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and Vyâsa are still revered and studied, the teachings of Plato, Bacon and Descartes find also many a zealous defender upon the banks of the sacred river. England has hitherto given India an education shorn of Christianity, and the consequence has been that the favorite school with Young Bengal" is a school of Deism; but a brighter day is dawning: revolutions in opinion do not spring up suddenly in this oriental world; yet the time is coming, when the Gospel of Christ, having gained access to the spiritual convictions of the multitude of India, shall gather up and appropriate to itself those secret truths which Hinduism contains, and shall solve those serious problems of life and eternity with which the Hindu mind has been so long and fruitlessly engaged.

ARTICLE II.

THEORIES OF MESSIANIC PROPHECY.

BY REV. S. C. BARTLETT, PROFESSOR IN CHICAGO THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY.

THE subject of Messianic Prophecy is attended with great difficulties. Certain portions of the Old Testament are so direct in their reference to Christ and his Kingdom, and so distinctly appropriated by him and his apostles, as to secure a general recognition among all who believe in prophecy and inspiration. But around this circle of clear light the direct prophecies - there is a broad penumbra

of doubt and debate.

In regard to a large part of this debated ground, the question among evangelical expositors has often been more as to the mode than the fact of a Messianic reference. And their concurrent recognition of the fact has often been the more weighty and impressive by reason of their diverse theories concerning the mode. It is interesting also to

observe how the weight of evidence in regard to particular passages has sometimes pressed upon candid scholars, till it has forced them to remodel their theories, or even to receive the fact to the detriment of their theories. Rosenmuller was constrained to reverse the judgment of his first edition, and in his Compend to receive not only the second, forty-fifth, seventy-second, and one-hundred and tenth, but even the twenty-first Psalm, as Messianic. Hengstenberg, in the interval between his Christology and his Commentary on the Psalms, found it necessary very materially to modify his views, and to include the thirty-fifth, thirty-eighth, fortyfirst, and sixty-ninth Psalms in the same class with the sixteenth, twenty-second, and fortieth. He did it by abandoning the exclusive reference of the latter class to Christ, and making them a set of generic utterances concerning "the ideal righteous sufferer," which apply in their fulness only to the suffering Saviour. We may question the theory; but it resulted in very considerably enlarging his catalogue of the Psalms ultimately relating to Christ. The late Professor Stuart, in discussing the numerous citations of Psalm sixtyninth by Christ's apostles,' though he takes the position that "David is originally and personally meant, and not Christ," and that these citations are made only as apposite and felicitous quotations, just as "we are accustomed continually to quote and apply maxims and sentiments from the classic writers," yet changes the whole bearing of his position by the brief remark that "David, as King, was, beyond all reasonable doubt, a type of King Messiah; and what was done in respect to the type may, by the usage of the New Testament writers, be applied to the antitype." The gradual expansion of view in the mind of Tholuck is well exemplified by a single instance: The fourth edition of his Commentary on John explains the Saviour's declaration, "Moses wrote of me" (John v. 46), as a reference to the

1 Matt. xxvii. 34, 38, xxiii. 38; Mark, xv. 23; John, ii. 17, xix. 28, 29, xv. 25; Acts, i. 20; Rom. xi. 9, xv. 3.

2 Stuart's Hints on Prophecy, pp. 37, 39.

single passage found in Deut. xviii. 18. But in the seventh edition he writes as follows: "On eypayev the commentators refer to different Mosaic prophecies, especially to Deut. xviii. 18. But the train of thought in our passage leads us to take it in a universal sense, by virtue of which Bengel adds to eypayev a 'nusquam non, he writes everywhere.'. . . Christ may have had in his eye the indirect and typical prophecies of Moses as well as the direct ones."

The fluctuating views of individuals, no less than the conflicting opinions of different writers, indicate the intrinsic. difficulty of the subject. The topic itself has lain before the church and occupied the attention of its leading minds from the beginning. It was not brought there by idle curiosity; but the sacred writers themselves have placed even its more difficult aspects on the threshold of the gospel. The first two chapters of Matthew comprise four of the most perplexing of the Old Testament citations. Mark begins his narrative with quotations from Malachi and Isaiah. The first chapter of Luke connects the infant Saviour with the "throne of his father David" and the "house of Jacob,” and in various ways binds the new dispensation close upon the events and predictions of the old.' John's gospel brings at once before its readers in connection. with Christ, the voice in the wilderness, the Lamb of God, Jacob's vision, the psalmist's zeal for his Father's house, the temple, and the brazen serpent. And similar allusions run through the whole texture of the New Testament. The subject was not introduced by Rabbins, nor Alexandrian Jews, nor Christian Fathers, but by the sacred writers themselves.

