WE divide the subject of Classification into two parts, denominated respectively General and Special Classification, The former, which is preliminary to the latter, will be considered in the present chapter. The nature and necessity of this division of the subject will appear from the following quotations from the authors we have previously named:--

      "Before we can enter," says Sir John Herschel, "into anything which deserves to be called a general and systematic view of nature, it is necessary that we should possess an enumeration, if not complete, at least of considerable extent, of her materials and combinations; and that those which appear in any degree important should be distinguished by names which may not only tend to fix [216] them in our recollection, but may constitute, as it were, nuclei or centers, about which information may collect into masses."

      And Mr. Mill, (System of Logic, page 433,) speaking of classification as embracing all really existing objects, says: "We cannot constitute any one class properly, except in reference to a general division of the whole of nature; we cannot determine the group in which any one object can most conveniently be placed, without taking into consideration all the varieties of existing objects--all, at least, which have any degree of amity with it. No one family of plants or animals could have been rationally constituted, except as part of a systematic arrangement of all plants or animals; nor could such a general arrangement have been properly made, without first determining the exact place of plants and animals in a general division of nature."

      It is evident, in other words, that, before a particular and correct classification can be made, we must ascertain the grand divisions which exist in nature, or form a general classification. Afterwards we can make as many subdivisions and classifications as are warranted by the facts in the several departments of each grand division. And as in nature, so in revelation; it is, first of all, necessary to possess a general knowledge of the entire book of Scripture,--"an enumeration, more or less complete, of its materials and combinations,"--its history and chronology, the great events which stand out prominently upon its surface, with the order of their succession, and their mutual dependence. For, as Mr. Mill elsewhere observes, "Of all truths relating [217] to phenomena, the most valuable to us are those which relate to the order of their succession."¹

      This general information is possessed, to a greater or less extent, by most persons in the various communities of Christendom. Almost every one knows what is written of the creation; of the early forms of worship; the deluge; the calling of Abraham; the life of Joseph; the passage of the Israelites from Egypt; the giving of the law; the subsequent conduct of the Jews under their judges, kings, and prophets; the birth, life, death, burial, resurrection, ascension, and coronation of the Saviour; the descent of the Holy Spirit; the preaching of the apostles; the conversion of Jews, Samaritans, and Gentiles; the organization of churches; the epistles directed to them; with various interesting and important matters which serve to fill up this rough outline of the book of Scripture. Now from the facts contained in this enumeration we are to form, or, more strictly speaking, to discover, those grand divisions into which the Bible is naturally divided.

      Without this all is chaos. Without this, too, it is impossible correctly to make those special classifications which are indispensable to a critical or accurate knowledge of particular subjects. In other words, unless this be done, there can be no science of interpretation, however numerous the collection of biblical facts, or however honest and earnest the endeavors of scholars to understand them. But, fortunately, we are not left at this late day to penetrate a [218] region hitherto unexplored; and it is with no ordinary pleasure that we record the fact, that the observation and research of enlightened Christians have led them, with singular unanimity, to look upon the Bible as being naturally separated into three grand divisions, respectively designated, in the order of their historical succession, as follows:--

      1. The Patriarchal, or ante-Judaic Dispensation.
      2. The Mosaic, or Jewish Dispensation.
      3. The Christian Dispensation.

      These names, which have been given to the several grand divisions of Scripture, serve as so many centers of attraction, drawing to them all those passages or recorded facts which the mind perceives naturally to belong to them. Or, to return to the language of Sir John Herschel, above quoted, "they constitute, as it were, nuclei or centers, about which information may collect into masses."

      But from this it follows of necessity, that if there be diversity of opinion as to the boundary lines of these divisions,--the points in the Scripture history where one dispensation ends and another begins,--there must be a corresponding diversity in the treatment of so much of that history as covers the space in dispute. For if A maintain that the Jewish Dispensation ends at a certain point, and B that it ends at some subsequent point, A will of course refer the intermediate Scriptures to the Christian Dispensation, while B will refer the same Scriptures to the Jewish. It is, therefore, not only necessary to determine, as has been done, that such divisions do exist in the Bible, but it [219] is equally, and for the same reason, necessary that we ascertain with all possible accuracy where the lines are placed that separate such divisions.

