288 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1870- 



profitably be used for instruction. But when we are 

 always hunting for artificial types, it may be fairly asked 

 whether there is any profit in using the Old Testament 

 in order to get, by a round-about process, doctrines which 

 could be got in quite the same shape, and much more 

 directly, from the New Testament, or even from the 

 Catechism. (2) More common is the fault of artificial 

 abstract moralising. Let me illustrate this by an extract 

 or two from a Sabbath school syllabus, in which side by 

 side with the lessons from Old Testament history stand 

 associated &quot; Doctrines to be proved.&quot; The following are 

 consecutive pairs : Joseph s brethren accused. Honesty 

 is the best policy. Joseph makes himself known to his 

 brethren Brethren should love one another. Joseph 

 meets Jacob Parents to be honoured. Jacob blesses 

 Joseph The death of a believer is happy. Jacob s 

 burial Sin brought death. The way of teaching which 

 such a scheme suggests, and to which in many hands it 

 certainly leads, is this : to cut up the history into little 

 sections, in each section to find a doctrine or moral 

 precept illustrated, and to regard this precept as the 

 chief &quot; lesson &quot; of the passage. As a matter of course the 

 lesson must often be far-fetched. For the Old Testament 

 was not compiled as a series of short lessons, but as a 

 narrative of the continuous history of God s dealings 

 with His people. Thus the story of Joseph s brethren 

 was never meant to teach that honesty is the best policy ; 

 it is narrated because it was necessary to show, in detail, 

 how God s providence brought Israel into Egypt. If we 

 concentrate our attention on the doctrines to be gathered 

 from little atoms of the history doctrines of a kind so 

 general that they find hundreds of illustrations, not only 

 in the Bible, but in everyday life we throw into the 

 background that which is the real peculiarity of Bible 

 history viz. that it is the history of salvation. It is 

 only by laying stress on this last character, only by 

 showing how in the Bible the invisible and eternal things 



