Psalms 150

Psalms 150:1-6

Praise according to full capacity. Of the last psalm of this series and of the whole book we have unhappily little indeed to say. God is praised, or there is the call to praise Him, as now manifestly enthroned in the earthly as in the heavenly sanctuary; for His acts, all without exception; mighty and of abundant greatness. Then He is to be praised with all sorts of instruments, according to the full capacity of each. This waking up of inanimate Nature, responsive to the touch or breath of man; is a blessed thing to anticipate. Nature is waiting upon man, and as yet he has evoked little but discord out of it. But this shall a be changed; and then what glorious music shall fill man’s abode. But at present we cannot even distinguish the parts of this wondrous concert. Who shall tell us what trumpet and psaltery and harp represent to us here? -what spiritual significance we are to find in them?

Most would, perhaps, think even the thought of it to be mere fantasy; and we must, at least, yet wait for the answer. But it will come, and might come soon enough, if -“more of reverence in us grow " -and more simplicity of faith in every word of God. Meanwhile let us be sure that everywhere there are notes now of that grand chorus that is to be, which are but out of the reach of ill-attuned ears. Much may be heard that we have not heard; and while the discord, though most real, is that which is first heard, most heeded by the mass, the more we listen the more we shall catch of the deep, sweet notes that lie under. “Seek and ye shall find” is still he Master’s word. “Let every thing that hath breath praise Jehovah! Halleluiah!” AppendicesAppendix 1.The Witness of Arithmetic to Christ: A Leaf from the Gospel of the Exact Sciences. “Doth not nature itself teach you?” (1 Corinthians 11:14.) “There are, it may be, so many kinds of voices in the world, and none of them is without signification” (1 Corinthians 14:10). The natural sciences need to be converted to Christ. Nature indeed does not: for (apart from man, the crown of it,) it has never fallen from Him. It knew at the beginning the touch of His creating hand, when; as the “Word,” the Revealer of the mind of God, He called it into existence; and the work must, of course, bear witness to the Worker. If it be the work of the Revealer, we may well take it as a revelation. And this it is, and as this it must be read, to understand it. But the sciences, so called, are drifting away from Christ. Man wants no more of God than he ever did; and science being the order of the day, his aim must be to make it such as he would have it. He must use it as Adam his father did the trees of the garden, to put a hedge between himself and Him who is pursuing him. The old story, if it be no more than a tradition, has its features of most uncomfortable resemblance to men’s conduct now; all the more uncomfortable because every one now believes in “heredity.” So much the more earnestly does science “offer itself,” as a well-known professor has told us, “to purify theology,” -necessarily after its own fashion: to make it as purely natural -as little supernatural -as it is itself. And from hence has come an attack on Christianity, (which is nothing if not supernatural,) an attack which in the multiplicity of forces enlisted under it, and in the pretentiousness of the learning out of which it springs, is the most formidable of its kind which perhaps the centuries have ever witnessed. There has been, too, already, on the part of those who maintain the defence, so large a yielding of the ground in dispute, as brings into peril of loss all that remains of it. They have allowed the principle -at least the mass have -that “Scripture was not intended to teach science,” to be pushed so far as practically to separate from one another God’s two witnesses. The natural has been cut off from the supernatural, and become thus merely secular. We may, perhaps, indeed find God in it, but scarcely the God of revelation: rather a heathen than the Christian God or God reduced to the features common to the two. The effect of which, for those to whom Christ is the revelation, and the only revelation, of God, is to make natural theology but the dullest, coldest candlelight to those accustomed to the warmth and glory of the noonday sun. Thus it is no wonder if Nature be left as neutral territory, or debateable ground, for the materialistic or agnostic squatter to build upon, with only scant and ineffective protest. But for Christianity such a division of the empire must be ruin in the end. Christ, if not a, universal King, is none. If the physical universe say “I know Him not,” where, then, is this kingdom of His? Thus science has gone on, taking fullest advantage of the concession made to it, pushing further and further its limits continually, insisting on full freedom for speculation, -on having room to add to the history of the world its dreams of the beginning, its prophecies of the end, and to fill up all the gaps between after its own fashion. If we object, we are told that “the world moves still,” in spite of the efforts of theologians to arrest it. “Scripture was not intended to teach science.” If science, then, can only conjecture a cosmogony, how life was produced, how species originated, how man descended (or ascended), nay, as to the birth of religion itself, the spectre of Galileo warns off interference, and Scripture, by the concession, must retire before it. Science is knowledge reasoned out and verified, -knowledge verified by facts of observation.

But then the first of Genesis has not the value of the poorest text-book of geology: it is not reasoned out, but revealed authoritatively. And here, after all, is the stumbling-block for the mere “naturalist”: can the supernatural be upon any terms with the natural? -can it, above all, be admitted as really “super” to the “natural”? -which means, of course, can it have leave to exist? But we are not going into the argument whether Scripture teaches science, still less to plunge into the conflict as to the first of Genesis. I believe, indeed, that there still exists a method of proof as to this, accessible, not merely to scientists or to the learned of any kind, but also to any common man who deems the matter worthy of sufficient attention. And after all, if Scripture is, in fact, a revelation from God, one would expect in it a kind of authentication which would appeal to common men, and not leave them wholly dependent upon the lagging evolution of nineteenth century science, and the not very tender ministry of its priesthood of today. Still we are not going to attempt such proof at this time. Our purpose is rather to interrogate Nature itself, by no means as a whole, but in a mere fragment of it, -a few letters of its alphabet indeed, -to listen to its voice, to see if we are able to interpret at all its language, and for this compare it (after the approved method of philology) with the alphabet of another language, well known to us all as theological, and see, if possibly they may not be near akin. If we should find them, in fact, so much so, as that the one, with the help of the other, should spell out a central truth of theology itself, -and if, moreover, the text used for this could be proved to be as old as, nay, involved in the very constitution of the alphabet itself, -then, without any possible question, as it would appear, the theological truth, whatever it be, must be at least as old as that old natural alphabet, and will be enforced with all the power of demonstration that Nature itself possesses. Then it will be seen that, as Scripture on its side has no quarrel with Nature, but can put sanction on its teaching, as the text at the head of this paper does, -so Nature, on its own side, far from being at issue with Scripture, owns it loyally as the word of the living God. It is evident that the more simple and elementary the truth taken up for this, the more simple and perspicuous the argument will be. The more fundamental also in Nature, and the more it belongs to that part of it which bears, most of all, the stamp of mind upon it, the more will it seem in order for the light illuminating it to flash out here. Now I know of nothing in which the stamp of mind is more readily discovered than in that numerical system which is more and more being seen to manifest itself in Nature, and most of all in that foundation science where the Builder’s hieroglyph would most certainly be found. Chemistry deals with the very substance of all material things, with the primitive atoms and molecules themselves and “Chemistry,” says Herschel, “is, in a most pre-eminent degree, the science of quantity; and to enumerate the discoveries which have arisen for it from the mere determination of weights and measures would be merely to give a synopsis of this branch of knowledge.” And he goes further than this, and affirms that “Indeed it is a character of all the higher laws of Nature to assume the form of a precise quantitative statement.” Similarly, Alexander von Humboldt declares that “the only remaining and widely diffused hieroglyphic characters still in our writing -numbers -appear to us again as powers of the cosmos, although in a wider sense than that applied to them by the Italian school.” Once more, Prof. Flint says: “The physical universe has, perhaps, no more general characteristic than this -its laws are mathematical relations. . . . If we are to give any credit to science, there can be no doubt about the weights and measures and numbers. This question, then, is alone left: could anything else than intelligence weigh, measure, and number? Could mere matter know the abstrusest properties of space and time and number, so as to obey them in the wondrous way it does? Could what has taken so much mathematical knowledge and research to apprehend, have originated with what was ignorant of all quantitative relations? . . . The belief in a Divine Creator is alone capable of rendering rational the fact that mathematical truths are realized in the material world.” (“Theism,” pp. 136, 137.) May we not be able to go further than this, however? May it be possible not merely to assure ourselves that there are such, but even to interpret the hieroglyphics? That would indeed be a revelation, if it could be achieved! But is there any hope of it? Would it not be utopian to indulge such a hope? Is there, in fact, any meaning behind them, beyond that which Prof.

Flint has given? Now we propose to inquire into the significance of only the first three numbers, -literally, the arithmetical A B C, -and to compare them with the fundamental truths of Christianity (which certainly give us, if this be true, the Name of the Builder of all this glorious fabric), the doctrine of the Trinity of Persons in the Godhead, and the respective offices of these three Persons. If there be any real correspondence apparent, then it will be surely fair to ask what can be the cause of this, except that the God thus presented to us is the Author alike of Nature and of Scripture? And this is a verification which it does not need a scientific expert to make, though it be really scientific; nor indeed any enlarged capacity or attainment of any kind. It is a manifestation of Himself such as God in His care and love to all might exhibit for the help of His creatures, and expect them to give heed to. How many such proofs must there be facing us everywhere in Nature, overlooked from sheer incredulity as to His having come so near us, even by those who believe in a Saviour’s birth in Bethlehem, -incredulity as to His desire to be known and. understood by every soul caring thus to know Him!

With what a blazon of proof would the natural sciences, if converted to Christ, surround us! I have elsewhere shown in detail -a detail which claims investigation at the hands of every candid seeker after truth -that there is a numerical structure of Scripture, as there is of Nature; and that these two have a common key in the spiritual significance of these numbers, as given in Scripture itself. I am only giving here one remarkable example on the side of Nature, and of Nature self-interpreted, although in perfect harmony with the scriptural use, and one which may well claim to be decisive. Certainly Christians have not had in their hands to lay the foundations of arithmetic, nor agreed to hide there in so secure a manner the evidences of their own belief. Nor, again, can it be supposed that they have constructed their belief out of the powers of these primary numbers. But “it is the glory of God to conceal a thing,” as “it is the glory of kings to search out a matter.” (Proverbs 25:2.) And “if thou criest after wisdom, and liftest up thy voice for understanding, -if thou seekest her as silver, and searchest for her as for hid treasures, then shalt thou understand the fear of the Lord, and find the knowledge of God.” (Proverbs 2:3-5.) There are then hidden things which are of priceless value to us. The earth but partially discloses her lodes and treasures of ore. But how little thought is there of these being such, even in the word of God itself; necessarily, therefore, how little search for them! If they are found also, how little belief is there in their value! The gems are counted but as common stones. How soon shall those who think so much of reason be waked up to find that there is reason everywhere, -divinest reason, put there by the Creator of the human mind, and who condescends to “reason” with the beings He has made? Let us proceed to consider the numbers. Of each there are two forms, the cardinal and the ordinal. Taking both into account, primacy, unity, soleness, are evidently the thoughts that inhere in the first number. We shall seek out what other thoughts may be involved in, or connect themselves in a natural way with these. Then we shall inquire as to the possible theological bearings of all this. The argument must necessarily be weak at first, but it will be cumulative, and rapidly gather strength as we proceed. At least, so it is contended; and the thing to be proved has interest enough in it surely to provoke inquiry. The ordinal of “one” is “first.” If we apply this in the sphere of Nature, it is plain that what is first -the true beginning of all must be, without doubt, the cause of all; the first, if we really get back to that, is cause; and the first of all is thus the cause of all. Suppose we could go back to the beginning, and that we found there, to the collapse of all our hopes, no God at all; nothing but such a cloud of elementary particles as our modern materialists can well believe in, -they must and will allow that this world-mist has been the cause of everything that exists today. Whatever the method -however the thing has evolved, -yet there cannot be really a single thought in the mind, or a particle of the air we breathe, that that mist shall not account for. And so Prof. Tyndall, in those “musings on the Matterhorn,” which have been the occasion of so much musing on the part of others since, tells us, that his — “Thought naturally ran back to its remoter origin and sculpture. Nor did thought halt there, but wandered on through molten worlds to that nebulous haze which philosophers have regarded, and with good reason; as the proximate source of all material things. I tried to look at this universal cloud, containing within itself the prediction of all that has since occurred. I tried to imagine it as the seat of those forces whose action was to issue in solar and stellar systems, and all that they involve. Did that formless fog contain potentially the sadness with which I regarded the Matterhorn?” And this is all so clear to him that to make good he thinks we might well even “recast our definitions of matter and force”! For it is plain that no one of us can believe in a self-creation of things, or their coming out of absolute nothing; no matter how long a time you allow them to do it in. Even. the growth of a smaller into a larger substance (as of a seed into a plant) would of course be quite impossible, except by the ministration to it of surrounding elements, as moisture, air, and soil, in the case instanced. We may refuse the gross materialism of Prof. Tyndall; but the passage quoted well illustrates the impossibility we have noted, of separating in this way between “first” and “cause.” Of course, it is not meant, however, that a “first” always implies this. You may have the first of a series, which in no wise depend on it, but (along with itself) upon what is back of all together. We are not now concerned with these smaller beginnings, but with what is so in its highest and fullest sense. We are on the search after God, and must expect that what is less full and high will give the less perfect view or image of Him. Our contention is simply this, that, in the most absolute way of looking at it, the “first” implies cause. “The First” is the Name God claims as His, and this implies His being the Cause of all else. That nothing comes out of nothing, which is, in its rightful meaning, the faith of all, assures us that the great First of all must be the Fountain of all. But we may take another step now, and a very easy step it shall be. A cause implies power, and mark, for its effect, sufficient, and so almighty power. So Prof. Tyndall speaks of the primeval world-fog as containing “potentially” his sadness on a certain occasion. Clear it is, surely, that a cause is not that till it has produced the effect; and thereby it has demonstrated its perfect power (quoad hoc, almighty) to produce it. The First Cause of the Universe must at least thus far be Almighty. There can be no need to dwell on this. A third step now: we are seeking what is highest of its kind: the highest kind of cause we know, what is it? Perhaps one might urge even that we should not know cause or potency at all, if we had not found it in our will as potent. I take this to be true, although it was so early a lesson, shrouding itself in the first instinctive impulse of the babe seeking its mother’s breast, that it may be better to take safer ground, and say that the highest cause we know is in will, choice, determination. “I will” would have no meaning, apart from the sense of power. True, that for executive ability an apparatus of nerves and bones and muscles has been somehow, and as it were in knowledge of my need, provided for me. True, my will may, from the failure of this, be practically impotent in a given case: yet even here this will of mine makes me, spite of all opposition to it, in this sense master of myself, sovereign in my inner citadel, -able, in fact, to distinguish myself by this very means from the outer machinery of flesh, which I ought to control and cannot. Just as the highest “first” we know, then, is cause and potency; so, and as clearly, the highest cause we know is will. And it is highest, not because of the amount of power that is wielded by it, but because it is measured, controlled, purposive. No one doubts that this is the highest quality of cause, and for this reason; and no one would give up the possession of an insect’s strength, governed by an intelligent will, for the resistless might of a hurricane, which is not so, -if, after all, there be a hurricane, even, of this kind! Put together all this, then, by most easy suggestion, there emerges for us a Figure far more definite than the “nebulous haze” that shrouds the beginning of Prof. Tyndall’s world; and which is a true figure of PRIMACY, of a first. It has been legitimately evolved under the careful curb of reason, demanding what is implied in the idea, as yet only of the ordinal form of a single number, and already we have got what may well stand as a fundamental conception of Deity. The King’s image appears already, if faintly, upon the current medium of exchange: a Supreme Will acting in power as the sufficient Cause of the Universe, intelligent, purposive. If this be the image on the coin, we know Whose image and superscription it alone can be. But we have still to look at the cardinal form of the number -“one,” unity. And here, as before, we have to give this its highest and most varied expression; then, putting all this together, to ask to what it points. It need not even now be doubted that this will be by a whole heaven removed from Tyndall’s world-fog. And first, physically, what is the highest and fullest expression of unity which we find in the material world? Manifestly, it is organic unity; and that is as much as to say, the unity of life. Life is the great organizer; and, from plant to man, weaves together its matchless tissues into wholes of marvelous symmetry and adaptation. Every part is fitted to every other part and to the whole, in a working practical unity far beyond the mere naked oneness of a single element. A mountain-mass of this would be but a bigger lump. The self-contained living thing is an individual. The thought here is indeed hardly needed to complete the ideal image which has been rising before us: for the intelligent, purposive Will-Cause of the universe must needs be a “living God.” And of course this organic unity is not true of Him, but only the shadow of what is ineffably higher than itself. We are but using earth-boundary-lines to mark off -not to measure -the heavens. But above this unity of life, however connected with it, rises another unity far higher, and therefore pointing more toward God, -the personality, which is other than the corporeity, and other than its life. But this, if disputed, we need not here contend about. Life and personality are at least the expression of unities which plainly enter into the idea of God, if we are to possess one; and no one will contend that He of whom Scripture speaks is not Living and Personal. But this does not end the correspondence: personality itself leads us further, in that character which seems very clearly to distinguish it from the constantly changing material body. The unity of consciousness is such as our bodies, ever in flux, have not -a unity in time. With all the changes wrought in the course, say, of fifty years, we are witnesses to ourselves that we are, after all, the same persons as fifty years ago. We have not, in that sense, changed in all that time, though the body has been renewed, physiologists tell us, some seven times over. Here there is a unity in time, an unchangeable identity, which, if carried to its highest conceivable terms, develops yet further that thought of God which has been growing steadily, and keeping step with us, as we have pursued our way. Now it overshadows us with the suggestion of the Unchangeable, and so, the Eternal. “Jehovah” meant this for the Hebrew and here the figure of the Hebrew’s God is on the coin. But the Hebrew did not stamp it there: who did? But again: there is another personal unity, which man necessarily conceives, and some aim after, but which is seen but fragmentarily among those that dwell on earth; all the more fittingly the attribute of Him we are seeking. This is moral unity, a character of consistent harmony in which nothing is disproportionate, nothing defective, nothing discordant. Righteousness (which is practical harmony with one’s relationships) and truth, which is identity between the representation and the fact, come naturally under this. Self-consistency in all positions is only possible to perfect goodness: and this fills out the full blessedness that we conceive as God’s. Add to this one last thing, which still the number covers, that God is One: there is no other; -none to dispute His absolute sway. Here again the old Hebrew creed is that of Nature. All these ideas, then, find unforced expression under this first arithmetical number. Together they present us with a very sufficient summary of our faith as to God: not, of course, yet the Trinity; but God as One, living, personal, immutable, eternal, righteous, and true, the Almighty, Maker of the universe, and whom, in this sense at least, we must call Father, perfect in this relationship as in all other. Atheism, polytheism, pantheism, agnosticism, are all set aside by such a faith as this. There is not a main thought, as it would appear, that can be developed out of the number that is incongruous with this, or does not help, indeed, to set it forth. Primacy, unity, soleness, in their highest developments, speak of Him. This would seem a most extraordinary fact, and worthy of attentive consideration.

