The Typology of Scripture

The Typology of Scripture

By Patrick Fairbairn
Published by Smith & English, 1854

VOLUME II, CHAPTER SIXTH.

TYPICAL THINGS IN HISTORY DURING THE PROGRESS OF THE FIRST DISPENSATION.

Having now considered the typical bearing of the fundamental facts and symbolical institutions belonging to the first dispensation of grace, it remains that we endeavour to ascertain what there might afterwards be evolved of a typical nature during the progress of that dispensation, by means of the transactions and events that took place under it. These, it was already noted in our preliminary remarks, could only be employed to administer instruction of a subsidiary kind. In their remoter reference to gospel-times, as in their direct historical aspect, they can rank no higher than progressive developements---not laying a foundation, but proceeding on the foundation already laid, and giving to some of the points connected with it a more specific direction, or supplementing them with additional discoveries of the mind and will of God. It is impossible here, any more than in the subjects treated of in the preceding chapters, to isolate entirely the portions that have a typical bearing from others closely connected with them. And even in those which exhibit something of the typical element, it can scarcely be expected, at so early a period in the world's history, to possess much of a precise and definite character; for in type, as in prophecy, the progress must necessarily have been from the more general to the more particular. In tracing this progress, we shall naturally connect the successive developements with single persons or circumstances; yet without thereby meaning to indicate that these are in every respect to be accounted typical.

SECTION FIRST.

THE SEED OF PROMISE--ABEL, ENOCH.

The first distinct appearance of the typical in connection with the period subsequent to the fall, is to be found in the case of Abel; but in that quite generally. Abel was the first member of the promised seed; and through him supplementary knowledge was imparted more especially in one direction, viz. in regard to the principle of election, which was to prevail in the actual fulfilment of the original promise. That promise itself, when viewed in connection with the instituted symbols of religion, might be perceived--if very thoughtfully considered--to have implied something of an elective process; but the truth was not clearly expressed. And it was most natural, that the first parents of the human family should have overlooked what but obscurely intimated a limitation in the expected good. They would readily imagine, when a scheme of grace was introduced, which gave promise of a complete destruction of the adversary, with the infliction only of a partial injury on the woman's seed, that the whole of their offspring should attain to victory over the power of evil. This joyous anticipation affectingly discovers itself in the exclamation of Eve at the birth of her first-born son, "I have gotten a man from (or, as it should rather be, with) the Lord"--- gratefully acknowledging the hand of God in giving her, as she thought, the commencement of that seed which was assured through divine grace of a final triumph. This she reckoned a real getting--gain in the proper sense--calling her child by a name that expressed this idea (Cain); and she evidently did so by regarding it as the precious gift of God, the beginning and the pledge of the ascendancy that was to be won over the malice of the tempter. [1] Never was mother destined to receive a sorer disappointment. She did not want faith in the divine word, but her faith was still without knowledge, and she must learn by painful experience how the plan of God for man's recovery was to be wrought out. A like ignorance, though tending now in the opposite direction, again discovers itself at the birth of Abel, whose name (breath, nothingness) seems, as Delitzsch has remarked, to have proceeded from her felt regard to the divine curse, as that given to Cain did from a like regard to the divine promise. It is possible that, between the births of the two brothers, what she had seen of the helpless and suffering condition of infancy in the first-born may have impressed the mind of Eve with such a sense of the evils entailed upon her offspring by the curse, as to have rendered her for the time forgetful of the better things disclosed in the promise. It is possible, also, that the corporeal frame and personal appearance of Abel may have been greatly less prepossessing than those of his brother. However it might be, the name imposed clearly indicates, that Eve associated with this second child her misgivings and fears respecting the future, as she had associated with the first her buoyant hopes and joyful anticipations. The result shewed how little the operations of grace were to pursue the course that might seem accordant with the views and feelings of nature. In particular, it shewed that, so far from the whole offspring of the woman being included, there was from the first to pervade the scheme a principle of election, in virtue of which a portion only, and that by no means the likeliest, according to the estimation of nature, were to inherit the blessing, while the rest should fall in with the designs of the tempter, and be reckoned to him for a seed of cursing. Abel, therefore, in his acceptance with God, in his faith respecting the divine purposes, and his presentation of offerings that drew down the divine favour, stands as the type of an elect seed of blessing -- a seed that was ultimately to have its root and its culmination in Him, who was to be peculiarly the child of promise. In Cain, on the other hand, the impersonation of nature's pride, waywardness, and depravity, there appeared a representative of that unhappy portion of mankind who should espouse the interest of the adversary, and seek by unhallowed means to establish it in the world.

The brief notices of antediluvian history are evidently framed for the purpose of exhibiting the contrary state and tendencies of these two seeds, and of rendering manifest the mighty difference, which God's work of grace was destined to make in the character and prospects of man. The name given by Eve to her third son (Seth, appointed), with the reason assigned for it, "For God," said she, "hath appointed me another seed instead of Abel, whom Cain slew," bespoke the insight the common mother of mankind had now obtained into this mournful division in her offspring. Cain, she regards as having, in a manner, ceased to belong to her seed; he had become too plainly identified with that of the adversary. He seems now to her view to stand at the head of a God-opposing interest in the world--and, as in contrast to him, the destroyer of the true seed, God is seen mercifully providing another in its room. [2] So that there were again the two seeds in the world, each taking root, and bringing forth fruit after its kind. But how different! On the one hand appears the Cainite section, smitten with the curse of sin, yet proudly shunning the path of reconciliation--retiring to a distance from the emblems of God's manifested presence--building a city, as if to lighten, by the aid of human artifice and protection, the evils of a guilty conscience and a blighted condition--cultivating with success the varied elements of natural strength and worldly greatness, inventing instruments of music and weapons of war, trampling under foot, as seemed good to the flesh, the authority of heaven and the rights of men, and at last, by deeds of titanic prowess and violence, boldly attempting to bring heaven and earth alike under its sway (Gen. iv. 13-24; vi. 4-6). [3] On the other hand appears the woman's seed of promise, seeking to establish and propagate itself in the earth by the fear of God, and the more regular celebration of his worship (Gen. iv. 26)--trusting for its support in the grace and blessing of God, as the other did in the powers and achievements of corrupt nature--and so, continuing uninterrupted its line of godly descendants, yet against such fearful odds, and at last with such a perilous risk of utter extinction, that divine faithfulness and love required to meet violence with violence, and bring the conflict in its first form to a close by the sweeping desolation of the flood. It terminated, as every such conflict must do, on the side of those who stood in the promised grace and revealed testimony of God. These alone live for ever; and the triumph of all that is opposed to them can be but for a moment.

This seed of the woman, however,---the seed that she produces in faith upon the promise of God, and in which the grace of God takes vital effect--is found, not only as to its existence, to be associated with, a principle of election, but also as to the relative place occupied by particular members in its line. All have by faith an interest in God, and in consequence triumph over the power of the adversary. But some have a larger interest than others, and attain to a higher victory. There was an election within the election. So it appeared especially in the case of Enoch, the seventh from Adam, and again in Noah, who, as they alone of the antediluvians were endowed with the spirit of prophecy, so they alone, also, are said to have "walked with God" (Gen. v. 22, vi. 9)--an expression never used of any who lived in later times, and denoting the nearest and most confidential intercourse, as if they had all but regained the old paradisiacal freedom of communion with Heaven. And as the divine seal, upon this higher elevation of the life of God in their souls, they were both honoured with singular tokens of distinction--the one having been taken, without tasting of death, to still nearer fellowship with God, to abide in his immediate presence ("He was not, for God took him"), and the other became under God the saviour and father of a new world. Of the latter we shall have occasion to speak separately, as there were connected with his case other elements of a typical nature. But in regard to Enoch, as the short and pregnant notice of his life and of his removal out of it, plainly indicates something transcendently good and great, so, we cannot doubt, the contemporaries of the patriarch knew it to be such. They knew--at least they had within their reach the means of knowing--that in consideration of his eminent piety, and of the circumstances of the time in which he lived, he was taken direct to a higher sphere, without undergoing the common lot of mortality. That there should have been but one such case during the whole antediluvian period, could not but be regarded as indicating its exceptional character, and stamping it the more emphatically as a revelation from Heaven. Nor could the voice it uttered in the ears of reflecting men sound otherwise than as a proclamation, that God was assuredly with that portion of the woman's seed who served and honoured him--that he manifested himself to such, as a chosen people, in another manner than he did to the world, and made them sure of a complete and final victory over all the malice of the tempter and the evils of sin. If not usually without death, yet notwithstanding it, and through it, they should certainly attain to eternal life in the presence of God.

