His out

in his old age, on his death-bed, and forever. ward habits may be changed and modified; but his heart ordinarily remains the same. His future principles, feelings, and prospects, bear the same relation to those of his youth, that the streams of a mighty river bear to the source, from which it took its rise, among the mountains. Reformation, regeneration, conversion, are always possible; but they take place very rarely in old age; and even when they do take place at that period of life, the habits and feelings of earlier days, however changed and corrected, still colour and even controul the life. In this respect, what Wordsworth says poetically, is true in fact :

"The child is father to the man.'

The day rests in the bosom of the morning; the rose is bound up in the bud; the oak lies in the acorn; summer and autumn are contained in spring. So the life and destiny of the man are generally wrapped up in the heart of the child or of the boy. That little fellow there, looking up so pleasantly and gratefully in his mother's face, and as she tells him of Jesus and the great salvation, is, perhaps, truly converted. Like Timothy, from a child he may know the Scriptures. His little heart, perhaps, has been softened by divine love. He does not know much; but he can love, he can hope, he can obey. He grows up, and the world seizes him; but he can never forget his mother, nor his mother's prayers. His image is before his eyes, even in scenes of folly, upbraiding him for his sin. Anew the Spirit of God touches his heart. He breaks away from the world. He weeps, he prays, he repents; and his child's heart, so soft, so calm, so satisfied, so grateful and happy, comes back again. In a word, he is converted, and becomes a little child, and thus enters the kingdom of heaven. Before, he seemed a full-grown man, with all the strength and pride of a man; cold, secular, worldly, unbending; ready to resent an insult, and quick to repel the arguments and appeals of the Gospel. But he is a child again, a Christian; a subdued penitent, grateful child.

INFLUENCE.

THE most insignificant people must not through indolence and selfishness undervalue their own influence. Most persons have a little circle of which they are a sort of centre. Its smallness may lessen their quantity of good, but does not diminish the duty of using that little influence wisely. Where is the human being so inconsiderable, but that he may in some shape benefit others, either by calling their virtues into exercise, or by setting them an example of virtue himself? But we are humble just in the wrong place. When the exhibition of our talents or splendid qualities is in question, we are not backward in the display. When a little self-denial is to be exercised, when a little good might be effected by our example, by our discreet management in company, by giving a better turn to conversation, then at once we grow wickedly modest: “ Such an insignificant creature as I am, can do no good. Had I higher rank, or brighter talents, then indeed my influence might be exerted to some purpose." Thus under the mask of diffidence, we justify our indolence, and let slip those lesser occasions of promoting religion, which, if we all improved, how much might the condition of society be raised!

The hackneyed interrogation, "What, must we be always talking about religion?" must have the hackneyed answer-" Far from it." Talking about religion is not being religious. But we may bring the spirit of religion into company, and keep it in perpetual operation, when we do not professedly make it our subject. We may be constantly advancing its interests; we may, without effort or affectation, be giving an example of candour, of moderation, of humility, of forbearance. We may employ our influence by correcting falsehood, by checking levity, by discouraging calumny, by vindicating misrepresented merit, by countenancing every thing which has a good tendency-in short, by throwing our whole weight, be it great or small, into the right scale.

HINTS ON THE INTERPRETATION OF THE

SCRIPTURES.

NO VI.

THE practice of Christians has assumed it to be legitimate in dealing with passages of Scripture, to apply them as to interpret them as applicable to a greater or less extent to bearing reference to more cases than one; in other words, other persons, times, events, cases, than those to which they originally were referred. I shall endeavour to shew in this paper, what warrant we have for this practice in Scripture, how far it is legitimate as a rule of interpretation, and bind up the observations made into a general maxim for our guidance herein. We certainly have many instances of such a proceeding in the interpretations given of various parts of the sacred volume by Christ and his Apostles. We constantly find passages directly limited and exclusive in their sense, when taken in the connection they were originally placed in, extended and enlarged by them, so as to bear a reference to present events or persons. In many prophecies which were at first delivered by the prophets, as directed to the Jewish people then living, and having their fulfilment in events then pending, we find them made to pass over the lapse of many ages, and become the predictions of other events, and bear an application to another generation of people. As for instance in the fulfilment of many prophecies in Christ, which had manifestly one fulfilment in, and were originally spoken of, David. Facts, too, are thus as it were enlarged; and as they are made types of, so have their language reference to, other events, as though they were a simple prophecy of the latter. As those two facts recorded, the one by Hosea, and the other by Jeremiah, as occurring in the history of the Jewish people: "Out of Egypt have I called my son ;" and "a voice was heard in Ramah, lamentation, and bitter weeping." The former referring to the departure from Egypt, the latter to the mourning of the Israelites, during their captivity in Babylon. Both these are declared by St. Matthew, (chapter ii,) to have been prophetical of certain events in the history of our blessed Lord. Nor is it confined only