This correspondence between Nature and Scripture can hardly be accidental, and cannot be of man. Is it possible that Nature is meant in this way to bear witness of the Hand that has moulded her? Is anything, in fact, more reasonable than this? Two. But the full Christian image of God we do not yet see; and we must now take up the second number to find if it will continue the story of the first. If it do so, the wonder must increase, and the difficulty of any solution of it, save one, be felt correspondingly. For the testimony now required is of a very different, almost of an opposite character to that which we have been considering, and, though Father and Son are indeed one God, the distinction between them we must expect to find now dwelt upon, even while we are reminded of this oneness also! Diverse, almost self-contradictory characters, one might think, to be found here together! And yet this will not be too hard a test, if we are right in believing that the handwriting we are reading is meant to convey such a message to us. Now, at first sight, the second number is, in some sense, the very opposite of the first; One, in whatever way it applies, excludes difference; but two affirms it. And this is the key-note of its significance both in nature and in Scripture. Two individuals, even though exactly alike, are yet different by the whole breadth of that individuality. But difference easily runs into the thought of opposition, conflict, and so begins to suggest the possibility of evil. This thought of evil enters largely into the natural use. “They are not one,” we say; “there is a difference between them.” “Two” is also the first number that divides. “One” cannot do so, as we all know. So evil too divides: it has separated man from God; it separates man from man; it has brought in death, which is the separation of soul from body. Two tends thus to evil, but it is not necessarily evil, or we should have no possible use for it in the quest we are now upon. Only with two comes in the thought of relationship; and language presents the other side in its use of seconding. To “second” is to “confirm, succour, help,” and to take even an inferior place in order to do this. And here there begins to dawn on us the light we are seeking. But notice first that the idea of difference, and to a large extent the assumption of evil as present, enters into the better significance itself. “The testimony of two men is true,” says Scripture. But how is it “true”? May not the testimony of one be true too? Undoubtedly, the meaning is, it can be taken as true; it is valid as evidence. But why cannot the testimony of one be taken as true? Well; the witness may be mistaken, of course: even that will be probably due to defect in some way, -to evil, in this sense of evil; but how often, even so, may real mistake be due to something worse than this! how frequently is it due to prejudice, passion, enmity, and such like! And the moral reason is, in fact, the principal one, why a single witness is to be distrusted so much, if not refused: evil has come in; and there is the main need of a second witness to confirm the first. But in any case the truth or validity of the double witness is founded upon difference. If upon examination we find the second witness only repeating the testimony, -still more, the words of the first, this correspondence, instead of producing greater confidence, destroys it. We say, this is a contrived affair: the one has learned his lesson from the other. We need the evidence of two persons, not of one; and this is only one person talking with two mouths. We need to have diversity of interests, feelings, general standard, with yet a confirmation of the point in question, -a sort of stereoscopic view of the facts, which shall give them due solidity. Thus the very help given in seconding implies a difference, often a moral one: in other words, the presence of evil. What then, are the ideas presented to us under this number, two? On the one hand, those of difference, opposition, conflict; of evil, producing division between God and man, between man and man, and going on to division between soul and body, the natural extreme of evil -death. In connection with this, though in an opposite interest, judgment is the putting of difference, the dividing according to difference: “who made me a judge or a divider over you?” On the other hand, we have the thought of “seconding,” confirmation, valid witness, help, taking an inferior place to give help; even here with the implication of evil having come in and created the necessity for this. How different is the sphere of ideas in which we are moving here from that into which we were brought in the case of the former number! And again, we have not travelled outside of nature for these suggestions: they have come to us from the natural use of language, with no sort of help from theology at all, save perhaps as far as the view that sin has brought in death may be held to be theological. But how is it that there rises up before us here a Figure, in most respects so different from the former one, yet so familiar, and so allied to it in our thoughts? We have got back of Christianity, outside of all possible influence from it, yet to find, some way, the Christ of Christianity meeting us, as if the very stones of earth’s foundations were in fact rising up to prophesy of Him! And is not this indeed prophecy, where no “human element” can come in to discredit the inspiration? Is not the king’s image upon the coin again? And if so, what primeval workman stamped it there? Christ is as manifestly before us here, with all the sacred sorrow of His humiliation; as in the first place we had the Father. God and man in one person; He exhibits in this way a marvellous difference within Himself, -two natures far apart brought into mysterious relationship. In Himself, therefore, at the very first thought, He claims -and it is His glory to claim -this number as His own. Who in the whole range of personal existence can claim it as He? And what is He in Godhead? As we know, the Son; the Second Person. And what in manhood? The Son of man the Second Man! And why the Second Man? Why, because evil has come in; and spoiled the glory of the first. And here too is an unspeakable difference: for, if manhood is to be raised up again, it cannot be in the old condition merely; no good in simply bringing back into that so soon lost, and which might be, therefore, so soon lost again! God never simply restores: He replaces the first with what is different from it and far better. Yet it is not the mere setting aside in judgment of man, but help, salvation for him, and “the Second Man is the Lord from heaven” (1 Corinthians 15:1-58). With Him comes in a second -a “new creation;” a second paradise, -not the lost Eden, but the garden of God. “Behold,” says the Voice from the Throne, “I make all things new.” (Revelation 21:5). Thus He is the Seconder, -the Helper, Saviour. He has met in conflict the adversary of our souls, that He might deliver us; and for this He has come down into the lower place, far below His natural equality with the Father, -below angels; nay, below the proper estate and dignity of man himself. He has come down to the place where the division which sin has caused is found at its worst -into the place of separation from God Himself, as witness the cry from the cross, out of the darkness it interpreted: “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” He has come down, too, to the place of death, the division of soul from body: “He humbled Himself, and became obedient to death, even the death of the Cross.” The number cleaves to Him in this way all through His path. No wonder; for throughout it He is the “True Witness,” testifying, amid all the contradiction that sin has brought in, to the perfection of Him to do whose will alone He came: Nay, in creation He has already been. that, -the Logos, the Word of God, -the utterance and revelation of His mind. No wonder then, that creation should bear witness of Him, as it truly does. No wonder, either, that, being this, after His work accomplished, He should be the appointed judge of all, the Divider to every man. according to the difference found in each, the “quick and dead” alike. Examine this throughout, and see if the “exact sciences” have no Gospel in them. Who has had power over nature, to place it there? Who has graven upon the current money of the realm of thought the sacred figure of the thorn-crowned King? Three. What then of the number 3? Does it too change the manner of speech, and yet continue the story to which thus far we have been listening? In one respect, the help to interpretation that we have been finding hitherto fails with the third numeral. We have no record in language of any significance attaching to the third numeral. Even this lack may, however, itself have significance; and we may note it and store it up for such use as every natural fact should have, if one supreme Mind produced and rules in nature. Meanwhile there must be surely some other way of arriving at the end desired.

If a worker may be known by his work, is there no work accomplished by this numeral, which will give it character? This question must, we think, be answered affirmatively; such work there is; and the more we examine it, the more, perhaps, we shall be impressed with the value of its testimony. Some have speculated upon the possibility of a fourth dimension. But, according to the witness of all around us there are but three, -length, breadth and thickness: three modes of extension which alone are actually existent in the world, and which, it would seem, are alone possible to thought either. Moreover, to have any solid, tangible reality whatever, we must have this third dimension. What are length and breadth without thickness? A pencil line drawn upon paper is really more than that. Thus the number 3 attached to any other number denotes the cube of it. It is the sign of cubic -that is, solid -measure; and the third measurement is the measure of content. Three, then, so taken, is ideally the great producer, the materializer, that which converts the idea into reality; thus manifests it, reveals it, brings out what it is. The architect’s plan is practically in two dimensions: it cannot be carried out except the third comes in to help. Let us keep this in mind, and still pursue the inquiry. Two dimensions cannot give solidity: correspondingly, two straight lines cannot enclose a space. That is one of the things which reason, transcending experience, affirms as an absolute, universal truth. I have not compared all possible two lines when I declare this, nor do I need to do so. It is one of those judgments which reveal the native power of the mind. Two straight lines cannot enclose a space. They cannot therefore in this sense effect a proper separation. Two, as we have seen, is the number of division; but we are not thinking of mere division now, but of separation as enclosure, -setting apart. As if, for instance, I had a field to cultivate, and for which my hedge must go all round. Connect this thought with that of the third dimension. The moment you get this, a thought -as the architect’s plan -becomes a realization, and, embodying itself in space, separates itself from what is round about it. It is not a destructive separation, but a constructive one, and in the interests of what is positive gain and fruit. Yet there may be implied, as in a hedge around a field, a previous or an outside evil from which the hedge is to separate; but if the field is to grow nothing, the hedge has no significance: it separates to, not simply from, -sets apart. Here, for the present, then, we may pause; we have got a distinct, workable idea of the number; let us consider the application. For the Christian and in Scripture, the Holy Spirit is, as we know, the third Person of the Trinity. Apart from Him, we could not, of course, speak of a Trinity at all. With Him the Godhead is manifest: too obvious and easy a thought, perhaps, to impress us much with its significance. But the Holy Spirit is also the Revealer. In another sense from that in which Christ is the Witness of God, the Holy Spirit is the witness. He is the Inditer of Scripture, through men inspired of Him -the Relator, as Christ is in Person and Work the substance of the relation. The Spirit is the productive witness, as in creation, brooding upon the face of the deep, or, garnishing the heavens. But He is the Producer in another way. Apart from Him, salvation itself is not actualized in the soul. New birth is of the Spirit; and “except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” With new birth sanctification begins in the soul; and as in the number of which we have been speaking, production and, setting apart are found together: the separation is from evil to bring forth fruit to God. As saith the Bridegroom of the Song of Songs: “A garden enclosed is my sister, my spouse.” And the heart of the spouse answers: “Let my beloved come into his garden, and eat his pleasant fruits.” So, once more, the figure is on the coin: the full, glorious image now. But the office of the Spirit may explain to us, what a little while since was left aside for consideration. As the worker in men it will be found that His Personality, though revealed distinctly enough in the word of God, is yet characteristically much hidden in His work. He is no mere “influence,” far from it. He can be grieved and vexed, searches and knows, sends and is sent, divides unto men severally as He will, guides into truth, makes intercession. Yet, while this is true, wherever pictures, types, parables of the Spirit, He is presented rather in His work, or as identified with those in whom His work is. Take an illustration from the book of Exodus: God speaks of Himself to Moses as identifying Himself with three men, who are thus in some way the display of what He is. “God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob:” this He declares to be His memorial Name (Exodus 3:15). Now, looking back to Moriah, the mount of sacrifice, we can see in Abraham’s offering of Isaac no obscure picture of the Father and the Son (Genesis 22:1-24.) But where is the Spirit seen in Jacob? Why, in that divine work which makes out of the “supplanter” an Israel, a “prince with God.” Take an example from the New Testament. In the 15th of Luke, where the Lord shows us the heart of God told out in the recovery of the lost, the Father comes into plain sight in the last parable; in the first, the Shepherd’s search after the sheep shows quite plainly too the Saviour-Son. But in the woman seeking the lost piece of silver, the Spirit can be only seen, not personally, but in the Church, commonly figured in that way. Once indeed, when the Spirit is seen in a bodily shape as a dove, at the baptism of Jesus, we have a partial exception; partial, as it seems, because the bird of love and sorrow is, as one of the sacrificial birds, rather the figure of the Man of sorrows, upon whom it descends. Again, where the Lord seems to be making the strictest comparison, and where the word He uses is actually that used for the Spirit also, -“the wind (pneuma) bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh nor whither it goeth,” -not only is the figure that of invisibility, and it is known by its effect, but the Lord adds, not as you would expect, “so is the Spirit,” but “so is every one that is born of the Spirit” (John 3:8). No more need be said in this respect but, looking back now at this third numeral, to note again, that we had to find its character not in itself but in its effects, how complete once more is the parallel. The very anomaly, as it might seem, is really what makes more striking the analogy. The type is perfect. The Three One.Not that we have yet done with it, however. We have found, distinctly enough, in this nature-witness, the three Persons of the Godhead have we no intimation that these three Persons are One God? Is it too much to expect, when we have found so much, still to find more? Well, let us put the question: how many answers may we not miss -answers of precious import too, -just because we do not put the question! We must now then look at these three numbers as a whole, and test them by their common significance: if we find this, we must further ask, do these common elements point in the direction of our search? is their message really this, that these three Persons are One God? Now there is one very evident feature in which these three numbers are united: they are all prime numbers. That means, as we know, that they are incapable of true division. But we could not go a single step beyond and find this. The number 4 splits at once into two halves, when tested by that divisive number two, which in that way so strongly suggests evil. Four is thus in Scripture the number of weakness and tendency to failure, -thus of the creature and, divided by this number, it yields again the fatal number of division and of death. But the three numbers preceding maintain their integrity, and thus equally and together bear the stamp of the divine. But this is only a first step in the direction we are taking. Let us now, as we are surely by this time warranted in doing, take, up Scripture as a means of inquiry, and compare it with what we have already ascertained. Scripture uses with full confidence these natural analogies, and thus frankly and fully commits itself to nature, -has no suspicion or jealousy of it at all. The apostle’s saying, which he gives as the “message” of One much greater, is an illustration of this, “God is light” is a direct comparison of Him to that which still in its inmost being is a mystery, though men. may have their theories about it. As a phenomenon it is a very complex one. Still, it is plain that the beam of light, as refracted in its spectral image, shows not merely a seven-fold glory of harmonious colour, but is a trinity of radiant energy, disclosing itself as heat, light, and chemical power, which is now called “actinism.” In the spectrum, the central light-rays blend at one end with the heat, at the other with the actinic rays, only the central band of colors, standing between the others, being, of course, the visible light. The analogy is so far obvious, though it is one which the science of the apostle might well be incapable of making. Christ, Himself the witnessing “Light,” brings the message to us that God is this: Father and Spirit being alike unseen of man. The warming, vivifying rays, which the manifest light carries with it, are no unapt symbol of the Father. The unseen, actinic rays, with their transforming power, are the no less apt symbol of the Spirit’s energy. The sun, with his luminous photosphere, -the light on a material candlestick, -is again He in whom “dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily” (Colossians 2:9), “and who is the effulgence of [the Father’s] glory” (Hebrews 1:3).

