WHAT IS A TYPE
BY R. W. DALE, M.A., LL.D.. " Now, of the things which we have spolcen this is tlie sum : We have such an High Priest, who is set on the riglit hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens," &c. — Hebrews viii, 1-5.
Content
WHAT IS A TYPE ? BY R. W. DALE, M.A., LL.D..
" ow, of the things which we have spolcen this is tlie sum : We have such an High Priest, who is set on the riglit hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens," &c. — Hebrews viii, 1-5. The discussion concerning Melchizedek has now closed. The writer has shown that the Jewish Scriptures themselves indicated that the priesthood of the descendants of Aaron was not to be perpetual, but was to give place to a priesthood of a higher order, — a priesthood underived, untransmitted, and having a dignity and authority with which mortal men could not be invested. And now he tells his readers that " the prmcipal thing " of which he is speaking is, that " we have a High Priest who sat down on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens ;'' who is " «: minister'''' not of an earthly temple, '■'■but of the true tabernacle which the Lord pitched, and not ma7iP That He cannot be a mere earthly priest, nor present mere earthly sacrifices, is shown in the next two verses. " Every High Priest is ordained to offer gifts and sacrifices ; and so Christ" if His priestly name and office are not an idle form, " must also have somewhat to offer : but if He were on earth He woidd not be a pricsf^ at all, for a tribe, a family to which He did not belong, had been appointed and consecrated " to offer ^ifts according to the law" He is, therefore priest in another sanctuary, and offers other gifts : and what these are the next verse informs us ; the service of the Jewish priests is devoted to the " example," or visible illustration and shadow of " heavenly things," as may be suggested indeed by what God said to Moses when ^^ he was about to complete the tabernacle, 'for see,' said He, ' that thou make all things accorditig to the pattern shoived to thee in the 7nount' "
154 W/iat is a Type? These words appear to me a general introduction to the contrast which the writer now proceeds to draw between the old covenant and the new, — the access to God granted in the Jewish temple, and the access to God granted to Christian believers through Christ, — the numerous Levitical sacrifices, and the great sacrifice once offered for the sins of mankind.
Already he has vindicated and illustrated the glory of the Lord Jesus Himself, as being greater than angels, greater than Moses. He has also shown that, according to Jewish prophecy, Christ is not only a priest, but a priest belonging to a loftier rank than that of Aaron and his sons ; and now the first part of the Epistle is about to close by a profoundly interestihg illustration of the superiority of the Christian dispensation itself to that religious constitution which these Jewish believers were longing to perpetuate. The personal supremacy of Christ above all who had to do with founding or maintaining the ancient system has been made clear ; the superiority of His priesthood to that of the sons of Aaron in permanence and in the solemnity of the consecration by which He was appointed to it, has also been showoi ; and the whole argument of the Epistle for steadfast loyalty to Christ, and against apostasy to Judaism, is about to be crowned and completed by the contrast, which extends to the middle of the tenth chapter, between the inferior promises and the merely symbolic institutions of the old covenant, and the nobler and eternal blessings which belong to the new. There is one expression in these introductory verses to which I wish to call your most thoughtful attention. The writer does not dwell upon it ; but it is developed and illustrated in the next two chapters. The institutions of Judaism are represented as visible illustrations, "shadows of heavenly things;" the very forms of the sacred vessels of the tabernacle were made after a pattern which was sho\vn tc Moses in the mount, and the whole ritual was a revelation and a prophecy of spiritual and eternal realities. This sentence is plainly of the very gravest importance in reference to the relation between the institutions of the ancient worship and the great truths and facts of the Christian system ; and, as that relation has been greatly misunderstood, and is still
Wkat is a Type? 155 perhaps most imperfectly and even incorrectly conceived, by many Christian people, I wish to explain it as clearly and as briefly as I can. All that follows in the argumentative part of this Epistle will be a mere riddle and perplexity to thoughful persons, if the general principle which this expression affirms is not grasped with firmness and accuracy.
