implies another; that the scriptures are adapted for this universal use and understanding; that such is their original perspicuity and force, that they are capable of being conveyed through all diversities of nation, age, and language, with little injury to their beauty, and none to their plainness in all material points.* Unlike the admired writers of heathen antiquity, whose eminence greatly rests on their exquisite and unrivalled diction, the Hebrew prophets and poets owe nothing to the harsh and unpolished language in which they wrote. Their pathos, grandeur, and sublimity, arise entirely from their sentiments: and these may be displayed in almost any language. And, though the writers of the New Testament used the most copious, and flexible, and powerful of tongues, the wisdom of God did not see fit to endow them with Ionic sweetness, or Attic taste. They adopted a cast of expression, simple, indeed, and plain, but which sounded strange and inelegant, and even barbarous, in Grecian ears. Yet this peculiarity, though derived from their national idiom, was better adapted for the instruction of all ages and nations than a more classical style would have been; for it is more in accordance with the phraseology of common life, which has a remarkable similarity in all countries. The less object is rejected, and the greater secured. Beauty is sacrificed to utility: the intransmissible charm of words, to

*See Note [B] at the end of this Chapter.

the strong and clear display of truth, in a manner the least liable to be impaired by the changes of time.*

That the writers of the New Testament, in employing their Hebraized, and, in other respects, peculiar diction, merely did what, without a miracle, they of necessity must have done, is an obvious remark: but it is equally deserving of attention, that this characteristic diction is, from its plainness and its partaking of the cast of common life, well calculated to be universally intelligible. Authors on biblical idioms have, too generally, overlooked this circumstance. They have dwelt so much on the doctrine of Hebraisms as almost to imply that the Christian scriptures are unintelligible throughout, without a farrago of Jewish and other oriental learning. I deny not the utility of such learning: but I wish to establish a correct idea of the nature and extent of its utility, as seldom reaching beyond the explaining of allusions and phrases of minor importance; while the great facts and doctrines, the precepts and the promises, of the gospel, are expressed in terms the most plain and the least associated with remote allusions. Whoever has studied the vast collections of Lightfoot, Schoettgenius, and Wetstein, can judge of the truth of this observation. Perhaps, if he would take the trouble to make a list

* "The principal advantages and excellencies of the Greek language, in copiousness and elegancy, are little used in the New Testament." Owen, on Sp. Und. ib. ch. viii.

of instances in which doctrinal elucidations are derived from this source, he would be surprized at their comparative fewness.

A cause of this advantageous peculiarity in the style of the New Testament, under the providence of its great Inspirer, may be found in the state of society, particularly among the Jews, at the time of its composition. All the nations on the coasts of the Mediterranean were in the practice of free and ready intercourse; and the occupations of common life, in the middling and lower orders, had pretty generally settled into a resemblance to the habits of the same orders of the community, in every following period, when the state of advancement in civilization has been about the same point. Persons in such circumstances, when, not from vanity or ambition, but from the honest impulse of conscience and piety, they became authors; would use a style plain and humble, equally distant from the lofty grandeur of a ruder and independent age, and from the fastidious refinement which attends the decay of genius among the educated classes. Such a style, the father of criticism pronounces to be "the clearest."

If these observations be founded in truth, they will induce us to suspect the soundness of that system of interpretation, which assumes that the

* Σαφεστάτη μὲν οὖν ἐστιν ἡ ἐκ τῶν κυρίων ονομάτων, ἀλλὰ TаTеh. Arist. Poetic. § 37.

New Testament is written in a style of hyperbole, metaphor, and allegory; to such a degree, that, when the critical operator has brought out what he deems the sober sense, the reader of plain understanding and simple piety is astonished at a result so diminutive, and so disproportionate to the general use and purpose of words.

Such a principle of interpretation, however, will not strongly recommend itself to those who regard "the words of the Lord as pure words, as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times." As little will it seem compatible with the testimony of the apostle Paul, to whom, more than any other writer of the New Testament, these extravagancies have been imputed, by some modern divines. When the greatness of the truths he uttered brought on him the charge of raving, he protested that he spoke "the words of truth and soberness." He admitted that he was (idurns Te Aoy) plain, common, plebeian, or even vulgar, τῷ λόγῳ) in speech. Having beheld, with unveiled face, the glory of the Lord, he preached not a veiled gospel, he used not the enticing words of man's wisdom.

These observations will not be understood as affirming the humble style of the New Testament to be such as excludes the natural figures of thought, or of diction; or that the noblest elevation, of both sentiment and expression, is not often exhi

bited in these sacred books. The true sublime could not but arise, from the moment and majesty of the subjects; and the simplest diction is the best vehicle of its expression. But the figurative style of the New Testament is very different from that which has been called the Asiatic style. It has been of unhappy consequence, in relation to the interpretation of scripture, that these have been considered as the same, or nearly similar. "That strong hyperbolical manner," says Dr. Blair, "which we have been long accustomed to call the oriental manner of poetry (because some of the earliest poetical productions came to us from the east), is in truth no more oriental than occidental; it is characteristical of an age rather than of a country; and belongs, in some measure, to all nations at that period which first gives rise to music and to song. Mankind never resemble each other so much, as they do in the beginnings of society. The style of all the most early languages, among nations who are in the first and rude periods of society, is found, without exception, to be full of figures; hyperbolical and picturesque in a high degree. We have a striking instance of this in the American languages; which are known, by the most authentic accounts, to be figurative to excess. The poetical parts of the Old Testament, especially the prophecies, possess this character: and, after a long interval, it is again discovered in the Koran, and the most ad* Blair's Lectures, vol. iii. 88, i. 131.