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interpolated and added; Fifth, Words omitted and passages abridged; Sixth, Several passages quoted together, so as to form one connected sense; Seventh, Several of these species of deviation combined together; Eighth, Passages rather indicated or hinted at, than formally quoted. Each of these particulars is illustrated by apt examples.

Having thus discussed the sources and manner of the New Testament quotations, the author next treats of their formulæ, or the manner in which they are introduced, and the purposes for which they are made. The last he considers to be these: For the explanation or proof of some doctrinal position; for pointing out the application of the passage quoted to some statement or description of the context, into which it is introduced; and for clothing the ideas of the writers in language already familiar to their readers, or attractive from its beauty, force, or dignity. His observations on the meaning of λŋpów, under the second of these heads, are too important not to be quoted here.

"From the circumstance that several of the passages thus adduced, are in the phraseology of the New Testament, as well as in that of the Rabbinical writings, said to be "fulfilled," it has been hastily inferred by some, that they are all to be regarded as designed prophecies of the events to which they are applied. For this opinion, however, no adequate support seems to be afforded by the phrase in question. The general idea attached to the verb λnpów, is that of filling up to its full capacity any thing of which it is predicated. Thus the Jews are said, by Christ, to have filled up the measure (Anpúσate Tò μéтpov) of their fathers, Matthew xxiii. 32. The phrase in question, consequently, is susceptible of application to whatever is thought of as supplying the complement of any given capacity, and that, whether it is used in a literal or tropical sense. Hence it is appropriately used in the New Testament, with respect to passages quoted from the Old Testament, in the following cases :

"First, when it announces the accomplishment of a prophecy contained in the words quoted. As the prediction is a mere empty declaration, as it were, until the fact predicted has occurred; so that fact, by giving meaning and force to the prediction, is viewed as its complement or filling up. Thus the New Testament writers, in recording the facts of our Lord's history, when they come to any which formed the subject of ancient prophecy, whether explicit or typical, direct the attention of their readers to the circumstance, by adducing the prediction, and intimating its fulfilment in the fact they have recorded.

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Secondly, when it introduces some description or statement which affords a parallel to what the writer has been saying. Such a description being regarded as involving a fact of general applicability to the human race, or to certain portions of it, is thought of as being, so to speak, in a state of deficiency, until the measure of its applicability has been filled up. Each new case, therefore, which affords a parallel to that, to which the description was originally applied, goes so far to supply this deficiency, by affording another instance in which the description holds; and hence the New Testament writers are in the habit of quoting such descriptions as having been fulfilled in the cases to which they are applied by them. Thus, a passage from the prophecies of Jeremiah, in which a description is given of the desolation caused by the Divine judgments upon the Jews, under the beautiful personification of Rachel rising from the dead, looking in vain for her children, and refusing to be comforted because they are not, is adduced by Matthew, as fulfilled in the sorrow which was produced by the massacre of the babes in Bethlehem, by order of Herod. No

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person, who studies the context of the passage as it occurs in the Old Testament, can suppose for a moment, that it contains a prediction of the cruelties which were perpetrated on the occasion related by the evangelist. The sole purport of the quotation seems to be, to intimate, as Bishop Kidder remarks, that such another scene of sorrow appeared then, (upon the murder of the innocents) as that was which Jeremy mentions upon another sad occasion." Comp. Matt. xv. 7, 8, with Isaiah xxix. 13; Matt. xiii. 14, with Acts xxviii. 25, and Isaiah vi. 9, &c." pp. 53-55.

Such has long appeared to us to be the only satisfactory mode of solving a difficulty which has, in no ordinary degree, proved a crux expositorum. Upon the principles here laid down, while the integrity and inspiration of the writers are perfectly secured, the interpretation of their references is relieved from the weight of the incubus which has been felt to rest upon it by reducing all the passages to the same category of direct prophetical announcement. Mr. Alexander's remarks upon the adoption of the language of the Old Testament, in many instances, by the writers of the New, for merely literary purposes, are equally judicious and forcible; and the objections that might be taken to what to many will appear a novel and startling hypothesis, he candidly states, and successfully obviates.

