beautiful organism. He does not give us a prose history or a prose treatise of creation, but he presents us with a poem of the creation, a graphic and popular delineation of the genesis of the most excellent organism of our earth and heaven, with their contents; as each order steps forth in obedience to the command of the Almighty Chief; and takes its place in its appointed ranks in the host of God. Our Poem of the Creation rises above the strifes of theologians and men of science, and appeals to the æsthetic taste and imagination of the people of God in all lands and in all times.

"The Poem of the Creation has all of the characteristic features of Hebrew poetry. (1). The feature of parallelism which Hebrew poetry shares with the Assyrian and ancient Akkadian, is characteristic of our poem in its varied forms of synonym, antithesis, and synthesis. . .

“(2). The measurement of lines by words or word accents is as even and regular in our poem as in the best specimens of Hebrew poetry. It has five poetic accents with the cæsura-like pause between the three and the two, or the two and the three, which is characteristic of all poems of this number of ac

cents.

"(3). It has considerable number of archaic words, such as we find elsewhere only in poetry. . . .

"(4). It has strophical organization. It is composed of six strophes or stanzas, which are indicated by the refrain, And evening came and morning came,' varying only in the number of the day. These strophes, while they do not have exactly the same number of lines, vary within definite limits, e. g., strophes I. and II. have seven lines each and the refrain; strophes III., IV., and V. have ten lines each and a refrain. The last strophe, the VI., has twenty lines and a refrain—or, in other words, is a strophe with a double refrain—such as we find, for example, in the allegory of the vine in the LXXX. Psalm.*

“(5). There are certain catch-words, or secondary refrains, also characteristic of Hebrew poetry, especially in the Song of Songs and Hosea, e. g.: (1) And God said, which begins each item of Creation in its turn. (2) And it became so. (3) And God saw that it was excellent.

* See Briggs' Biblical Study, p. 277.

"(6). Our Poem employs poetic license in the use of archaic endings of suffixes and cases to soften the transition from word to word and make the movement more flowing. This is also to be noted in the order of the arrangement of the words in the lines.

"(7). The language and style are simple, graphic, and ornate, such as we find everywhere in poetry, but are regarded as unusual and especially rhetorical in prose.

“(8). There is a simple and beautiful order of thought which harmonizes in the several strophes: God speaks, the creature comes forth in obedience, the Creator expresses his delight in his creature. The Creator then works with the creature and assigns its place and functions. The day's work closes with its evening; and the break of the morning prepares for another day's work. All this gives a monotonous character to the story if it be regarded as prose, but it is in exact correspondence with the characteristic parallelism of Hebrew poetry, which extends not only to the lines of the strophe, but also to the correspondence of strophe with strophe in the greater and grander harmonies of the poem as a whole. These eight characteristics of the first chapter of Genesis are all poetical characteristics, and we make bold to say that there is no piece of poetry in the Bible which can make greater claims than this to be regarded as Poetry." (Extract from article on the Hebrew Poem of the Creation, in the Old Testament Student, April, 1884. See also Briggs' Messianic Prophecy, p. 68.)

XVI.

THE DETAILS OF PREDICTIVE PROPHECY.

I said in my Inaugural Address on the Authority of Holy Scripture, that "If we insist upon the fulfilment of the details of the predictive prophecy of the Old Testament, many of these predictions have been reversed by history." I have been astonished at the misinterpretation and misrepresentation of that sentence. I was simply quoting from my Messianic Prophecy, published in 1886, from the chapter on predictive prophecy, in which I show that: "Kuenen has the right of it over against the scholastic apologists when he says: 'When they assert that the proph

ecies have been fulfilled exactly and literally, and thence deduce far-reaching consequences, we cannot rest satisfied with the general agreement between the prediction and the historical fact, but must note also along with that the deviation in details, as often as such a deviation is actually apparent.' But Kuenen and the Scholastics are here alike in error, for the prophecies are predictive only as to the essential and the ideal elements. The purely formal elements belong to the point of view and coloring of the individual prophets. We are not to find exact and literal fulfilments in detail or in general, but the fulfilment is limited to the essential ideal contents of the prophecy."

