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(Canon Titcomb) that to collect and classify such resemblances, and to present 
them in the form in which they will be best understood, is a very useful work. 
And such, in the case of a highly important myth, is the object and result of 
Mr. Cooper’s paper. In the remarks, however, which that paper has sug- 
gested, reference has been made to an apparent difficulty, which in any 
sufficiently extensive comparison of mythology with Scripture comes 
naturally forward — namely, the entire absence from the Pentateuch of any 
mention of the Eesurrection. But the fact is, to have spoken opeuly of 
the Resurrection would have been foreign to the whole plan and purpose 
of that Divine work ; the office of which, as the formal expression and 
incorporation of The Law and the Representative of the Old Testament 
in general, was not to teach in plain words a system of theology, but 
allegorically to typify that, as yet far distant, gospel light, for which, by 
its discipline also, it was already preparing the way. In the New Testament, 
and by St. Paul especially, wo are taught that the Pentateuchal narratives, 
whatever other meanings or uses they may have, were also allegories, and 
as such foreshadowed gospel truth. And the more w r e both realize this fact 
and search for its causes, the more we shall see that any direct revelation 
with regard to the Resurrection would not merely have involved the confusion 
of mixing together the type and the antitype, but would also have been, to 
say the least, an exception to the general principle on which, as regarded the 
higher mysteries of religion, it had pleased the Almighty to act — that, namely, 
of deferring till the due time should be come, their fuller and more open 
development : a development which then, and not till then, could be made 
both as a whole and in a manner more worthy of the infiuite mercy and love 
therein to be brought to light. The more remarkable the reticence, the more 
certainly it had its reasons and objects ; and if one such object was the avoiding 
of that confusion or disturbance of which I have already spoken, this, as we 
may reasonably conclude, was not the only one. Por the general principle 
which has just been noticed, and to which, more than to any other cause, the 
very use of allegorical instead of direct teaching may most naturally be re- 
ferred, — this general principle itself is unquestionably a far more important 
reason for the reticence in question. 
And because this principle is so true, while yet Christian translators and 
expositors, living themselves in the days of the antitype, have always been in 
danger of more or less losing sight both of it and of the types themselves, and 
so of regarding as directly, what was meant to be only indirectly, evangelical — 
for these reasons — if we wish to be correct, not merely as regards theology, 
but also as regards the history of theology, — we shall do well to examine, if 
not suspiciously, at least carefully, all such renderings and expositions of the 
Old Testament as seem to present with more than usual directness the special 
truths of the Gospel. And this the more, because, besides the desirableness 
for its own sake of all attainable accuracy in the rendering and interpreting of 
the Word of God, all error in the direction here spoken of lays us open to 
the charge which, if we ourselves give cause, we cannot but expect that 