Christ as God and man alike, “the Sun of Righteousness” yet to “arise with healing in His wings” (Malachi 4:2), and bring the day. The harmony of Nature and Scripture is here maintained throughout and even the numerical progression is in harmony also. But let us follow this leading also further. “Light” is “that which makes manifest” (Ephesians 5:13). The fantasies begotten of obscurity are dispelled by it, and the truth becomes apparent. Truth is the accordance of the idea with the fact and this unity or identity comes under the range of the first number, even as in the Genesis-record of creation the light appears on the first day. God as One in His moral nature is the True, -consistent with Himself, and with the reality of things everywhere. But Christ also is the Light, and the Radiator of the light, the True Witness, bringing into the soul the valid evidence of the truth. As God and Man, He is the two-fold Witness, entirely competent as such, true and trustworthy. Who could believe in the light, and yet not accept the Sun? But again, the Spirit as the Sanctifier, the Worker of reality, the Actualizer of the divine idea in man; is no less the True and the scriptural phrase for holiness agrees with this: it is the taking things as they are, accepting things at their real value. It is “the holiness of truth” and the Spirit is truth” (1 John 5:6). Once more, the numbers agree: the three are one in the self-same respect as the Scripture testifies as to the Persons of the Godhead. The three are a tri-unity, a trinity, even as the God of the Scriptures is a Triune God. But there is another thing beside Light, that the same apostle bears witness that God is: “God is Love” (1 John 4:8) and this too will be most manifest in Him who is God manifest, and who is God’s love-gift to mankind. But this is found in all three Persons, and must be capable of deduction under all three numbers, if there is to be no defect in this natural presentation of things. This is what we seek, the testimony of nature as parallel with Scripture, and which all that we have found hitherto encourages us to expect. Now, under the first number, we got the idea of consistency, harmony, accord. The number one, we have seen never to divide. This “atoneness” is assuredly the atmosphere of love: “love worketh no ill to his neighbor” (Romans 13:10). This may be a negative, rather than a positive character still it is a character of that which we are seeking. As we do not come under this number to the breach caused by evil, so we have not yet the activity of love to heal the breach. The preservative spirit of concord, therefore, is as yet all that one can expect. Under the second number, evil is seen as having come in, and divine love in its fullness is revealed. “Hereby know we love, because He laid down His life for us” (1 John 3:16, Gk.). God and man are brought together in the very Person of the Mediator and in His work for men, love stays at nothing whereby the end may be attained. The spirit of concord is here become the spirit of reconciliation: the Witness to God is the Saviour of men. Under the third number, the work of the Spirit of God is the carrying out and making effectual the work of Christ in man’s behalf. The soul of man becomes the garden of God, and receives the nurture necessary for the production of the fruit in which He takes pleasure. In him that keepeth His word is the love of God perfected (1 John 4:6). Here then, with whatever imperfection told, is the first leaf only of that gospel of which we may be sure, if this be the beginning, the natural sciences must have much to say. The effort of the day is largely to force them into indifference, if not hostility to divine truth. Nature is neither hostile nor indifferent. And that numerical structure which we find in chemistry undeniably impressed upon the foundations of the world, but which as truly exists in nature and in Scripture everywhere, is, I believe, a God-given key to the correspondence of one with the other -a most signal help to the consistent interpretation of both. Mere utilitarianism, though quite unworthy of the name, may despise what it would consider the mysticism of all this. Harness nature to the machinery by which man’s work is to be done, that it can understand.

Nay, “speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee,” -that will be approved, so long as the lessons gathered are to be merely earthy, and plenty of room is allowed for man’s imagination to roam free from the control of God. You may speculate, as you please, upon elemental fogs as the cause of the sadness of a man of science, and even so your sanity shall not be questioned: for the imagination, even though it be but the whirl of the livelier brain-particles, still must be admitted to belong to man. But gravely to make nature talk in parables, -seriously to believe that they are there, -to credit God with sending messages to us by such a channel, -this will be for many too preposterous even for examination. Here induction, deduction, argument of every kind will perhaps be vain: the prophets of such things must be held for an anachronism. They should have lived when the world was in its credulous youth. This is not the age of gold but the age of iron, and we are rightly doubtful about that age of gold. And yet, if even a time of universal scepticism were upon us, it should be lawful, one would think, to doubt the doubt. The perplexity and unrest, the sorrow and strife, with which the world is filled, are certain: there was One who dared to say once, “Come unto me, and I will give you rest.” It would be good if one could believe in God speaking to us in a voice like that! It would be good to believe even that Nature were His other hand put round us, clasping the hand of revelation, in His earnest desire to draw us to Himself. The belief that such is the fact is perhaps apology enough for speaking. Appendix 2.A Study of the Numerical Symbolism of Scripture There is, I suppose, no student of Scripture who has not caught sight, to a greater or less extent, of a symbolism of numbers to be found in it. He who has implicit faith in “all Scripture” being given by inspiration of God will not doubt that the numbers in it, being part of it and sharing its inspiration, must therefore be “profitable,” as all else in it; and spiritually, which is the profitableness which God has given it for us. But a spiritual meaning attaching to the use of numbers can hardly be other than a symbolic one; falling in thus with the general typical and parabolic language of the Bible, which evidently pervades so much of it. Take the sevens of the book of Revelation generally , or the twelves of the heavenly city, no one could, probably doubt it; but upon all this I need not now dwell, the whole present volume with others of the series being such an extended proof of consistent meaning running through the numbers of Scripture, and imbedded in the very structure of it as, if it does not satisfy any one who will patiently examine it, as to its truth in the main, nothing else that I can say will be likely to do so. I say “its truth in the main,” because it would be a very strange presumption to suppose that there were no blots or disfigurements such as are apt every where to affect all human work, and especially where it is employed upon that which is best and highest. Any one who would take such signs of human infirmity to invalidate the whole of that with which they are connected will have in consistency to reject almost all that man has ever put his hand to. And yet such arguments prevail with many, if not to disprove, at least to cast such doubt upon what is presented to them, as to prevent all real examination of the matter. The thing is shelved: if, with Gamaliel, they will not fight against it, lest haply they should be found to strive against God, like him too, they will leave it to prove this by its success elsewhere, and not trouble themselves in the meanwhile overmuch about it. To those who are disposed to settle the matter by minute criticism of the kind referred to, I would suggest a consideration of the very opposite kind, an argument drawn not from particulars, but from a general view of the subject, and which ought to stand the more securely because of the breadth of its foundation. In the present volume the material of such foundation is gathered out of the whole book of Psalms. every psalm, every verse of every psalm, is cited in evidence and that not in any disorderly manner, or with any fancifully devised arrangement of the proof, but taken from first to last in the very order of Scripture, and with jealous respect to every hint that can be gathered from any source, as title or alphabetic arrangement, or aught else. All this, remember, is taken together in the whole and in every part of it, not merely to prove a numerical structure of the book, which would be comparatively a small thing, but through this to show the meaning of the whole and of every part of it. Every division, subdivision, section, verse, must more or less contribute to this end. The numerical harmony must be the key to a spiritual harmony which emphasizes everywhere the distinctive features of each part in such a way as to combine them into an intelligible and intelligent whole. If this can be done, -if it has been with any success accomplished, -who can even imagine it to be a mere flight of fancy, working in obedience to a strong will to have it so, that has accomplished this? If, on the other hand, there be no way of accounting for this, except by there being somewhere a Mind behind it, which has arranged these marvellous harmonies, then assuredly the book in which they are found is a book which has upon it the seal of its inspiration, not only as a whole but in its details, in such a manner as to bid defiance to all the higher criticism of the day to remove it from it. And this alone would make it of inestimable value to every truth-seeking mind: But not merely this: the seal is set at the same time upon the interpretation of the book. Granting, of course, that there may be mistakes shown here and there, as is fully admitted, yet, the main features cannot be a mistake and even the details cannot be to any large extent: they are the artist’s strokes which combine to make the picture and the truthfulness of the picture as a whole insures the general truthfulness of color and shade. However, my purpose now is to take up the numbers, and to inquire more fully than I have yet done into their symbolic meanings. These are the keys to the locks, for they are not one but various: and it will be understood that they need to be carefully modeled to the wards that are to receive them, if they are to turn without being forced. Much difficulty has arisen from lack of precision as to these meanings, while the positively contradictory ones advocated by different writers have been a stumbling-block with many as to any faith in them at all. I do not propose, however, to examine these differences, but to give the grounds only for those which satisfy myself, and which have abundantly proved themselves in experimental application. It will be found also that these meanings have their roots in nature as well as in Scripture, and are thus counter-checked on either side while the numbers themselves are not indefinite, but few in number the larger ones being but resultants of their factors, as 10, Isaiah 5 X 2, or of the addition of certain others together, according to warrant in Scripture itself as 7 Isaiah 4 + 3 and 5, as will be shown hereafter, Isaiah 4+1. Plainly, without some Scriptural or natural warrant, the latter method would be quite unjustifiable, as any numbers might be arbitrarily taken in this way, and entire uncertainty of all meaning be the result. The series of numbers which we may consider fundamental is, I believe, but seven: answering to the seven notes in music, which by their combinations produce all the various melody and harmony with which we are acquainted. Seven is the well-known number of perfection, which, taken from the completion of God’s six days’ work with the Sabbath of His approving rest, has been used for the division of time ever since, and in Israel was the basis of most of the larger divisions, except the year itself. Thus the months were lunar, (except the partial one intercalated to keep the year straight,) and the 7th month specially marked out by the day of atonement and the feast of tabernacles (Israel’s celebration of rest); while there was a sabbatic year as well as day, and a jubilee at the end of a week of sabbatic years -a still more joyous rest. Consistently with this, the number 8 speaks always in Scripture of a new beginning -what is new in contrast with the old. But this I shall give proof of later, and it is largely accepted in this way. It needs only to be mentioned here to give definiteness to the assurance that in Scripture the numerical series is in fact of seven numbers only. All others seem to be but compounds of these. Let us now take up the numbers separately. One.The number speaks for itself of the ideas connected with it. They are rooted in all language, so that it cannot be hard to test the applicability of any that we attribute to it. Yet it is naturally one of the fullest in meaning in the whole series, and it will be seen how various are the applications that can be made of a few primary thoughts here: a thing of essential importance to any numerical structure, as every series of numbers must of course, begin with this, which must have, therefore, a largeness suited to such various connection. After the first two numbers we shall find this rapidly diminishing in proportion to their less constant use. We may for lucidity divide the meanings of the number into subheads under which to group its different applications.