"Thus the poet uses a gigantic vine to illustrate the marvellous growth of the kingdom of God. It was transplanted from Egypt to Canaan, covered the whole land, reached with its branches from the Mediterranean to the Euphrates, cast the cedars of Lebanon in the shade of its gigantic boughs. Thus Daniel uses the stone cut out of the mountain without hands, growing to become a vast mountain filling the whole earth. The mountain of the house of Jahveh rises above the highest mountains. Ezekiel represents the New Jerusalem and the holy land in impossible proportions and situations. Some of these cases are so grotesque and extravagant that no one could for a moment think of an exact and literal fulfilment. And yet there are a large number of predictions which, in their proper interpretation, are no less impossible. These have been so interpreted by Scholastics as to find exact fulfilment, and by Rationalists as to show that they have not been fulfilled. A striking example of this is the new temple and holy land and institutions of Ezekiel, and under this head may be brought all that large class relating to Israel's future, which Kuenen argues to be unfulfilled, and to be impossible of fulfilment. He classifies them thus: (1) the return of Israel out of captivity; (2) the reunion of Ephraim and Judah; (3) the supremacy of the house of David; (4) the spiritual and material welfare of the restored Israel; (5) the relation between Israel and the Gentiles; (6) Israel's undisturbed continuance in the land of their habitation.

"If exact and literal fulfilment of these prophecies was designed in the predictions, then we must agree with Kuenen that they have been disproved by history; but it is against the laws of predictive prophecy so to interpret them. These predictions are

not only impossible now, but in form many of them always were impossible. Israel in predictive prophecy is not Israel after the flesh, but Israel after the spirit, as the Apostle Paul explains. The true children of Abraham are the faithful. The Christian Church is the legitimate successor of the Israel of old and the heir of its promises. The essential contents of these predictions when eliminated from their formal elements are spiritual and not carnal" (pp. 50–51).

The view that I have presented takes a middle course between the scholastic dogma of the fulfilment of the details of Biblical prophecy and the Rationalistic position that predictive prophecy is nothing more than the foresight and the forecast of men of genius, some of which has been fulfilled, but the greater part of which has been disproved by history.

The Westminster Confession of Faith nowhere states that the details of Biblical prophecy have all been fulfilled, or will all be fulfilled in the future. The passages cited from the Confession of Faith and the Catechism, in the charges made against me, do not mention the words predictive prophecy. They have nothing whatever to do with prophecy or the details of prophecy. The verses of Holy Scripture cited by the prosecution in proof of this specification, number thirty-two. Twenty-three of these are not used in the Confession of Faith at all; six of the remainder are used under other chapters than the first chapter, to prove other doctrines than the doctrine of Holy Scripture. Only three are used under the first chapter, and these have no manner of relevancy with the question of the fulfilment of the details of predictive prophecy. This is a question entirely beyond the range of its definitions. It is difficult to see how any one by any process of inference can bring the details of predictive prophecy under these statements.

There is not a word of Holy Scripture that teaches directly or indirectly the fulfilment of the details of predictive prophecy. The passages adduced by the prosecutors have all been considered by me many times and used in my lectures and writings in their Biblical meaning. They do not teach the fulfilment of all the details of predictive prophecy; but either the fulfilment of predictive prophecy in general, or some particular predictive prophecy.

The passage Matthew v. 17-18, may seem on the surface to be an exception, but it is not such in reality.

"Think not that I came to destroy the law or the prophets : I came not to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass away from the law, till all things be fulfilled." Our Saviour here teaches that He and His gospel are not in conflict with the Old Testament Scripture, but rather their complete and entire fulfilment. This wonderful passage opens up the whole doctrine of the relation of the two dispensations. The jot and the tittle doubtless indicate the most minute details. But details of what? of every statement, sentence and letter and variation of letter in the Old Testament Scripture? Our Saviour's own discussions show such an interpretation to be impossible. He himself changed the law of divorce. The greater part of the legislation of the Mosaic codes was superseded once and for all by Jesus. The Westminster Confession teaches that, all the ceremonial laws are now abrogated under the New Testament, and that the judicial laws expired together with the state of the Jewish people, not obliging any other now, further than the general equity thereof may require (xix. 3, 4). If then we cannot interpret Jesus' words, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass away from the law," with such precision as to infer the eternal validity of every minute detail of the Pentateuchal legislation; still less can we do so with reference to the fulfilment of the Prophets, about which it is not expressly said that, 66 one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass away from the prophets till all be fulfilled."

66

The doctrine of Jesus is perfectly true in the sense in which He clearly meant it. All that was really predicted in the prophets has been or will hereafter be fulfilled to the jot and tittle; but the details of the predictive prophecy of the Old Testament are not in fact predicted. They belong to the symbolic form, the typical frame, the clothing, the setting of the prediction and not to the prediction itself. The predictions must first be interpreted, before we can raise the question of their fulfilment. The difference between the scholastics and myself is, as regards the interpretation of predictive prophecy. I have carefully studied all these prophecies and in my volume entitled Messianic Prophecy have carefully set forth the principle for their