History of the Old Covenant. By J. H. Kurtz [pp. 451-486]

Kurtz on the Old Covenant.
And after all the deductions that can be made on the ground of
the Old Testament being used in the New by way of accommo dation rather than of explication, it is yet impossible for him
who examines the inspired interpretations given of the Old Testament with any candour, to avoid the conclusion that Christ is
represented as spoken of in many passages where no distinct
mention of him lies upon the surface; and if their authority be
admitted as infallible, of course he must be there.
Here, then, we come to be pressed by the difficulty of finding
that certain rule, those settled principles, which shall approve
themselves as sound before an enlightened judgment, by which
to decide where references to Christ are to be assumed, and
how far they are to be pressed; so that we may not on the one
hand deny to the Scriptures what they actually contain, nor on
the other bring in upon them what has no existence but in our
own imagination. There must be some rule besides mere conjecture or caprice; The point of perplexity in the whole subject,
is the determination of what that rule is. And it is in the endeavour to fix upon it that such various and conflicting theories of
interpretation have been broached. Aside from all examination
it would seem to be the most obvious and simplest rule to refer
to Christ only such predictions as are explicitly made of him,
and such types as manifestly point to their fulfilment in him.
But from reasons which have just been adduced, the finding of
a Messianic content in these, and limiting it to them, must be
given up as untenable. The authority of the New Testament is
against it. The structure of the Old Testament itself, and the
context in which these predictions and types stand, is against
it. They cannot be torn from their connexion, and referred to
a totally different subject from that to which all around them
refers, but by the most violent and arbitrary procedure. Either
then these types and predictions themselves have no direct relation to Christ, or else the entire passages in which they stand
cannot be separated from all relation to him. Some, who were
unbelievers in a supernatural revelation, have not scrupled to
take the first horn of this dilemma, and have maintained that no
direct prediction of Christ, or which is tantamount to the same
thing, no prediction of him at all properly so called, is to
be found in the Old Testament; that its language invariably
VOL. XXIII.-NO. III. 47
185J.]
455