1. Soleness.Soleness is the exclusion of another: as where Zechariah says of the day of the Kingdom soon to come: “In that day there shall be one Lord, and His Name one.” Under this head we may group also — Singularity, uniqueness; Solitariness; which leads on to — Barrenness; the solitude of impotence. In the opposite direction to this, however, soleness may imply — Sufficiency, power; that which stands alone must have power to stand alone; thus — Independency; admitting no other; which in a bad sense may be a mere synonym for — Pride; and in a creature in his relation to the Creator — Rebellion. But soleness may have also another set of meanings, as where I have to pronounce what are apparently two things to be but one, I affirm their — Unchangeableness, consistency, perpetuity, are but identity in progressive time; and again — Truth is the identity of an idea with fact or object; as — Knowledge is but the identification of these.
2. Unity.Unity we may distinguish as the oneness which proceeds from the uniting of different elements, whether these be physical, mental, moral or spiritual. One cannot divide. Thus we have — At-oneness, harmony, consistency, congruity, integrity, righteousness, which is consistency with relationship, and of which obedience to authority is only one form; concord, peace. We may pass on now to thoughts which are connected with the ordinal form of the number, which here have special importance, as —
3. Primacy.The first natural suggestion is that of — Supremacy, headship, rule; — Beginning; and putting these things together, the supreme, the absolute beginning is the controlling cause of all that exists beside (see Appendix I). We may put down therefore — Cause, source, occasion (which is a lesser cause); and then -foundation, ground, (and so) plea. Of course, it will be understood that not all these thoughts are synonymous with soleness, unity, primacy, as contained in this first number. But these three ideas naturally lead to them all, suggest them. A symbol is just that which in this way suggests what it does not explicitly convey. A cock crowing is not the symbol of a cock at all; but it may be a symbol of the dawn. The numbers come far closer than this to what they stand for. Their meanings have, as stated, their roots in nature, and have all been worked out in this very way. Thus when we find such things as these characterizing the first psalm of a series, or the first section of a psalm, or the first verse of a section, there can be no doubt that this fulfills the requirement of a numerical structure; nor, when we find such conformity continually maintained, that a numerical structure is in fact what we have before us. But yet this does not complete entirely the range of thought which may be found under this number; as it is evident that there may be combinations of these thoughts which may equally find place under it. Thus — Life is the great organizer, or cause of the unity which is every where found in the animal and vegetable kingdoms; while — Personality is the proper unity of man as a spiritual being. Then — Will is allowed to be that which gives us our original conception of cause, and is plainly the assertion of personal independence. Thus we reach — Choice, Election. Then again, — Grace is a state of favor (at-oneness) with God freely (i.e., sovereignly) conferred. It is remarkable how the greater part by far of all these thoughts unite together to image God as the sole personal First Cause and Ruler of all, omniscient, almighty, unchangeable, eternal, righteous and yet gracious; God of the Old Testament and of the New, -Jehovah, Father. And this tends greatly to confirm the naturalness of this grouping as designed of God. Gathered together entirely without thought of this, we find that we have gathered a group of special witnesses, all giving testimony in one direction, and uniting to put God in the first place, which is always His! If we think yet that this is chance, what can we think when we find the second number as much bearing witness to the Second Person of the Godhead as the first to the First Aye, and again the third to the Third? If this looks like arrangement, who has arranged it? If it be chance, does it not seem as if chance itself had become a worshiper of God? Let us worship Him in it then, too. But this has been already taken up at more length (Appendix 1). We must now go on to consider the number Two.If One points to the exclusion of difference, difference is the very thing which Two proclaims. This note of difference runs through all its meanings. We will group them, as in the former case, under sub-heads for better distinction.
4. Relation.With the thought of “another” there comes in necessarily that of relation. A second, if only as that, must have some relation to the first, If it be a true second, as we say, then it is a relation of — Help, support, confirmation, assurance; and thus it is in Scripture the number of Competent testimony. We have this idea expressed in our word “seconding,” and in Scripture in Ecclesiastes 4:9-12. Already this supposes need and something adverse, and thus we are naturally led to the thought of — Preservation, deliverance, salvation. Another thought naturally contained in it is that of — Service, ministry. Then we have, as still connected, but in a more external way, — Addition, increase, growth; and these lead on to — Progress, movement, activity. Spiritually, attachment is almost synonymous with love, near akin to which we have desire, the expression of which, to one thought able to grant it, is in prayer. Attachment, too, may be otherwise read as association, partnership, fellowship. In its ordinal form as —
5. Second.The number is clearly expressive of — Dependence, which leads naturally on to faith, which is dependent attachment. But otherwise it may be read in the sense of inferiority; and so lowliness, humiliation, subjection may be associated with it as ideas. As the number which expresses —
6. Difference.It is very apt to connect itself with the thought of evil, whether moral or physical. Running through the grades of — Diversity and contrast, it goes on to — Contradiction, opposition, conflict, to enmity, and the enemy’s work. And evil comes out again, unmistakably, in the thought of Doublemindedness, duplicity, deceit. It is also the first number which divides, and so stands for —
7. Division.Which we may have as — Separation. Here it may be related to knowledge as analysis, differentiation; discernment; and so judgment, wisdom; in an external manner, sight. But death also is separation, dissolution. Combining such thoughts as these, we shall easily find, as already said, how they cluster round the Person and work of Christ, the Second Person of the Trinity, God and yet Man, the Second Man, the Word of God, the true Witness, the Saviour, come down into the inferior place, to be the Minister and Servant of our need, serving even to death for this, and that death the death of the Cross. All through, the number two links itself with this, which covers, it is plain, both His Person and His glorious work. How unlike are all these things to what we had under the first number! what contrasts are contained in them! But it is the number of contrast, and all speak of Him. Let the reader pause again and consider here how the Lord the True Witness, puts His seal on the numerical system in all this. There is nothing in it that is recondite or hard to follow, surely; nothing that is forced or unnatural. If it speak, and speak truly, after such a fashion as this, how much may we expect from the use which the Spirit of God has made of it. Two is also, as I take it, the number of the soul, the emotional part of man’s nature, as the spirit is the mental and moral. This I have elsewhere spoken of,* and it does not seem so much to concern us here.
   It is also the number of the woman, full of contrasts, as she is: dependent on man, but his help-meet, the type of increase, yet through whom came sin and death, and yet again, through her victorious “Seed,” salvation. Three. When we come to the number three, the help of language fails, for man has penetrated indeed but a little way into the divine mysteries of the book of Nature. We have no words that express the inner meaning of this number, as “unity” and “seconding” speak for the former ones. Nevertheless we are not left without efficient help for ascertaining this. Three, the number of the Spirit, is revealed to us, like the Spirit Himself, by the work it does. The Lord shows himself to us in it, not merely as Master of arithmetic, but as the One to whom geometry bears equal witness. There seem to be just three things which mark respectively three groups of meanings. The first is that there are three dimensions to every solid body; the second, that it takes three straight lines to enclose a space; the third, that the third line of a triangle returns to the first. Let us look at them in this order.

According to the first of these, three is the symbol of cubic -that is, of solid measure; of solidity. Two dimensions give you a measure of surface only, length and breadth without thickness: but there is no such thing in fact: the thinnest line that you can draw upon paper is more than that. Three is thus the symbol of reality, realization; of fulfillment, fullness, of manifestation, as the statue or the house manifests what is in the maker’s mind, -the telling out of the heart. Cubic measure is a measure not of surface, but of content. As the place of divine manifestation, the sanctuary, God’s dwelling-place, was a cube -of ten cubits in the tabernacle, twenty in the temple. So is the final city, which the glory of God lightens: “the length and the breadth and the height of it are equal.” The glory of God is but the manifestation of Himself; and “whoso offereth praise glorifieth Me,” says the Lord Himself (Psalms 50:23): displays Him in His rightful character, as the “blessed God.” To know Him really is to bless Him. Praise is thus the occupation of the sanctuary; not otherwise than freely, while and because necessarily. God’s name, too, is the manifestation of Himself. The Trinity is alone His full manifestation. The Spirit, the Third Person of the Trinity, is He who manifests in the creature the counsels of God, whether in creation or in new creation. 2. It is remarkable how the meanings under the second head run into the first, though reached in such a different manner. Here, if three straight lines enclose a space, the number will speak of separation from what surrounds, but not (as the last number,) of simple division. Like the enclosure of a field, it speaks of setting apart for purpose, specialization, which, if we apply it Godward, we know as sanctification, and in the spiritual result to be attained, as holiness. For, uniting the present with the former line of thought, let us remember that cubic measure is a measure of content and speaks of what is internal, as the Spirit’s work is. Specialization means here therefore transformation, as in some sort it generally does: sanctification of heart is holiness. Thus we are reaching the sanctuary from another side, and have the symbolism of the number doubly witnessed to. Both sides are needed: for the manifestation of things, which only the presence of God rightly gives, realizes the “truth,” the maintenance of which in its full character is holiness -the “holiness of truth” (Ephesians 4:24). The sanctuary is God’s dwelling-place; but as speaking of setting apart, the number is competent to symbolize the dwelling place in general, possession, portion; what is set apart to you. And so also of marriage, which is essentially the same idea. The ban, too, we must remember, was in Israel the setting apart of holiness, though in destruction, -the sanctification of God in judgment; and we find this, therefore, sometimes under the same number that speaks of the glory and praise of God. 3 The third head is that which most evidently furnishes us with the symbol of resurrection, -the return of the third line of a triangle to the first. Here it is most striking that “life” comes under the first number, “death” under the second, just as the first two sides separate from one another. In the third line then, symbolically, death returns to life: we have resurrection. We see why in Scripture it is on the third day. Return, remembrance, recovery, revival of every kind would be symbolized by it, of course, as fitly. One would suppose, reproduction. And the triangle becomes as a whole a sort of mathematical trinity: the witness of how divine truth underlies every where the Kosmos -the ordered world. That the Spirit of God, the Third Person of the Trinity, is borne witness to also in this number, there is no need to cite more than this in proof. But I may add that it is by the indwelling of the Spirit that our bodies are made the temples of the Holy Ghost, and the Church as a whole the “habitation of God.” Four. That the first three numbers have this definite reference to the Persons of the Godhead, they being also all prime numbers, may prepare us to find in the following one the number of the creature, as in some sense it is generally, perhaps, taken to be. Its character is seen in this, that it is the first number that is not a prime: that is, it is the first number that is capable of division without remainder by some other than itself. Thus it speaks emphatically of weakness, which does not belong to God but to the creature in contrast with Him: of that which yields itself to be fashioned by the divine hand, and may yield itself, alas, to another. This yieldingness gives, I believe, the real significance of its symbolism whether good or evil. In Scripture 4 divides thus in two ways either as 3+1, the number of manifestation and that of divine sovereignty (and this is the good sense, when the creature reveals the divine hand that is over it) or else by true division, 2X2, which seems to be invariably significant of evil. Yieldingness may be on the part of man meekness or mercy; and the latter even on God’s part. It may be failure under testing, of which last also the number is clearly competent to remind us. But failure is the sign also of transitoriness and change; and testing, the putting to proof, leads to experience, experimental knowledge. These various thoughts with which 4 connects show it to be the world-number: and in Scripture it is that of the “four corners of the earth,” of earthly completeness and universality, which thus has on it the stamp of weakness, whatever men may boast. It is the number of the “four winds of heaven” -the various and opposing influences of which the earth is the scene, and which so depict the moral contrasts and opposition which mark the fallen creature’s ways. These ways of the creature are but the practical walk on earth; which typically the fourth book of Scripture (Numbers) presents as to the people of God. The connection with the number 2, of which it is the square, is seen all through, while yet it is sufficiently distinct from it. Five. In the cleansing of the leper and the consecration of the priest alike, the blood is put upon three parts of man: the tip of the right ear, the thumb of the right hand, the great toe of the right foot; and these three parts manifest man in his responsibility to God. The ear is to receive His word; the hand to do the enjoined work; the foot to walk in His ways. Each of these parts is connected with the number 5. The ear is one of five senses, the avenues of perception, by which as a rational being he can be appealed to. The hand is that by means of which he moulds and fashions the natural world around him. It is the expression of active power, the four fingers with the opposing thumb, the consecrated, because the governing part. These on the two hands give ten, the number of the commandments in the two tables of the law, the measure of natural responsibility. The foot, the expression of personal conduct (the walk) gives a similar division, much less marked, however, and the two feet a similar ten. Five stands thus as the number of man, exercised and responsible under the government of God. Notice how carefully man’s power is characterized as creature, dependent power. His hand is the sign of it as the vicegerent of God in the world: no beast has, in any proper sense, a hand. Yet the power is in no way like divine power, -simple and without effort, but a co-operation of forces, in which (as he recognizes) “union is strength;” the four fingers, every way significant of weakness, helped by the strong, opposing thumb; the two hands also assisting one another. In perfect agreement with this, the Scripture commonly gives us 5 as 4+1, that is, man the creature in connection with God, his Ruler yet his Helper. Here the divine ways give him constant and needed exercise; and 5 will be found often associated with this thought of exercise under responsibility; and also with the kindred one, that man’s way (4) under the control of God (1), according to its character leads to a corresponding end. Capacity, as identified with responsibility, and leading thus to recompense are thus symbolized by the number 5: this as God’s governmental way, implying necessarily conditions. But man may be in relation to God other than governmental; and we shall find it not infrequently spelling for us the blessed word “Immanuel,” and pointing us directly once again to Christ. It is plainly seen in all this how the significance of the lower numbers enters into the higher; and when we rise to Ten. We have only, so far as I can see, a 5 X 2, while — Forty. The number of probation, is only 4X10, or 4 X (5 X 2). Six. Six is the second number capable of true division. Divided, its factors are 2 and 3, which easily yield the thought of the manifestation (or fullness) of evil, or of the enemy’s work. But evil is weakness, as again this divisibility teaches; and as such it must yield to God. Read in a good sense, the number of conflict (2) brings forth from it sanctification and the glory of God (3). It is the number of man’s work-day week, the appointed time of labor for him, type of his life labor, his “few and evil” days, limited because of sin. It thus speaks plainly of limit, and of a limit which is God’s discipline, because of sin, -His curb and victory over it. It speaks thus of mastery, overcoming. In the “number of the beast” (666) we find it in three successively higher powers, -evil in fullest activity, yet its feebleness ever apparent, and God’s hand controlling it: it increases only responsibility and judgment. It is but “the number of a man,” vainly and impiously aspiring to be as God. In the tenth Psalm is the description of this “wicked one” (vers. 2-11). It is, conjointly with the preceding one, an alphabetic psalm, from which in this place exactly six letters (Mem to Tzaddi) are dropped out. Goliath’s height Isaiah 6 cubits; a giant of his race has six fingers and six toes. Nebuchadnezzar’s idolatrous image Isaiah 60 cubits high and 6 broad. One sixth of Gog’s host is spared (Ezekiel 39:2.) That is, 6 parts are the spiritual measure of the host, of which God spares one in divine sovereignty. Lastly, the darkness at the cross began at the sixth hour, and ended at the ninth (3X3) -God now fully displayed. Seven and Twelve.I put these numbers together because they are in some respects so much alike, and because in comparing them the character of each comes out the better. Seven is well-known as the number of perfection and so of rest. But it may be applied to evil, and simply show “completeness” of any kind. Twelve is in Scripture as commonly divided into 4X3 as seven is into 4+3. The factors are the same; but, whereas in the one case they are added, in the other they are multiplied. Seven and twelve should be, in some way therefore, allied in meaning. It is only in the relation of its factors that twelve differs from seven:* the number of the world and of divine manifestation characterize it; but these are not (as in 7) merely side by side. It is God manifesting Himself in relation to the world of His creation, as seven is, but now in active energy laying hold of and transforming it. Thus twelve is the number of manifest sovereignty as it was exercised in Israel, for instance, by the Lord in the midst of them, or as it will be exercised in the world to come.
“Turn now to the complete rest of the people of God -to the New Jerusalem, which has the glory of God, whose light God is, and the Lamb the lamp of it, to which the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple. Here perfection and rest are found, if anywhere, the thought connected, as abundantly plain, with seven: yet what do we find? Look at the foundations of the city: they are twelve in number. Look at the gates: there are twelve gates. Measure the city: its length, breadth and height are equal -twelve thousand furlongs each. Measure the height of the wall, 144 cubits, -12 X12.