I. To understand it aright there are, I think, three very simple facts which need to be carefully considered and constantly remembered. (i) The first is, that the Jewish system was intended for the culture of the religious life of the Jews themselves. I find, on reading the Old Testament Scriptures, that for about sixteen hundred years before Christ came, the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, were living under a civil polity and maintaining ritualistic observances instituted by God Himself. o matter whether the idea of oftering sacrifice originated with man, or was given at first by Divine revelation ; no matter whether the resemblances between the Levitical ceremonies and the rites of certain pagan systems were numerous or few; the declarations of holy Scripture are perfectly miambiguous that the whole of the Jev/ish system had God's sanction. It is equally certain that while many parts of the Levitical law may have rested on social or sanitary grounds exclusively, there were other parts which were religious in their principle and purpose. There was a temple for worship ; there were sacrifices for sin ; there were consecrated priests. Through generation after generation the appointed victims were consumed on the altar ; festival after festival the outer courts of the sanctuary were crowded with worshippers ; year after year the High Priest entered with reverence and fear and awe into the Holy of Holies. ow, it seems to me incredible that all this should have been a mystery without meaning to Moses, to Aaron, to Samuel, to David, to Isaiah, and to all the prophets ; incredible, that the tens of thousands of holy men who took part in
156 What is a Type? these solemn rites, should have connected them with no moral or spiritual truths. If it be alleged that this cumbrous and stately system was altogether unintelligible till Christ came, — a riddle, without a solution till then, — I can only ask. For what purpose did it exist at all ? Perhaps it may be said that it is an additional aid to our faith to discover in these Jewish rites, curious and even profound anticipations of the fully-developed
Christian faith ; but, if that had been the solitary object of these institutions, it would surely have been enough if the ceremonies had been performed, once for all, when the people were at Sinai, or when Solomon came to the throne, or if they had been solemnly enacted once every hundred years. If they were simply unintelligible prophecies of Christ, — prophecies which could not be understood until Christ came, — what need was there that, day after day, year after year, century after century, they should be still repeated ? Moreover, it is singularly unfortunate, if the ceremonial system had no meaning for the Jews themselves, and reserved all its wealth of instruction for Christian times, that this very system proved a very perilous hindrance to the Christian faith in the first age, and that ever since, it has been to so large an extent a difficulty requiring to be explained, instead of an independent source of instruction on Christian doctrine or practice. We understand it imperfectly ; if the Jews before Christ did not understand it at all, it has certainly proved a very remarkable and uncompensated failure. It is surely far more reasonable to suppose that the Levitical institutions had a religious meaning for the Jews themselves, and exerted a real and powerful influence on their religious life. (2) The principles of true religion have always been the same as they are now, ever since man sinned and God determined to effect his redemption through the incarnation, death, resurrection, and glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. I do not say that those principles were revealed at first as clearly as they are revealed now ; but that, although our knowledge of God and of His salvation is much fuller than Adam, or Abraham, or Moses possessed, what was true in their times is true still; that, if God taught them anything. He must have
W/iat is a Type? 157 taught them substantially the same things He has taught us, although the teaching was clear only when it dealt with the most elementary truths, and became obscure when it passed beyond them. As far as it went, the revelation of God to the Jewish race must have been substantially identical with His revelation to ourselves. For instance, it was as true then as it is now, that there is but one God, — that His character is holy, and that His law requires man to be holy too : — that man has sinned, needs God's forgiveness, and that whenever God
