three stories, or mansions, or rooms, signify the three degrees of truth in the mind and all its faculties. The window in the uppermost story of the ark means intellectual light, received by the church and by every man, from Above, or from the Lord. The door in the side, or way of access into the church, and that which admits into the mind spiritual life, signifies the outward doctrine of sacred charity, to which we hearken, and by which we are admitted to the protection, peace, and blessedness which are promised: thus internal and externl instruction. Hence all this is said to be done to establish a covenant

between God and man.

Nor is it to be passed over, as of trifling significance, that the same waters which destroyed the ungodly, preserved Noah and all within the ark from the same destruction. The forty days denote, as they always do in the Word, all the states of grievous temptation through which every one is led in the regenerate life. Hence, to signify similar things, Moses was in the mount forty days and forty nights; the children of Israel sojourned forty years in the wilderness; the prophet Elijah journeyed forty days and forty nights from the wilderness to Horeb, the Mount of God, on the strength of his miraculous food; the prophet Ezekiel was commanded to bear, representatively, the iniquity of Judah forty days; and, finally, the Lord Jesus was led into the wilderness, where for forty days He bore grievous temp

tations.

And the ark is said finally to have rested on the mountains of Ararat, which implies an elevated state of light and love. Various states of fluctuation and change in the regeneration are also signified by sending forth first a raven and then a dove to see if the waters were abated. And complete regeneration and liberty are denoted by going forth and building an altar to sacrifice to the Lord.

The literal sense is clearly untenable, and the narration could never have been intended to be understood in any other than a spiritual sense. By this interpretation, the sacred oracles are preserved from the cavils and ridicule to which they have been subjected; science is not defied, but vindicated; and reason is not discarded, but honored. The history is so wonderfully arranged, as to every particular, that an examination of it by the inquiring and reflecting mind will issue in regarding the whole narrative as a holy and divinely-inspired revelation of Him who knoweth the secrets of every heart,-a symbolic mental history couched, for wisest reasons, in the language of similitude and correspondence, and thus most worthy of God to give and

of man to receive. Every sentence of it, when properly understood, is filled with a heavenly meaning, and every word teems with light and life.

149

So, also, the subsequent history of the Tower of Babel,148 and the confusion of tongues said to have been consequent on its unhallowed erection, is a series of corresponding images, arranged in the factitious form of a narrative, to signify and represent the further departure of mankind from the simplicity of truth and the true worship of God. "The people of the earth," it is said, "journeyed from the east" (Gen. xi. 2), that is, they departed from a holy state of charity and love, denoted by the east,-thus from the Lord. Their worship became more profane and their conduct more corrupt, and they are represented, therefore, as building for themselves habitations there, endeavoring to find rest and security in the degraded plain or valley of Shinar. In that low state, bricks, or false principles framed from their impure imaginations, originating in and confirmed by the burning lusts of self-love and the love of the world, were substituted for the stones of truth, and the pure doctrines thence derived; and the slime, or pitch, or bitumen of unclean concupiscence was supplied in the place of mortar, the conjoining principles of affection and mutual love springing from goodness. The sad result was the origination and multiplication of heresies, idolatries, and countless false sentiments in religion, the increase and strengthening of numberless evil lusts, and the substitution of doctrines of faith for the life of charity, thus originating all kinds of doubt, denial, and mental confusion, ending in spiritual destruction. Thus men brought upon themselves the direful judgment and punishment signified by the "fire and brimstone" rained upon them apparently from God out of heaven, denoting a state of self-inflicted torment, directly opposed to the divine will and wisdom.

According to this view of the nature and character of the Word, we may see how wicked men and nations, and even apparently evil actions, were capable of representing what is holy, good, and true.

148 Babel means, in English, " perplexity," | of tongues at the building of the tower of Ba"confusion."

149 Shinar, in English, means, "the watch ing of one sleeping," or "the charge of the city."

"Contemplation of the divine essence is the noblest exercise of man; it is the only means of attaining to the highest truth and virtue, and therein to behold God is the consummation of our happiness here. The confusion

bel should teach us this lesson. The heaven those vain builders sought to reach, signifies, symbolically, the mind, where dwell divine powers. Their futile attempt represents the presumption of those who place sense above intelligence, who think that they can storm the intelligible by the sensible."— Vaughan's Hours with the Mystics, vol. i., p. 73. Thera peutæ.