The remaining lectures are devoted to the INTERNAL and DOCTRINAL connexion of the Old and New Testaments. In the second and third, the Divine nature and character, and the condition and prospects of man, form the subjects of discourse. On the harmony, or rather the identity, which characterizes the representations of the sacred writers, he thus eloquently expatiates:

"In that revelation of the Divine will, which the Bible contains, we have a series of communications stretching through a course of many centuries, conveyed through individuals of different habits, tastes, education, and talents, and characterized by the greatest variety of form and style. Amid all this diversity, however, of outward circumstance, the great Author of the whole remained, from first to last, the same. By whomsoever the message was borne to men, whether by patriarchs, or prophets, or by the Son of God himself; at whatever period it was announced, whether in the early dawn of the world's history, or after the fulness of the time' had already come; and in whatever form it appeared, whether clothed in symbols, or conveyed in the language of direct annunciation, whether set forth by some silent yet significant type, or proclaimed by the living voice of some gifted Seer, whether uttered in brief and naked terms, or wrapt in the gorgeous mantle of impassioned poetry; it was, throughout, the same Divine Spirit who inspired the messenger, and authorized the message. God,' the apostle tells us, 'who, at sundry times, and in divers manners, spake unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days, spoken unto us by his Son.' As in the natural world, the media, through which the rays of the sun pass, and the degree of warmth and illumination experienced in consequence, at the earth's surface, are different at different times

'Non habet officii Lucifer omnis idem'

whilst it is in every case, and at all times, the same luminary to which we are indebted for whatever of light and heat our atmosphere may transmit to us; so in the spiritual world, it hath pleased the Sovereign of the universe that the radiance of N. S. VOL. V.

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Divine truth, flowing, as it ever must, from the fountain of his own eternal mind, should descend in different degrees, and with diversified hues, upon those to whom it was originally sent."-pp. 67,68.

The subjects of the Divine unity; the intimations of a plurality in the Divine essence; the traces of the doctrine of the Trinity; the use of plural terms for the Deity, and especially their construction with singular adjuncts; the distinction between the invisible and manifested Deity; the "Angel of Jehovah;" the moral character of God, &c. as presented to view in the Old Testament, are all taken up, and discoursed upon in a very felicitous and convincing manner. Nor are the remarks of the author on the Scripture doctrine of human depravity, and the connexion which subsists between Adam and his posterity, less interesting and valuable. We are the more gratified that he has spoken out upon this latter point, since the corresponding representative headships of Adam and Christ have almost become obsolete in our modern theology, and there are many who in the general profess to be Calvinists, that shrink from an avowal of the doctrine which they involve. It is, however, a doctrine distinctly taught by the apostle Paul, Rom. v. 12—19; 1 Cor. xv. 22, 45-49, and recognized not only by divines of the Augustinian school in a former age, but also by the most enlightened Lutheran expositors of the present day.

The extent to which the doctrine of a future state was known before the appearance of our Saviour is next examined; and it is proved not only from the express testimony of an inspired apostle, Heb. xi. 1316, but by an adduction of passages from the Old Testament, that the ancient Hebrews possessed a firm belief in the separate existence of the soul after death, and that they were not left in ignorance of the resurrection of the body, and a final judgment. We fully agree with the author in the opinion, that being "gathered to one's fathers"-a phrase of frequent occurrence in the patriarchal history-has no reference whatever to deposition in the ancestral sepulchre, but means a reunion of spirit with kindred spirits in the invisible world. On the celebrated passage Job xix. 25-27, Mr. Alexander has a critical note of some length, in justification of the following translation which he gives of it in the

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"But I, even I, know that my Vindicator liveth,

And He, the Last, shall abide by [my] dust;

Even after my skin [which] they shall devour, this [shall be]

And out of my flesh I shall see God.

Because I, even I, shall see for myself,

And my eyes shall behold and not another,

My reins are consumed in my bosom."

On this version, however, we have to remark, first, That though 1978 is undoubtedly employed as a personal title of Jehovah, Isa. xliv. 6, yet it is here so closely connected in point of sense with Op, that it cannot, with any propriety, be regarded otherwise than as an adverb of

