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

Kurtz on the Old Covenant.
Nor does the fruit attach itself to the stem until the bud and
the blossom have first preceded it. God might have revealed
to Adam, (whatever infidels may say to the contrary,) every
event that has ever occurred, or is yet to occur, upon this world's
surface. But prophecy would thus be degraded to mere soothsaying. And is it not apparent that such random, uncalled-for
predictions, having only the doubtful merit of disclosing a distant future, but with no particular end in view, and of no partieular use to the times when it was made known, would have
been vastly inferior to the wisdom and goodness of that system
of disclosure which pervades the prophecies, by which the present
is made the mirror of the future, and the future is made to
educate the present?
Thus is produced what may be called an organic connexion
of the Old Testament prophecy and its history. One grows
with the other, and they are inseparably entwined together.
As the plan of God in the history advances to its completion,
prophecy is unfolded with a corresponding ratio. At the outset
its announcements are made chiefly in general outlines, then
become gradually more full and distinct. With every fresh
want that makes itself felt, prophecy draws a new trait in the
coming Saviour by which that want shall be supplied. With
every image of the future good which the grace of God brings
into the history, prophecy points again at the great original of
whom this is the imperfect foreshadowing. To anticipate the
progress of the history, and hold him up as a remedy for evils
which had never yet been experienced, or to describe him by
images which have no type in the present, and no significancy,
no felt reality for it, would be unseasonable and unwise. At
each point of time what the people needed to know just then
was revealed to them; future necessities were left to be supplied as they should arise. A prophecy, which was required by
the condition of things in the time of Isaiah, would have been
wholly out of place delivered to Abraham. Prophecy has thus
its historic aspect, as the history has its prophetic aspect.
They are closely linked in together, and correspond ever in
their advances; the prophecy keeping pace with the history as
its interpreter, or outrunning it as its guide.
Such was the end to be answered by one of the divine func VOL. XXIII.-NO. III. 48
1851.]
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