forgives, it is because man's relation to Himself is derived from the suffering of another on man's behalf These things have been always true, and although they have not always been revealed as fully and clearly as they are now, yet if man received in ancient times any knowledge of God — of God's moral attributes, of God's will ; and of his own moral condition and the means of escaping from his guilt and ruin ; these truths, whether they were more dimly or more distinctly communicated, must have had a place in Divine revelation. The forms in which truth of this order is clothed may vary, — the measure of man's knowledge of it may vary : but the truth itself is invariable. And that, as a matter of fact, the same truths substantially that we believe now — not all of them, perhaps, but, so far as they went, the same — were believed by God's saints in the old times, is sufficiently plain from this, that their actual spiritual life was so like our own, that many Christian people — erroneously, as I am compelled to think — suppose that the book of Psalms, in which the devotion of the Jewish saints is uttered, contains a full and adequate expression for the religious life of the Church in all ages. If, from some remote world, an angelic visitor were to bring fruits and flowers precisely like those with which we ourselves are already familiar, it would be a fair inference that the elements of the soil in that unknown orb were the same as they are here, — that there was heat there like that in which our own flowers blossom and our own fruits ripen, — that there was an atmosphere there like our own, and rain. And so, if we knew nothing of the revelation which God had made to the Jewish
158 W/iai is a Type? people, there would be enough in the Book of Psalms alone, to convince us that it was substantially the same as the revelation He has made to us ; for in that book the moral and spiritual results of the ancient revelation are preserved to us, and they are of the same kind as the results of the revelation made to ourselves. David knew as well as we know that the gods of the nations are idols, and that Jehovah is the sole Creator of the heavens which declare His glory, and of the earth which is full of His goodness. He knew that sin was intolerable to God, and, under the consciousness of his guilt, cried passionately, " Cast me not away from Thy presence." He knew that
though " God is angry with the wicked every day," " there is forgiveness with Him that He may be feared," and could sing with tranquil joy of the blessedness of the man "whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered." If, then, the Jewish system was intended for the religious instruction of the Jews themselves, — and if religious truth remains the same through all ages — it follows necessarily that we may expect to find in the institutions of Judaism the same truths which are more fully and gloriously revealed by Christ Himself and the inspired writers of the ew Testament. (3) This conclusion is confirmed, and the necessary limits of it suggested, by the fact that Judaism is always represented in the ew Testament as a system intended to discipline and educate men for the coming of Christ. If the Jewish institutions were introductory to the Christian revelation, they must surely have been in essential harmony with it, and have taught substantially the same truths. If they were intended to discipline the Jewish people for Christ's coming, their spiritual influence must have been in harmony with that of the faith of Christ, and must have formed the spiritual life after the same model. And yet, since they were only introductor}^, and formed only a preparatory discipline, we cannot suppose that the Jewish saints — even the wisest and holiest — found in them all that we find in the four Gospels, and the writings of the apostles. The Jewish institutions, according to the language of this Epistle, were not full disclosures of Divine truth ; they were pictures or
What is a Type? 159 delineations — " s/u7do7c>s 0/ //cavc^/y t/i///gs" — but still heavenlythings were actually revealed through them.
II. And now, keeping these three principles in mind, it will not be difficult to perceive what we ought to understand by the typical character of Old Testament ritualism, and of Old Testament history.
According to the use of the writers of the Christian Scriptures, if an ancient ceremony was obviously intended by God to reveal to the Jew a certain religious principle or truth, that ceremony is treated as a type of the Christian yc?r/ in which the same principle or truth is now revealed. For instance, take those words of our Lord's in which He says, " Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it again," words which according to the evangelist, referred to the temple of His body. Are we to suppose that the connection between the body of Christ and the Jewish temple was purely arbitrary ? Or was there any outward resemblance between them which justified the Lord Jesus in speaking of the one as a type of the other ? By no means. Try to imagine yourself a Jew — -a devout Jew — who had come out from among the idolatries and superstitions of Egypt, into the wilderness. He knew that the gods which were worshipped by the Egyptians were mere creations of the human imagination, that their visible forms were the work of human hands. He knew too, that the Jehovah he worshipped had created all things ; the thunder was the symbol of His voice, and the lightning of His vengeance. He reigned in the highest heavens, was infinite in power, and in wisdom, and perfect in holiness. Occasionally He had appeared to the saintly men of his race ; to Abraham in the old time ; to Moses more recently ; but was not God too great and awful to be accessible to common men ? Could even the holiest expect that He would be always near to them ? The tabernacle, constructed by God's own appointment, was the answer to all his apprehensions. In the centre of the
