siah to speak here of the saints, as comprehended in his own person; δύναται ιδιοποιούμενος τὰ πάθη τῆς ἐκκλησίας αυτου, τα προκείμενα ἐξ αὐτῆς λέγειν. Το these verses he gives the following turn: The saints formerly multiplied their idols; but after they were taught the truth by my wonderful deeds among them, they hasted away from all their abominations, etc.' This if it be not very solid exposition, may at least put in some claim to the praise of ingenuity.

To the same purpose almost exactly, does Jerome explain the Psalm before us. "The Psalm pertains to Christ, who speaks in it..... It is the voice of our King, which he utters in the human nature that he had assumed, but without detracting from his divine nature. David means Christ. The Psalm pertains to his passion." The third and fourth verses, he explains in the same way as Eusebius. We see nothing at all of David in the whole Psalm. Vox Christi, vox Christi ad Patrem, is often repeated by Jerome, throughout his commentary. Brev. in Psalterium, p. 151.

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In the like manner does Augustine also explain the Psalm. "Rex noster," says he in quoting the title, " in hoc Psalmo loquitur ex persona susceptionis humanae, de quo titulus regalis (he refers to pn which the Seventy render ornloyoagia) tempore passionis inscriptus eminuit." In the explanation of vs. 3 and 4, he also agrees for substance with Eusebius.

We see then, that there is no foundation for charging the ancient commentators, at any rate the most distinguished and conspicuous among them, with giving a double sense to the Psalm under consideration. They do not apply it at all to David. He does not seem to have even entered their minds as the object of the Psalm, but merely as the author of it. Of course, those modern interpreters, who, like Calvin, Grotius, Le Clerc, Dathe, and many others, find a primary and secondary, or a historic and spiritual or ideal meaning in the sixteenth Psalm, cannot make their appeal for support to the distinguished commentators of the ancient church. Mistake on this subject, however, has been so common, that I hope the true exhibition of the ancient exegesis, as made above, will not be regarded as superfluous.

If now we must declare, which of the various views that have been presented respecting the design and meaning of this Psalm we should choose, for one I should answer, that I agree with none of them; I mean, that there is no one among the whole, which I could adopt as my own, and be satisfied with

it throughout on critical and hermeneutical grounds; although for substance, I should agree with the ancient commentators. I cannot admit the double sense. There is a host of difficulties which rise up against this, too numerous to be particularly recounted on the present occasion. I can merely hint at some of the leading ones. If there be an occult sense to the words of Scripture, not conveyed by the language itself, to be attained in some way independent of the laws of language; then it would follow, that he who reads the Scriptures, and applies to them the laws of interpretation common to all other books, can have no security, that he has arrived at the principal and most important meaning which they were designed to convey. If there be an occult meaning, couched under the words of Scripture, a second inspiration is needed for the readers, in order to determine it with any good degree of satisfaction; for when the laws of language cease to be the guide, (as of course they must in the case before us,) then some substitute worthy of equal or greater confidence, must come in their place. But a substitute must be either conjecture, or inspiration. The first surely cannot lay claim to much certainty; it is subject to no laws; it has no bounds. A second inspiration then is needed, in order to understand a second or occult revelation, i. e. a second sense of words.

When God speaks to men, he speaks in a language which they understand. Otherwise a revelation so called, would not in fact be one. Nothing is revealed, which is not understood, or at least which is not intelligible. And when a communication is made by the use of language, how can it be understood, unless language is employed in the same way as men are accustomed to employ it? For example, how could one who understands only the English language in its ordinary use, be able to expound a communication in which English words should be employed, but a sense given to them by the writer entirely foreign to the usus loquendi of the language? It would manifestly be as impossible, in such a case, for a writer to be understood, as it would be if he were to make his communication in Sanscrit or Chinese.

It follows of necessity, that a revelation, in the true and proper sense of this term, which is made by the use of words, must be made by employing those words in a manner that accords with the usus loquendi of the language employed. And if this be true, it seems to decide the whole question; for there

is no other book on earth, (if you except books of riddles, and some of the old heathen oracles,) where language has, or can have, a double sense. All men, who do not design to deceive or mislead, attach but one meaning to words, i. e. but one meaning to the same words in the same place. Even a book of riddles in reality does this; the enigmas have but one true meaning, and were not designed to have any more; although from the manner in which words are employed, it may be difficult to decipher it.

If I admit a double sense, then, in the Old Testament Scriptures, I admit that they are not to be interpreted according to the laws of human language. What should we think of a man, who should construe the classics, ancient or modern, in this way? What should we think of the sobriety and integrity of a speaker, who should design to attach more than one meaning to his words? And if I must come to the conclusion, that the Old Testament is not to be construed according to the laws of human language, then I must come to the conclusion that a second inspiration is necessary in order to understand it. If so, how did the first inspiration communicate a revelation?