In this respect Enoch--as being the most distinguished member of the seed of blessing in its earlier division, and the most honoured heir of that life which comes through the righteousness of faith--is undoubtedly to be viewed as a type of Christ. Something he had in common with the line as a whole--he was a partaker of that electing grace and love of God, in virtue of which alone any could rise from the condemnation of sin to the inheritance of life in the divine kingdom. But apart from others in the same line, and above them, he passed to the inheritance by a more direct and triumphant path--a conqueror in the very mode of his transition from time to eternity. These characteristics, which in Enoch's case were broadly marked, though in themselves somewhat general, and incapable of being understood to have reference to a personal Messiah, till such a Messiah had been more distinctly announced, are yet pre-eminently the characteristics of Christ, and in the full and absolute sense could be found only in him. He is, as no other individual among men could be, the seed of the woman, considered as the seed of promise, destined by God's purpose of grace to bruise the head of the tempter, and reverse the process of nature's corruption. In him, as present from the first to the "determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God," was the ultimate root of such a seed to be found which should otherwise have had no existence in the world. He, therefore, beyond all others, was the chosen of God, "his elect in whom his soul delights." And though to the eye of a carnal and superficial world, which judges only by the appearance, he wanted what seemed necessary to justify his claim, to such a position, yet in reality lie possessed, and gave infallible proof of his divine connection with the Father, by a faith that never faltered in the hardest trials, a righteousness free from every stain of impurity, and a life that could only underlie for a moment the cloud of death, but even there could see no corruption, and presently rose, as to its proper home, in the regions of eternal light and glory. With our eyes resting on this exalted object in the ends of time, we have no difficulty in perceiving, that what appeared of supernatural in such men as Abel and Enoch, only foreshadowed the higher and greater good that was to come. It did, however, foreshadow this--not indeed personally and formally, as if from the appearance of Abel and Enoch a personal Messiah could have been descried, or as if from the incidents in their respective lives, precisely similar ones might have been inferred as likely to happen in the eventful career of the man Christ Jesus. We could not descend thus to individual and personal marks of coincidence between the lives of those early patriarchs and the life of Messiah, without, in the first instance, anticipating the order of Providence, which had not yet directed the eye of the Church to a personal manifestation of Godhead, and then entangling ourselves in endless difficulties of practical adjustment--as in the case of Enoch's translation, who went to heaven without tasting death, while Christ could not enter into glory till he had tasted it. But let those patriarchs be contemplated as the earlier links of a chain, which, from its very nature, must have some higher and nobler termination; let them be viewed as characters that already bore upon them the lineaments, and possessed the beginnings of the new creation; what do they, then, appear but embodied prophecies of a more general kind in respect to "Him who was to come?" They heralded his future redemptive work by exhibiting in part the signs and fruits of its prospective achievements. The beginning was prophectic of the end; for if the one had not been in prospect, the other could not have come into existence. And in their selection by God from the general mass around them, their faith in God's Word, and their possession of God's favour and blessing, as outwardly displayed and manifested in their histories, we see struggling, as it were, into being the first elements of that new state and destiny, which were only to find their valid reason, and reach their proper elevation, in the person and kingdom of Messiah.

SECTION SECOND.

NOAH AND THE DELUGE.

The case of Noah, we have already stated, embodied some new elements of a typical kind, which gave to it the character of a distinct stage in the developenient of God's work of grace in the world. It did so in connection with the deluge, which had a gracious, as well as a judicial aspect, and, by a striking combination of opposites, brought prominently out the principle, that the accomplishment of salvation necessarily carries along with it a work of destruction. This was not absolutely a new principle at the period of the deluge. It had a place in the original promise, and a certain exemplification in the lives of believers from the first. By giving to the prospect of recovery the peculiar form of a bruising of the tempter's head, the Lord plainly intimated, that somehow a work of destruction was to go along with the work of salvation, and was necessary to its accomplishment. No indication, however, was given of the way in which this twofold process was to proceed, or of the nature of the connection between the one part of it and the other. But light to a certain extent soon began to be thrown upon it by the consciousness in each man's bosom of a struggle between the evil and the good--a struggle, which so early as the time of Cain drew forth the divine warning, that either his better part must vindicate for itself the superiority, or it must itself fall down vanquished by the destroyer. Still farther light appeared, when the contending elements grew into two great contending parties, which by an ever-widening breach, and at length by most serious encroachments from the evil on the good, rendered a work of judgment from above necessary to the peace and safety of the believing portion of mankind. The conviction of some approaching crisis of this nature had become so deep in the time of Enoch, that it gave utterance to itself in the prophecy ascribed in the epistle of Jude to that patriarch: "Behold the Lord cometh with ten thousand of his saints to execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds, which they have ungodly committed, and of all their hard speeches, which ungodly sinners have committed against him." The struggle, it was thus announced, should ere long end in a manifestation of God for judgment against the apostate faction, and, by implication, for deliverance to the children of faith and hope.

By the period of Noah's birth, however, the necessity of a divine interposition had become much greater, and it appeared manifest to the small remnant of believers, that the era of retribution, which they now identified with the era of deliverance, must be at hand. Indication was then given of the state of feeling by the name itself of Noah, with the reason assigned for imposing it, "This same shall comfort us concerning our work and toil of our hands, because of the ground, which the Lord hath cursed." The feeling is too generally expressed, to enable us to determine with accuracy, how the parents of this child might expect their troubles to be relieved through his instrumentality. But we hear, at least, in their words the groaning of the oppressed-- the sighing of righteous souls, vexed on account of the evils which were thickening around them, from the unrestrained wickedness of those who had corrupted the earth; and, at the same time, not despairing, but looking up in faith, and even confident that in the lifetime of that child the God of righteousness and truth would somehow avenge the cause of his elect. Whether they had obtained any correct insight or not, into the way by which the object was to be accomplished, the event proved that the spirit of prophecy breathed in their anticipation. Their faith rested upon solid grounds, and in the hope, which it led them to cherish, they were not disappointed. Salvation did come in connection with the person of Noah, and it came in the way of an overwhelming visitation of wrath upon the adversaries.

