1 8 74 ] THE OLD TESTAMENT IN TEACHING 287 



history there could be no saving doctrine, because with 

 out a work of redemption actually realised there could 

 be no doctrine of redemption. 



The erroneous way of thought which I have just 

 characterised is still common enough amongst us, and 

 we have all seen how it works in the use of the Old Testa 

 ment for instruction. It issues either (i) in arbitrary 

 spiritualising, or (2) in dry and shallow moralising, (i) 

 The first of these ways of using the Old Testament is 

 probably less common in the school than in the pulpit, 

 and can never again reach the predominance accorded to 

 it by some pre- Reformation Romish theologians, who 

 value the Old Testament history only in so far as an 

 allegorical reference to New Testament truth can be 

 extracted from it. Yet the warning is not unnecessary, 

 that the disposition everywhere to find types and figures 

 is one of the most ensnaring tendencies with which we 

 can approach the Bible ; for there is no surer method 

 of eliminating from the Scripture narratives that endless 

 variety of human interest which is a chief source of their 

 charm and power, and reducing them to limp and colour 

 less uniformity. Take, for example, the story of Abraham 

 offering Isaac. Can anything show more powerfully, 

 not only to the understanding, but to the heart, the 

 nature of the faith with which we are to cling to God, 

 through all apparent hardness in His dealings with us, 

 than this narrative taken literally ? But if instead of 

 trying to bring ourselves, or those we teach, under the 

 direct influence of Abraham s faith on the one side, and 

 the issue that justified that faith on the other, we proceed 

 to spiritualise, and seek in Isaac a type of Christ, instantly 

 the rich direct personal lesson is gone, and we are brought 

 back, in a roundabout way, to the doctrine of the Atone 

 ment in general. Of course there are real types in the 

 Old Testament, but in them the typical lesson rises 

 naturally out of the literal lesson, and shares its direct 

 concrete personal character. Such types alone can 



