should be pursued with the writings of Isaiah and Jeremiah in the Old Testament, and of Paul and John in the New.  What is obscure is to be interpreted by what is clear; what is briefly hinted, by what is more fully expressed.  Different writers, moreover, belonging to the same age, animated by the same spirit, and confessedly governed by the same general rules of faith and practice, mutually explain each other.  Thus the prophets Isaiah, Hosea, Joel, Amos, and Micah, who belong to the same century, and in a less degree Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the other prophets of a later age, shed each a light on the pages of all the rest.  The same is true of all the epistolary writers of the New Testament, notwithstanding their marked differences of style, and the different aspects also in which they respectively contemplate Christian doctrine and duty.

Our Saviour says of those who claimed to be, before his advent, the shepherds and leaders of God’s spiritual fold:  “All that ever came before me are thieves and robbers; but the sheep did not hear them.”  John 10:8.  Yet according to this same evangelist he honored Abraham, Moses, and the prophets, as true leaders and teachers of God’s people.  Chaps. 8:39, 40, 56; 5:45-47; 12:38-41.  We know, then, that the Saviour’s words must be restricted to such spiritual thieves and robbers as the scribes and Pharisees of his day, who under the leadership of Satan (chap. 8:41, 44) climbed up some other way into the fold.

The apostle Paul says (Rom. 2:7) that God shall render “to them who by patient continuance in well-doing seek for glory, and honor, and immortality, eternal life.”  We know at once, without reference to the context, that he does not mean, in opposition to the whole tenor of his epistles, to affirm that men can obtain eternal life by their own well-doing, without respect to “the righteousness of God, which is by faith of Jesus Christ, unto all and upon all them that believe.”  But if we examine the context, this shows that here the apostle is not speaking of the meritorious ground of justification, but of God’s impartial regard to a righteous character in both Jews and Gentiles.

Historical parallelisms hold of necessity a prominent place in the interpretation of both the Old and the New Testament.  In the Old Testament we have the two parallel histories of the Hebrew commonwealth, first in the books of Samuel and the Kings, then in the books of Chronicles.  In the New, the four gospels are four parallel accounts of our Lord’s life and teachings.  Then there are several parallelisms of less extent; as, for example, Isaiah’s account of Sennacherib’s war upon Hezekiah, and Hezekiah’s sickness (Isa. chaps. 36-39, compared with 2 Kings 18:13-20:21, and the briefer notice of 2 Chron. chap. 32); the three accounts of Paul’s conversion (Acts 9:1-22; 22:1-21; 26:1-20); and other passages which will readily occur to the reader.  To the work of comparing and harmonizing these parallel histories