When we look simply at the outward results produced by that remarkable visitation, they appear to have been twofold--on the one side preservation, on the other destruction. But when we look a little more closely, we perceive, that there was a necessary connection between the two results, and that there was properly but one object aimed at in the dispensation, though in accomplishing it there was required the operation of a double process. That object was, as stated by St Peter, "the saving of Noah and his house" (1 Pet. iii. 20)--saving them as the spiritual seed of God. But saving them from what? Not surely from the violence and desolation of the waters; for the watery element would then have acted as the preservative against itself and instead of being saved by the water, according to the apostolic statement, the family of Noah would have been saved from it. [4] From what, then, were they saved? Undoubtedly from that, which, before the coming of the deluge, formed the real element of danger--the corruption, enmity, and violence of ungodly men. It was this which wasted the church of God, and brought it to the verge of destruction. All was ready to perish. The cause of righteousness had at length but one efficient representative in the person of Noah; and he much "like a lodge in a garden of cucumbers, like a besieged city,"--the object of profane mockery and scorn, taunted, reviled, plied with every weapon fitted to overcome his constancy, and, if not in himself, at least in his family, in danger of suffering shipwreck amid the swelling waves of wickedness around him. It was to save him--and with him, the cause of God--from this source of imminent danger and perdition, that the flood was sent; and it could only do so, by effectually separating between him and the seed of evil-doers--engulphing them in ruin, and sustaining him uninjured in his temporary home. So that the deluge, considered as Noah's baptism, or the means of his salvation from an outward form of spiritual danger, was not less essentially connected with a work of judgment than with an act of mercy. It was by the one, that the other was accomplished; and the support of the ark on the bosom of the waters, was only a collateral object of the deluge. The direct and immediate object was the extermination of that wicked race, whose heaven-daring impiety and hopeless impenitence was the real danger that menaced the cause and people of God,--"the destroying of those (to use the language that evidently refers to it in Rev. xi. 18), who destroyed the earth."

This principle of salvation with destruction, which found such a striking exemplification in the deluge, has been continually appearing anew in the history of God's dealings among men. It appeared, for example, at the period of Israel's redemption from Egypt, when a way of escape was opened for the people of God by the overthrow of Pharaoh and his host; and again at the era of the return from Babylon, when the destruction of the enemy and the oppressor broke asunder the bands with which the children of the covenant were held captive. But it is in New Testament times, and in connection with the work of Christ, that the higher manifestation of the principle appears. Here alone perfection can be said to belong to it. Complete as the work in one respect was in the days of Noah, in another it soon gave unmistakeable evidence of its own imperfection. The immediate danger was averted by the destruction of the wicked in the waters of the deluge, and the safe preservation of Noah and his family as a better seed to replenish the depopulated earth. But it was soon found that the old leaven still lurked in the bosom of the preserved remnant itself; and another race of apostates and destroyers, though of a less ferocious spirit, and under more of restraint in regard to deeds of violence and bloodshed, rose up to prosecute anew the work of the adversary. In Christ, however, the very foundations of evil from the first were struck at, and nothing is left for a second beginning to the cause of iniquity. He came, as foretold by the prophet Isaiah (ch. Ixi. 3), "to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, and the clay of vengeance of our God," which was, at the same time, to be the "year of his redeemed." And, accordingly, by the work he accomplished on earth, "the prince of this world was judged and cast out" (John xii. 31); or, as it is again written, "principalities and powers were spoiled," and "he that had the power of death destroyed" (Col. ii. 14; Heb. ii. 14), thereby giving deliverance to those who were subject to sin and death. He did this once for all, when he fulfilled all righteousness, and suffered unto death for sin. The victory over the tempter then achieved by Christ, no more needs to be repeated than the atonement made for human guilt; it needs to be appropriated merely by his followers, and made vital in their experience. Satan has no longer any right to exercise lordship over men, and hold them in bondage to his usurped authority; the ground of his power and dominion is taken away, because the condemnation of sin, on which it stood, has been for ever abolished. Christ, therefore, at once destroys and saves-- saves by destroying--casts the cruel oppressor down from his ill- gotten supremacy, and so relieves the poor, enthralled, devil-possessed nature of man, and sets it into the glorious liberty of God's children.

In the case of the Redeemer himself, this work is absolutely complete; the man Christ Jesus thoroughly bruised Satan under his feet, and won. a position where in no respect whatever he could be any more subject to the power of evil. Theoretically, we may say, the work is also complete in behalf of his people; on his part, no imperfection cleaves to it. By virtue of the blood of Jesus, the house of our humanity, which naturally stood accursed of God, and was ready to be assailed by every form of evil, is placed on a new and better foundation. It is made holiness to the Lord. The handwriting of condemnation that was against us, is blotted out. The adversary has lost his bill of indictment; and nothing remains but that the members of the human family should, each for themselves, take up the position secured for them by the salvation of Christ, to render them wholly and for ever superior to the dominion of the adversary. But it is here that imperfection still comes in. Men will not lay hold of the advantage obtained for them by the all-prevailing might and energy of Jesus, or they will but partially receive into their experience the benefits it provides for them. Yet there is a measure of success also here, in the case of all genuine believers, And it is to this branch of the subject more immediately that the apostle Peter points, when he represents Christian baptism as the antitype of the deluge. In the personal experience of believers, as symbolized in that ordinance, there is a re-enacting substantially of what took place in the outward theatre of the world by means of the deluge. "The like figure whereunto (literally, the antitype to which, viz. Noah's salvation by water in the ark) even baptism doth also now save us; not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God, by the resurrection of Jesus Christ" (1 Peter iii. 21). Like the apostle's delineations generally, the passage briefly indicates, rather than explicitly unfolds, the truths connected with the subject. Yet, on a slight consideration of it, we readily perceive, that with, profound discernment, it elicits from the ordinance of baptism, as spiritually understood and applied, the same fundamental elements, discovers there the same twofold process, which appeared so strikingly in the case of Noah. Here also there is a salvation finding its accomplishment by means of a destruction--"not the putting away of the filth of the flesh''---not so superficial a riddance of evil, but one of a more important and vital character, bringing "the answer of a good conscience," or the deliverance of the soul from the guilt and power of iniquity. The water of baptism--let the subject be plunged in it ever so deep, or sprinkled ever so much--can no more of itself save him than the water of the deluge could have saved Noah, apart from the faith he possessed, and the preparation it led him to make in constructing and entering into the ark. It was because he held and exercised such faith, that the deluge brought salvation to Noah, while it overwhelmed others in destruction. So is it in baptism, when received in a spirit of faith. There is in this also the putting off of the old man of corruption--crucifying it together with Christ, and at the same time a rising through the resurrection of Christ to the new and heavenly life, which satisfies the demands of a pure and enlightened conscience. So that the really baptised soul is one in which there has been a killing and a making alive, a breaking up and destroying of the root of corrupt nature, and planting in its stead the seed of a divine nature, to spring, and grow, and bring forth fruit to perfection. In the microcosm of the individual believer, there is the perishing of an old world of sin and death, and the establishment of a new world of righteousness and life everlasting.

Such is the proper idea of Christian baptism, and such would be the practical result were the idea fully realized in the experience of the baptised. But this is so far from being the case, that even the idea is apt to suffer in people's minds from the conscious imperfections of their experience. And it might help to check such a tendency--it might, at least, be of service in enabling them to keep themselves well informed as to what should be, if they looked occasionally to what actually was, in the outward pattern of these spiritual things, given in the times of Noah. Are you disinclined, we might say to them, to have the axe so unsparingly applied to the old man of corruption? Think, for your warning, how God spared not the old world, but sent its mass of impurity headlong into the gulph of perdition. Seems it a task too formidable, and likely to prove hopeless in the accomplishment, to maintain your ground against the powers of evil in the world? Think again, for your encouragement, how impotent the giants of wickedness were of old to defeat the counsels of God, or prevail over those who held fast their confidence in his word; with all their numbers and their might, they sunk like lead in the waters, while the little household of faith rode secure in the midst of them. Or, does it appear strange, at times perhaps incredible, to your mind, that you should be made the subject of a work which requires for its accomplishment the peculiar perfections of Godhead, while others are left entire strangers to it, and even find the Word of God--the chosen instrument for effecting it--the occasion of wrath and condemnation to their souls? Remember "the few, the eight souls" of Noah's family, alone preserved amid trie wreck and desolation of a whole world --preserved, too, by faith in a word of God, which carried in its bosom the doom of myriads of their fellow-creatures, and so, finding that, which was to others a minister of condemnation, a source of peace and safety to them. Best assured, that as God himself remains the same through all generations, so his work for the good of men is essentially the same also; and it ever must be his design and purpose, that Noah's faith and salvation should be perpetually renewing themselves in the hidden life and experience of those who are preparing for the habitations of glory.