Behold the tree of life planted by the river that issues from the throne of God: it bears twelve manner of fruits, and yields its fruit every month, -twelve times a year. Everywhere this number twelve meets us where we would expect to find the seven. It has the factors of seven; it is, as it were, the expansion of seven; and the spiritual idea that shines through it, that God is everywhere the manifest Ruler, what does it speak of to our hearts but that complete subjection to Him, which is indeed the perfection of the creature and its rest?” The regular numerical series is here complete; the next number to seven, Eightsimply showing that it is complete by indicating a new beginning, as the eighth day is the first of a new week. It thus speaks of what is new in contrast with the old, as the new covenant or the new creation. It will be noticed that this is closely akin to the meaning of two, and that eight is but the cube of two. There is no difficulty with the number wherever we find it, except only that we must remember that here also the significance may be evil as well as good; and also that the overpassing of the week of time brings us to the commencement of eternity. Eight has not infrequently such a thought in it. Appendix 3.The Numerals in Relation to the Six Days’ Work In its relation to nature the symbolism of numbers is a matter of the deepest interest. If it has, as we have seen, its roots in nature, and at the very basis of all arithmetic there is such a testimony to Christ as, I may venture to say, has been proved to exist, then it is hardly possible to believe that it ends with this, or that this is other than just a beginning of what must extend indefinitely throughout nature. Moreover to pursue such an investigation need not be alarming to those who most fear imagination. A bubble is not capable of being stretched very far, as every body knows; and the attempt to stretch it most surely ends in revealing its nature. The safe-guard as to imagination is to test it in every direction, and there is no test more severe than a mathematical one. I propose, then, briefly to take up the six days’ work as given in the first chapter of Genesis, to test the numerical structure more closely than has been done hitherto, with regard to the natural facts themselves. This has, as may be easily realized, its peculiar difficulties, -most of all, perhaps, in this, that the symbolism of the numbers gives us rather a moral than a physical vocabulary by which to interpret. I have been content therefore generally hitherto to apply it to the typical meaning which in all the six days’ work is double, and affords a secure enough basis for application, especially as a concurrent natural one more or less appears. But there is another thing to be taken into account also, as yet has not been done. The days being expressly announced in order from the first to the seventh, these numbers must of course, remain for interpretation, as I have elsewhere used them. But besides this, it has been very generally noticed that the six days run into two parallel divisions, according both to subject and mode of arrangement: thus — 1st day -Light. (1) 4th day -Lights. 2nd day -Waters dividing (2) 5th day -Waters producing. 3rd day -Dry Land and vegetation. (3) 6th day -Dry land producing, and man. Here is an evident parallelism which must divide the 6 days into two parts, and give to the second part a second series of numbers also, as I have indicated. Both must find their place in the interpretation. Dana in his well-known “Geology” remarks — “In this succession we observe not merely an order of events, like that deduced from science; there is system in the arrangement, and a far-reaching prophecy, to which philosophy could not have attained, however instructed. “The account recognizes in creation two great eras, each of three days, -an Inorganic and an Organic. “The last day of each era, included one work typical of the era, and another related to it in essential points, but also prophetic of the future. Vegetation, while for physical reasons a part of the creation of the third day, was also prophetic of the future organic era in which the progress of life was the grand characteristic. The record thus agrees with the fundamental principle in history, that the character of an age has its beginnings within the age preceding. So again, Man, while like other Mammals in structure, . . . was endowed with a spiritual nature, which looked forward to another era, that of spiritual existence.” Thus we have three great divisions, -including the Sabbath as a third: let us characterize them each numerically: —

1. (Genesis 1:1-13): The reign of the inorganic. I do not say more than the reign, because of that with which it closes, the introduction of vegetable life. But how does the inorganic bear its numerical stamp? Plainly, because it is of simple, uniform constitution, not differentiated into organs. Thus Dana as a physicist has characterized it by what agrees fully with the numerical division. But the second division will not be classed numerically as the “reign of the organic;” and this certainly would not characterize it in any proper way. “The progress of life” says Dana,” was its grand characteristic.” We can express it more fully and precisely every way, and numerically, as —
2. (Genesis 1:14-31): The two-fold, active life, in progress towards the discernment characterizing man. “Two-fold” -not like the plant, but with life and soul; and thus “active” -the moving creature; this crowned finally, (not by evolution, but according to the plan and by the creative power of God,) with the “discernment” which is not the mere intuitive instinct of the beast, but the discriminating knowledge of the human spirit. The third division, which consists of the seventh day alone, is simple:
3. (Genesis 2:1-3): The Sanctification of the Sabbath of rest. The numerical structure in each case seems to seize upon the central character, and define it sufficiently for its purpose. But let us go on now to the smaller divisions. The account of the original creation of the heavens and earth shows itself by the structure to be but an introduction, however necessary as that, to the six days’ work. It does not belong to that work, yet cannot form a section apart, without throwing the rest of the chapter into disorder. It must come in with the first day, and there is most suited to the spiritual meaning as making the work of the first day a beginning of restoration; thus: —
4. (vers. 1-5): Introduction and first day: light. (1) Original creation. (2) The earth as it were in dissolution: darkness upon a deep. (3) Restoration beginning with Light. The stamp of the God of resurrection is clearly upon this history at the beginning, and it is repeated every day in the common daily cycle as it is recorded, the “evening and the morning” being the day. Notice that the beginning of the first day is not before the light, but with it, or it could not begin with evening: for evening implies already light. But the light strangely comes only to fade and darken into night, through this to reach its morning by a new birth as it were, when (for that day, of course) the darkness is wholly past. How earnest is God to impress us with these spiritual lessons! Faith in all times has had to learn the ruin of the creature and the sole sufficiency of God; and that is what resurrection teaches. It is the end seen from the beginning: the final lesson written on the first page of the book. We are here too much at the beginning of things to reason as to them in their physical aspect, which is what we are just now concerned with. Why light should be the first thing in physical restoration we may have no means of knowing, while the spiritual meaning is clear enough. If there is indeed that deep sympathy in the natural with the spiritual, upon which all our belief in analogy is based, then we have in this what may commend the history as true in such respect, and suggest a means of insight even into nature itself, which has had at present (as I think) no advocates. It may not the less merit consideration. “Light,” it will be seen, comes under two Numbers 1:1-54; Numbers 3:1-51, and does not seem as if it could be spared from either. The meanings of the numbers can in fact each be given in terms of the other with reference to it: for “that which doth make manifest is light,” and it is thus a source of knowledge. This may justify its double place according to the spiritual meaning, and so justify it really; for the spiritual is that which governs everywhere in Scripture. Yet it must also be a canon of all true interpretation that no spiritual interpretation can set aside the text which it interprets, and the text here is physical. Plainly then light as making manifest would seem as yet not to be called for, when there were no eyes yet to be blessed by it, as there are not till the fifth day. When we remember, however, that light is not merely what we call by that name, but in fact a trinity of light, heat, and actinism, or power for chemical change, for this, if we cannot trace it, we can easily infer a meaning in connection with the next step in the preparation of the earth to be the home of life, the making of the expanse or firmament. Thus a physical meaning may well underlie the spiritual one, and light in its triune character answer to the third place in which we find it here as an active agent in the restoration just beginning. But we must go on to the second day, in which we find the formation of the expanse by which the waters are divided. Two is the number both of progress and increase (and so of expansion), and also of division and thus the numerical stamp is fully upon the second day. All this seems at first sight to be purely phenomenal; but, if we consider it more deeply, does it not point to some adjustment, if no more, of those laws of the expansion and diffusion of gases, which are among the most remarkable and important for the needs of every living and breathing thing? While the division of the waters is of course that which provides for the water-supply of the dry land next to come into existence. This is all obvious enough to be perhaps even common place as a suggestion; but if so, does it not show that the numerical structure, which emphasizes just such central points as these, has a real physical as well as spiritual significance? Upon the third day, the earth is separated from the waters, and we have the beginning of organic life in the plant, the link with the next division. Both these things bear upon them very plainly the numerical stamp. As to the earth, it is the habitable earth, man’s future dwelling-place, set apart from the waters which had ingulfed it, and thus in true resurrection. The number of its section -of the day itself -is fully set upon it. Then as to the vegetable life, three is the number of specialization, of setting apart for specific purpose, which organization so fully exemplifies. Besides which, as I have elsewhere shown,* there are three organic kingdoms in nature, of which the vegetable stands third; man, by virtue of the spirit with which he is endowed, standing first and the animal, the mere “living soul,” the second. The vegetable occupies the third place among these as the great transformer of the inorganic into the organic; while the animal reduces again the organic to the inorganic. The vegetable is the producer, as the animal is the consumer.
   Another thing which is specially noticed in the account, and which would seem to come under this number is the phenomenon of reproduction. All living things must of course reproduce themselves, if life is to continue on the earth; for as a fact death comes in with life. Thus “its seed in itself” is characteristic. Thus the numerical structure is justified all round: for these matters to which it directs our thoughts are not points of slight importance, but which have direct and essential relation to the account before us, which is in fact that of the preparation of the earth for man. Let this be duly weighed, and the argument for the symbolism of the numbers will be convincing. But we have not closed the account of the third day: we have yet to consider numerically these two divisions of it as such. The first seems to refer to the gathering together of the waters into one place, by which in fact the dry land was laid bare. It naturally raises the question whether the land was elevated, or by the opening of interior receptacles in the earth the waters were drained off: a point which it certainly is not for us to take up here. The word of the Creator seems to imply action upon the waters, rather than upon the land; but of the import of the whole question we have too little knowledge to venture anything. As to the second, we have not the same clue in the language; but growth, which is characteristic of the living thing, comes under the number; and if the transforming power of the cell is the fundamental thing in it, there must be growth as the immediate consequence of this, and for anything beyond the mere cell-unit. The cell must be reproduced; and the addition of material is followed by division in order to effect this. If tissue is to be formed, this is done by transformation once more of the newly formed living matter into it; in which that which has begun to live gives up its life, the protoplasm or bioplasm as it has been variously called “dies into” -so Dr. Beale expresses it -the formed material of the tissue, membrane or bone or muscle. So hard does death follow upon life! and yet so really also does it minister to it. Weighty lessons to reach so early in our Nature primer! But notice how in “growth,” “addition,” “division,” “death,” we are taking up the ideas expressed under the number two of the subdivision; and notice that as “transformation” and “reproduction” are the inherent powers of organic life, “growth,” “division,” “death” are modes of their accomplishment. Thus the numbers appear throughout; and while that of the division gives the governing principle, the modes are given in the subdivision! Is this system or what is it? Aye, what? For the first subdivision of this third day follows the same rule: gathering of the waters into one place is just the mode by which the dry land is produced! I leave to the reader to decide what all this may mean or not mean. But we have only reached half-way through the six days’ work, and in the second division the numerals are doubled, as we have seen. In this way they are more exacting in their requirements, but if intended as helps and verification of interpretation there must be more than compensation in the result attained. Let us go on then carefully and hopefully to consider what is still before us. Here though life in its progress is, as we have seen, the great theme of the division, we have yet an introduction which does not take up this, though it is a preparation for it. The fourth day with its “lights” is here the analogue of the “light” of the first. These two numbers, then, 4 and 1, are what we have to consider in reference to this day. The number 1 speaks naturally, as in the former case, of light upon the earth as the great subject: and this is plainly stated to be so: “God set them in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth.” The number 4 is that of the earth, eminently of matter, as passive, recipient, thus would remind us of the bodies to which the light is attached, making them “luminaries.” Thus both numbers are significant and point together to what no one can fail to see to be the central feature of the fourth day. But the number 1 is the number of rule also; and here sun. and moon are especially appointed to be respectively the rulers of the day and of the night. As the result, upon these now depend the alternations of light and of darkness, and the seasons -here first named. Four, let us remember, is the number that speaks of transitoriness and change, which naturally point here to the “seasons.” But the seasons are dependent upon the rule of sun and moon: so that the 4 and the 1 come for the second time together. Surely there is some meaning in all this. These changing seasons, while they affect all living things, have yet plainly their chief significance for God’s responsible creature, man, so soon now to appear upon the scene, and thus the word “signs” precedes “seasons” in the command given. The earth being dependent upon heaven in the way it is, it could not but be that man would seek the significance of all appearances in sun and moon; with which the stars would soon. come to be conjoined. By all these he would learn his littleness and his dependence, as we find in an exaggerated form and turned to evil, as he turned away from God, in his wide-spread worship of the heavenly bodies. Their power for evil shows their power for good; upon which it is not here for me to dwell. It is enough here to point out how plainly all this heralds the near approach of man, and the tender interest shown by God in His creature. Purpose of love is read in the Scripture physics from the beginning; and the book of Scripture opens for us the book of Nature with lessons for the heart. But to come now to the fifth day, which is also the second of the second series: the Numbers 5:1-31; Numbers 2:1-34 are those therefore which have now to be considered in relation to the work of this day, the introduction of animal life. But two, as has elsewhere been shown,* is the number of the animal kingdom or simple “living soul,” above which man is raised by his possession of spirit. The “soul” in Scripture is the seat of that emotional, appetitive, instinctive life, which needs for its full development the guidance and control of that intelligent, moral nature, which in man is joined to it. This dependent nature of the beast suits the place for which it was ordained, of subjection to man, which in the domestic animals we find them filling, and which, spite of the fall, the wild beast itself recognizes still to a large extent. The full meaning of it now we can hardly realize.
   The soul as the motive, emotional faculty full of the unreasoning contrasts which we find in passion; comes fully under this number two. But in its relation to instinct proper, it seems to transcend this. Instinct, within a certain range, does, as we know, the work of mind, more promptly and satisfactorily than mind itself will do it. Reason will pause, waver, get perplexed and blunder, where instinct will at a dash and almost unfailingly accomplish its end. If it were mind, it were a higher mind than man’s; and yet man’s mind rectifies its mistakes and rises above instinct, and into spheres into which it is impossible for this to enter. The wisdom of the beast in its lower sphere seems more divine than that of man, which has marked upon it in its readiness to err, the creatureliness which is for him so wholesome an admonition.

The beast, in fact, as having no personality to distract it, acts from its own God-given nature, unperverted by the fall; and laws of nature have, as we all realize, the same character of promptness, certainty and effectiveness which we recognize in the instinct of the beast. Its Maker has (as we may reverently say) the responsibility of its actions in a way that cannot be said of man with his free personality: hence it is necessarily, what man should be freely, weakness which withal testifies of an energy beyond itself. And this is just what would be covered by the number 5, which, as 4 and 1, speaks of creature weakness allied with divine strength. This as applied to man suggests of necessity responsibility as we have elsewhere seen, while in the beast it would speak only of an energy which wrought in it beyond its own. Thus the 5 and the 2 unite here, as previously the numbers of the fourth day, just to point out the central feature of the work accomplished. A perfect system seems to develop itself in these numbers, which should induce us to inquire more earnestly into it; and which in Moses manifests a mind beyond Moses, -is a mark of inspiration which will turn the keenest-eyed of critics most of all, as that, into the adoring worshipper. There is more than this, one may feel sure, as to the meaning of the fifth day’s work, but I do not possess the competence to utter it. Let us go on to the sixth day, which is the third of the second series: where again the numbers are manifest. Notice, throughout, that there is no possibility of manipulating any of these, no choice at all which can be exercised with regard to them. We are rigorously shut up to these and none but these. If imagination is permitted, it is restricted within the narrowest limits: and this, for the purpose we have before us, is what is most of all to be desired. On the sixth day, as on the third, we have a double work: the earth bringing forth the living soul, as on the fifth day the water did; now the land-animal; and after this man is made in the image of God. As to the first part of the work, the land-animal, I can, I fear, say very little to the purpose. The living soul is introduced on the fifth day, and there characterized: as such it is not distinctive here. Of the three classes “cattle” might seem to suit the number of discipline; but of the “creeping things” we do not seem to have a clearly defined idea; while “the beast of the earth,” said to be the more freely moving wild beast, is not by this either much more fully defined. They are all beasts of the earth, in the sense of moving upon it, and the “cattle,” put first, shows that the definitions here are not in the way of zoological classification, while the thought of relation to man is prominent if not ruling. As to the creation of man we can happily see more clearly. What is said of him is that he is “created in the image of God, as His likeness:” in some sort the reflection of Himself. The word “created” is very important; for it shows that the “image of God” does not refer, as many have thought, to the sovereignty man was to exercise over the earth, but that it was inherent in his very constitution. And it shows more than this: it enables us to say definitely in what it consists. For the word “created” is used as a different thing from simple “making,” and implies the bringing forth of some new element of being, not involved in former production. Thus it is used in this chapter in regard to the original creation of heaven and earth, not of anything merely material afterward.

