05.10. Preliminary Remarks.
Preliminary Remarks.
HITHERTO we have been occupied chiefly with an investigation of principles. It was necessary, in the first instance, to have these ascertained and settled, before we could apply, with any prospect of success, to the particular consideration of the typical materials of Old Testament Scripture. And in now entering on this, the more practical, as it is also the more varied and extensive, branch of our subject, it is proper to indicate at the outset the general features of the arrangement we propose to adopt, and notice certain landmarks of a more prominent kind that ought to guide the course of our inquiries.
1. As all that was really typical formed part of an existing dispensation, and stood related to a religious worship, our primary divisions must connect themselves with the Divine dispensations. These dispensations were undoubtedly based on the same fundamental truths and principles. But they were also marked by certain characteristic differences, adapting them to the precise circumstances of the Church and the world at the time of their introduction. It is from these, therefore, we must take our starting-points; and in these also should find the natural order and succession of the topics which must pass under our consideration. In doing so we shall naturally look, first, to the fundamental facts on which the dispensation is based; then to the religious symbols in which its lessons and hopes were embodied; and finally, to the future and subsidiary transactions which afterwards carried forward and matured the instruction.
2. In the whole compass of sacred history we find only three grand eras that can properly be regarded as the formative epochs of distinct religious dispensations. For, according to the principles already set forth (in Ch. IV.), the things directly belonging to creation, however they may have to be taken into account as presupposed and referred to in what followed, still do not here come into consideration as a distinct class, and calling for independent treatment. The three eras, then, are those of the fall, of the redemption from Egypt, and of the appearance and work of Christ, as they are usually designated; though they might be more fitly described, the first as the entrance of faith and hope for fallen man, the second as the giving of the law, and the third as the revelation of the Gospel. For it was not properly the fall, but the new state and constitution of things brought in after it, that, in a religious point of view, forms the first commencement of the world’s history. Neither is it the redemption from Egypt, considered by itself, but this in connection with the giving of the law, which was its immediate aim and object, that forms the great characteristic of the second stage, as the coming of grace and truth by Jesus Christ does of the third. Between the first and second of these eras two very important events intervened the deluge and the call of Abraham—both alike forming prominent breaks in the history of the period. Hence, not unfrequently, the antediluvian is distinguished from the patriarchal Church, and the Church as it existed before, from the Church as it stood after, the call of Abraham. But important as these events were, in the order of God’s providential arrangements, they mark no material alteration in the constitutional basis, or even formal aspect, of the religion then established. As regards the institutions of worship, properly so called, Abraham and his descendants appear to have been much on a footing with those who lived before the flood; and therefore not primary and fundamental, but only subsidiary, elements of instruction could be evolved by means of the events referred to. The same may also be said of another great event, which formed a similar break during the currency of the second period the Babylonish exile and return. This occupies a very prominent place in Scripture, whether we look to the historical record of the event or to the announcements made beforehand concerning it in prophecy. Yet it introduced no essential change into the spiritual relations of the Church, nor altered in any respect the institutions of her symbolical worship. The restored temple was built at once on the site and after the pattern of that which had been laid in ruins by the Chaldeans; and nothing more was aimed at by the immediate agents in the work of restoration, than the re-establishment of the rites and services enjoined by Moses. Omitting, therefore, the Gospel dispensation, as the antitypical, there only remain for the commencement of the earlier dispensations, in which the typical is to be sought, the two epochs already mentioned—those of Adam and Moses.