SECTION THIRD.

THE NEW WORLD AND ITS INHERITORS---THE MEN OF FAITH.

In one respect the world seemed to have suffered material loss by the visitation of the deluge. Along with the agents and instruments of evil, there had also been swept away by it the emblems of grace and hope--paradise with its tree of life and its cherubim, of glory. We can conceive Noah and his household, when they first left the ark, looking around with melancholy feelings on the position they now occupied, not only as being the sole survivors of a numerous offspring, but also as being themselves bereft of the sacred memorials which bore evidence of a happy past, and exhibited the pledge of a still happier future. An important link of communion with heaven, it might well have seemed, was broken by the change thus brought through the deluge on the world. But the loss was soon fully compensated, and, we may even say, more than compensated, by the advantages conferred on Noah and his seed from, the higher relation to which they were now raised, in respect to God and the world. There are three points that here, in particular, call for attention.

1. The first is, the new condition of the earth itself, which immediately appears in the freedom allowed and practised in regard to the external worship of God. This was no longer confined to any single region, as seems to have been the case in the age subsequent to the fall. The cherubim were located in a particular spot, on the east of the garden of Eden; and as the symbols of God's presence were there, it was only natural that the celebration of divine worship should there also have found its common centre. Hence, the two sons of Adam are said to have "brought their offerings unto the Lord"--which can scarcely be understood otherwise than as pointing to that particular locality which was hallowed by visible symbols of the Lord's presence, and in the neighbourhood of which life and blessing still lingered. In like manner, it is said of Cain, after he had assumed the attitude of rebellion, that "he went out from the presence of the Lord," obviously implying that there was a certain region with which the divine presence was considered to be more peculiarly connected, and which can be thought of nowhere else than in that sanctuary on the east of Eden. But with the flood the reason for any such restriction vanished. Noah, therefore, reared his altar, and presented his sacrifice to the Lord where the ark rested. There immediately he got the blessing, and entered into covenant with God--proving that, in a sense, old things had passed away, and all had become new. The earth had risen in the divine reckoning to a higher condition; it had passed through the baptism of water, and was now, in a manner, cleansed from defilement; so that every place had become sacred, and might be regarded as suitable for the most solemn acts of worship. [5]

This more sacred and elevated position of the earth after the deluge appears, farther, in the express repeal of the curse originally laid upon the ground for the sin of Adam: "I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake" (Gen. viii. 21), was the word of God to Noah, on accepting the first offering presented to him in the purified earth. It is, no doubt, to be understood relatively--not as indicating a total repeal of the evil, but only a mitigation of it; yet such a mitigation as would render the earth a much less afflicted and more fertile region than it had been before. But this again indicated that, in the estimation of Heaven, the earth, had now assumed a new position; that by the action of God's judgment upon it, it had become hallowed in his sight, and was in a condition to receive tokens of the divine beneficence, which had formerly been withheld from it.

2. The second point to be noticed here, is the heirship given of this new world to Noah and his seed--given to them expressly as the children of faith.

Adam, at his creation, was constituted the lord of this world, and had kingly power and authority given him to subdue it and rule over it. But, on the occasion of his fall, this grant, though not formally recalled, suffered a capital abridgment; since he was sent forth from Eden as a discrowned monarch, to do the part simply of a labourer on the surface of the earth, and with the discouraging assurance, that it should reluctantly yield to him of its fruitfulness. Nor, when he afterwards so distinctly identified himself with God's promise and purpose of grace, by appearing as the head only of that portion of his seed who had faith in God, did there seem any alleviation of the evil; the curse that rested on the ground rested on it still, even for the seed of blessing (Gen. v. 29), and not they, but the ungodly Cainites, acquired in it the ascendancy of physical force and political dominion.

A change, however, appears in the relative position of things, when the flood had swept with its purifying waters over the earth, Man now rises, in the person of Noah, to a higher place in the world; yet not simply as man, but as a child of God, standing in faith. His faith has saved him, amid the general wreck of the old world, to become in the new a second head of mankind, and an inheritor of earth's domain, as now purged and rescued from the pollution of evil. "He is made heir," as it is written in Hebrews, "of the righteousness which is by faith,"--heir, that is, of all that properly belongs to such righteousness, not merely of the righteousness itself, but also of the world, which in the divine purpose it was destined to possess and occupy. Hence, as if there had been a new creation, and a new head brought in to exercise over it the right of sovereignty, the original blessing and grant to Adam are substantially renewed to Noah and his family: "And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth. And the fear of you, and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth, and upon every fowl of the air, upon all that moveth upon the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea; into your hand are they delivered." Here, then, the righteousness of faith received direct from the grace of God the dowry that had been originally bestowed upon the righteousness of nature--not a blessing merely, but a blessing coupled with the heirship and dominion of the world.

There was nothing strange or arbitrary in such a proceeding; it was in perfect accordance with the great principles of the divine administration, Adam was too closely connected with the sin that destroyed the world, to be invested, even when he had become through faith a partaker of grace, with the restored heirship of the world. Nor had the world itself passed through such an ordeal of purification, as to fit it, in the personal lifetime of Adam, or of his more immediate offspring, for being at all represented in the light of an inheritance of blessing. The renewed title to the heirship of its fulness was properly reserved to the time when, by the great act of divine judgment at the deluge, it had passed into a new condition; and when one was found of the woman's seed, who had attained in a peculiar degree to the righteousness of faith, and along with the world had undergone a process of salvation. It was precisely such a person that should have been chosen as the first type of the righteousness of faith, in respect to its world-wide heritage of blessing. And having been raised to this higher position, an additional sacredness was thrown around him and his seed:--the fear of them was to be put into the inferior creatures; their life was to be avenged of every one that should wrongfully take it; even the life-blood of irrational animals was to be held sacred, because of its having something in common with man's, while their flesh was now freely surrendered to their use:--the whole evidently fitted, and, we cannot doubt, also intended to convey the idea, that man had by the special gift of God's grace been again constituted heir and lord of the world, that, in the words of the Psalmist, "the earth had been given to the children of men," and given in a larger and fuller sense than had been done since the period of the fall. [6]

3. The remaining point to be noticed in respect to this new order of things, is the pledge of continuance, notwithstanding all appearances or threatenings to the contrary, given in the covenant made with Noah, and confirmed by a fixed sign in the heavens, "And God spake unto Noah, and to his sons with him, saying, And I, behold, I establish my covenant with you, and with your seed after you; and with every living creature that is with you, of the fowl, of the cattle, and of every beast of the earth with you; from all that go out of the ark, to. every beast of the earth, And I will establish my covenant with you; neither shall all flesh be cut off any more by the waters of a flood; neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth. And God said, This is the token of the covenant which I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for perpetual generations: I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant" (more exactly: my bow I have set in the cloud, and it shall be for a covenant-sign,) "between me and the earth. And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in the cloud: and I will remember my covenant, which is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh." (Gen. ix. 8-15.)