It is used next of the introduction of the “living soul,” soul being such a new element. And next it is used here, where in man spirit is added to soul. If this be really so, then spirit is that which is really the image of God in man. Scripture confirms this from every side. For “God is a Spirit,’’ and the “Father of spirits.” (John 4:24; Hebrews 12:9). Had it said “souls,” the beast is also a soul; but “the spirit of man which is in him” is that by which alone human things are known (1 Corinthians 11:1-34). It is the intelligent and moral part. Here then is manifestly what is necessary to the image of God; and if “we are His offspring” (Acts 17:28) then we can understand how as “Adam begat a son in his own likeness, after his image” (Genesis 5:3), man too can be said to be brought forth -only here it is creation, and the child is but a creature, -in the image of God. Out of this comes indeed his capacity for the place into which he is immediately put, as the vicegerent of God upon earth: “Let us make man in our image, as our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.” The word for “have dominion” is radah, “let them tread down” or “subdue:” implying a dominion to be maintained with power, and the moulding of those subject to him to his will. Thus we find in the next chapter that Adam is put into the garden, “to dress it and to keep it;” and the mention of “cattle” in the present one implies the same thing. There was yet no existing evil; but here were plastic natures for him to mould and convert to fullest use. While the need of this would be for himself such needed discipline -if we may yet use such a word -such training by exercise, if that be fitter, as would call out in himself the vigilance and carefulness suited to one under needful trial, and liable to temptation. These then are the main features of the sixth day’s work as to man; and here it is not hard again to trace the fitness of the numbers. Three is the number of reproduction, perhaps of reflexion, and shows us man in the image and likeness of God. Six is the number of mastery and of discipline; that which springs out of his being alone in God’s image, and in relation to the earth on which he is placed. Thus again the numbers have the most fitting and beautiful relation to the subject in hand. As to the two divisions of the sixth day as such, -their relation to these first two numbers, -I can only give what suggests itself to me, and something of the mode by which I reach it, that it may be the better tested by those who put things to the test. The lack of clearness as to the first division of necessity occasions difficulty. In the first place, it would seem likely that the two divisions, the beast of the earth and the man, are here exhibited in contrast with one another. Contrast there is necessarily, and the number 2 speaks often of this, especially where we have, as here, two as the whole measure of what is before us. What is before us is something characteristic of the beast and of the man respectively. As we know the man best, it is natural to turn first to him; and here, if we consider how he is presented to us as one in the image of God, His offspring, we must think of this link with God as being the great contrast between man and beast. Two, the number of this section that speaks of man, may naturally, therefore, suggest fellowship, -that fellowship for which the beast is totally inapt. He can look up into the face of God, listen and respond to Him. A wondrous privilege and dignity, which has not as yet been pointed out to us, but which is based upon that which has been pointed out: that which comes first has been put first, and now we have the inference which is to be noted from it. On the other hand, the beast’s life is in this respect alone, nay, we may say, barren. He has on this account no link with eternity; he is but the beast that perishes. Neither desire nor thought in him craves anything better; and death is to him no shadow, no perplexity. Thus he fills evidently the numerical place assigned him; and I see no other way in which he could fill it. The number one as applied to him seems to point absolutely in this direction alone. The method of exclusion may be here permitted to the argument; though it only furnish as to it the smallest part. This examination may not be unfitting as an appendix to the book of Psalms, which has in it such constant references to nature, and indeed to the first of Genesis. It should confirm us in the conviction of how important a place the numerals have in Scripture, and encourage us as to their application in the field of nature also. They are open books put into our hand by the same divine Teacher: would only that there were more to pursue their deeper study in that faith in the perfectness of all His work, which alone will give us the profit of such labor. Appendix 4.A Plea for the Possessing Ourselves of All God’s Revelation “I have more understanding than all my teachers,” says the psalmist enthusiastically, “for Thy testimonies are my meditation.” The Christian can surely not think him too emphatic. That is the voice of the disciple; but it is the voice of the Master that has said: “Search the Scriptures: for in them ye think ye have eternal life; and they are they that testify of Me.” In their own line, therefore, every believer recognizes that they are absolutely unique. Not all the books that have ever been produced in all the ages of human history outside of them are equal even to the small dust of the balance when weighed against these. It is well to remember in such days as ours, that it was of the Old Testament, and almost certainly of only part of the Old Testament that the writer spoke. As it was of the Old Testament also that the apostle spoke when he reminded Timothy that from a child he had “known the holy Scriptures; which are able,” he adds, “to make thee wise unto salvation, through faith that is in Christ Jesus.” How small a part of what we have today was the wisdom for which the psalmist disclaimed in comparison all that the world beside could show! But this is not now what I intend to take up or speak about. I am not writing for those that would contest it. In their own line, it is admitted, let us say, that the Scriptures are unique. I would yet propose the question, -and it will be by no means so readily or unanimously answered, even by the Christian, -what is then “their own line?” How far does this unique value of theirs extend? Supposing we desire to use the Bible fairly, and (as given of God,) for all for which He gave it, how could we define this? is it not desirable to do so? at least to have some practical idea of how to use it, if not an absolute definition? If God had meant by Scripture only to teach us the way to heaven, or, along with this, how to live a good life here (and this, I suppose, is pretty much the definition that would be adopted by the many) the first thing that would naturally occur to any one thinking seriously about it, would be that the Bible is a very large book and a very strange book, on this view of the matter. It is a very large book: for it surely does not take so many words to tell: us the way to heaven: and any one that knows the gospel knows well (and thank God that it is so) that a very few texts will suffice to show this with the most absolute clearness. As to the living a good life here, the simplest way to show us this would be in something like the ten commandments, with applications to suit the varied circumstances of life or, if that were too legal, a catalogue raisonné of Christian principles. Scripture on the face of it is not at all like this. Though there are blessed statements of the gospel, as we very well know, and many a page of Christian exhortation, yet these are not put together as we might imagine they would be, and they are mixed with much else and various matter very different from all this. Things are not so definitely stated that there should be no possible mistake about them, as witness the conflict of Christian men over their meaning. What a help to a common understanding would be at least a divine summary of faith and practice, such as the various churches have adopted and which for this purpose they find so useful. But then these articles of faith separate: they are but the expression after all of the judgment of a section of Christendom suppose there had been given us by divine inspiration as plain a creed as any of these, would it not have united instead of scattering us? if the Westminster Confession had been written by apostles instead of theologians of the seventeenth century, would we not have all subscribed it? and would not Arminianism have been effectively excluded from the minds of all honest-minded and believing men? But such help as this it has not pleased God to give us and we have to hunt up even texts upon any given subject -not always sure even that we have got the right ones -from every part of Scripture! Does not God care for the poor? Does He not know the dullness of our minds at best, the multifarious occupations that we have to be engaged in, the trouble and anxiety caused by our many differences, the darkness in which true-hearted saints grope often after His will, the tendency we have on account of all this, to follow the men who will do our thinking for us, and in whom in some way or other we have concluded to put confidence? Yes, surely: all this and more God knows and, knowing it, has written Scripture as He has, a book so large, so various, so needing to be searched, studied; so certain to exercise most the most careful, earnest, conscientious, God-fearing. His thought then for us, whatever it may be, is not to save us from thought, -not to let us of from the necessity of labor for what we get from it. It was not to a class of theological students, but to men so poor that they could follow Him for the loaves with which He fed them, that He said: “Labor not for the meat that perisheth, but for that meat which endureth unto everlasting life, which the Son of man shall give unto you.” (John 6:27.) Notice, therefore, that this applies not merely to the more hidden things of the Old Testament, but to the plain speech of the New as well, that it calls for labor -for more earnest and untiring labor than our daily food does and that not from a special class of selected, capable workmen, but from all who need and desire such spiritual food. Evidently the Lord distinguishes the thing that is to be labored after in the way He does in order to challenge our interest by the exceeding importance of it. “Meat that endureth to everlasting life” is a very significant title indeed, and one that we shall do well if we seek to realize what we can of the depth of its meaning. I have seen it interpreted as signifying “food that will give you entrance into everlasting life,” -by which you will become possessors of it: and that is true enough as a thought, and afterwards affirmed also: “he that eateth of this bread shall live for ever.” It is a true thought in itself, and a thing justly worthy of all the emphasis that can be put upon it. And yet, if that were all, for the Christian, who has already the possession of eternal life, the urgency of the exhortation would necessarily pass out of it. He is not to be persuaded that he needs labor to get what he has already got, or to keep what it is as certain he can never lose. Here too, it may be pleaded that the Lord is actually speaking to men who were not believers but it is plain all the way through the chapter that there were disciples also among them, while in the open synagogue He is not hindered from speaking of such things and in such a way as to test disciples themselves. Here in seeking to attract men to Himself He might, as with the woman of Samaria, speak of things the depth of which they would not yet be able to penetrate, and yet of what they would understand to be a blessing set before them and those who sought it would not be stumbled to find at last greater than at first they had realized. After all, the truth itself is not so difficult to conceive, and the Lord’s words to the Samaritan are strictly parallel. To her He speaks of “living water springing up unto eternal life,” and under this figure of the Spirit’s presence, permanent and operative ever, not to bring one into life, but throughout it. So here with the bread of life, the living bread, it too abides unto eternal life, in opposition to the “meat that perisheth.” Not only the life is eternal, but all that ministers to it partakes of the same eternity. Christ abides, and abides as the unfailing support of a life which though eternal is dependent too, and which never ceases to realize its dependence. An image of this, and to which the Lord also, in His epistles to the churches, refers us, was that “hidden manna,” which was preserved in the golden pot and carried into the land, the type of our glorious heritage, that the children of Israel might see the food with which Jehovah had fed them in the wilderness. (Exodus 16:32.) Thus the food of the wilderness abode, but abode simply as a memorial, to be seen. To the overcomer at Pergamos on the other hand, the promise is: “I will give him of the hidden manna” (Revelation 2:17): he shall partake of it, not simply see it. Christ as enjoyed in the wilderness shall be enjoyed afresh in the glorious land to which we are going: more perfectly, surely, for all shall be perfect there, and yet, let us mark it well, the very wilderness-food itself. For the manna is Christ in His humiliation, and in heaven He is no longer in humiliation, yet it is the hidden manna of which the saint in heaven still partakes. A serious consideration presses upon one here, that, if this be the food partaken of, -and since one cannot call up again the wilderness-condition, save in memory, -he who has not had the wilderness experience cannot have the repetition of it in heaven: he cannot recall what he has never known. Thus, too, there must be some correspondence between the measure of apprehension of Christ here and the measure of such apprehension of Christ there. Take an angel’s knowledge: it could not in this respect be the knowledge of the redeemed from among men. There is no sin in the angel, and it is not sin that limits his view; nay, his very freedom from it -his never having had the experience of it -would be a necessary limitation. And so would it be with the babe, only coming into the world to be taken out of it. The perfecting of its faculties in another scene would not give it experiences of a state in which it had never been. Perfecting of experiences that we have had is, of course, another thing. This there will surely be: for we shall look back with eyes purged from the films of earth, and with memories that will themselves be perfected. But the knowledge will still be measured -finite, not infinite; and with limitations, whatever may be the enlargement of its scope. If Christ then be the “meat that endureth unto everlasting life,” and the manna so laid up must be manna gathered here, how important must this gathering of the manna be! Surely there can be no “meat that perisheth” to be compared with it; and one can no longer wonder at being called to seek it with proportionate earnestness. Now it is Scripture that is to give us this knowledge of Christ, though of course there is in Christ more than can be justly spoken of as manna. This will not make Scripture of less importance to us surely. Christ it is that is the knowledge of the “new man,” and Christ is “all” that knowledge. (Colossians 3:11.) God has “predestinated us to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He may be the First-born among many brethren.” (Romans 8:29.) The “edifying of the body of Christ” also is “till we all come unto the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.” (Ephesians 4:13.) We are now growing up to this; and for this it is that the word of God is given to us, not simply that we may be saved, or even live here a life of piety and good works, but to form in us the mind of Christ, that “we may grow up unto Him in all things.” (ver. 15.) No wonder Scripture is as large, therefore, as it is: communion with God, though we talk quietly enough about it, yet if it be realized in the depth and fullness of its meaning, how immense a thing it is! Communion with God, realized in this way would be nothing less than sharing all His thoughts as He has revealed them to us; thoughts which have Christ as centre and circumference; for “all things were created by Him and for Him.” (Colossians 1:16.) Here then is what we are called to enter into: here is a field to be worked which will call for all our faculties in all their energy to be engaged with. God does not tell us that it is easy work: how could it be? delightful work it is, and that increases all the energy that it demands. But it requires that we yield ourselves unreservedly to it, subordinating everything else to God’s great purpose with regard to us. Christ must come to fill the whole range of our vision; but, so filling, to enlarge and rectify and illumine it with divine glory. Here the nature of man finds what it craves, and expands in all parts and in equal proportions. Mind, heart and conscience develop together. Scripture, while it makes men of might, produces no monsters: no men of intellect without heart; no conscience urging one to self-devised torment; and yet no self-complacent egotism either: “I live, not I,” says one who is without question a competent witness to us; “but Christ liveth in me.” (Galatians 2:20.) This is not simply doctrine, nor even faith in a doctrine. A glorious truth underlies it, but this is more; it is the apprehension of the truth, and the experience which flows from it. He who spoke this had accepted what Christ had done for him, the death in which he himself for faith had died, and which enabled him to turn away from himself, the man down here, to the One with whom he was now identified before God, and with whom he had in the joy of his heart accepted identification. His old life had ended therefore: he was now a man in Christ; though realizing that there was still upon earth a “self” in which he could not glory, save in the infirmity which made him conscious of the need, -a need continually met as realized, -“that the power of Christ should rest upon” him. (2 Corinthians 12:5; 2 Corinthians 12:9.) This for the pursuit of Christ’s interests on earth to whom he belonged, while, beholding Him above, he was “changed into His image” (2 Corinthians 3:18.) I believe that a most false and limited idea of the design of Scripture is shutting masses of Christian people out of the very desire to possess themselves of what our gracious God has given them in it. It is a book larger by far than they have any use for. To find salvation and to live a good life on earth, these are the ends they have before them, and which they suppose to be all that God has in His mind for them. But for these ends, I say again, Scripture is too large; I may say boldly, it is very much too large. Did they think that they had any particular responsibility about it, they would perhaps even be distressed to know what to do with it all. As it is they read it more or less, perhaps conscientiously all through, but with a languid interest in much of it at best, and with a wonder which they scarcely like to admit, why it should have been written. Of searching it for themselves, save certain parts, they know very little. They get light here and there upon it through others, and read books, if they are not too deep. They have really no thought that what God means by it all is to form in them the mind of Christ -to give them fellowship with Himself -to train them for co-heirship with His Son; and that all this means not a little need of teaching, not a little exercise, as well as the disciplinary dealings of His hand by the way; -“exercised to discern both good and evil, -“suffering that they may reign with Him.” To accomplish this the word of God is not too large; though that of course, does not imply but that it will always be beyond us. It is plain that He means us to be busy with it, -would not let us off thinking, -would not leave any vacuity with us for the thorn and thistle-seed always floating in the air, to plant themselves in and spring up. To His people of old He spoke earnestly about this: “And these commandments that I command thee today shall be in thy heart; and thou shalt teach them diligently to thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thy house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. And thou shalt bind them as a sign upon thy hands, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes; and thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house and upon thy gates” (Deuteronomy 6:6-9). All this implies a constant keeping the words of God before themselves and others, constant confession of them and meditation upon them. And how thoroughly a saint of old could respond to this, the delight he could have in it, and the fruit he could find, the 119th Psalm alone is sufficient to assure. Is it to be supposed that God would have us less fully occupied or give us less joy or profit from the occupation? The whole heart also, if it be this we bring to it, needs the whole Word. How could it do less than this, if only because God has given it? Has He misjudged our need, or put upon us useless labor? Certainly He does not mean to have it drudgery for us, nor does He give us mere chaff to thresh out for the granary. If there be what may seem strange to be from Him, would He not have us inquire the more because of its strangeness? If we seem sometimes to be laying up useless store, we should find, if we keep it long enough, occasion for it.

