicable one; for, notwithstanding all the "inner light," and the "angelic intercourse" of eighteen centuries, it remains as great a mystery as ever. Direct inspiration, or special revelation, may enable one to understand it for himself, but he cannot make it known to others. He can be a sort of center of infallibility for his countrymen, [91] directing them from his inner light how to live--but he cannot elevate them to his favored position. It would seem that the learning of the church would have been much more wisely employed in teaching men how to be inspired, than in framing rules of interpretation, which must be worthless. The Bible is a mystery, and its principal value consists in the fact that it makes known that it is a mystery. As a mystery does not fulfill the requirements of a revelation, our confidence or faith in it must be transferred to the inspired and infallible interpreters of it--to those who alone can illuminate its darkness by casting upon it reflections from the "Divine Light within." This, if we understand it, is infidelity clothed in the habiliments of "spirituality"--a something like "an angel of light," which beckons us away from the Bible to find that truth which it declares is not made known to us in the Bible!

      What, then--for surely the reader is prepared to look upon the other side of the question--does the word "mystery," as used in the Scriptures, "fairly import or necessarily imply, when viewed in the light of the attending circumstances?" We answer that its ordinary and obvious meaning is, a secret--by which we understand something easily intelligible when made known, but wholly unintelligible until made known. The "secrets" of Free-Masonry, for example, are utterly inscrutable to the uninitiated--to those to whom they have not been communicated; but are as plain and intelligible as anything else to those to whom they have been made known. So the gospel was a "secret" up to the time of its revelation; and after that [92] time it is still called the mystery or secret of the faith--just as Masons speak of what are, not what were, the mysteries of their order. The whole question then turns upon this point: has the mystery of godliness been revealed or made known, or has it not? Because, as in either case, it will still be called a mystery, nothing can be inferred from the mere fact that that word is employed. We are, therefore, forced to a direct appeal to all the facts in the case. What say the Scriptures?

      Paul, in the Epistle to the Romans, uses this language: "Now to him that is of power to establish you according to my gospel, and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery which was kept secret since the world began, but now is made manifest, and by the Scriptures of the prophets, according to the commandment of the everlasting God, made known to all nations for the obedience of faith,"⁵ etc. Also, in the Epistle to the Ephesians, he says: "For this cause I Paul, the prisoner of Jesus Christ for you Gentiles, (if yon have heard of the dispensation of the grace of God which is given me to you-ward; how that by revelation he made known to me the mystery, as I wrote before in few words, whereby when ye read ye may understand my knowledge in the mystery of Christ,) which in other ages was not made known unto the sons of men as it is now revealed unto the holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit."⁶ Again, to the Colossians he writes: "Whereof I am made a minister according [93] to the dispensation of God which is given to me for you, to fulfill the word of God; even the mystery which hath been hid from ages and generations, but now is made manifest to his saints."⁷ And even the passage which tells us that, "without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness," immediately makes known what that mystery is, viz.: "God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory."

      If anything can be made clear, and placed beyond dispute, these quotations establish the correctness of our position--while they show that the difference between Paul and our Mystic friends is this: he preached--the revelation of the mystery, and they the mystery of revelation; he declares that it is, they that it is not made manifest and known to the saints; he assures us that by reading we may understand his knowledge of the mystery, they that this knowledge must be derived from some "internal light" or special inspiration; he says that the mystery was hid before its revelation, they that it is hid in its revelation! Thus, in every aspect, mysticism is directly antagonistic to the plainest declarations of the Bible--not only destitute of Scripture support, but opposed to Scripture.

      2. A second objection is based upon Paul's language in 2 Corinthians iii. 6, which reads as follows: "Who also hath made us able ministers of the New Testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit; for the letter killeth, but [94] the spirit giveth life." This passage is thought to teach not only that the literal meaning is useless, but that it is full of danger. And as those who have embraced this conclusion have drawn it from the letter of this text, it would seem that they are involved with us in mortal peril! To preserve them from being killed, therefore, by their inconsiderate adoption of the letter, we will say that the above text has some secret spiritual sense which does not appear upon the face of it. They are now safe--and so are we. For, of course, nothing but this secret sense can apply to our position, and for aught any one knows, this is directly in our favor! The objection, therefore, is engulfed in the very ground upon which it was based. But suppose we take the literal meaning of the text-- and thus inconsiderately abandon what we thought to prove by it, so far as the text itself is concerned; then--as all Scripture is profitable--we will use the destructive force of the letter to kill the objection based upon it; for in this sense it clearly proves our proposition.

      The Apostle is contrasting Judaism and Christianity. The former he calls the "letter;" the latter the "spirit." In harmony with his argument to the Romans, that the commandment which was ordained to life, he found to be unto death; that sin taking occasion by the commandment, deceived him, and by it slew him;⁸ he here says that he is a minister, not of the Old Testament, for it is the ministration of death written and engraven in stones--but of the [95] New Testament—i. e. not of the letter, but of the spirit; for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life. The New Testament, then, as it stands--the New Covenant, the New Dispensation, the New Institution of Christianity--as it is revealed and made known in the plain and literal sense of the words of the gospel--which we are to understand, Paul says, as we read them--this is the spirit referred to in the text.⁹

      I have now disposed of the two most plausible objections that have been urged against the position I have adopted; and have shown not only their impotency as objections, but that the very texts upon which they are based do really and strongly confirm the truth of my proposition. It only remains, in this place, for me briefly to remark upon the limit of our sphere as interpreters of Scripture--the confines outside of which we are never to pass. And to these remarks I would take the liberty of directing the special attention of the reader.