i6o W/iat is a Typef camp, surrounded by common dwellings, though composed of more cosdy materials as became the Divine glory, there was a tent which was to be regarded as God's dwelling-place. It was divided into separate courts, and the innermost sanctuary was to be entered only by the high priest, and by him only once a year ; but still, there was the Divine home standing among the common homes of the nation : into the outer court all the people might at, any time have access, and into the inner court of all — the very presence-chamber of Jehovah — the high priest
entered as the representative of all the people. The tabernacle first, the temple afterwards, was a visible sign of how near God was to man, that no immeasurable interval separated the Highest of all from our sinful race, that in no unexpected vicissitudes of human history was He far away ; He had made a home among the children of men. This was the obvious truth which the tabernacle and temple taught the Jewish people ; and the very same truth, in a far more wonderful, impressive, and glorious form, was taught by the presence of Christ in the world in a human body. That body, the vesture of a Divine person, taught all tliat the temple taught concerning God's nearness to man, and taught it far more fully. And for this reason, Christ could fitly appropriate to the one the very term which denominated the other. I do not wish to anticipate the discussion of the. Jewish sacrifices which occupies the next chapter, but perhaps these afford a still simpler illustration of the principles I am anxious to establish. For instance, when a devout Jew looked upon the sacrifices which were slain for the sins of the whole nation on the great day of atonement, what impression would they produce on his mind ? Are we to suppose that he foresaw that the time would come when God Himself, in the person of Jesus Christ, would stoop to shame and death that human transgression might be forgiven ? I think not ; whatever intimations of this kind may be found in the Psalms and the Prophets, came long after the sacrificial system was first instituted, and must have been, till the coming of Christ, very mysterious and dim. But he saw in the sacrifices a visible declaration, made by the Divine authority, of the ill desert of
W/iat is a Type? i6i sin : he saw also that it was God's will that sin should be forgiven, and forgiven, not on account of any great and noble works wrought by the repentant sinner himself ; for to offer the animal sacrifices for the sin of the whole people, required no self-denial worth considering on the part of any individual, and the forgiveness which might be obtained when they were offered, was plainly the free, undeserved act of the Divine mercy. Conviction of the evil of sin, trust for pardon in the grace of God, and not in any atonement to be effected by their own right doing, were naturally encouraged by these annual offerings. or was this all : the whole Jewish nation was gradually familiarized with the idea that by God's appointment
forgiveness of sin was connected with the sufferings of a victim guilty of no offence against the Divine law. But these same truths lie at the very basis of the atonement made by Christ for human sin ; and these same spiritual results, /', conviction of the evil of sin, simple trust in the Divine mercy; '' for pardon, are encouraged by His death. And hence Jewish V sacrifices are typical of Christ's atonement. ' The same principle which determines the typical character of rehgious institutions and ceremonies determines also the typical character of historical narratives. The fancy of theologians has run wild in attaching spiritual meanings to Old Testament stories, and, by a natural reaction, many thoughtful men have come to think with unmitigated contempt of all typical interpretations of historical facts, whether in the lives of individual saints or the vicissitudes of the Jewish nation. The innumerable wives of Solomon have been spiritualized into a typical representation of the innumerable virtues of his character; Samson's meeting a young lion has been made typical of Christ's meeting Saul on his way to Damascus ; Jacob's purchasing of the birthright by red pottage, of Christ's purchasing heaven for us by His own red blood, and Jacob's being clothed in Esau's garment when the blessing was obtained, of Christ's being clothed in our nature when the purchase was effected. All these fanciful analogies are unworthy of the dignity of holy Scripture ; a system of interpretation dealing in such puerilities and arbitrary conceits as these, M
1 62 W/iat is a Type? must manifestly be utterly vague and uncertain. On sucli i:)rinciples anything may be brought out of anything. But if, in God's government of the Jewish people or His providential ordering of an individual life, any principle is obviously revealed, which is exemplified in a higher form in the l)resent spiritual relations of mankind, a typical element may be fairly recognised. An Old Testament type is the exhibition, in an inferior form, of a truth, a principle, a law, which is revealed in a higher form in the Christian dispensation.
