i 5 4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



three fishes which, according to St. John's Gospel, were caught by 

 St. Peter and the other apostles. Some points in his long develop- 

 ment of this subject may be selected to show what the older theo- 

 logical method can be made to do for a great mind. He tells us 

 that the hundred and fifty and three fishes embody a great mys- 

 tery ; that the number ten, evidently as the number of the com- 

 mandments, indicates the law ; but, as the law without the spirit 

 only kills, we must add the seven gifts of the spirit, and we thus 

 have the number seventeen, which signifies the old and new dis- 

 pensations ; then, if we add together every several number which 

 seventeen contains from one to seventeen inclusive, the result is a 

 hundred and fifty and three the number of the fishes. 



With this sort of reasoning he finds profound meanings in the 

 number of furlongs mentioned in the sixth chapter of St. John. 

 Referring to the fact that the disciples had rowed about " twenty- 

 five or thirty furlongs/' he declares that "twenty-five typifies the 

 law, because it is five times five, but the law was imperfect before 

 the gospel came ; now perfection is comprised in six, since God in 

 six days perfected the world, hence five is multiplied by six that 

 the law may be perfected by the gospel, and six times five is 

 thirty." 



But Augustine's exploits in exegesis were not all based on 

 numerals ; he is sometimes equally profound in other modes. 

 Thus he tells us that the condemnation of the serpent to eat dust 

 typifies the sin of curiosity, since in eating dust he " penetrates the 

 obscure and shadowy " ; and that Noah's ark was " pitched within 

 and without with pitch" to show the safety of the Church from 

 the leaking in of heresy. 



Still another exploit one at which the Church might well 

 have stood aghast was his statement that the drunkenness of 

 Noah prefigured the suffering and death of Christ. It is but just 

 to say that he was not the original author of this interpretation ; 

 it had been presented long before by St. Cyprian. But this was 

 far from Augustine's worst. Perhaps no interpretation of Scrip- 

 ture has ever led to more cruel and persistent oppression, torture, 

 and bloodshed than his reading into one of the most beautiful 

 parables of Jesus of Nazareth into the words " compel them to 

 come in" a warrant for religious persecution: of all uninten- 

 tional blasphemies since the world began possibly the most 

 appalling. 



Another strong man follows to fasten these methods on the 

 Church : St. Gregory the Great. In his renowned work on the 

 book of Job, the Magna Moralia, given to the world at the end of 

 the sixth century, he lays great stress on the deep mystical mean- 

 ings of the statement that Job had seven sons. He thinks the 

 seven sons typify the twelve apostles, for "the apostles were 