      I submit, then, the following obvious but highly important canon: That in the interpretation of Scripture we are to restrict ourselves to what is expressly revealed or declared, i. e. to the words or phenomena of the Bible. The absolute and essential nature of revealed things, with their remote causes and reasons, must remain in this life an inscrutable mystery. They are beyond the limits of possible [96] knowledge, and, consequently, beyond the comprehension of exegetical principles. But the same is true of everything in the natural world. "Of things absolutely or in themselves," to quote a distinguished authority, "be they external, be they internal, we know nothing, or know them only as incognizable; and we become aware of their incomprehensible existence only as this is indirectly and accidentally revealed to us, through certain qualities related to our faculties of knowledge, and which qualities, again, we cannot think of as unconditioned, irrelative, existing in and of themselves. All that we know is, therefore, phenomenal,--phenomenal of the unknown. . . . . . With the exception of a few late Absolutist theorizers in Germany, this is, perhaps, the truth of all others most harmoniously re-echoed by every philosopher of every school."¹⁰

      We do but contend that revealed things are not an exception to the universal law of all things. Archbishop Whately very justly complains that "philosophical divines are continually going beyond Scripture into those inquiries concerning the absolute, which are confessedly, and by their own account, beyond the reach of human faculties. What the Scriptures are concerned with, is not the [97] philosophy of the human mind in itself, but (that which is properly religion) the relation and connection of the two Beings;--what God is to us--what he has done and will do for us--and what we are to be and to do in regard to Him."

      It is only, then, when we go "beyond revelation" that we encounter what may properly be called mysteries. As long as we are content with the knowledge of phenomena--that is, in this case, of the words and sentences, interpreted as other words and sentences should be--so long will we stand upon tangible ground and deal with intelligible communications. In contending, therefore, that the Bible is not mysterious, I desire to be understood as meaning that it is not so phenomenally; for I would be far from intimating that there are no mysteries below, above, and around it--mysteries which are suggested by it, but which, nevertheless, are not in it--and hence, are not the subjects of interpretation. Of course, a Book which brings, as it were, eternity into time, and the kingdom of the heavens down to the earth, would, in being adjusted within its wonderful sphere, bear upon and suggest innumerable things outside of itself, which form no part of its subject, and of which nothing is revealed. It is these outside particulars that men have called the "mysteries of revelation;" whereas they are not of it at all.

      Perhaps we may be borne with in illustrating a point so important, and which has been so often overlooked.

      A stone let loose from the hand falls to the ground. Nothing is more simple--nothing better understood. But [98] one can ask questions about it--questions which are immediately suggested by it--which no one can answer. Why does it fall? The earth attracts it toward its center. So far all is clear. We have the phenomenon, with its proximate cause or explanation. But now if we attempt to go beyond this, we are lost. How does the earth attract it? What is the essential nature of that influence which it throws out beyond itself, which takes hold of the stone and draws it down with positive force? No man can tell. And yet the phenomenon is obvious to the meanest capacity; and the law which regulates it, an "object of precise and certain knowledge." So we reverently believe the facts in the history of the Son of God; and we can and do under stand them phenomenally, i. e. in so far as they are revealed. But not satisfied with this, the world has for ages been seeking to penetrate into the essence of these phenomena--to go beyond the record, and learn something of "eternal generation"--of "God of God"--"eternally begotten"--to analyze the divine mind, and to comprehend the eternal purpose of the Creator, its cause and explanation, with all those deep-buried reasons which actuated him in producing the work of redemption--in short, to define the Infinite; stupendous folly; only equaled by its daring and impious presumption!

      Again, the veriest rustic can understand the practical prerequisites necessary to the support of his animal life. He can plant, till, reap, grind, cook, eat, and thus continue to live. He seems to regard the whole process as a sort of matter of course, and by no means difficult of [99] comprehension. Yet he would very soon perish if he never again performed these actions till the mysteries connected with them were solved; if he had to determine the essence of vegetable and animal life, with the secret processes and influences which convert the elements of matter into the one, and the defunct remains of that into the other. And so with the practical duties which underlie our spiritual life, as exhibited in the Bible --they are as obvious and plain as the others; but if we must wait, as so many seem to be doing, to understand every "why" and "wherefore" suggested by them, before we comply, then all must perish on account of disobedience.

      Thus we might continue to illustrate, and show upon every page the clearest revelation suggesting inscrutable mysteries--secret things which belong to God and not to us or our children. What Paul saw and heard in the third heaven is a mystery--but why? The account given is plain enough, but the vision is not told, and is a mystery because it is not in revelation. What the seven thunders uttered (Rev. x. 4) is a mystery, not because the words are mysterious, but because the words are not there! John was required to "seal up those things which the seven thunders uttered, and write them not." What Christ wrote with his finger on the ground (John viii. 6) is a mystery--a secret that no rules of exegesis could unfold, because it is not revealed to us what he wrote. How the angel strengthened him in the garden--what was that virtue that went out of him to heal the sick--at what season the angel went down into the pool of Bethesda and troubled the [100] water, and a thousand such questions, are wholly unanswerable, because they are outside of revelation,--beyond the limits of possible knowledge.

      We are now prepared to advance to the consideration of those Scriptures which are embraced under the second of the divisions we have temporarily formed. [101]

[TOOS 85-101]