      So far as known to me there is no disagreement respecting the termination of the first and the beginning of the second dispensation. All concur in fixing this point at the giving of the law from Mount Sinai. The reasons for this are so abundant, so palpable, and so conclusive, and withal so generally known and appreciated, that it were idle to occupy space in presenting them. Unhappily, however, the same unanimity of opinion does by no means obtain respecting the boundary between the Jewish and the Christian Dispensations. And indispensable to every biblical student as we deem the determination of this point, we might here safely leave it without discussion, and proceed at once to the elucidation of that method which would enable the reader to solve the problem for himself. But as we feel sure that he would prefer to see a matter so important settled in its appropriate place, as it will be so frequently involved in our subsequent progress, and as it will furnish a fair illustration of the application of the inductive method to the Scriptures, we have concluded--notwithstanding our development of the principles involved is still incomplete--to attempt the solution of the problem by the aid of the general principles exhibited in the first chapter of the present book.

      The point before us is to determine precisely, if possible, when the Christian Dispensation began; and as there is no text which tells us in so many words that it began at this [220] or that point, it can be determined only by means of the inductive method. We begin, then, by observing and collecting the facts which relate to the subject; and while, for want of space, we shall do little more than allude to them, the reader will do well to examine them carefully in their original places and connections:--

      First fact. Christ was a Jew; born of Jewish parents according to the flesh; made (or placed) under the (Mosaic) law; and lived and died under the Jewish Dispensation. We need not pause to prove a fact which none ever denied.

      Second fact. During his life, the Christian Dispensation, or the kingdom of heaven, is spoken of, sometimes as future, and sometimes as present. For example: "The kingdom of heaven is at hand;" "On this rock I will build my church;" "Thy kingdom come;" "Woe unto you Scribes and Pharisees, for you shut the kingdom of God against men, for you neither go in yourselves nor suffer those that are entering to enter;" "The law and the prophets were until John, since that time the kingdom of God is preached, and every man presseth into it;" it "suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force;" "The kingdom of God is within you,--has come unto you."

      Third fact. The limitations placed upon the disciples in their preaching, during this period, were those of Judaism, and not of Christianity: "Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of Samaria enter ye not, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." But in the Christian [221] Dispensation there is "no difference," and they are to "go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature."

      Fourth fact. It is a recognized principle that the law or dispensation is changed when the priesthood is changed, (Heb. vii. 11, 12;) while it is revealed that Christ was not a priest while on the earth, because the law of Moses was then of force, (Heb. viii. 4,) but that he was made a priest after, or "since the law," (Heb. vii. 28.) He was the end of the law--nailed it to his cross. He was afterwards made a priest after the order of Melchisedec, and then there was "of necessity a change in the law," or a new dispensation, which brought men "under law to Christ."

      Fifth fact. The Holy Spirit, by the mouth of the prophets, predicted that this law should go forth out of Zion: "For out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem." (Is. ii. 2, 3; Mic. iv. 2.)

      Sixth fact. The Apostles who were to open the kingdom--to proclaim this law and this word of the Lord, and to one of whom, Peter, were given the keys of the kingdom of heaven--were expressly required, in accordance with the above prophecy, to "tarry at Jerusalem until they should be endued with power from on high;" and then, when thus endued, they were to "begin" the proclamation of the word of the Lord, "at Jerusalem." They were also informed that they should "receive" this "power after that the Holy Spirit had come upon them."

      Seventh fact. All this was fulfilled on the day of [222] Pentecost, (Acts, ii.) Christ was then priest; the Holy Spirit came upon the Apostles; they were tarrying at Jerusalem; and Peter, with the eleven, proclaimed the word and the law of the Lord, "beginning at Jerusalem;" while the door was thus opened through which three thousand passed into the kingdom of heaven, freed or loosed from their sins.

      Though the above are not all the facts which bear upon the case, they are the prerogative instances, and are abundantly sufficient to enable us to determine the point before us. These force us to exclude such hypotheses as that the Christian Dispensation began in eternity, or at the creation of man, or the calling of Abraham, or the giving of the law, or the birth of Christ, or the crucifixion; and compel us to adopt one of two conclusions,--either that it began with the preaching of John in the wilderness, or on the day of Pentecost. Now the inductive method requires that, "after a great number of exclusions have left but few principles common to every case," or but few conclusions possible in the light of all the facts, "one of these is to be assumed as the cause," i. e. the explanation or answer; " and by reasoning from it synthetically, we are to try if it will account for the phenomena."² We will assume, then, for the sake of testing its correctness, that the new dispensation began with the preaching of John the Baptist in the wilderness of Judea. Now if this be true, all the texts which bear upon the subject can be clearly explained by it [223] without doing violence to them, and without disregarding, in their interpretation, the forms of expression which are common in the Bible. Let us apply it, then, to the various classes of facts we have before us:--

      1. If it be true, then according to our first fact there were two dispensations in existence at the same time, for Christ, during his life, recognized the existence and authority of the Jewish Dispensation.