150

Both the unjust judge and the unfaithful steward represented, in the internal sense, the Lord's divine operations for man's welfare, and what we are required spiritually to do, in order to secure his divine blessing and protection. The descendants of Israel, though as a people they were a vile, obstinate, sensual, and rebellious race from the beginning,' were yet made subservient to the divine purposes, in representing a true spiritual church, without being one themselves; and though they "made the Word of God of none effect by their tradi tions" (Matt. xv. 6), yet they became the depositaries of that Volume of eternal life, in which the particulars of their own history were recorded for the use of all future ages, as the shadows of the kingdom of God both in heaven and on earth.151 Wicked kings, as Saul and Ahab, by virtue of their regal authority, and impious priests, as the sons of Eli, by virtue of their sacerdotal character, were, under that representative dispensation, and in a good sense, types of the Lord, and are called "the Lord's anointed." Concerning David, Israel's king, it is thus written in a prediction of the advent of the Saviour, whom he represented, "David, my servant, shall be king over them, and they shall have one Shepherd, and they shall dwell in the land; even they and their children, and their children's children forever: and my servant David shall be their prince forever" (Ezek. xxxvii. 24, 25). And, again: "The children of Israel shall return, and seek the Lord their God, and David their king" (Hos. iii. 5). Thus, in a good sense, of David, notwithstanding his enormous crimes, it is written, not of his personal, but of his representative character, that "he was a man after God's own heart" (Acts xiii. 22); for in all the particulars of his remarkable history he was the chosen representative of the Lord, and his whole life was representative of the progress of every regenerating mind."

152

150 Ex. xxxii. 9; Deut. ix. 6-13; 2 Kings xxi. | Him of the Church, which is his body, and 15; John viii. 44; Acts vii. 51.

151 "We find St. Paul (says Locke) truly a minister of the spirit of the laws; especially in the Epistle to the Hebrews, where he shows that a spiritual sense runs throughout the Mosaic institution and writings.' He shows us that the letter is only as the veil which concealed the brightness of the face of Moses; that the history of Abraham and his two sons is an allegory; and that Melchisedec represented the Lord; he shows us, in a word, that 'the WHOLE dispensation was so conducted as to be the figure and the shadow of a spiritual system."-Dr. Blair.

through that again of each individual Christian, as being a member of that body; and therefore the Psalms generally are adopted by the whole Church in her assemblies, and by separate believers in their closets, with equal propriety, as the language of their devotions; they are an inspired Liturgy, provided for all ages and all lands."-Tracts for the Times, lxxxix., p. 129. David means, in English, "beloved, dear."

"Nothing has done more hurt among Christians than taking the Psalms, or hymns of David, the Beloved, literally, as if they related only to temporary transactions or de152 David is a type of our Lord, and through liverances wrought for the Jews." "None

has a spiritual sense also, which proves it to be the book of God. At times we, through blindness, can discern only the natural; and

other times, the spiritual almost appears; and sometimes both are discerned with equal clearness. Upon this plan we are to inter

Also, the Psalms applied to Israel are, in the higher sense, to be understood of the spiritual Israel. We are, in a far higher sense than they, delivered from bondage and slavery; we go through the sea, and travel in the wilderness. We have, spiritually, God's pillar, tabernacle, and mount; we have bread from heaven, water from the rock, and prospect of a land of rest. We have enemies, difficulties, and dangers; captivities and deliv erances. In like manner are we to understand the figures borrowed from the natural world. We read here of creation; heaven, earth, and sea; of sun, moon, and stars; of air, thunder, dew, and rain; of light and darkness, summer and winter. All such things are figures of higher things in the new creation, the world of grace. In short, whatever be the figures used in the Psalms, whether David, Israel, the ceremonial law, or anything in creation, or in the history of man, they are shadows of far higher and better things in Christ's kingdom."—See Bishop Horne on the Psalms, condensed from Jones's Scripture Directory, ed. 1815, pp. 73–78.