3. It is not simply the fact, however, of these successive dispensations which is of importance for our present inquiry. Still more depends for a well-grounded and satisfactory exhibition of Divine truth as connected with them, upon a correct view of their mutual and interdependent relation to each other; the relation not merely of the Mosaic to the Christian, but also of the Patriarchal to the Mosaic. For as the revelation of law laid the foundation of a religious state which, under the moulding influence of providential arrangements and prophetic gifts, developed and grew till it had assumed many of the characteristic features of the Gospel; so the original constitution of grace settled with Adam after the fall, comparatively vague and indistinct at first, gradually became more definite and exact, and, in the form of heaven-derived or time-honoured institutions, exhibited the germ of much that was afterwards established as law. In the primeval period nothing wears a properly legal aspect; and it has been one of the current mistakes, especially in this country, of theological writers,—a source of endless controversy and arbitrary explanations,—to seek there for law in the direct and obtrusive, when, as yet, the order of the Divine plan admitted of its existing only in the latent form. We read of promise and threatening, of acts and dealings of God, pregnant with spiritual light and moral obligation, meeting from the very first the wants and circumstances of fallen man; but of express and positive enactments there is no trace. Some of the grounds and reasons of this will be adverted to in the immediately following chapters. At present we simply notice the fact, as one of the points necessary to be kept in view for giving a right direction to the course of inquiry before us. Yet, on the other hand, while in the commencing period of the Church’s history we find nothing that bears the rigid and authoritative form of law, we find on every hand the foundations of law; and these gradually enlarging and widening, and sometimes even assuming a distinctly legal aspect, before the patriarchal dispensation closed. So that when the properly legal period came, the materials, to a considerable extent, were already in existence, and only needed to be woven and consolidated into a compact system of truth and duty. It is enough to instance, in proof of what has been stated, the case of the Sabbath, not formally imposed, though divinely instituted from the first the rite of piacular sacrifice, very similar (as we shall show) as to its original institution the division of animals into clean and unclean the consecration of the tenth to God—the sacredness of blood—the Levirate usage—the ordinance of circumcision. The whole of these had their foundations laid, partly in the procedure of God, partly in the consciences of men, before the law entered; and in regard to some of them the law’s prescriptions might be said to be anticipated, while still the patriarchal age was in progress. As the period of law approached, there was also a visible approach to its distinctive characteristics. And, without regard had to the formal difference yet gradual approximation of the two periods, we can as little hope to present a solid and satisfactory view of the progressive development of the Divine plan, as if we should overlook either their fundamental agreement with each other, or their common relation to the full manifestation of grace and truth in the kingdom of Christ. It must be borne in mind, that the Law—the intermediate point between the fall and redemption—had its preparation as well as the Gospel.
4. In regard to the mode of investigation to be pursued respecting particular types, as the first place is due to those which belonged to the institutions of religion, so our first care must be, according to the principles already established, to ascertain the views and impressions which, as parts of an existing religion, they were fitted to awaken in the ancient worshipper. It may, of course, be impossible to say, in any particular case, that such views and impressions were actually derived from them, with as much precision and definiteness as may appear in our description;for we cannot be sure that the requisite amount of thought and consideration was actually addressed to the subject. But due care should be taken in this respect, not to make the typical symbols arid transactions indicative of more than what may, with ordinary degrees of light and grace, have been learned from them by men of faith in Old Testament times. It is not, however, to be forgotten that, in their peculiar circumstances, much greater insight was attainable through such a medium, than it is quite easy for us now to realize. At first, believers were largely dependent upon it for their knowledge of Divine truth; it was their chief talent, and would hence be cultivated with especial care. Even afterwards, when the sources of information were somewhat increased, the disposition and capacity to learn by means of symbolical acts and institutions, would be materially aided by that mode of contemplation which has been wont to distinguish the inhabitants of the East. This proceeds (to use the language of Bähr) “on the ground of an inseparable connection subsisting between the spiritual and the bodily, the ideal and the real, the seen and the unseen. According to it, the whole actual world is nothing but the manifestation of the ideal one; the entire creation is not only a production, but, at the same time, also an evidence and a revelation of Godhead. Nothing real is merely dead matter, but is the form and body of something ideal; so that the whole world, even to its very stones, appears instinct with life, and on that account especially becomes a revelation of Deity, whose distinguishing characteristic it is to have life in Himself. Such a mode of viewing things in nature may be called emphatically the religious one; for it contemplates the world as a great sanctuary, the individual parts of which are so many marks, words, and letters of a grand revelation-book of Godhead, in which God speaks and imparts information respecting Himself. If, therefore, that which is seen and felt was generally regarded by men as the immediate impression of that which is unseen, a speech and revelation of the invisible Godhead to them, it necessarily follows, that if they were to have unfolded to them a conception of His nature, and to have a representation given them of what His worship properly consists in, the same language would require to be used which God spake with them; the same means of representation would need to be employed which God Himself had sanctioned—the sensible, the visible, the external.”[100] [100]