1. 68 FREE BOOKS http://www.scribd.com/doc/21800308/Free-Christian-Books
2. ALL WRITI GS http://www.scribd.com/glennpease/documents?page=970
" ow, of the things which we have spolcen this is tlie sum : We have such an High Priest, who is set on the riglit hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens," &c. — Hebrews viii, 1-5. The discussion concerning Melchizedek has now closed. The writer has shown that the Jewish Scriptures themselves indicated that the priesthood of the descendants of Aaron was not to be perpetual, but was to give place to a priesthood of a higher order, — a priesthood underived, untransmitted, and having a dignity and authority with which mortal men could not be invested. And now he tells his readers that " the prmcipal thing " of which he is speaking is, that " we have a High Priest who sat down on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens ;'' who is " «: minister'''' not of an earthly temple, '■'■but of the true tabernacle which the Lord pitched, and not ma7iP That He cannot be a mere earthly priest, nor present mere earthly sacrifices, is shown in the next two verses. " Every High Priest is ordained to offer gifts and sacrifices ; and so Christ" if His priestly name and office are not an idle form, " must also have somewhat to offer : but if He were on earth He woidd not be a pricsf^ at all, for a tribe, a family to which He did not belong, had been appointed and consecrated " to offer ^ifts according to the law" He is, therefore priest in another sanctuary, and offers other gifts : and what these are the next verse informs us ; the service of the Jewish priests is devoted to the " example," or visible illustration and shadow of " heavenly things," as may be suggested indeed by what God said to Moses when ^^ he was about to complete the tabernacle, 'for see,' said He, ' that thou make all things accorditig to the pattern shoived to thee in the 7nount' "
154 W/iat is a Type? These words appear to me a general introduction to the contrast which the writer now proceeds to draw between the old covenant and the new, — the access to God granted in the Jewish temple, and the access to God granted to Christian believers through Christ, — the numerous Levitical sacrifices, and the great sacrifice once offered for the sins of mankind.
Already he has vindicated and illustrated the glory of the Lord Jesus Himself, as being greater than angels, greater than Moses. He has also shown that, according to Jewish prophecy, Christ is not only a priest, but a priest belonging to a loftier rank than that of Aaron and his sons ; and now the first part of the Epistle is about to close by a profoundly interestihg illustration of the superiority of the Christian dispensation itself to that religious constitution which these Jewish believers were longing to perpetuate. The personal supremacy of Christ above all who had to do with founding or maintaining the ancient system has been made clear ; the superiority of His priesthood to that of the sons of Aaron in permanence and in the solemnity of the consecration by which He was appointed to it, has also been showoi ; and the whole argument of the Epistle for steadfast loyalty to Christ, and against apostasy to Judaism, is about to be crowned and completed by the contrast, which extends to the middle of the tenth chapter, between the inferior promises and the merely symbolic institutions of the old covenant, and the nobler and eternal blessings which belong to the new. There is one expression in these introductory verses to which I wish to call your most thoughtful attention. The writer does not dwell upon it ; but it is developed and illustrated in the next two chapters. The institutions of Judaism are represented as visible illustrations, "shadows of heavenly things;" the very forms of the sacred vessels of the tabernacle were made after a pattern which was sho\vn tc Moses in the mount, and the whole ritual was a revelation and a prophecy of spiritual and eternal realities. This sentence is plainly of the very gravest importance in reference to the relation between the institutions of the ancient worship and the great truths and facts of the Christian system ; and, as that relation has been greatly misunderstood, and is still
Wkat is a Type? 155 perhaps most imperfectly and even incorrectly conceived, by many Christian people, I wish to explain it as clearly and as briefly as I can. All that follows in the argumentative part of this Epistle will be a mere riddle and perplexity to thoughful persons, if the general principle which this expression affirms is not grasped with firmness and accuracy.