There can be no doubt, that the natural impression produced by this passage in respect to the sign of the covenant, is, that it now for the first time appeared in the lower heavens. The Lord might, no doubt, then, or at any future time, have taken an existing phenomenon in nature, and by a special appointment made it the instrument of conveying some new and higher meaning to the subjects of his revelation. But, in a matter like the present, when the specific object contemplated was to allay men's fears of the possible recurrence of the deluge, and give them a kind of visible pledge in nature for the permanence of her existing order and constitution, one cannot perceive how a natural phenomenon, common alike to the antediluvian and the postdiluvian world, could have fitly served the purpose. In that case, so far as the external sign was concerned, matters stood precisely where they were; and it was not properly the sign, but the covenant itself, which formed the guarantee of safety for the future. We incline, therefore, to the opinion that, in the announcement here made, intimation is given of a change in the physical relations or temperature of, at least, that portion of the earth where the original inhabitants had their abode; by reason of which the descent of moisture in showers of rain came to take the place of distillation by dew, or other modes of operation different from the present. The supposition is favoured by the mention only of dew before in connection with the moistening of the ground (Gen. ii. 6); and when rain does come to be mentioned, it is rain in such flowing torrents as seems rather to betoken the outpouring of a continuous stream, than the gentle dropping which we are wont to understand by the term, and to associate with the rainbow.

The fitness of the rainbow in other respects to serve as a sign of the covenant made with Noah, is all that could be desired. There is an exact correspondence between the natural phenomenon it presents, and the moral use to which it is applied. The promise In the covenant was not that there should be no future visitations of judgment upon the earth, but that they should not proceed to the extent of again destroying the world. In the moral, as in the natural sphere, there might still be congregating vapours and descending torrents; indeed, the terms of the covenant imply, that there should be such, and that by means of them God would not fail to testify his displeasure against sin, and keep in awe the workers of iniquity. But there should be no second deluge to diffuse universal ruin; mercy should always so far rejoice against judgment. And so precisely it is in nature with the rainbow, which is formed by the lustre of the sun's rays shining on the dark cloud as it recedes; so that it may fitly be called, in the somewhat poetical language of Lange, "the sun's triumph over the floods; the glitter of his beams imprinted on the rain-cloud as a mark of subjection." How appropriate an emblem of the action of divine grace always returning after wrath! Grace still sparing and preserving even when clouds of judgment have been threatening to desolate and destroy! And as the rainbow throws its radiant arch over the expanse between heaven and earth, and as with a wreath of beauty unites the two together again, after they have been engaged in an elemental war, it strikingly images to the thoughtful eye the essential harmony that is still to subsist between the higher and the lower spheres. Such undoubtedly is its symbolic import, as the sign peculiarly connected with the Noachic covenant; it holds out, by means of its very form and nature, an assurance of God's mercy, as engaged to keep perpetually in check the floods of deserved wrath, and continue to the world the manifestation of his grace and goodness. Such also is the import attached to it, when forming a part of prophetic imagery, in the visions of Ezekiel (ch. i. 28), and of St John (Rev. iv. 3); it is the symbol of grace, as ever ready to return after judgment, and to stay the evil from proceeding so far as to accomplish a complete destruction. [7]

Yet gracious as this covenant with Noah was, arid appropriate and beautiful the sign that ratified it, all bore on it still the stamp of imperfection; there was an indication and a prelude of the better things needed to make man truly and permanently blessed, not these things themselves. For, what was this new world, which had its perpetuity secured, and over which Noah was set to reign, as heir of the righteousness that is by faith? To Noah himself, and each one in succession of his seed, it was still a region of corruption and death. It had been sanctified, indeed, by the judgment of God, and as thus sanctified it was not to perish again as it had done before. But this sanctification was only by water--enough to sweep away into the gulf of perdition the mass of impurity that festered on its surface, but not penetrating inwards, to the elements of evil which were bound up with its very framework. Another agency, more thoroughly pervasive in its nature, and in its effects more nobly sublimating, the agency of fire, is required to purge out the dross of its earthliness, and render it a home and an inheritance fit for those who are made like to the Son of God (2 Pet. iii. 7-13). And Noah himself, though acknowledged heir of the righteousness by faith, and receiving on it the seal of heaven, in the salvation granted to him and his household, yet how far from being perfect in that righteousness, or by this salvation placed beyond the reach of evil! How mournfully did he afterwards fall under the power of temptation! and how much of the serpent's seed still lurked in the members of his household! High, therefore, as Noah stood compared with those who had gone before him, he was after all but the representative of an imperfect righteousness, and the heir of a corruptible and transitory inheritance. He was the type, but no more than the type, of Him who was to come--in whom the righteousness of G-od should be perfected, salvation should rise to its higher sphere, and all, both in the heirs of glory, and the inheritance they are to occupy, should by the baptism of fire be rendered incorruptible and undefiled, and fading not away.

SECTION FOURTH.

THE CHANGE IN THE DIVINE CALL FROM THE GENERAL TO THE PARTICULAR -- SHEM, ABRAHAM.

The obvious Imperfections just noticed, both in the righteousness of the new head of the human family, and in the constitution of the world over which he was placed, clearly enough indicated, that the divine plan had only advanced a stage in its progress, but had by no means reached its perfection. As the world, however, in its altered condition, had become naturally superior to its former state, so--in necessary and causal connection with this--it was to stand superior to it also in a spiritual respect: secured against the return of a general perdition, it was also secured against the return of universal apostacy and corruption. The cause of righteousness was not to be trodden down as it had been before, nay, was to hold on its way and ultimately rise to the ascendant in the affairs of men.

Not only was this pre-supposed in the covenant of perpetuity established for the world, as the internal ground on which it rested, but it was also distinctly announced by the father of the new world, in the prophetic intimation he gave of the future destinies of his children. It was a melancholy occasion which drew this prophecy forth, as it was alike connected with the mournful backsliding of Noah himself, and the wanton indecency of his youngest son. When Noah recovered from his sin, and understood how this son had exposed, while the other two had covered his nakedness, he said, "Cursed is Canaan; a servant of servants (i. e. a servant of the lowest grade) shall he be to his brethren. And he said, Blessed is the Lord God of Shem, and Canaan shall be his servant. God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant" (Gen. ix. 25-27),

There are various points of interest connected with this prophecy, and the occurrence that gave rise to it, which it does not fall within our province to notice. But the leading scope of it, as bearing on the prospective destinies of mankind, is manifestly of a hopeful description; and in that respect it differs materially from the first historical incident, that revealed the conflict of nature and grace in the family of Adam. The triumph of Cain over righteous Abel, and his stout-hearted resistance to the voice of God, gave ominous indication of the bad pre-eminence which sin was to acquire, and the fearful results which it was to achieve in the old world. But the milder form of this outbreak of evil in the family of Noah, the immediate discouragement it meets with from the older members of the family, the strong denunciation it draws down from the venerable parent, above all, the clear and emphatic prediction it elicits of the ascendancy of the good over the evil in these seminal divisions of the human family, one and all perfectly accorded with the better state to which the world had now risen; they bespoke the cheering fact, that righteousness should now hold its ground in the world, and that the dominant powers and races should be in league with it, while servility and degradation should rest upon its adversaries.

This, any one may see at a glance, is the general tendency and design of what was uttered on the occasion; but there is a marked peculiarity in the form given to it, such as plainly intimates the commencement of a change in the divine economy. There is a striking particularism in the prophetic announcement. It does not, as previously, give forth broad principles, or foretel merely general results of evil and of good; but it explicitly announces--though still, no doubt, in wide and comprehensive terms--the characteristic outlines of the future state and relative positions of Noah's descendants. Such is the decided tendency here to the particular, that in the dark side of the picture, it is not Ham, the offending son and the general head of the worse portion of the postdiluvian family, who is selected as the special object of vengeance, nor the sons of Ham generally, but specifically Canaan, who, it seems all but certain, was the youngest son (Gen. x. 6). Why this son, rather than the offending father, should have been singled out for denunciation, has been ascribed to various reasons; and resort has not unfrequently been had to conjecture, by supposing that this son may probably have been present with the father, or some way participated with him in the offence. Even, however, if we had been certified of this participation, it could at most have accounted for the introduction of the name of Canaan, but not for that being substituted in the room of the father's. Nor can we allow much more weight to another supposition, that the omission of the name of Ham may have been intended for the very purpose of proving the absence of all vindictive feeling, and shewing that these were the words, not of a justly indignant parent giving vent to the emotions of the passing moment, but of a divinely inspired prophet calmly anticipating the events of a remote futurity. Undoubtedly such is their character; but no extenuating consideration of this kind is needed to prove it, if we only keep in view the judicial nature of this part of the prophecy. The curse pronounced is not an ebullition of wrathful feeling, not a wish for the infliction of evil, but the announcement of a doom, or punishment for a particular offence; and one that was to take, as so often happens in divine chastisements, the specific form of the offence committed. Noah's affliction from the conduct of Ham was in the most peculiar manner to find its parallel in the case of Ham himself: He, the youngest son of Noah, [8] had proved a vexation and disgrace to his father, and in meet retaliation his own youngest son was to have his name in history coupled with the most humiliating and abject degradation.