We have (if we are Christians) the Spirit of God as our Teacher; and He, let us remember, “searcheth the deep things of God.” (1 Corinthians 2:10). If the heart is only enough engaged, and the throne of grace is yet accessible, we need not despair of learning because things are “deep.” I have found too that one of the most fruitful causes of not understanding or misunderstanding a portion of Scripture is just the lack, as the man of science would say, of a perfect induction. That is to say, something -perhaps obvious enough -has escaped me. It was there, but I was too careless, too much in a hurry, -perhaps too doubtful of being able to find any meaning -actually to find it. The key too may be some distance off, and in a part I have not read or remembered. Hence the necessity of storing the mind with Scripture. It is all valuable -too valuable yet perhaps, for me to appreciate, just as a savage might have no use for a sewing-machine. Let us be assured that in Scripture there is nothing barren or unprofitable anywhere. The whole Word, then; and all to be honestly thought upon and sought into. But even so, we have not got all the riches God designs for us. There is the great book of Nature, wide open, and inviting us by its appeal to all our senses. Here again, if we have minds that work, we shall find what will give them full activity. “Too much,” perhaps, you may say; “there is no end to it.” No, truly: no end to all God’s wonders, nor to the riches He has spread around us. But here, also, is a field which has been much worked of late in man’s interests, and he is very proud of what he has done in it. It has for the most part to do with a world which has been put under the dominion of man, as meant for his use, and he has only lately begun to find how rich is his inheritance. But God has taken care, also, that this world with which man has so much to do should be full of witness to His power who is above him, as well as the love that has strewn this munificence around him: a witness he can never lose, never escape. It shines upon him from the lights of the spangled sky above him; it breathes in the whisper of the gentle breeze around, which before night may have increased to a hurricane; the various voices of the day and night preach it in melody and in dissonance: and everywhere man has acknowledged this witness to be divine, and worshiped. Scripture has brought nigh God and perfected this witness. In the mirror of Nature every spiritual truth has its reflection; and these images appear throughout Scripture and become the familiar language in which its doctrines are conveyed. In the New Testament the Creator Himself is declared to be the Word -thus the Revealer -of God, and creation therefore by implication to be a revelation. God’s witness is twofold and on the face of heaven and earth Scripture again is written out in incorruptible signs that may be appealed to. Not in vain, surely, has God done this: He can still “call to the heavens and to the earth that He may judge His people” (Psalms 50:4); and rebuke the unbelief which uplifts itself against Him in the very face of such tokens. Now, if Christ be indeed the One by whom and for whom all things were created, it is only the one to whom Christ has become what we see He was with the apostle, who can be at the centre of any branch of knowledge. All roads must lead to Him. The spiritual must everywhere underlie the natural, give meaning to it, make it really what it is meant to be, clothe it with the power that should belong to it. No science but must run into theology. All the analogies of nature become but witnesses of this inner reality, without the knowledge of which the savant and scientist becomes indeed but a pitiful agnostic all his utterances but broken fragments of sentences, -the stammerings of infirmity and impotence itself. And if this be true, what must be the value of Scripture, what must be its comprehensiveness? what field of knowledge will you shut off from it? what shall we think, for instance, of the so readily accepted dictum, that Scripture was not intended to teach science? and which is meant -not to assert of it that it is infinitely beyond a mere primer or text-book of science, but -to rule it out as incompetent in this sphere, as without help or authority as regards the visible, and to relegate it to the sphere of the invisible alone. The effect is that as to the immensity of nature round us we may think what thoughts we please, unhindered by anything in Scripture. Guesses we may have, and theories, and “working hypotheses” ad libitum, which even palpable self-contradictions shall not destroy,* and they must not be even limited by any intrusion of the divine. Thus practically we get a. world -yea, a universe as far as man has explored it -Christless, if not godless; to which Scripture, with its old-time child-notions of miracles and a God nigh at hand, is in plain opposition.
Take the common theory of evolution in proof of this. It has been lately said of it that “Whatever differences of opinion as to this theory may still exist, few naturalists can feel reluctant to acquiesce in Wallace’s statement that Darwin did his work so well that descent with modification is now universally accepted as the order of nature in the organic world.’”*
Now, if this be so, open your Bibles at the second chapter of Genesis, and ask yourself how on the principle of “descent with modification” Eve could have have been by any possibility evolved out of Adam! That is evidently not in the order of nature: it is the exact opposite of it; it is miracle and nothing else. Apply to it the slow successive changes demanded by Darwinism, and the absurdity is heightened at every step; but the absurdity is there at the beginning in the male producing the female for the continuance of the race. It is not even the poetry some have claimed for it. It is simply absurdity, or miracle and divine truth. Let us take our stand then with Scripture, or give it up: compromise is impossible. If the account of creation is not true, Scripture opens with falsehood in its face. It asserts knowledge of what only revelation could make known; or else gives conjecture, and then. how much else of the same sort follows it, who shall say? In fact the history has been amply safeguarded. I venture to say that the proofs of divine inspiration in it can challenge the world to refute them; and thank God, the evidence is of a sort as accessible to the non-scientific as to the scientific mind. If it can be shown that according to the Genesis account the story of the restoration of the earth out of its “waste and desolate” condition is but the symbolic picture of the restoration of the same earth morally to God, as history and prophecy combine to picture it; -a picture also of the restoration of an individual sou/ to God, but in terms which we have to go to the New Testament to make clear to us; -if we can show a numerical symbolism running through the whole, uniting the physical, dispensational and individual aspects of the history together, and uniting itself to a symbolic numerical structure running through other parts of Scripture; -then assuredly we have a threefold cord which shall not be broken, binding it into a wondrous whole which can only be from God. This has been already done in measure,* but deserves to be done in a much more thorough and painstaking way. The whole is a many-linked proof of the underlying of the natural by the spiritual of which I have already spoken, and of which every parable in Scripture speaks, to which every one of those analogies of which we all so confidently and as it were instinctively avail ourselves, bears witness.
This analogy, if it be real, can be used also in another and a reverse way from that in which we usually employ it: a fact which deserves the most attentive consideration. If the spiritual and the natural run. thus in parallel lines, why should we not trace the natural by means of the spiritual, as well as the spiritual by means of the natural? Take, for instance, once more, the first chapter of Genesis. If it be indeed a picture of either the soul or the world being restored to God, then we cannot possibly miss what is here so plain, that this restoration implies a fall having taken place, which the waste and desolate condition of the earth, darkness upon the face of the deep, so strikingly symbolizes. May we not see in it, then, physically, a lapsed condition of the earth, the effect of some cataclysmic overthrow, instead of the condition in which it was originally created, as many believe? This can be proved, I am sure, otherwise; but that therefore proves that such a conclusion would, in this case, lead us aright. Would it not in every case in which the grounds of the conclusion were as plain as this? But if so, again how valuable must Scripture be for the knowledge of Nature! It should be in every way the firm ground of the naturalist, and induction be here as reliable as that directly from nature; the microscope also being as great a revealer in one case as in the other. Ah, how little patient, believing work has been done in this direction with regard to Scripture: a neglect which has shut us out so much from the light it could have given, just in the very matters hidden from the mere man of science. The beginnings of things and their points of connection with the unseen, are things largely thus hidden: how good would it be to have all the light that Scripture can give thrown into those dark inmost recesses of the constitution of things. What a thing it would be to have a faithful company of devout explorers giving themselves to explore nature with the light of Scripture, and Scripture also, one may reverently say, in the light of nature. For both are God’s books and both alike truthful, and Christ the theme of and the key to both. “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof.” In every corner of it He is to be found; upon every part of it His Name stands written. Oh for the students that shall make His glorious sanctuary their college, and see in nature that which only the anointed eye can see, and hear the worship of the things we call inanimate, but through which the Life of life is pulsating everywhere. If we desire this, we must bring the word and the work of God together in a way that yet, it seems to me, we nowhere see. It seems almost as if we had here believed that we had the incompatible service of two masters, to one of which whosoever clings will despise the other. And so it will be until we discern that the Master is in fact only One, not two at all. And when Christ reigns over the whole of science -over all that is worthy to be called knowledge, -then we shall have an education in which heart, mind, and moral nature, shall find equal and true development; and in the heart and mind of those so taught there shall be no distraction between secular and sacred, no divided life from one half of which God is banished; but for these “there shall be,” as the prophet says, “One Lord over all the earth; in that day there shall be One Lord, and His Name One.” Appendix 5.Christ in the Book of Psalms The Lord’s own words to His disciples assure us of “things written in the Psalms concerning” Him. (Luke 24:44.) In the New Testament sixteen psalms are quoted as referring to Him;* and there is nothing to show us that this is the whole number, although all the fundamental ones are doubtless in this list. Outside of it, the Rabbinic writers, though blind to Christ, rightly emphasize the twenty-first and seventy-second psalms also as Messianic;** and the twentieth psalm can hardly be separated from the twenty-first. The tendency with some Christian writers has been to see Christ almost everywhere in them, while naturally the drift of the so-called “higher criticism” is all the other way: the effort to imagine the circumstances under which they were written, as well as the intention of the writers, necessarily leading them away from the divine intention, which is all-important. And when it can be boldly questioned, as by Cheyne, whether David was the writer of any of them; the apostle’s comment, “he being a prophet . . . spake of . . . Christ (Acts 2:30-31) may be dismissed, as “contemporary Jewish exegesis,” from all consideration.
It is only the knowledge of the structure of the book of Psalms as a whole that can show us how fully in place the Messianic psalms are, and define clearly their limits. They will then be seen in clear relation to those surrounding them, and in fact as the life-centre of the whole. As long as the individual psalms are looked at as in no particular order or relation to one another, or the order a merely artificial one, so long, of course, it will be possible to find a Messianic psalm in any position whatever in the book. The divisions and their meaning once ascertained, each psalm will be found to have its place, from which it could not be removed without a gap resulting. The numerical structure is everywhere also a test and confirmation of the reality of this. My purpose now is very briefly to trace the connection of these Messianic psalms, both among themselves and with those in the midst of which they are, -certainly not scattered at random, nor without divine meaning in these connections. The first book, as we have seen, is the largest in scope, and necessarily the introduction to all the rest. Its theme is in fact mainly Christ Himself, and that as the Source of blessing to His people. This people is Israel; and we must not forget this, which, so far from depriving us of our portion, only reminds us continually of the larger character of this, as “blessed with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ.” (Ephesians 1:3.) There cannot therefore be a spiritual blessing from which we are shut out; while their being ours in heavenly places lifts us into the sphere to which Christ Himself belongs, and where we possess a relationship to Him of which the Psalms know nothing. But our intelligence as to Scripture depends upon our taking it as it is written, and our spiritual profit also largely upon our distinguishing things that differ, that both we may have what is our own unmixed, and that Christ also may be seen in all His glories, and in connection with all the interests which are His. And these we must learn, not from any preconceptions of our own about them, but patiently and humbly as led of Scripture. God’s thoughts are not as our thoughts, but deeper and higher every way. In the first book there are three subdivisions, of which the first and third alike speak of Christ; while the second shows us rather the circumstances of the latter days, to which we find ourselves in the Psalms so constantly carried forward. The first subdivision (Psalms 1:1-6; Psalms 2:1-12; Psalms 3:1-8; Psalms 4:1-8; Psalms 5:1-12; Psalms 6:1-10; Psalms 7:1-17; Psalms 8:1-9) speaks of Christ’s dominion, King in Zion (Psalms 2:1-12), and Son of Man, the creation put under Him (Psalms 8:1-9). The first is His open claim, though resisted by man. The second is a secret told into the ear of faith alone. The King! that is the first and last thought in the Psalms, whatever else may grow up around and unite itself to this: a King with power, although long patience may be exercised before it is put forth. Power: for not only is God for Him, but He is Son of God. Thus it is in the right hands; out of which it will never slip and never can be forced; and being divine power, it is a revelation. How long the world has been waiting wearily for this, without knowing for what it waited; nay, rejecting Him when He came in fulfillment of this very prophecy, to claim His right. The King! because obedience is the very thing from which man has broken away, and to which he must return in order to blessing. Thus the very first psalm is the psalm of obedience, while in the second is the One to whom it must be rendered; who as the Son of God is the Revealer of God; faith in whom turns back the heart to Him, and finds the blessing. We see why, then, it should be the first thought of Christ in the Psalms that He is King: -the proclamation of the King. That this is not all, when the heart turns back to its allegiance, the psalms, that follow (Psalms 3:1-8; Psalms 4:1-8; Psalms 5:1-12; Psalms 6:1-10; Psalms 7:1-17) are proof enough. The remnant of true followers, amid the mass of those that reject Him, learn in the very trials that ensue from their true-heartedness the need of mercy because of sin; from whence but a little, and a new figure rises before them, not now of the Son of God, though with links of unmistakable connection with Him. It is now of a Son of man in whom both God is glorified and the dominion of man is restored; while along with this, there are thoughts of humiliation and the mysterious joy of a trodden wine-press, -intimations of fruitful suffering, by and by to be more at large declared. The meaning here Israel as yet has not recognized, and will not until the day that they look upon Him whom they have pierced. But, united with the first picture -the Son of God joined to the Son of man -we have emphasized the two parts of a wondrous whole, in which a glory of God is manifested above the heavens, as His name is declared by it in all the earth: to us at least a clear outlining of what is to be filled up in the psalms that follow, -an inscription on the door of the temple of praise to Messiah’s Name. To this the second subdivision has nothing that I am aware to add. But with the third we come at once to the heart of our subject. Here we have Christ before us, not simply in His glory, but also in the path of suffering leading up to it, and in which we learn His perfection and the fullness of His grace toward us also. We find Him identifying Himself with His people, making their cause His own, and the consequences of this in the unequalled sorrow of the Cross; but as that in which the Son of man was glorified, and God was glorified in Him. His inmost heart is seen: we learn to know Him as we know no other, and are made His doubly, redeemed by His blood, and won by the perfection we have found in Him. First of all in the sixteenth psalm, we see Him as a pilgrim on the way; as a servant also for the need of His people. His heart is with the saints; and the obedience, so new a thing for Him to render, is not to avail for Himself to spare Him one drop of the cup of sorrow He is to drink for others: it is an obedience by which they are to be made righteous. On the other hand, and none the less on this account, God is His all, “the measure of His portion, and of His cup;” and we find Him guided by His counsel, and maintained by Him in human weakness, perfect Leader in a path of faith in which we are to follow Him. We see Him in it, down to death itself through which the “path of life” passes on up to the presence of God, whence the light also shines for us by the way which He has gone. In the next psalm (Psalms 17:1-15) we find Him, spite -nay, because of all that He is, the object of the hatred of the men of the world, and His pleading against this which, though made as in His own behalf, we find to be intercession for others, with whom He identifies Himself. In the eighteenth, we have the answer of God to Him, which lifts Him into the place of power. Delivered from the strivings of the people, He is made the head of the nations. Here, of course, we are brought evidently to the latter days. Judgment has its course upon earth, the rod of power being in the hands of the rejected One, and long-suffering patience no longer holding back what is needed for the deliverance of His people and the blessing of the earth at large. For in result He praises among the nations, as the anointed King of all the earth. This is the close of the first series and these psalms are all subjective -the utterances of the Messiah Himself. In the next three, on the contrary, we have the utterances of faith as to Him, and thus the nineteenth psalm is accounted for as coming where it does in this series: creation and the law being now seen by it as the introduction to Christ. Thus the glory of the sun is dwelt upon -the typical picture of the Lord from the beginning of Genesis and then the law is seen in its effects, by its own perfection convicting the soul of sin, beyond even the knowledge of the one who as the servant of the Lord seeks to be admonished by it. This prepares, as is evident, the way for sacrifice but it is not to the sacrifices of the law that we now turn. No: the next psalm does indeed speak of sacrifice but it is Another that offers it, and that other the King Himself. In His salvation His people shall rejoice, for it is the Name of the God of Jacob that is declared in it: as we should say, the God of Grace. The whole psalm is a prophecy of Christ and of His work, though in relation (as all through) with Israel, and the following psalm speaks of Him in His glory. These are but hints of what atonement is. In the third series, however, it is fully declared with its blessed effects and the twenty-second psalm returns once more from the objective to the subjective: no voice but His own can declare to us worthily the inmost heart of it. The link with the day of atonement is shown in the third verse. The sufferer is undergoing what no righteous man ever did beside. A martyr for God, He is forsaken of God. And why? He answers His own question: it is because He who is the Holy One would dwell amid the praises of His people and this was what (typically and governmentally only,) the blood of the sin-offering accomplished on the day of atonement. Here we see, then, the reality of what that sin-offering meant, and all other sufferings are as nothing compared with this.

