ploys for its conversion and salvation. Their waywardness and disobedience, their murmurings, their hasty, ill-timed zeal, their negligent remissness, all find their counterpart in us; and well is it if the hearty penitence and the sincere obedience which they manifested at other periods find likewise in us their parallel. The instruction thus gained we shall for brevity's sake call the inferential use of history. This is in every case a legitimate deduction from the narrative, and the spiritual instruction thus gained is, by the fairest construction, a part of the meaning of the inspired record.

Next to this we shall mention what may be called the analogical use of Scripture. This is done when we trace resemblances between natural and spiritual objects, and illustrate the latter through the medium of the former. There is no logical deduction here, as in the former case. We find in it, not proof, but illustration. Where the resemblance is striking, and especially where it extends to many particulars, it often enables the mind easily and distinctly to apprehend what otherwise, perhaps, it could scarcely grasp; and even if it does not positively confirm the truth, it performs a valuable service in obviating objections. With many minds, an apt analogy has all the force of a rigid proof, or is, perhaps, more effective; because more intelligible and impressive, than such a proof would be to them. It is to all a pleasing as well as an instructive way of conveying truth. We make use of analogies from the works of God in nature, the better to set forth spiritual relations; and why may we not make a similar use of his Word? especially as we can claim for it the example of inspired apostles, who not unfrequently drew such analogies from the Old Testament for the instruction of their hearers or readers. The propriety and the advantages of it are so obvious that it is constantly done by all Christians; and some of these analogies are so true and striking that they have stamped themselves upon our current devotional language, and upon our most ordinary conceptions of things, to such an extent, indeed, that in employing them we scarcely think that we are using figures. The wilderness world, the Jordan of death, the heavenly Canaan, are as familiar in our religious language as any literal expression we can employ. The only caution necessary in connection with this use of Scripture is, that we should remember analogies are not proofs, and even the best analogies are not perfect. They should, therefore, not be pressed too far; it does not follow that because there is a resemblance, however striking, in some points, there must be a corresponding similarity in every other. Neither does one analogy exclude another; but the same thing may have a resemblance on different sides to various spiritual truths, and may be rightfully

employed in illustration of them all. In order to learn what is the truth, we must go to those parts of Scripture where it is plainly and directly conveyed. But when the truth has first been discovered and proved from other sources, we may then resort to analogies to aid in its distinct conception and to impress it more vividly on the mind; while, of course, the use of any passage by way of analogy is never to be understood as superseding or invalidating its proper historical sense.

A third use of these parts of Scripture may be called their suggestive use, by which we mean the taking its language in detached portions, and without any particular attention to its connection, or to the precise sense which it must have in the place where it occurs, allowing it to suggest any profitable sense which the words may be capable of bearing, or awaken any train of devout thought which may casually connect itself with them. This, of course, is not interpreting Scripture; the meanings or the thoughts thus suggested are never to be put forward as the true sense of the passage, with which they may be connected; and yet we think that, if indulged in sparingly, and by a person already well instructed and of sound judgment, it may not only be allowable, but very profitable. It is well to have devout thoughts and important truths frequently in our minds, whatever may be the immediate occasion of their introduction. As we walk by the way or sit in the house, as we look abroad upon the works of God or upon the handicraft of man, it is of service to let every thing be an occasion of suggesting such thoughts, however remote or even fanciful the association that introduces them. Especially, then, it seems to us that when we are reading the Word of God, about which every sacred association spontaneously clusters, we may at times with profit, instead of anxiously confining ourselves to the strict and proper sense of the passage, allow our thoughts to have loose rein, and yield ourselves up to any pious reflection that strikes us in connection with it. The only danger here arises from its excessive use, tending to the neglect of that more solid study of the Bible, by which alone we can learn what it truly teaches, and from its injudicious use allowing thoughts to be suggested which are themselves erroneous or of an improper kind. Of course, these suggestions are not proved to be true from their having arisen in connection with Scripture; they form no part of the actual sense of the passage; and yet they are sometimes so easily connected with it, the language which the sacred writer employs upon his own immediate subject often admits of so ready and apt an application to some higher subject, that it would almost seem as if the language had been carefully framed to admit of both applications, and it is scarcely possible for a pious and reflecting mind to read the one without

instantly recurring to the other. Thus when we read, "Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered the heart of man the things which God hath prepared for them that love him," who can avoid thinking of the heavenly glory, though that is not the subject originally contemplated by the sacred writer? When it is said of Samson, "the dead, which he slew at his death, were more than they which he slew in his life," how can we help connecting it in thought with Him who triumphed when he fell over all the powers of darkness? Different minds are differently affected by suggestions of this sort, so that no one can prescribe an absolute rule for the government of another. Much depends upon the turn of mind and habit of thought. What seems to one a fanciful and incongruous association may afford rich and profitable meditation to another. We should not absolutely condemn all associations of this sort, therefore, in the gross, or even in all cases those which may seem insipid and profitless to us; they may appear differently to others. Some eminently pious and judicious men have made frequent use of the Old Testament in this way; and with the limitations we have above prescribed to it, it does not seem as though it could do any harm. Indeed, the apostles themselves, not so frequently as some have alleged, yet occasionally, made a similar use of the Old Testament, accommodating its language to some new idea; not thus expounding Scripture in a sense foreign to the intent of the original writer, but using its familiar words as an apt vehicle of their own thoughts.