It was, therefore, in the first instance at least, for the purpose of marking more distinctly the connection between the sin and its punishment, that Canaan only was mentioned in the curse. Viewed as spoken to Ham, the word virtually said, I am pained to the heart on account of you, my youngest son, and you in turn, shall have good cause to be pained on account of your youngest son-- your own measure shall be meted back with increase to yourself. It "may be true--as Havernick states in his Introduction to the Pentateuch--that the curse, properly belonging to Ham, was to concentrate itself in the line of Canaan; and, beyond doubt, it is more especially in connection with that line that Scripture itself traces the execution of the curse. But these are somewhat remote and incidental considerations; the more natural and direct is the one already given--which Hofmann, we believe, was the first to suggest. [9] And as the word took the precise form it did, for the purpose more particularly of marking the connection between the sin and the punishment, it plainly indicated, that the evil could not be confined to the line of Ham's descendants by Canaan; the same polluted fountain could not fail to send forth its bitter streams also in other directions. The connection is entirely a moral one. Even in the case of Canaan there was no arbitrary and hapless appointment to inevitable degradation and slavery; as is clearly proved by the long forbearance and delay in the execution of the threatened doom, expressly on the ground of the iniquity of the people not having become full, and also from the examples of individual Canaanites, who rose even to distinguished favour and blessing, such as Melchizedec and Eahab in earlier, and the Syrophenician woman in later times. Noah, however, saw with prophetic insight, that in a general point of view the principle should here hold, like father like child; and that the irreverent and wanton spirit, which so strikingly betrayed itself in the conduct of the progenitor, should infallibly give rise to an offspring, whose dissolute and profligate manners would in due time bring upon them a doom of degradation and servitude. Such a posterity, with such a doom, beyond all question were the Canaanites, to whom we may add also the Tyrians and Sidonians, with their descendants the Carthagenians. The connection of sin and punishment might be traced to other sections besides, but it is not necessary that we pursue the subject farther.

Our course of inquiry rather leads us to notice the turn the prophecy takes in regard to the other side of the representation, and to mark the signs it contains of a tendency toward the particular, in connection with the future developement of the scheme of grace. This comes out first and pre-eminently in the case of Shem: "And he said, Blessed is (or be) Jehovah, the God of Shem,"--a blessing not directly upon Shem, but upon Jehovah as his God! Why such a peculiarity as this? No doubt, in the first instance, to make the contrast more palpable between this case and the preceding; the connection with God, which was utterly wanting in the one, presenting itself as everything, in a manner, in the other. Then, it proclaims the identity as to spiritual state between Noah and Shem, and designates this son as in the full sense the heir of blessing: "Blessed be Jehovah, the God of Shem." My God is also the God of my son; I adore him for himself; and now, before I leave the world, declare him to be the covenant God of Shem. Nor of Shem only as an individual, but as the head of a certain portion of the world's inhabitants. It was with this portion that God was to stand in the nearest relation. Here he was to find his peculiar representatives, and his select instruments of working among men--here emphatically were to be the priestly people. A spiritual distinction, therefore --the highest spiritual distinction, a state of blessed nearness to God, and special interest in his fulness--is what is predicated of the line of Shem. And in the same sense, namely, as denoting a fellowship in this spiritual distinction, should that part of the prophecy on Japheth also be understood, which points to a connection with Shem: "God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem." It obviously, indeed, designates his stock generally as the most spreading and energetic of the three--preeminent, so far as concerns diffusive operations and active labour in occupying the lands and carrying forward the business of the world--and thus naturally tending, as the event has proved, to push their way, even in a civil and territorial respect, into the tents of Shem. This last thought may therefore not unfairly be included in the compass of the prediction, but it can at most be regarded as the subordinate idea. The prospect, as descried from the sacred heights of prophecy, of dwelling in the tents of Shem, must have been eyed, not as an intrusive conquest on the part of Japheth, subjecting Shem in a measure to the degrading lot of Canaan, but rather as a sacred privilege--an admission of this less honoured race under the shelter of the same divine protection, and into the partnership of the same ennobling benefits with himself. In a word, it was through the line of Shem that the gifts of grace and the blessings of salvation were more immediately to flow--the Shemites were to have them at first hand; bnt the descendants of Japheth were also to participate largely in the good. And by reason of their more extensive ramifications and more active energies, were to be mainly instrumental in working upon the condition of the world.

It is evident, even from this general intimation of the divine purposes, that the more particular direction which was now to be given to the call of God, was not to be particular in the sense of exclusive, but particular only for the sake of a more efficient working and a more expansive result. The exaltation of Shem's progeny into the nearest relationship to God, was not that they might keep the privilege to themselves, but that first, getting it, they should admit the sons of Japheth, the inhabitants of the isles, to share with them in the boon, and spread it as wide as their scattered race should extend. The principle announced was an immediate particularism for the sake of an ultimate universalism. And this change in the manner of working was not introduced arbitrarily, but in consequence of the proved inadequacy of the other, and, as we may say, more natural course that had hitherto been pursued. Formally considered, the earlier revelations of God made no difference between one person and another, or even between one stem and another. They spoke the same language, and held out the same invitations to all. The weekly call to enter into God's rest--the promise of victory to the woman's seed--the exhibition of grace and hope in the symbols at the east of Eden--- the instituted means of access to God in sacrificial worship--even the more specific promises and pledges of the Noachic covenant, were offered and addressed to men without distinction. Practically, however, they narrowed themselves; and when the effect is looked to, it is found that there was only a portion, an elect seed, that really had faith in the divine testimony, and entered into possession of the offered good. Not only so, but there was a downward tendency in the process. The elect seed did not grow as time advanced, but proportionally decreased; the cause and party that flourished was the one opposed to God's. And the same result was beginning to take place after the flood, as is evident from what occurred in the family of Noah itself, and from other notices of the early appearance of corruption. The tendency in this direction was too strong to be effectually met by such general revelations and overtures of mercy. The plan was too vague and indeterminate. A more specific line of operations was needed-- from the particular to the general; so that a certain amount of good, within a definite range, might in the first instance be secured; and that from this, as a fixed position, other advantages might be gained, and more extensive results achieved.