I have only to add, at present, that whenever any interpreter will give me satisfactory proof of his being inspired, I will bow with implicit submission to his exegesis; but until he does this, I must believe that we are to come at the meaning of the Hebrew Scriptures, through the instrumentality of language employed in its ordinary way, according to its usages among men.

There are no limits to this second sense of the Scriptures. The man who adopts it, is cast at once upon a boundless ocean, without rudder or compass. He must himself be inspired, in order to know with any security, whether his interpretation is But as I find no promise of such inspiration to writers of the present day, I must hold to the laws of language, as one of the indispensable means of investigating the true and only sense of the Scriptures.

That a double or mystic sense is unnecessary, the reader may see illustrated in the remarks of Prof. Hahn, to which I have already referred. Of course it seems, on all these grounds, to be inadmissible. The appeal to the writers of the New Testament in order to sanction it, I must think to be entirely without any good grounds. Consequently I cannot hold with Calvin, Grotius, Le Clerc, Dathe, Bishop Lowth, and many others, that the sixteenth Psalm has a historic sense applicable

to David, and a spiritual sense applicable to the Messiah. One greater than David is here.

Nor, in the second place, can I hold with the rationalist interpreters, that David only is meant in this Psalm. I have too much respect for the opinion of Peter and Paul to do so. I cannot receive the accommodation exegesis, which represents them as taking advantage of the erroneous and ungrounded notions of the Jews, in regard to the meaning of the Psalm in question, in order to persuade them that Christ had actually risen from the dead; a persuasion, by the way, which not a few of the rationalists believe to be as ungrounded as the interpretation itself. Neither can I admit, with Rosenmüller and De Wette, that Peter and Paul, although very sincere in the opinion that the Psalm under consideration did apply to Christ, yet were altogether mistaken as to their views of the sense of the writer. When I am prepared to admit this, then must I be prepared to place the theogony of Hesiod, the dreams of the Vedas, the wild conceits of the Zendavesta, and the hypocrisy and lofty pretensions of the Koran, side by side with the Jewish Scriptures; and to say of the latter what Dr Röhr has in effect once and again said, 'There is no difference in point of authority; all is the work of fallible men; all the distinction that can be made is, that the Jewish Scriptures are less replete with absurdities, than any other pretended revelation.'

I quit the modern schools then, and go back to the ancients. I cannot, indeed, accord with all the particulars of their exegesis. Far from this; for how could they explain the very difficult passages in the Psalm under consideration, while they held principally to the version of the Seventy? Indeed they hung entirely upon this; with the exception of Jerome, who, however, does not appear to have availed himself here of his Hebrew knowledge. But it is one thing to give a skilful explanation of minute parts, or particular words and phrases only, where nothing but a nice observation of the laws of language, and accurate acquaintance with the minutiae of grammatical forms, can impart ability to satisfy a well informed inquirer. It is another thing to see and well explain the general scope and intention of a piece, and to point out its connection and symmetry.

In regard to this last object, I should choose my lot among the interpreters of ancient days. All the distinguished men among them agree, that the Psalm relates to Christ, in his passion and his victory over death and the grave, including his sub

sequent exaltation at the right hand of God. This strikes me as the best, and only sure interpretation. I can find difficulties enough in making the application to David alone, to deter me from it. Peter and Paul long ago found them. And in making the application to the Messiah, I can select no portion of his life, in which what he is here represented as saying seems so applicable, as some period not long before his passion and death, when he may be supposed to have been meditating on these, and on the consequences which were to ensue. The first instinctive feeling of his corporeal nature, was an involuntary shrinking from the prospect of suffering; and a cry to God (as in v. 1), that he might be preserved or supported under his sorrows, would be the natural consequence. In like manner the Saviour did actually pour out his sorrows and his supplications, in the garden of Gethsemane and on the cross. His devotedness to God, his love of his own disciples, his abhorrence of all wickedness, the joy that would be consequent on the work of redemption which he was about to accomplish, the goodly heritage' that would be given him, all these pass in review before his mind, and serve to cheer him under the prospect of the agonies to be endured. Even death itself, the result of these agonies, was to be no bar to his triumph. He would burst the gates of the grave, even before it had any power to dissolve his body committed to it. He would rise to a glorious, endless life, and be exalted at the right hand of God, where is full and everlasting joy and happiness.

Such seems to me to be the general course of thought in Ps. XVI. One may compare it with Is. LIII; to which, in some respects, it has a great resemblance. There the sufferer, after he has made expiation by his death, is represented as "dividing a portion with the great, and the spoil with the strong," as "seeing the travail of his soul and being satisfied," as "seeing a seed who should prolong their days, while the pleasure of the Lord prospers in his hand." How much like to the "lines falling in pleasant places, and having a goodly heritage" (Ps. 16: 6) this is, the reader scarcely needs to be informed. The general course of thought is alike in both. Suffering precedes victory, and reward follows. The reward is the heritage bestowed upon him; and this is no less, than having "the heathen for his inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for his possession," Ps. 2: 8.

Exactly the same course of thought, also, is presented in Ps.