37. I. INTRODUCTORY: HISTORY OF STRUCTURE

4to), at Dresden and Leipzig: Bishop Lowth does not appear to have known of this work, for it anticipates him, and under the heading "Exergasia Sacra" it lays down the very doctrine which it remained for Lowth to improve and elucidate. Schoettgen lays down ten canons, and he illustrates each with three examples.

Bishop Jebb (born 1775 at Drogheda) published his Sacred Literature in London, 1820: and, until Thomas Boys began to write in 1824, Jebb's work had remained the last word on the subject. It was a review of Lowth's work and "an application of the principles so reviewed" to the illustration of the New Testament.

But both these works of Bishops Lowth and Jebb were almost entirely confined to the verbal correspondences in parallel lines; and never proceeded beyond short stanzas; and, even then, did not rise beyond what Lowth called "parallelism" and Jebb called "Sacred Composition."

It was reserved for Thomas Boys to raise the whole subject on to a higher level altogether, and to lift it out of the literary parallelism between words and lines; and to develope it into the correspondence between the subject-matter and truth of the Divine Word.

In 1821 Thomas Boys soon followed up Bishop Jebb by publishing his Tactica Sacra, and in 1827-30 his Key to the Book of Psalms.¹

While the successive works of Bishops Lowth and Jebb were enthusiastically and generally received, yet the works of Thomas Boys not only had to fight their way through much opposition, but are now practically unknown to Biblical students. Whether it is because they afford such a wonderful evidence of the supernatural and miraculous in the Bible, and such a proof of the Divine Authorship of the Word of God, that they are therefore the special object of attack by the enemies of that Word (both Satanic and human) He alone knows. But so it is.

¹ This was only a description of his principles of Correspondence, which he applied to some sixteen Psalms. It was the privilege of Dr. Bullinger to edit Thomas Boys's manuscript; and, from pencilled notes in Boys's Interleaved Hebrew Bible (Boothroyd's Edition with Commentary), to complete and publish, in 1830, the whole of the Psalms with a Preface, and Memoir by his friend the Rev. Sydney Thelwall (who had been a personal friend of Boys), then Vicar of Westleigh, North Devon. An Introduction and Appendix were added by Dr. Bullinger as editor. This work was called A Key to the Book of Psalms to preserve a continuity with Boys's own title.

Bishop Jebb, however, we are thankful to say, in the Second Edition of his Sacred Literature (1831), does recognize Boys's work in a note on page 74. He says, "Since the publication of Sacred Literature, this peculiarity of composition has been largely and happily illustrated, in his Tactica Sacra, by the Rev. Thomas Boys."

In 1851 Richard Baillie Roe made a great effort to revive the subject by publishing An Analytical Arrangement of the Holy Scriptures according to the principles developed under the name of Parallelism in the writings of Bishop Lowth, Bishop Jebb, and the Rev. Thomas Boys.

This appears to have shared the same fate as all the others. Roe's book gives us too much as well as too little. It gives too much of dry analysis, and too little of the end for which it is made. Moreover, it is not improved by departing from Boys's simplicity; and serves only to complicate the subject by adding much that is arbitrary in arrangement. It may be said of Roe's method, that what is true is not new; and what is new is no improvement.

The facts being as thus stated, it shows that the subject has either not yet been grasped nor understood by Bible students; or, that it makes too much for the Inspiration and Divine Origin and Authority of the Word of God; and that there are spiritual powers, working with the human, whose one great object is to make the Word of God of none effect (Eph. vi. 12 and 17).

And yet, we may say that, no more powerful weapon has yet been placed in our hands outside that Word, which is "the Spirit's sword." It affords a wondrous proof of Inspiration; it gives us a clearer and more comprehensive view of the scope of the Scriptures, than the most learned and elaborate commentaries can ever hope to do; and it is capable of even turning the scale in doubtful, doctrinal, and critical questions.

By its means the student is led to views and truths, and reflections which, without it, would never have occurred to him. And it is not too much to say that until the Correspondences of the Biblical Structure are duly recognized we shall never get a correct translation or a true interpretation of many passages which are to this day dark and confused in both our Versions, the R.V. as well as in the A.V.

ii. PRINCIPLES GOVERNING STRUCTURE

Preaching on another subject, Bishop Lowth truthfully and feelingly observed that "It pleased God, in His unsearchable wisdom, to suffer the progress of the Reformation to be stopped mid-way; and the effects of it to be greatly weakened by many unhappy divisions among the reformed."

The same may be said of the Law of Correspondence in the Structure of the Word of God, so wonderfully discovered and developed; and yet, needing to-day almost to be rediscovered, and certainly to be developed in its application to the whole Word of truth.

Parts of the world, remaining yet unexplored, are eagerly sought out without stint of labour or money. Would that the same zeal could be seen applied in the interest of this great subject.