But the latter part of the psalm shows the glorious results in blessings welling out in wider and wider circles to the ends of the earth. The name of God is newly declared to those in new relationship to Him who has accomplished the wondrous work, and His righteousness is declared in it to generations following. The sin-offering psalm gives character in a certain way to all the remaining psalms of this first book. The twenty-third psalm shows us now the great Shepherd of the sheep brought again from the dead, and the pleasant pastures in which He leads His flock. The twenty-fourth, Jehovah’s house established on the earth, and the people who enter it. Jehovah Himself enters it as King of glory to take His place among His ransomed ones. This ends the nine psalms which are characteristically Messianic, and the fifteen psalms following are “remnant” psalms, or such as show us the exercises and experiences of the faithful in Israel, the background being circumstances of the latter days. But the apprehension of divine grace enters into them in a different manner from anything before. Sin is confessed, and God for His name’s sake forgives as promptly as the confession is made. The twenty-fifth and thirty-second psalms are especially characteristic, and have much of the New Testament style, if they do not reach its standard. After these the first book closes with two psalms (40 and 41), both of which speak once more of atonement, though in a different manner from before. The fortieth psalm is the burnt-offering aspect of the cross, the Lord seen as come to do the will of God, His law (which man has continually broken) in His heart, and its provision of sacrifice realized as written of Him. The awful burden of sin is experienced but not the forsaking of God endured. It is striking that this comes at the end, as if it were almost an appendix to the book, and does not seem to be the basis of other experience psalms, as does the sin-offering psalm (Psalms 22:1-31). In fact, is not the value of the burnt-offering that which rather belongs to Christianity, though not altogether lacking in Israel’s blessing? At any rate, there must be a reason for the supplementary place here occupied by the burnt-offering psalm. The forty-first, as the closing psalm of the book, depicts the cross as the stumbling-block to unbelief, while faith, penetrating the disguise assumed by love in this “poor man’s” humiliation, finds blessing from Jehovah: a natural and solemn admonition at the close of the book. Thus we see throughout how the Messianic psalms govern it, and that it has a fullness and completeness of its own in this respect, no main feature being altogether omitted, though some may be more fully developed elsewhere. The second book is more limited in scope and more external in character. Though redemption be a leading feature of it, it is more a redemption by power than by purchase, and seen rather in its effects for man therefore, than from the divine side of what sin is before God. The sixty-ninth is its psalm of atonement, and presents the trespass-offering side of it. But here again Christianity had to bring out the full character of this, and the “fifth part more” of the trespass-offering cannot be as yet developed. The Kingship of Christ is, of course, the prominent feature in the psalm which speaks of Him. The structure resembles that of the first book, the Messianic psalms being found in the first and third subdivisions, the second being devoted to psalms of experience, which are not however, excluded from the other parts. The first subdivision opens with the cry of the remnant in their distress, in answer to which in the forty-fifth psalm we have the glorious picture of Christ as King. Still more plainly than in the second psalm, God and man meet in Him; and for the first time, and the only one in the Psalms, He is seen as Israel’s Bridegroom. His rule is righteous and eternal: all enemies are put down, and the nations worship. This is the only view of Christ in the first part. The second gives the circumstances of the last days, the rule of Antichrist and not Christ, and then the exercises of the people, looking on toward deliverance. The third closes the book with a series of psalms which put before us Christ as the Restorer of the nation: first, as the King of Israel, taking up their cause as their Representative before God to bring them to blessing; and then in His work on the cross as involved in this. In the first series, the sixty-first psalm shows us the King’s vows as heard by God, and the possession of those that fear God’s name given to Him in consequence. He sojourns in the Tent which God had pitched among men, and dwells there as King in the presence of God forever, the eternal link between God and man. The sixty-second psalm has in it no clear evidence of Messianic character, except its place in this series between two psalms of the King. As the experience of the Leader and Finisher of faith it is, however, perfectly suited; being the utter rejection of all other dependences than God Himself. And after this the sixty-third psalm breathes after God as seen in the sanctuary, whose loving-kindness is better than life. Thus the soul follows hard after Him, while its enemies drop off and are destroyed. The next psalm is but a lament over the folly and wickedness of man; but the sixty-fifth with its single and plural voices points to the settlement of the deeper question of how the iniquities of those for whom their Head has undertaken are purged away, and through the Chosen One of God now dwelling in the Sanctuary, they too are satisfied with the goodness of God’s house established in their midst. The blessing following runs through two more psalms; then in the sixty-eighth there bursts out a strain of glory and triumph, in which God is celebrated under all His Names, which have all been illustrated and endeared to them through Him who has gone up on high, leading captivity captive, and receiving gifts for men: yea, (they acknowledge in humble gratitude) even for the rebellious, that Jah Elohim, might dwell among them.

Now the dove’s wings are over them, the beauty of Christ is seen upon them; and under the leadership of their glorious and divine King, Israel’s tribes throng up to the sanctuary. Thus the first series of psalms ends. The second bases the blessing on the sacrifice of Christ -on atonement, which here, in connection with Israel’s restoration has its restitutive aspect, as in the trespass-offering. As the result of this, in the seventy-first psalm Israel is seen reviving, taking bold of Jehovah’s strength alone, and making mention only of Jehovah’s righteousness. While in the seventy-second psalm the whole earth comes under the rule of the Saviour-King, who is seen in character as a true Melchizedek. Thus the salvation-book of the Psalms is completed. That it is Jewish and in sphere earthly is plain, and may be a disappointment to us; but we may be sure that inspiration has made no mistake: the limits of the law are too narrow to contain the fullness of the Christian gospel, and the divine side of the work of Christ has been more fully expressed already in the opening book. The essential outlines are, of course, preserved. The theme of the third book, as we know, is holiness. Much briefer than either of the preceding, the Messianic psalms are in the same proportion, while they are also much fainter sketches of the commanding figure for which we are looking. Very much as in the first subdivision of the second book, the first appearance of Christ here is in answer to the cry of distress on the part of the people. The earth and all its inhabitants are dissolved, but at the appointed time for which He has been waiting, He sets up the pillars of the earth once more. It has been dissolved by its corruption: He establishes it by just judgment carried out. He is the divine Interpreter, and with God alone it is to abase or to exalt. For this, however, that any may be exalted, grace must come in, and not merely judgment. Grace is His delight, judgment His strange work: and so we find here. “I will psalm,” He says “unto the God of Jacob: the God of Jacob is the God of grace. All this is in character with the third book. In the eightieth psalm, which is again the third psalm of a second section of the same division, there is just an appeal to God to act in their behalf through Messiah, “the Man of Thy right hand, the Son of man whom Thou madest strong for Thyself.” Here they have found the secret of blessing, and the next psalm shows the light of divine favor beginning to shine upon them. The cry of the eighty-fourth psalm is quite similar to this: “Behold, O God our shield, and look upon the face of Thine Anointed;” and in the next psalm we find all the attributes of God united in the salvation of His people. While in the next two psalms, but more mysteriously, we have Christ in the form of a Servant, owned, in the last, by God and by His people: all their fresh springs found in Him. But one other psalm in this book speaks of Christ, -the eighty-ninth, -in which He is seen as the One contemplated in the covenant with David. Here we have typical prophecy, and again the King, though to be made of God His firstborn, supreme as to the kings of the earth. The fourth book has two psalms of special importance, and is remarkable for the development of its blessed theme. It begins with a psalm of Moses, a lament over the generation dying in the wilderness, which is but a typical example of man’s doom as man. The reason of it is, he has lost the knowledge of God, who has always been a habitation for men, but men have turned their backs upon Him. Of this departure from Him death is the universal witness. With God is the fountain of life; turning from Him, man has accepted death as His portion, but which as an admonition God would have him lay to heart. But he cannot find the way back: first, man is helpless to recover himself. The second psalm of the book (the ninety-first) introduces us, therefore, to the Second Man. Here is One who has never wandered. He has “made Jehovah, even the Most High, His habitation,” and He can claim; therefore, all the consequences of this. Dwelling in His secret place -secret, alas, now to man at large -He abides therefore under the shadow of the Almighty. Plague and pestilence pass by Him harmless; the young lion and serpent He can trample under foot. The angels have Him in charge, lest He should dash. His foot against a stone. Here is a Man, in short, with whom (as in the next psalm) earth can enjoy once more a Sabbath-rest; and the world be established on immovable foundations. (Psalms 93:2.) But this shows no title as yet for the failed children of the first man; and though there are assurances given as to the righteous, that leaves, as we know, Job’s question unanswered. Meanwhile Jehovah’s kingdom is seen as coming, then as come, and the second subdivision ends amid the praises of the whole earth (Psalms 100:1-5); and still this vital question remains unanswered. With the third subdivision again a Messianic psalm appears, the old refrain; sounding through the whole book, of a King of righteousness. The King after Jehovah’s heart is come; and we readily connect Him with the Second Man of the ninety-first psalm: He is King of Israel now; and when we go on to the 102nd, Israel’s time has come for blessing, and Zion’s to be built up once more: the throne is ready for the King, but in this psalm where is the King? The voice here is of One not in power but in weakness -in extreme distress. Nay, Jehovah’s hand is upon Him and in wrath: He is dying, His days shortened, and He contrasts these shortened years with God’s eternity in His cry to Him. Is this the King of Israel? Nay, is this the glorious Man who has the secret of life and of enduring blessing? The answer is an amazing one, and it is God Himself who gives it. He is not only King of Israel: He is not only the Second Man, over whom death has no title: He is God Himself; He is Creator of heaven and earth; He is the deathless One, the fountain of Life Himself. “The Second Man is the Lord from heaven;” and in the sacrifice which is here accomplished, divine-human arms hold us fast to God. Although the fifth book is the longest of the whole five, there are but six psalms that are Messianic; and this is to be accounted for, no doubt, by its deuteronomic, governmental character. The 109th and 110th go together as the divine ways with the Perfect Man. They are complete contrasts: the first being One who for His love finds only hatred; until love itself can only pronounce the doom of its rejectors. The 110th is that which speaks directly of His Melchizedek Priesthood. He is exalted to God’s right hand, and waiting for His enemies to be made His footstool, and for an obedient people to be made willing in the day of His power. Here the principle in divine government is contained in the last verse, though not apart from the psalm before it. The path of humiliation and suffering has ever been the way ordained of God to lead to glory, a principle which our Lord distinctly enunciated for His disciples, as He accepted it for Himself, drank only of the brook in the way -took but the refreshment provided of God in the common way of faith and patience in which He led His followers. His trials have enabled Him to be the true Priest, the sympathetic Intercessor that His people crave, as well as the truly human King, the succorer of the needy. The 118th psalm shows us the Stone which the builders rejected becoming the Head of the Corner: and here His humiliation is nevertheless the stumbling-stone to men: the Stone was low enough for them to stumble over, and yet thus for the foundation-stone upon which faith builds, and the temple to God’s praise alone can stand. Among the “songs of degrees,” three short psalms alone remain. The first (Psalms 132:1-18) turns upon the history of David and the house of God, and David is here plainly a type of a higher King. The promise as to his house is connected with that as regards Zion and the dwelling-place of God in it. In the next psalm we have not David but Aaron, and the unity of brotherhood in Israel at last established among her jarring tribes: a spiritual unity now produced by the Spirit outpoured upon the head of her true High-priest, of whom it is here implied that Aaron was but a figure. In these two psalms, therefore, the Melchizedek Priest-King is again before us and the following brief psalm gives us the blessing of God by man and of man by God which is the glorious work of the true Melchizedek. Brief as this outline of the Messianic psalms is, it is surely enough to show the divine order in which they are arranged, and the fullness of the presentation of Christ which is found in them. His peculiar relation to us, of course, will not be found. Throughout the Old Testament times it was a “mystery hid in God.” (Ephesians 3:4-9.)