It is carefully to be noted, then, that a comprehensive object was as much contemplated in this new plan as in the other; it differed only in the mode of reaching the end in view. The earth was to be possessed and peopled by the three sons of Noah; and of the three Shem is the one who was selected as the peculiar channel of divine gifts and communications--but not for his own exclusive benefit; rather to the end that others might share with him in the blessing. The real nature and bearing of the plan, however, became more clearly manifest, when it began to be actually carried into execution. Its proper commencement dates from the call of Abraham, who was of the line of Shem, and in whom, as an individual, the purpose of God began practically to take effect. Why the divine choice should have fixed specially upon him as the first individual link in this grand chain of providences, is not stated; and from the references subsequently made to it, we are plainly instructed to regard it as an example of the absolutely free grace and sovereign election of God (Josh. xxiv. 2; Neh. ix, 7.) That he had nothing whereof to boast in respect to it, we are expressly told; and yet we may not doubt, that in the line of Shem's posterity, to which he belonged, there was more knowledge of God, and less corruption in his worship, than among other branches of the same stem. Hence, perhaps, as being addressed to one, who was perfectly cognizant of what had taken place in the history of his progenitors, the revelation made to him takes a form, which bears evident respect to the blessing pronounced on Shem, and appears only, indeed, as the giving of a more specific direction to Shem's high calling, or chalking out a definite way for its accomplishment. Jehovah was the God of Shem--that in the word of Noah was declared to be his peculiar distinction. In like manner Jehovah from the first made himself known to Abraham as his God, nay even took the name of "God of Abraham" as a distinctive epithet, and made the promise, "I will be a God to thee and to thy seed after thee," a leading article in the covenant established with him. And as the peculiar blessing of Shem was to be held with no exclusive design, but that the sons of Japheth far and wide might share in it, so Abraham is called, not only to be himself blessed, but also that he might be a blessing; a blessing to such an extent, that those should be blessed who blessed him, and in him all the families of the earth should be blessed. Yet with this general similarity between the earlier and the later announcement, what a striking advance does the divine plan now make in breadth of meaning and explicitness of purpose? How wonderfully does it combine together the little and the great, the individual and the universal? Its terminus a quo the son of a Mesopotamian shepherd; and its terminus ad quern the entire brotherhood of humanity, and the round circumference of the globe! What a divine-like grasp and expansiveness! The very projection of such a scheme bespoke the infinite understanding of Godhead; and minds altogether the reverse of narrow and exclusive, minds attempered to noble aims and inspired by generous feeling, alone could carry it into execution.

By this call Abraham was raised to a very singular pre-eminence, and constituted in a manner the root and centre of the world's future history, as concerns the attainment of real blessing. Still, even in that respect not exclusively. The blessing was to come chiefly to Abraham and through him; but, as already indicated also in the prophecy on Shem, others were to stand, though in a subordinate rank, on the same line; since those also were to be blessed who blessed him; that is, who held substantially the same faith, and occupied the same friendly relation to God. The cases of such persons in the patriarch's own clay, as his kinsman Lot, who was not formally admitted into Abraham's covenant, and still more of Melchizedec, who was not even of Abraham's line, and yet individually stood in some sense higher than Abraham himself, clearly shewed, and were no doubt partly provided for the express purpose of shewing, that there was nothing arbitrary in Abraham's position, and that the ground he occupied was to a certain extent common to believers generally. The peculiar honour conceded to him was, that the great trunk of blessing was to be of him, while only some isolated twigs or scattered branches were to be found elsewhere; and even these could only be found, by persons coming, in a manner, to make common cause with him. In regard to himself, however, the large dowry of good conveyed to him in the divine promise could manifestly not be realised through himself personally. There could at the most be but a beginning made in his own experience and history; and the widening of the circle of blessing to other kindreds and regions, till it reached the most distant families of the earth, could only be effected by means of those who were to spring from him. Hence, the original word of promise, which was "in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed," was afterwards changed into this, "in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed" (Gen. xxii. 18.)

Yet the original expression is not without an important meaning, and it takes the two, the earlier as well as the later form, to bring out the full design of God in the calling of Abraham. From the very nature of the case, first, as having respect to so extensive a field to be operated on, and then from the explicit mention of the patriarch's seed in the promise, no doubt whatever could be entertained, that the good in its larger sense was to be wrought out, not by himself individually and directly, but by him in connection with the seed to be given to him. And when the high character, as well as the comprehensive reach of the good was taken into account, it might well have seemed, as if even that seed were somehow going to have qualities associated with it, which he could not perceive in himself--as if another and higher connection with the heavenly and divine should in due time be given to it, than any he was conscious of enjoying in his state of noblest elevation. We, at least, know from the better light we possess, that such actually was the case; that the good promised neither did, nor could have come into realization but by a personal commingling of the divine with the human; and that it has become capable of reaching to the most exalted height, and of diffusing itself through the widest bounds, simply by reason of this union in Christ. He, therefore, is the essential kernel of the promise; and the seed of Abraham, rather than Abraham himself, was to have the honour of blessing all the families of the earth. This, however, by no means makes void the in thee of the original promise: for by so expressly connecting the good with Abraham, as well as with his seed, the organic connection was marked between the one and the other, and the things that belonged to him were made known as the beginning of the end. The blessing to be brought to the world through his line had even in his time a present though small realization --precisely as the kingdom of Christ had its commencement in that of David, and the one ultimately merged into the other. And so, in Abraham as the living root of all that was to follow, the whole and every part may be said to take its rise; and not only was Christ after the flesh of the seed of Abraham, but each believer in Christ is a son of Abraham, and the entire company of the redeemed shall have their place and their portion with Abraham in the kingdom of God.

Such being the case with the call of Abraham--in its objects so high, and its results so grand and comprehensive,--it is manifest, that the immediate limitations connected with it, in regard to a fleshly offspring and a worldly inheritance, must only have been intended to serve as temporary expedients and fit stepping-stones for the ulterior purposes in view. And such statements regarding the covenant with Abraham, as that it merely secured to Abraham a posterity, and to that posterity the possession of the land of Canaan for an inheritance, on the condition of their acknowledging Jehovah as their God, is to read the terms of the covenant with a microscope--magnifying the little, and leaving utterly unnoticed the great--in the preliminary means losing sight of the prospective end. [10] Another thing also, and one more closely connected with our present subject, is equally manifest; which is, that since the entire scheme of blessing had its root in Abraham, it must also have had its representation in him--he, in his position and character and fortunes must have been the type of that which was to come. Such uniformly is God's plan, in respect to those whom it constitutes heads of a class, or founders of a particular dispensation. It was so, first of all, with Adam, in whom humanity Itself was imaged. It was so again in a measure with the three sons of Noah, whose respective states and procedure gave prophetic indication of the more prominent characteristics that should distinguish their offspring. Such, too, at a future period, and much more remarkably, was the case with David, in whom, as the beginning and root of the everlasting kingdom, there was presented the foreshadowing type of all that should essentially belong to the kingdom, when represented by its divine head, arid set up in its proper dimensions. Nor could it now be properly otherwise with Abraham. The very terms of the call, which singled him out from the mass of the world, and set him on high, constrain us to regard him as in the strictest sense a representative man--in himself and the things belonging to his immediate heirs, the type at once of the subjective and the objective design of the covenant, or, in other words, of the kind of persons who were to be the subjects and channels of blessing, and of the kind of inheritance with which they were to be blessed, It is for the purpose of exhibiting this clearly and distinctly, and thereby rendering the things written of Abraham and his immediate offspring a revelation, in the strictest sense, of God's mind and will regarding the more distant future, that this portion of patriarchal history was constructed. Abraham himself, in the first instance, was the covenant head and the type of what was to come; but as the family of the Israelites were to be the collective bearers and representatives of the covenant, so, not Abraham alone, but the whole of their immediate progenitors, who were alike heads of the covenant-people,--besides Abraham, Isaac also, and Jacob, and the twelve patriarchs, possess a typical character. It shall be our object, therefore, in the two remaining sections--which must necessarily be rather long ones--to present the more prominent features of the instruction intended to be conveyed in both of the respects now mentioned--first in regard to the subjects and channels of blessing, and then in regard to the inheritance destined for their possession.

Notes

1. I think it quite impossible, in the circumstances, that the faith of Eve should have gone farther than this; as the promise of recovery had as yet assumed only the most general aspect; and though it might well have been understood to depend upon the grace and power of God for Its accomplishment, yet who, from the revelations actually given, could have anticipated these to manifest themselves in the birth of Jehovah himself as a babe? The supposition of Baumgarten--who here revives the old explanation, "I have gotten a man, Jehovah," that Eve thought she saw in Cain "the redeeming and coming God," is arbitrary and incredible. The *** should be taken as in ch. v. 24. vi, 9, with, in fellowship with the Lord; or, as in Judg. viii. 7, with, with the help of.