that

but

time, specifying generally the period when the event expressed by the verb should take place. Secondly, it is more natural to take ¬y, dust, in the sense of 8, earth, a substitution which not unfrequently occurs in the book of Job, than to limit it to Job's own dust, which demands the assumption of an ellipsis of the pronominal affix, "my," which we can scarcely suppose the patriarch to have omitted in a passage in which he employs it not fewer than five times, in order to give emphatic expression to the strong feelings by which he was excited. Thirdly, often occurs in the sense of near, beside, &c. is undeniable; by cannot well be rendered beside dust; and the idea of the Redeemer standing or abiding beside the dust of his saints is scarcely in keeping with the Scripture mode of representation. p corresponds here top, the form employed when God promised to raise up a prophet like unto Moses, and predicts the advent and incarnation of the Messiah. Fourthly "out of my flesh," certainly comes much nearer the force of, than "in my flesh," the rendering of our common version. Still we doubt whether the meaning of new be, "I shall look out of, or from, my body." In Gen. ii. 23, the only other passage in which the word occurs as here, the meaning is, consisting of my flesh— a partaker of my nature; so that if we may employ the one to explain the other, we must arrive at the conclusion, that the afflicted patriarch firmly anticipated the real incarnation of his Vindicator, the Living One, whom it would be his inexpressible felicity to contemplate in a future state, though his own frame should moulder in the dust. The preposition is here, as elsewhere, used to denote the material out of which anything is made. The translation we should offer of the passage is this:

“For I know assuredly that my Redeemer, the Living One,

Shall in future time arise upon the earth.

And though after my skin, this frame be destroyed,

Yet of my flesh I shall see God,

Whom I shall assuredly see for myself,

And my eyes shall behold, and no other:

My reins are consumed in my bosom."

The last line expresses the intense desire which Job had to contemplate him, who, though the Author and Giver of life, was to assume a life of humanity, and after vanquishing death, by his own death in the human nature, should present himself in the same in the blessed abode of departed saints—a glorious and most certain pledge of the resurrection of their dead bodies from the grave, by the exercise of his omnipotent vindicating power. It appears to us, that we must either adopt this construction of the passage, or give in to the rendering “out of”— i. e. apart from my flesh, in my disembodied state-787 never being used in the sense of seeing through a medium. Still, in whatever way we construe the words, they unequivocally express the patriarch's belief in a future state, which it is the object of Mr. Alexander to prove.

The fourth lecture is occupied with the criteria and characteristics of the Messianic prophecies. To the use of the term "Messianic" some of our readers may be disposed to demur; but it has long been employed by German writers, is now quite familiar to biblical scholars in America, and is so very convenient, that we should be sorry to see it denied the privilege of naturalization. Mr. A. divides the criteria of these prophecies into internal and external. The internal are: 1. When in the passage itself, or in the immediate context, the subject of the piece is expressly denominated the Messiah, or receives some appellation which can be shown to be appropriate only to him, we must regard the whole as prophetical of Christ. 2. When to the subject of a passage, not simply referable to the Almighty as such, are ascribed attributes and actions incompatible with the ordinary conditions of humanity, but which fully accord with the New Testament declarations respecting Jesus Christ. 3. When a passage contains a description of circumstances as occuring in the case of the person to whom it refers, which, though not absolutely incompatible with the ordinary limits of human performance or endurance, are, on the one hand, extremely unlikely to have happened in the case of any mere man; and, on the other, cannot be shown to have occurred in the case of any person but Christ, to whom it can be shown they exactly apply. 4. When exalted and glowing descriptions are given of scenes of future glory and felicity, especially when these are identified with the "latter days," the passage is to be interpreted as having a reference to the period of the Messiah's reign. The most important external criteria are these: 1. Passages which can be shown to be parallel to those in which the Messianic character is decidedly exhibited; 2. The testimony of the ancient Jewish church; and, 3. The quotation of any passage as Messianic, by our Lord or his Apostles.

The most valuable portion of this lecture is that in which what the author justly calls the "impious" theory of accommodation, is most ably refuted. Mr. A. shows that it goes to overthrow Christianity entirely, as a system of Divine truth; involve the whole of the New Testament in uncertainty, and expose its doctrines to contempt: that it presents a glaring contrariety to the best ascertained facts of the case; that it is opposed to all that we know of the character of Christ and his apostles; and inconsistent with their miraculous agency, and with the fact that our Lord's interpretations, so far from pleasing, gave the greatest offence to the Jews whom he addressed. The remarks made at the close of the lecture on the fanciful and indefensible theory of a plurality of senses in any given place, are extremely judicious, and deserve the serious attention of those Christian teachers, who from early association, from habit, or from some less excusable cause, are wedded to this mode of interpretation.

Lectures fifth, sixth, and seventh, treat of the Messianic prophecies in the detail. Upon these our space will not permit us to descant;

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