to predictions or events; but the same method of interpretation applies practical exhortations and advice, which were at first intended to support, console, or edify one person, by an elongation, as it were, of prophetic perspective, to other persons, in after ages, as directly belonging to them. In the concluding admonitions of the epistle to the Hebrews, the Apostle urges as one motive to contentment, in times of difficulty and pressing circumstances, that God hath said, "I will never leave thee nor forsake thee." Now, when we come to examine the original utterance of this promise, we find that Moses delivered it, shortly before his death, to support and encourage the Israelites in their subjugation of the land of Canaan: "Be strong, and of good a courage, fear not, nor be afraid of them: for the Lord thy God, he it is that doth go with thee; he will not fail thee, nor forsake thee." (Deut. xxxi. 6.) Here, however, St. Paul, divinely inspired as he was, binds this promise upon the Hebrew Christians, and bids them regard it as written for their especial consolation and relief.

Now, on what principle does this extended and continuous application in the instances before quoted take its stand. For if it can be elicited, we shall on the one hand be guarded against a loose and unwarranted interpretation of God's Word, and, on the other, shall find a staff to lean upon, and a light to guide us towards a faithful exposition of its contents. In this way, were prophecies only thus treated, we might find a good reason for the practice in the theory of type and antitype, where the investment of each with a similar character, or the features which mark the latter being delineated in the former, would admit of the prediction being applied in a double sense, and casting the rays of its brilliance through and beyond the one to the other. But the

* Some consider these words to have been adopted by the Apostle, from those spoken to Joshua, after Moses' death. (See Josh. i. 5.) The argument will apply with equal force, whichever be true; but Í am more inclined to believe that they were adopted from this place in Deuteronomy; as it is well known that the Apostles quoted mostly from the Septuagint, and their translation here is the same as that in Heb. xiii.: whereas in Joshua the words used are different.

principle in the last instance cannot be so limited; for there would be manifestly no impropriety in applying its encouragement to any body of Christians in similar circumstances; that is to say, its application may be indefinitely extended. But if we examine into the ground of reason, which furnishes to us a right for interpreting prophecies in this double sense, we shall gain a clear insight into that which stamps this further extension of the right with truth. Why then are certain predictions, which we meet with in the Bible, unfolded in this double sense? An accurate writer on prophecy, thus clearly expounds its reasonableness and strict propriety: "This age of prophecy," he says, (speaking of David and Solomon's reign,) "brings the doctrine of the double sense,' as it has been called, before us. For Scriptural prophecy is so framed, in some of its predictions, as to bear a sense directed to two objects, of which structure the predictions concerning the kingdom of David furnishes a conspicuous example. *** The double sense of prophecy, is of all things the most remote from fraud or equivocation, and has its ground of reason perfectly clear. For what is it? not the convenient latitude of two unconnected senses, wide of each other, and giving room to a fallacious ambiguity, but the combination of two related, analogous and harmonizing, though disparate subjects, each clear and definite in itself. Of the validity and rectitude of this interpretation by a double sense, there is a simple and decisive test, which will shew at once when it may with safety, and should in reason, be admitted. The test is, that each of the subjects ascribed to the prophecy be such as may challenge the right of it in its main import, and meet it in its obvious representation."*

Leaving now this particular doctrine of prophetical interpretation, we may remark, that the general principle is substantiated on the ground of analogy. Subjects which resemble each other in their great essential particulars, through which there runs not an incidental, but a close and striking similarity, which are tied to each other as it were by a cord of the same materials and

* Davison's Lectures on Prophecy. 195.