I. To understand it aright there are, I think, three very simple facts which need to be carefully considered and constantly remembered. (i) The first is, that the Jewish system was intended for the culture of the religious life of the Jews themselves. I find, on reading the Old Testament Scriptures, that for about sixteen hundred years before Christ came, the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, were living under a civil polity and maintaining ritualistic observances instituted by God Himself. o matter whether the idea of oftering sacrifice originated with man, or was given at first by Divine revelation ; no matter whether the resemblances between the Levitical ceremonies and the rites of certain pagan systems were numerous or few; the declarations of holy Scripture are perfectly miambiguous that the whole of the Jev/ish system had God's sanction. It is equally certain that while many parts of the Levitical law may have rested on social or sanitary grounds exclusively, there were other parts which were religious in their principle and purpose. There was a temple for worship ; there were sacrifices for sin ; there were consecrated priests. Through generation after generation the appointed victims were consumed on the altar ; festival after festival the outer courts of the sanctuary were crowded with worshippers ; year after year the High Priest entered with reverence and fear and awe into the Holy of Holies. ow, it seems to me incredible that all this should have been a mystery without meaning to Moses, to Aaron, to Samuel, to David, to Isaiah, and to all the prophets ; incredible, that the tens of thousands of holy men who took part in
156 What is a Type? these solemn rites, should have connected them with no moral or spiritual truths. If it be alleged that this cumbrous and stately system was altogether unintelligible till Christ came, — a riddle, without a solution till then, — I can only ask. For what purpose did it exist at all ? Perhaps it may be said that it is an additional aid to our faith to discover in these Jewish rites, curious and even profound anticipations of the fully-developed
Christian faith ; but, if that had been the solitary object of these institutions, it would surely have been enough if the ceremonies had been performed, once for all, when the people were at Sinai, or when Solomon came to the throne, or if they had been solemnly enacted once every hundred years. If they were simply unintelligible prophecies of Christ, — prophecies which could not be understood until Christ came, — what need was there that, day after day, year after year, century after century, they should be still repeated ? Moreover, it is singularly unfortunate, if the ceremonial system had no meaning for the Jews themselves, and reserved all its wealth of instruction for Christian times, that this very system proved a very perilous hindrance to the Christian faith in the first age, and that ever since, it has been to so large an extent a difficulty requiring to be explained, instead of an independent source of instruction on Christian doctrine or practice. We understand it imperfectly ; if the Jews before Christ did not understand it at all, it has certainly proved a very remarkable and uncompensated failure. It is surely far more reasonable to suppose that the Levitical institutions had a religious meaning for the Jews themselves, and exerted a real and powerful influence on their religious life. (2) The principles of true religion have always been the same as they are now, ever since man sinned and God determined to effect his redemption through the incarnation, death, resurrection, and glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. I do not say that those principles were revealed at first as clearly as they are revealed now ; but that, although our knowledge of God and of His salvation is much fuller than Adam, or Abraham, or Moses possessed, what was true in their times is true still; that, if God taught them anything. He must have
W/iat is a Type? 157 taught them substantially the same things He has taught us, although the teaching was clear only when it dealt with the most elementary truths, and became obscure when it passed beyond them. As far as it went, the revelation of God to the Jewish race must have been substantially identical with His revelation to ourselves. For instance, it was as true then as it is now, that there is but one God, — that His character is holy, and that His law requires man to be holy too : — that man has sinned, needs God's forgiveness, and that whenever God