      2. If it be true, then those Scriptures in our second class, which speak of the kingdom of heaven as having come, signify that it had actually and formally come; but this is incompatible with those other texts which represent it as future.

      3. If it be true, then the direction to the disciples to confine their preaching to the Jews, is a law of the Christian Dispensation, and, of course, still obligatory; but this, too, is incompatible with the commission, unless the "all nations" and the "every creature" be taken in a limited sense, to mean only all the Jews in every nation, which is contrary to known facts.

      4. If it be true, then Christ must have exercised the priestly once upon the earth--which is also contrary to fact.

      5. If it be true, then the prophecies of Isaiah and Micah cannot refer to the going forth of the law of the last dispensation. But they expressly declare that the prediction is concerning what shall take place in "the last days" or dispensation, when the "mountain of the Lord's house "the government or kingdom of Christ--"shall be established in the top of the mountains." [224]

      6. If it be true, the Apostles did not "begin at Jerusalem," but merely carried on there what had been begun some years before in the wilderness.

      7. If it be true, Peter did not open the door of the kingdom on the day of Pentecost, nor upon any other occasion; but merely stood is the door, with his keys in his hand, which were altogether useless, as it had been opened by John, without keys.

      This assumption, then, so far from being verified by the test, is shown to be wholly untrue, and incompetent to explain one single fact, without having its explanation proved false by the instant and irreconcilable opposition of numerous and various other facts. We are left, therefore, to the single conclusion, that the new dispensation began on the day of Pentecost. Let us now see whether this can be verified.

      It perfectly accords with the fact that Christ lived under the Jewish Dispensation; with the fact that the kingdom of heaven was future during his lifetime; with the fact that the gospel was to be preached to all the world; with the fact that Christ was to be priest before the law was changed; with the fact that the law was to go forth from Mount Zion; that the Apostles were to publish it, and begin at Jerusalem; and that they were to do so after they received the Holy Ghost; and so with every other fact and document on the subject. The only apparent exception³ being those texts which speak of the kingdom of heaven [225] as being in existence during his life--before the king was crowned.

      If, now, the ordinary forms of speech used by the sacred writers will enable us to interpret those texts in harmony with this general conclusion, without doing violence to them or bringing them in opposition to other texts, the verification will be perfect and the induction complete.

      To determine this we must take into account the peculiar circumstances of the case. We notice that John, Christ, the twelve, and the seventy, all proclaimed and inculcated the principles of the kingdom of heaven. The whole burden of their teaching was directed to the preparation of men for the coming kingdom. They told them what it was like in the material world; gave them correct ideas of its spiritual nature; and made known those exalted principles of self-denial, sincerity, love, and forgiveness, which were to distinguish its subjects, and which, therefore, were to be received and cherished as a preparation for that kingdom. Now those who embraced these instructions were spoken of as receiving the kingdom of God, or as having the kingdom of God within them, or as pressing into the kingdom of God, or as having the kingdom of heaven come unto them; and as these principles were greatly opposed, it was necessary for those who embraced them to break loose, as by an effort of violence; and press into the kingdom, in spite of those who by their hypocrisy and falsehood were shutting the kingdom of God against men. Thus, by embracing those principles or truths which were certain to conduct them into the kingdom which was [226] at hand and ready to be formally set up, they could, by anticipation, and in perfect accordance with the usages of Scripture, be said to enter or to have entered the kingdom.

      But is it a usual or frequent form of expression in the Bible, to represent things as having actually occurred which are yet future, but which, from the certainty of their coming, are virtually the same as past?

      In that beautiful prophecy concerning our Saviour, in the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, we read: " He is despised and rejected of men. . . And we hid as it were our faces from him. . . Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows; yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God and afflicted." And so throughout. "He was wounded;" "he was bruised;" "the chastisement of our peace was laid upon him," etc. The Lamb of God was virtually slain in the days of Isaiah--nay, from the foundation of the world; and it could, therefore, be spoken of by anticipation, as having really occurred; and yet no one would presume to argue from this circumstance that, as a historical event, the actual occurrence took place one moment anterior to the time of Pontius Pilate, and the day and hour specified by the Apostles.

      Our Saviour tells his disciples (Mark, ix. 31,) that "the Son of man is delivered into the hands of men;" while his actual delivery into their hands was long afterwards.

      In the institution of the supper he tells them: "This is my body broken for you--and my blood shed for you;" while he was yet alive.