5. When the symbolical institutions and services of former times shall have been explained in the manner now indicated, the next step will be to consider in detail the import and bearing of the typical transactions which took place during the continuance of each dispensation. In doing this, care will require, in the first instance, to be taken, that the proper place be assigned them as intended only to exhibit ideas subsidiary to those embodied in the religion itself. And as in reading the typical symbols, so in reading the typical transactions connected with them, we must make the views and impressions they were fitted to convey to those whom they immediately respected, concerning the character and purposes of God, the ground and measure of that higher bearing which they carried to the coming events of the Gospel. Nor are we here again to overlook that religious tendency and habit of mind which has been noticed as a general characteristic of the inhabitants of the East; for they would certainly be disposed to do with the acts of providence as with the works of creation—would contemplate them as manifestations of Godhead, or revelations in the world of sense of what was thought and felt in the higher world of spirit. Besides, it is to be borne in mind, that the historical transactions referred to were all special acts of Providence. While they formed part of the current events of history, they were, at the same time, so singularly planned arid adjusted, that the persons immediately concerned in them could scarcely overlook either their direct appointment by God, or their intimate connection with His plans and purposes of grace. It is the hand of God Himself that ever appears to be directing the transactions of Old Testament history. And the acts in which He more peculiarly discovers Himself being the operations of One whose grand object, from the period of the fall, was the foiling of the tempter and the raising up of a seed of blessing, they could scarcely fail to be regarded by intelligent and pious minds as standing in a certain relation to this centre-point of the Divine economy. In proportion as the people of God had faith to “wait for the consolation of Israel,” they would also have discernment to read, with a view to the better things to come, the disclosures of His mind and will, which were interwoven with the history of His operations.
It is in this way we are chiefly to account for God’s frequent appearance on the stage of patriarchal history, and His more direct personal agency in the affairs of His chosen people. The things that happened to them could not otherwise have accomplished the great ends of their appointment; for through these God was continually making revelation of Himself, and bringing those who stood nearest to Him to a fuller acquaintance with His character as the God of life and blessing. It was therefore of essential moment to the object in view, that His people should be able without hesitation to regard them as indications of His mind: that they should not merely consider them as His, in the general sense in which it may be said that “God is in history;” but His also in the more definite and peculiar sense of conveying specific and progressive discoveries of the Divine administration. How could they have been recognised as such, unless the finger of God had, in some form, laid its distinctive impress upon them? Taking into account, therefore, all the peculiarities belonging to the typical facts of Old Testament history—the close relation in which they commonly stood to the rites and institutions of a religion of hope—the evident manner in which many of them bore upon them the interposition of God, and the place occupied by others in the announcements of prophecy;—they had quite enough to distinguish them from the more general events of providence, and were perfectly capable of ministering to the faith and the just expectations of the people of God.
6. We simply note farther, that when passing under review acts and institutions of God which stretch through successive ages and dispensations, there will necessarily recur, under somewhat different forms, substantially the same exhibitions of Divine truth. It was unavoidable but that all the more fundamental ideas of religion, and the greater obligations connected with it, should be the subject of many an ordinance in worship, and many a transaction in providence. The briefest mode of treatment, as it would naturally involve fewest repetitions, would be to classify, first the primary heads of doctrine and duty, and then arrange under them the successive exhibitions given of each in the future enactments and dealings of God, without adhering rigidly to the period of their appearance. This plan was partially followed in our first edition, but was found impracticable as a whole. We deem it necessary to keep by the historical order, though it may be occasionally attended with the disadvantage of having the same truths brought anew before us. For thus alone can we mark aright the course of development, which in a work of this nature is too important an element to be sacrificed to the fear of at times trenching on ground that may have been partially trodden before.