2. It is to be noted, however, that both the parents of the human family, Adam as well as Eve, are associated with this seed of blessing. It is a circumstance that has been too much overlooked; but for the very purpose of marking it, a fresh commencement is made at Gen. v. of the genealogical chain that links together Adam and Christ; "This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him. . . . And Adam lived an hundred and thirty years, and begat a son in his own likeness, after his image, and called his name Seth:"--as if his progeny before this were not to be reckoned--the child of grace had perished, and the other in a spiritual sense was not. Adam, therefore, is here distinctly placed at the head of a spiritual offspring--himself the first link in the grand chain of blessing. And the likeness, in which he begat this son--"his own image"---must not be limited, as it too often is, to the corruption that now marred the purity of his nature--as if his image stood simply in contrast to God's. It is as the parental head of the whole lineage of grace that he is represented, and such a contrast would here especially be out of place.

3.  It is in connection with this later developement of evil in the Cainites, that Lamech's song is introduced, and with special reference to that portion of his family, who were makers of instruments in brass and iron--instruments, no doubt, chiefly of a warlike kind. It is only by viewing the song in that connection, that we perceive its full meaning, and its proper place, as intended to indicate that the evil was approaching its final stage: "And Lamech said to his wives, Adah and Zillah, hear my voice; Ye wives of Lamech, hearken to my speech. For, men (the word is quite indefinite in the original, and may most fitly be rendered in the plural) I slay for my wound, and young men for my hurt. For, Cain is avenged seven times, and Lamech seventy times seven." He means apparently, that with such weapons as he now had at command, he could execute at will deeds of retaliation and revenge. So that his song may be regarded, to use the words of Drechslerr "as an ode of triumph on the invention of the sword. He stands at the top of the Cainite developementr from thence looks back upon the past, and exults at the height it has reached. How far has he got ahead of Cain! what another sort of ancestor he! No longer needing to look up in feebleness to God for protection, he can provide more amply for it himself than God did for Cain's; and he congratulates his wives on being the mothers of such sons. Thus the history of the Cainites began with a deed of murder, and here it ends with a song of murder."

4. I am aware many eminent scholars give a different turn to this expression in the first epistle of Peter, and take the proper rendering to be " saved through (?'. e. in the midst of) the water"--contemplating the water as the space or region through which the ark was required to bear Noah and his family in safety. Bo Beza, who says that " the water cannot be taken for the instrumental cause, as Noah was preserved from the water, not by it;" so also Tittmann, Bib. Cab. vol. xviii. p. 251; Steiger in his Comm. with only a minute shade of difference; Robinson, in Lex, and many others. But this view is open to the following objections: 1. The water is here mentioned, not in respect to its several parts, or to the extent of its territory from one point to another, but simply as an instrumental agent. Had the former been meant, the expression would have been " saved through the waters," rather than saved by water. But as the case stood, it mattered nothing, whether the ark remained stationary at one point on the surface of the waters, or was borne from one place to another; so that through, in the sense of passing through, or through among, gives a quite unsuitable meaning. That Noah needed to be saved from the water, rather than by it, is a superficial objection, proceeding on the supposition that the water had the same relation to Noah that it had to the world in. general. For him, the water and the ark were essentially connected together; it took both to make up the means of deliverance. In the same sense, and on the same account, we might say of the Red sea, that the Israelites were saved by it; for, though in itself a source of danger, yet as regarded Israel's position, it was really the means of safety (1 Cor. x. 2). 2. The application made by the Apostle of Noah's preservation requires the agency of the water, as well as of the ark, to be taken into account. Indeed, according to the best authorities (which read o ^«/), the reference in the antitype is specially to the water as the type. But apart from that, baptism is spoken as a saving, in consequence of its being a purifying ordinance, which implies, as in the deluge, that the salvation be accomplished through means of a destruction. This is virtually admitted by Steiger, who, though he adopts the rendering " through the water," yet in explaining the connection between the type and the antitype, is obliged to regard the water as also instrumental to salvation. " The flood was for Noah a baptism, and as such saved; the same element, water, also saves us now--not, however, as mere water, but in the same quality as a baptism."

5. If we are right as to the centralization of the primitive worship of mankind (and it seems to be only the natural inference from the notices referred*to), then the antediluvian population cannot well be supposed to have been of vast extent, or to have wandered to a very great distance from the original centre. The employment also of a special agency after the flood to disperse the descendants of Noah, and scatter them over the earth, seems to indicate, that an indisposition to go to a distance, a tendency to crowd too much about one locality, was one of the sources of evil in the first stage of the world's history, the recurrence of which well deserved to be prevented, even by miraculous interference; and it is perfectly conceivable, indeed most likely, that the tower of Babel, in connection with which this interference took place, was not intended to be a palladium of idolatry, or a mere freak of ambitious folly, but rather a sort of substitution for the loss of the Edenic symbols, and, as such, a centre of union for the human family. It follows, of course, from the same considerations, that the deluge might not absolutely require, so far as the race of man was concerned, to extend over more than a comparatively limited portion of the earth. But its actual compass is not thereby determined.

6. It presents no contrariety to this, when rightly considered, that the Lord should also have connected his purpose of preserving the earth in future with the corruption of man: " And the Lord smelled a sweet savour (viz. from Noah's sacrifice), and the Lord said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake, for the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth" (Gen. viii. 21.) The meaning is7 that God delighted so much more in the offerings of righteousness than in the inflictions of judgment, that he would now direct his providence, so as more effectually to secure the former--would not allow the imaginations of man's evil heart to get such scope as they had done before, but perceiving and remembering their native existence in the heart, would bring such remedial influences to work that the extremity of the past should not again return.

7. Far too general is the explanation often given of the symbolic import of the rainbow by writers on such topics--as when it is described to be "in general a symbol of God's willingness to receive men into favour again" (Wemyss' Clavis Symbolica), or that "it indicates the faithfulness of the Almighty in fulfilling the promises that he has made to his people" (Mill's Sacred Symbology). Sound Christian feeling, with something of a poetic eye for the imagery of nature, finds its way better to the meaning--as in the following simple lines of John Newton:--

"When the sun with cheerful beams Smiles upon a low'ring sky, Soon its aspect softened seems, And a rainbow meets the eye; While the sky remains serene, This bright arch is never seen.

Thus the Lord's supporting power Brightest to his saints appears, When affliction's threatening hour Fills their sky with clouds and fears; He can wonders then perform, Paint a rainbow on the storm.

Favoured John a rainbow saw Circling round the throne above; Hence the saints a pledge may draw Of unchanging covenant-love: Clouds awhile may intervene, But the bow shall still be seen.

8. Gen. ix. 24. The expression in the original is 'Jtsptt '"OS and is the same that is applied to David in 1 Sam. xvii. 14. There can, therefore, be no reasonable doubt that it means youngest, and not tender or dear, as some would take it. Tt is not so expressly said, that Cannan was Ham's youngest son, but the inference that he was such is fair and natural, as he is mentioned last in the genealogy, ch. x, 6, where no sufficient reason can be thought of for deviating from the natural order.

9. Weissagung und Erfulhmg, i. p. 89.

10. This is precisely what is done in a late volume, Israel after the J?lesli, by Mr William H. Johnstone--p. 7, 8. He appears also to slump together the covenant with Abraham and the covenant at Sinai, as if the one were simply a renewal of the other. And this notwithstanding the distinction drawn so pointedly between them in the epistle to the Galatians, and while the author, too, professes to have gone to work with the thorough determination to be guided only by Scripture!