      A case directly in point occurs in Philippians, iii. 20: [227] "For our conversation is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ;" where the word "conversation" is, in the Greek, politeuma, (politeuma,) citizenship. We are, then, citizens or residents of heaven--not actually, but virtually, from having embraced the principles and adopted the course of life which will conduct us to heaven. And this agrees with what is said to the Hebrews, xii. 22: "But ye are come to Mount Sion, and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels," etc. This text is doubly useful in the establishment of the point in question, because, if taken literally, it verifies the conclusion previously reached, that the law of the new dispensation went forth from Mount Zion in Jerusalem, inasmuch as this passage begins the contrast of the two dispensations, by identifying them with the two mountains whence they respectively started; and if the words are to be taken as Mr. Barnes and others suppose, then they are analogous to the class of Scriptures which it is incumbent upon us to explain in harmony with that conclusion. In whatever sense they are taken, therefore, they conclude the argument. But we will quote Barnes's note in loco:--

      "It cannot be literally meant here that they had come to the Mount Zion in Jerusalem, for that was as tree of the whole Jewish people as of those whom the Apostle addressed, but it must mean that they had come to the Mount Zion of which the holy city was an emblem; to the glorious mount which is revealed as the dwelling-place of God., of angels, of saints. They were not, indeed, literally [228] in heaven, nor was that glorious city literally on earth, but the dispensation to which they had been brought was that which conducted directly up to the city of the living God, and to the holy mount where he dwelt above. . . . . It is true that Christians have not yet seen that city by the bodily eye, but they look to it with the eye of faith. It is revealed to them; they are permitted by anticipation to contemplate its glories, and to feel that it is to be their eternal home. They are permitted to live and act as if they saw the glorious God whose dwelling is there, and were already surrounded by the angels and the redeemed."

      Inasmuch, therefore, as the conclusion or generalization from the facts is warranted, required, and supported by every fact involved in it--until it is shown to be erroneous by the counter testimony of facts equally veritable and plain--we can suffer no consequences of the conclusion, or no mere opposing theory to shake our conviction, that the Christian Dispensation did first actually, formally, and historically begin its existence on this earth, on the day of Pentecost. In this conclusion we are happy to have the concurrence, among others, of a not less discriminating mind than that of Archbishop Whately. He says:--

      "That gospel which had been proclaimed by Christ and his disciples, during his personal ministry, was, that the 'kingdom of heaven was at hand.' That kingdom was then only in preparation. It was not completely begun, till the Apostles, after the outpouring on them of the Holy Spirit, on the day of Pentecost, founded at Jerusalem the first Christian church, and baptized into the name of the [229] Lord Jesus about three thousand persons, who were thus enrolled as subjects of that kingdom."⁴

      We have thus settled, as we trust, the boundary lines of the three grand divisions of the Bible, viewed as a connected history. And on these premises we remark, that these dispensations, while clearly and perfectly distinct, are not independent of each other. Each one has its own appropriate facts, laws, promises, privileges; blessings, ordinances, and institutions, which are sui generis and distinctive; while many things in each are common to all, and many serve to explain and establish matters in the others. As God is unchangeable, the principles by which, if we may so speak, he is pleased to govern himself in his dealings with men, cannot change, and must be the same in every dispensation; while the laws and institutions which are adapted to man in the various stages of his career and his development must change in order to that adaptation. Hence it is, that we find God unchangeably requiring faith and obedience, while the propositions to be believed and the commandments to be obeyed vary, many of them, with the different dispensations. Hence if we would learn the peculiarities of either dispensation, that which constitutes it Patriarchal, Jewish, or Christian, in distinction from the others, we must go to those parts of Scripture which are professedly devoted to that dispensation. Whereas the general principles of all divine religion may be learned with more or less ease, and may be seen more or less fully developed in either department. [230]

      We may further remark that, as Christianity was always in contemplation during the continuance of the antecedent dispensations, a large number of its principles were anticipated and recorded with reference to it. Hence we can learn many of the peculiarities of the Christian Dispensation, particularly if read by its own effulgent light, from the types and shadows of the Mosaic, from the prophets, from the Baptist, and, above all, from Him the very burden of whose preaching and instructions was to illustrate and commend the truths and principles of the approaching dispensation. While, then, it is absolutely necessary to fix with the utmost precision the lines of separation, in order to learn what is distinctive in each dispensation, we are not to suppose that these dispensations are respectively insulated from the rest of Scripture, and destitute of that mutual support, illustration, and confirmation which are apparent upon every page of the inspired record. [231]

[TOOS 216-231]