This is a comparison; or affirmation that the Son of Man's coming shall be like the lightning coming out of the east and shining unto the west. By the second law of the figure, the names of the things compared, the Son of Man's coming, and the lightning's coming and shining, are used in their literal sense; and accordingly the event foreshown in the prediction is the Son of Man's literal coming in visibility and conspicuousness to the eyes of men, like the lightning's coming out of the east and shining unto the west. Nothing can be more clear and indisputable than this. If the names of the agents and acts were not used in their literal sense, there would be no means of knowing what the event is that is foreshown by the prediction, nor what being is to be the agent or subject of it. If Christ is not the being whose act is meant by his coming, who is that being? If the event denoted by his coming is not a real personal coming, visible and conspicuous, like the lightning that flashes from one side of the firmament to the other, what is the event that his coming is used to foreshow? No satisfactory answer can ever be given to these questions.

Yet many writers, wholly unaware of this great law of the figure, speak of the expression as though it were metaphorical, or ascribe to it some other wholly

foreign nature, and construe it as a prediction of the march of the Romans into Judea to the siege and destruction of Jerusalem nearly eighteen hundred years ago. No construction could involve a grosser violation of the figure and the passage. It is impossible, from the nature of the comparison, that the Son of Man's coming can denote anything else than his literal personal coming; precisely as it is impossible that the lightning's flashing from the east unto the west can denote anything but the flashing of that element in that manner. Christ's coming, moreover, in the dazzling pomp of deity, darting avenging fires from his chariot wheels, is to present a vivid resemblance in conspicuousness, though it is immeasurably to transcend it, to a shaft of lightning that leaps from a midnight cloud, and darting to the west fills the whole scene for a moment with a noonday effulgence; but no such resemblance is presented to it by a slow marching army of Romans, who could have no general visibility like a brilliant object in the heavens, but must have been absolutely invisible to all who were not in their immediate vicinity. A just understanding of the figure would have withheld these writers from such a misconstruction of it, and such a violation of the prophecy.

A strict adherence to the laws of figures in the

interpretation of the Scriptures will set aside a vast number of similar misconstructions that are now current, and restore the perverted passages to their

true sense.

CHAPTER XV.

THE RESULTS OF THE LAWS OF FIGURES IN THE
INTERPRETATION OF THE SCRIPTURES.

ANOTHER, though less frequent error, is the assumption, as shown chapter XI., that narrative, or commemorative portions of the sacred volume, in which the rhetorical figures are employed in the usual manner, are nevertheless themselves taken in the whole as narratives, tropical; and that the events therefore which they relate or describe are not those which they actually denote; but that they are used representatively, and signify a different and analogous class. The effect is, accordingly, on a mere fanciful and arbitrary assumption, to set aside the true meaning of such passages, and force on them a foreign and false sense. It is most unjustifiable, therefore, and dangerous, as it enables the `interpreter, under the pretence of a law of language, to reject the revelation God has made in any portion

of the Scriptures, and substitute a lawless dream of his fancy in its place.

There is an example of this in the interpretation many writers put on the xviiith Psalm, in which David commemorates a personal visible interposition of Jehovah, to deliver him from the hands of his enemies who were plotting his assassination. Thus Professor Stuart treats that representation of the appearance of the Almighty in his cloudy chariot, and extrication of the psalmist from danger, as a mere drapery of thoughts, or occurrences of a wholly different kind, fabricated by the writer, for the purpose of giving dignity and beauty to the poem. What those thoughts or events were, however, he does not show; nor could he have presented any statement of them, had he attempted it, that would have possessed the least air of probability; for if, as he asserts, the acts of God which are gratefully and adoringly commemorated are purely fictitious and representative, the gratitude and adoration which they are exhibited as exciting must, on the same principle, be held to be representative also; and the whole is turned into an inexplicable enigma; for what merely resembling sentiment and act can gratitude and adoration be supposed to represent? It is rather, indeed, a trifling and impious farce; for why should acts be