The recent Oxford doubters have well indicated the importance of the topic. After objecting to such things as the recognition of any "symbolism of the gospel in the law," or of any distinction "in the elder prophecies between

1 E. g., the sending of Gabriel, the prophecy concerning “Elias,” the quotations from Zachariah and Isaiah, and the putting of Hannah's song in the mouth of Mary.

the temporal and the spiritual Israel," one writer proceeds as follows: "The question which has been suggested runs up into a more general one, 'the relation between the Old and New Testaments;' for the Old Testament will receive a different meaning accordingly as it is explained from itself or from the New. In the first case, a careful and conscientious study of each one for itself is all that is required; in the second case, the types and ceremonies of the law, perhaps the very facts and persons of the history, will be assumed to be predestined or made after a pattern corresponding to the things that were to be in the latter days. And this question of itself stirs another question respecting the interpretation of the Old Testament in the New. Is such interpretation to be regarded as the meaning of the original text, or an accommodation of it to the thoughts of other times?" The writer does not exaggerate the importance of the question, nor deny the method of the sacred writers, while he clearly intimates his refusal to accept their authority as interpreters. He also, by implication, suggests some of the sources of difficulty.

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The difficulties of the subject may be best presented by a few well-known instances. Of Christ's abode in Egypt and return to Palestine, it is declared in Matt. ii. 15: "He was there until the death of Herod, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, Out of Egypt have I called my Son." But the original passage (Hosea ii. 1), as Mr. Barnes truly says: "evidently speaks of God's calling his people out of Egypt under Moses;" and he ventures to add: "It cannot be supposed that the passage in Hosea was a prophecy of the Messiah, but was only used by Matthew to express that event." Again, Hebrews i. 5 applies to Christ the declaration : " I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son." The quotation is from 2 Sam. vii. 12-16, a passage in which God promises David a posterity with an everlasting kingdom, but threatens that posterity with chastisement "if he commit

1 Professor Jowett, in "Recent Inquiries in Theology," p. 407.

iniquity," and closes with the assurance that "my mercy shall not depart from him, as I took it away from Saul." So the citation in Hebrews x. 5-7 ascribes to the Messiah the utterance of the words in Psalm xi. 6-8: "Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not," etc., though the same speaker, in verse 12, speaks of "mine iniquities." A similar difficulty in the sixty-ninth Psalm (ver. 5) was so formidable as to prevent Hengstenberg from admitting it into his Christology, although, as Alexander truly observes, no Psalm except the twenty-second is more distinctly applied to Christ in the New Testament. In 1 Cor. x. 3-6 we read that the fathers were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and did all eat the same spiritual meat, and did all drink the same spiritual drink; for they drank of that,spiritual rock which followed them, and that rock was Christ;" and that these things were our examples" (TÚTTO). John records, xix. 35, of the exemption of the Saviour from the breaking of his bones: "these things were done that the scripture should be fulfilled, which says, A bone of him shall not be broken." But the passage, Exodus vii. 46, which he quotes, is a direction concerning the paschal lamb. Paul, in Gal. iii. 16, refers thus to the promise to Abraham and his seed (Gen. xiii. 15, xvii. 8): "He saith not, And to seeds as of many, but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ." Afterwards he argues that by the union of believers to Christ, the same promise is to them, and concludes in verse 29: "And if ye be Christ's then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise." Add to these instances the quotation of the eighth Psalm in Heb. ii. 6-8, with the subsequent application to Christ, the use of Isaiah vii. 14 in Matt. i. 22, 23, and of Isaiah xxix. 13 in Matt. xv. 7, and we have at least specimens of the chief forms of difficulty surrounding the subject of Messianic Prophecy.

The problem is to discover some fundamental and central principle, according to which these various kinds of passages can be understood, so as neither to abrogate the authority of the New Testament, nor to set aside the authority of the Old.

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