In our remarks thus far, we have had primarily in view the spiritual sense that may be elicited from or connected with Scripture, in order to a practical application of it to our hearts and consciences. The historical types of the Old Testament, or those persons and events in the former dispensation, which are to be considered as typical, either specifically of Christ and his work, or more generally of persons and events in the present dispensation, may be explained in the same way. And though it would savour of presumption in us to assert positively that we have a perfectly satisfactory solution of a question so much debated, and on which there has been and still is so great a diversity of views even among sound and learned divines, we may venture to express our opinion that the three uses of Scripture above described, the inferential, the analogical, and the suggestive, will go very far in explaining this subject. There are types in all those senses more or less explicit; some of them stated to be types by the inspired writers; others which we argue to be types, proceeding upon the same principles which they seem to have followed. Thus, to illustrate our meaning by the case of Joshua: no one, we presume, would be

disposed to doubt that he was a distinguished type of the Lord Jesus Christ. He is not expressly called so in the New Testament, it is true; but from the instances of types that we do find there, it is plain that he is to be so regarded. And he may be considered as a type in all three of the senses which have been spoken of. As the divinely constituted, divinely qualified, and successful leader of God's people, he is a type of which the inferential use may be made to point to Christ; for the gracious God, who raised up the leader suited to that emergency of his people, attended him by his divine aid, by him subdued their foes and fulfilled his promises of good, thereby pledged himself to raise up at the fit time one who should supply every other real need of his people, and who should be at once divinely appointed and qualified to bring in upon them every spiritual good which he promised and intended for them. Looking upon Joshua, therefore, they could strengthen their faith in the coming of the predicted Shiloh; and from what God had mercifully given them in the one, they could form some kind of expectation as to what he designed for them in the other. In this manner Joshua could have been regarded as a type of the coming Saviour before he actually appeared.

The suggestive use of the life and character of Joshua in its typical relation to Christ could, on the other hand, only be made after the great antitype had come. Now that we have learned all about Christ from actual manifestation, we can again turn back and take a fresh survey of the type, and new points of contact, never observed before, will be discovered between them. Thus, that he should bear the name of Joshua, which is the Hebrew form of Jesus; that he should be in Egypt in his infancy, and in his infancy be endangered by the murderous edict of a cruel tyrant; that he should be forty years in the wilderness, and Jesus forty days in the same;-accidental resemblances like these, if we call them such, may suggest reflections more or less profitable to us, and may connect more closely in our minds the life of Joshua with that of Him whom he typified; but it could never have reasonably occurred to the mind of any one to anticipate these coincidences before the Saviour had actually come.

The analogical use of this type might be made both before Christ came and after; but only as his character and the nature of his work were known from other sources independent of the history wherein the type is found, as, for instance, from the prophecies respecting Christ or his recorded life. Analogies between what one did in natural and the other in spiritual things are so obvious and abundant that we need not delay to point them out. Here again let it be borne in mind that it is the inferential only which strictly teaches;—the analogical illus

trates what is elsewhere learned; while the suggestive pleasingly and impressively carries our thoughts, though it be by trivial ways, to Him whom we cannot too frequently contemplate.

We have thought it more conducive to the edification of the general reader to present our own views of this interesting subject than to give a more particular account of the work which has immediately suggested them, and the title of which is prefixed to this article. We desire, however, in conclusion, to invite attention to it, as a sample of an interesting and important class of German works, for which we are indebted to a wholesome reaction from the sceptical excesses of the modern school of criticism and interpretation. We desire to see the growing taste for German literature in this department directed not merely to innocuous but to salutary objects, and we therefore take pleasure in calling the attention of our Biblical students to the works which have been called into existence within a few years by the example and authority of Hengstenberg. One of the earliest of these writers is the one before us, Keil of Dorpat, who has done good service to the cause of truth, not only in this work on Joshua, but in a later one on Kings, and an earlier one on Chronicles. To the same general class, but with less direct dependence upon Hengstenberg, belong Kurtz, the author of several valuable works upon the Pentateuch and the Old Testament History, and Delitzsch, the author of a kindred work on the interpretation of prophecy. As co-workers, more or less directly and successfully, in the promotion of the same end, the names of Ranke, Hävernick, and Drechsler, are already familiar to our German-reading students of the Bible.

ART. VII.—The True Test of an Apostolical Ministry.

THE apostles governed the primitive church, not in dioceses or fixed districts, but with an ambulatory and convenient jurisdiction. The power of each extended to the whole. Still, in the exercise of this extraordinary power, they appear to have had some regard to a division of labour. Paul expresses his unwillingness to interfere with other men's labours, and his earnest wish to preach the gospel where it had not yet been heard.-(Rom. xv. 20, 21.) In accordance with this method was the general distribution of the Jews and Gentiles between Paul and Peter.-(Gal. ii. 7.)

When a church was founded by an apostle, he seems to have sustained a peculiar relation to it afterwards, as its spiritual father, and as such bound still in some degree to