1874] WHAT TO SEEK IN THE BIBLE 231 



sideration of the circumstances, with comparison of like 

 and unlike passages. 1 



II. The last of these postulates of a true interpretation 

 raises the question of the relation of exegesis to the 

 analogy of faith, which forms a long and perplexed 

 chapter in the history of the decadence, as well as the 

 growth, of Protestant theology. But it is to be observed 

 that the Reformers everywhere place Scripture above the 

 Ecclesiastic Canon, in virtue of its own innate perspicuity 

 to every one that approaches it in the spirit of faith. 

 And so to the Reformers and their truest followers the 

 analogy of faith means not a dead rule of dogma, but 

 the living sympathy of a renewed soul living in fellow 

 ship with Christ, with the historic record of God s ever- 

 consistent working towards the establishment of His 

 kingdom upon earth. Just as it requires a historic sense 

 to understand profane history, it requires a spiritual 

 sense to understand sacred history. 



III. If the perspicuity of Scripture rests on the one 

 side on the illumination given by the Spirit to the faithful 

 reader, it is no less grounded on the other side on the 

 historicity of Scripture. God s dealings with His people 

 were always personal. What His prophets and apostles 

 spoke, they spoke because by the Spirit they understood, 

 and would have others to understand, how God was 

 dealing with men. And if we possess the same spirit, we, 

 too, shall understand the Word so soon as we place our 

 selves in the historical position of the first hearers. Hence 

 the Reformers emphasise the fact that the Old Testament 

 prophets (who, more than any other Scripture writers, 

 have been supposed to talk things unintelligible to their 

 first hearers) did in Israel precisely the work that ministers 

 of the Gospel must do now in ministering by special 

 application of the principles of law and grace to the ever- 



: Niemeyer, p. 469. The circumstantiae are, I presume, mainly the 

 verbal context ; but the principle implies that the historical circum 

 stances be also considered. 