forgives, it is because man's relation to Himself is derived from the suffering of another on man's behalf These things have been always true, and although they have not always been revealed as fully and clearly as they are now, yet if man received in ancient times any knowledge of God — of God's moral attributes, of God's will ; and of his own moral condition and the means of escaping from his guilt and ruin ; these truths, whether they were more dimly or more distinctly communicated, must have had a place in Divine revelation. The forms in which truth of this order is clothed may vary, — the measure of man's knowledge of it may vary : but the truth itself is invariable. And that, as a matter of fact, the same truths substantially that we believe now — not all of them, perhaps, but, so far as they went, the same — were believed by God's saints in the old times, is sufficiently plain from this, that their actual spiritual life was so like our own, that many Christian people — erroneously, as I am compelled to think — suppose that the book of Psalms, in which the devotion of the Jewish saints is uttered, contains a full and adequate expression for the religious life of the Church in all ages. If, from some remote world, an angelic visitor were to bring fruits and flowers precisely like those with which we ourselves are already familiar, it would be a fair inference that the elements of the soil in that unknown orb were the same as they are here, — that there was heat there like that in which our own flowers blossom and our own fruits ripen, — that there was an atmosphere there like our own, and rain. And so, if we knew nothing of the revelation which God had made to the Jewish
158 W/iai is a Type? people, there would be enough in the Book of Psalms alone, to convince us that it was substantially the same as the revelation He has made to us ; for in that book the moral and spiritual results of the ancient revelation are preserved to us, and they are of the same kind as the results of the revelation made to ourselves. David knew as well as we know that the gods of the nations are idols, and that Jehovah is the sole Creator of the heavens which declare His glory, and of the earth which is full of His goodness. He knew that sin was intolerable to God, and, under the consciousness of his guilt, cried passionately, " Cast me not away from Thy presence." He knew that
though " God is angry with the wicked every day," " there is forgiveness with Him that He may be feared," and could sing with tranquil joy of the blessedness of the man "whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered." If, then, the Jewish system was intended for the religious instruction of the Jews themselves, — and if religious truth remains the same through all ages — it follows necessarily that we may expect to find in the institutions of Judaism the same truths which are more fully and gloriously revealed by Christ Himself and the inspired writers of the ew Testament. (3) This conclusion is confirmed, and the necessary limits of it suggested, by the fact that Judaism is always represented in the ew Testament as a system intended to discipline and educate men for the coming of Christ. If the Jewish institutions were introductory to the Christian revelation, they must surely have been in essential harmony with it, and have taught substantially the same truths. If they were intended to discipline the Jewish people for Christ's coming, their spiritual influence must have been in harmony with that of the faith of Christ, and must have formed the spiritual life after the same model. And yet, since they were only introductor}^, and formed only a preparatory discipline, we cannot suppose that the Jewish saints — even the wisest and holiest — found in them all that we find in the four Gospels, and the writings of the apostles. The Jewish institutions, according to the language of this Epistle, were not full disclosures of Divine truth ; they were pictures or
What is a Type? 159 delineations — " s/u7do7c>s 0/ //cavc^/y t/i///gs" — but still heavenlythings were actually revealed through them.
II. And now, keeping these three principles in mind, it will not be difficult to perceive what we ought to understand by the typical character of Old Testament ritualism, and of Old Testament history.
According to the use of the writers of the Christian Scriptures, if an ancient ceremony was obviously intended by God to reveal to the Jew a certain religious principle or truth, that ceremony is treated as a type of the Christian yc?r/ in which the same principle or truth is now revealed. For instance, take those words of our Lord's in which He says, " Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it again," words which according to the evangelist, referred to the temple of His body. Are we to suppose that the connection between the body of Christ and the Jewish temple was purely arbitrary ? Or was there any outward resemblance between them which justified the Lord Jesus in speaking of the one as a type of the other ? By no means. Try to imagine yourself a Jew — -a devout Jew — who had come out from among the idolatries and superstitions of Egypt, into the wilderness. He knew that the gods which were worshipped by the Egyptians were mere creations of the human imagination, that their visible forms were the work of human hands. He knew too, that the Jehovah he worshipped had created all things ; the thunder was the symbol of His voice, and the lightning of His vengeance. He reigned in the highest heavens, was infinite in power, and in wisdom, and perfect in holiness. Occasionally He had appeared to the saintly men of his race ; to Abraham in the old time ; to Moses more recently ; but was not God too great and awful to be accessible to common men ? Could even the holiest expect that He would be always near to them ? The tabernacle, constructed by God's own appointment, was the answer to all his apprehensions. In the centre of the