but the real David was a man after God's own heart."-Bp. Horne's Abstract of Hutchinson's Works, p. 303. "The book [of the Psalms] contains sub-here we should check vain conjectures. At jects far more sublime, spiritual, and interesting than merely the history of David and the affairs of his kingdom. We cannot for a moment suppose that the trials and tri-pret the Psalms as having a double meaning. umphs, the joys and sorrows, the afflictions and victories of the son of Jesse, are the subjects which the God of heaven has appointed to promote devotion in all his temples; or that the opposition and persecution which David met with at the hands of Saul, on his way to the throne: or the sorrows which Absalom occasioned afterwards; or the victories which David obtained over Moab, Edom, and Philistia, are to form the songs of Sion in all ages. Nay, it would be absurd to think that the affairs of any one man, however eminent, should be ordained of God as the subject-matter of the prayers and praises of all the redeemed in all lands [for ever]. The book of Psalms doubtless sets forth the Lord Jesus Christ and the affairs of his kingdom of grace. Its main design is to set forth the Saviour of the world, and to direct our eyes and hearts to the true David, king of Sion, the God of Israel. In this bright mirror we behold the glory of his person, kingdom, and priesthood; we here see his humiliation, conflicts, and sorrows. The oppositions, persecutions, and contempt which he endured, and the glorious victories which he obtained, are here set before us. It is a clear and perfect mirror wherein the Church may view herself in all the different states, circumstances, and conditions she passes through on her journey heavenward. Here we behold the Church of Christ in prosperity and adversity, in light and darkness, in joys and sorrows, in trials and in triumphs by turns. At one time we see her declining, sinking in sin, and carried into captivity; then reviving again, and returning with singing unto Sion. At times we see her struggling with temptations, afflictions, and trouble; at other times rising above oppressions, and triumphing in her God. To-day in sorrow, weeping in the dust; to-morrow happy, and singing on the mount of joy. The book of Psalms furnish-nal meaning, especially in its application to eth us with a full view of the Lamb's wife through all the heavenly road, and with all she meets with during her pilgrimage through the wilderness, till she arrives at the mount of God in the Holy Land. Here her beauty, riches, honors, her conquest, joy, and safety are all correctly described. The books of Scripture have a double sense, the literal and the spiritual; this cannot be said of any other book in the world; human writings have only a natural, but the Bible

That the book of Psalms, and the Prophets, throughout the inspired pages, contain an internal and spiritual sense, they themselves testify. David, "the oldest Psalmist of Israel" (2 Sam. xxiii. 1), affirms that "his tongue was the pen of a ready writer" (Ps. xlv. 1); and at the period of his bodily decease, claims the spirit of inspiration for his sacred songs, when he said, "The spirit of the Lord spake by me, and his word was upon my tongue' (2 Sam. xxiii. 2). "I, Jehovah, have spoken by the prophets, and I have multiplied vi sions, and used similitudes by the ministry of the prophets" (Hosea xii. 10). We have only to turn to the New Testament, and in the Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, the Epistles, and in the Book of Revelation we shall find the most ample evidence of this inter

"

the Lord Jesus Christ, and as, in that sense, being fulfilled not only in Him, but also in the constant experience of every Christian believer.-See Acts iv. 25; Heb. ii. 6; Acts ii. 25,30; Rom. xv. 9; x. 18; Matt. xxvii. 43; Heb. x. 5; John xiii. 18; Rom. viii. 36; Heb. i. 8; Eph. iv. 7, 8; Rom. xi. 9, 10; Acts i. 20; Matt. xiii. 34; iv. 6,7; Heb. iii., iv.; Matt. xxii. 44; Rom. xv. 11; Luke xx. 17; Acts iv. 11; 1 Pet. ii. 7.

No

CHAPTER XIX.

SACRIFICIAL WORSHIP.

other worship but what was internal, such as prevails in heaven, existed in the earliest ages among those of the most ancient church,153 signified by Adam; but when that church declined from its pristine integrity, purity, and spirituality, men had no longer an intuitive perception of correspondences, as heretofore, and then they began to collect and cultivate them as a science. Then, also, external worship, representative and significative of internal, was first instituted, and stated forms were established.

According to correspondences, the firstlings of the flock signify worship from inmost spiritual affection. Thus, the offering of "Abel, a keeper of sheep," which signifies worship from love, was said to be more acceptable to Jehovah than the offering of "Cain, a tiller of the ground," which signifies worship from faith without inward love. Abel's offering was first-fruits; not so that of Cain (Gen. iv.). The worship of the ancient church, signified by Noah, was purely representative. With the members of that dispensation, all external objects and operations whatever symbolized the glorious realities of heaven, representing truths with their perceptions, and affections with their delights, together with all the activities of the mind into which they flowed. Their external worship, therefore, was a precise type of their internal character, and was represented by Noah's sacrifice, of which we read that "He builded an altar unto the Lord; and took of every clean beast, and of every clean fowl, and offered burnt

168 "The man of the most ancient church | celestial; as for example, when they saw performed no other worship but what was internal, such as prevails in heaven, for with them heaven communicated with man, so that they made one; that communication was perception; thus being angelic men, they were also internal men; they were sensible indeed of the external things relating to the body and the world, but they cared not for them; in every particular object of sense they perceived somewhat divine and

any high mountain, they did not perceive any idea of a mountain, but of height, and by virtue of height they perceived heaven and the Lord; hence it came to pass that the Lord was said to dwell on the highest, and He himself was called The Highest and most exalted, and afterwards the worship of the Lord was solemnized on mountains; the case was similar in other instances."A. C., n. 920.