i6o W/iat is a Typef camp, surrounded by common dwellings, though composed of more cosdy materials as became the Divine glory, there was a tent which was to be regarded as God's dwelling-place. It was divided into separate courts, and the innermost sanctuary was to be entered only by the high priest, and by him only once a year ; but still, there was the Divine home standing among the common homes of the nation : into the outer court all the people might at, any time have access, and into the inner court of all — the very presence-chamber of Jehovah — the high priest
entered as the representative of all the people. The tabernacle first, the temple afterwards, was a visible sign of how near God was to man, that no immeasurable interval separated the Highest of all from our sinful race, that in no unexpected vicissitudes of human history was He far away ; He had made a home among the children of men. This was the obvious truth which the tabernacle and temple taught the Jewish people ; and the very same truth, in a far more wonderful, impressive, and glorious form, was taught by the presence of Christ in the world in a human body. That body, the vesture of a Divine person, taught all tliat the temple taught concerning God's nearness to man, and taught it far more fully. And for this reason, Christ could fitly appropriate to the one the very term which denominated the other. I do not wish to anticipate the discussion of the. Jewish sacrifices which occupies the next chapter, but perhaps these afford a still simpler illustration of the principles I am anxious to establish. For instance, when a devout Jew looked upon the sacrifices which were slain for the sins of the whole nation on the great day of atonement, what impression would they produce on his mind ? Are we to suppose that he foresaw that the time would come when God Himself, in the person of Jesus Christ, would stoop to shame and death that human transgression might be forgiven ? I think not ; whatever intimations of this kind may be found in the Psalms and the Prophets, came long after the sacrificial system was first instituted, and must have been, till the coming of Christ, very mysterious and dim. But he saw in the sacrifices a visible declaration, made by the Divine authority, of the ill desert of
W/iat is a Type? i6i sin : he saw also that it was God's will that sin should be forgiven, and forgiven, not on account of any great and noble works wrought by the repentant sinner himself ; for to offer the animal sacrifices for the sin of the whole people, required no self-denial worth considering on the part of any individual, and the forgiveness which might be obtained when they were offered, was plainly the free, undeserved act of the Divine mercy. Conviction of the evil of sin, trust for pardon in the grace of God, and not in any atonement to be effected by their own right doing, were naturally encouraged by these annual offerings. or was this all : the whole Jewish nation was gradually familiarized with the idea that by God's appointment
forgiveness of sin was connected with the sufferings of a victim guilty of no offence against the Divine law. But these same truths lie at the very basis of the atonement made by Christ for human sin ; and these same spiritual results, /', conviction of the evil of sin, simple trust in the Divine mercy; '' for pardon, are encouraged by His death. And hence Jewish V sacrifices are typical of Christ's atonement. ' The same principle which determines the typical character of rehgious institutions and ceremonies determines also the typical character of historical narratives. The fancy of theologians has run wild in attaching spiritual meanings to Old Testament stories, and, by a natural reaction, many thoughtful men have come to think with unmitigated contempt of all typical interpretations of historical facts, whether in the lives of individual saints or the vicissitudes of the Jewish nation. The innumerable wives of Solomon have been spiritualized into a typical representation of the innumerable virtues of his character; Samson's meeting a young lion has been made typical of Christ's meeting Saul on his way to Damascus ; Jacob's purchasing of the birthright by red pottage, of Christ's purchasing heaven for us by His own red blood, and Jacob's being clothed in Esau's garment when the blessing was obtained, of Christ's being clothed in our nature when the purchase was effected. All these fanciful analogies are unworthy of the dignity of holy Scripture ; a system of interpretation dealing in such puerilities and arbitrary conceits as these, M
1 62 W/iat is a Type? must manifestly be utterly vague and uncertain. On sucli i:)rinciples anything may be brought out of anything. But if, in God's government of the Jewish people or His providential ordering of an individual life, any principle is obviously revealed, which is exemplified in a higher form in the l)resent spiritual relations of mankind, a typical element may be fairly recognised. An Old Testament type is the exhibition, in an inferior form, of a truth, a principle, a law, which is revealed in a higher form in the Christian dispensation.
1. 68 FREE BOOKS http://www.scribd.com/doc/21800308/Free-Christian-Books
2. ALL WRITI GS http://www.scribd.com/glennpease/documents?page=970
