reader understands at once that the poetic description in the eighteenth psalm is to be taken figuratively.  The attempt has been made to interpret the gospel history as a myth—­the embodiment of a system of pure ideas in the garb of history.  It is difficult to refute an assumption which has no foundation to rest upon.  This mythical theory may, nevertheless, be disposed of in a very short and simple way.  The great central truth of the gospel history is the death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth.  If any one would know how the apostle Paul regarded this, let him read the fifteenth chapter of the first epistle to the Corinthians, where he pledges his veracity as a witness on its historic reality (ver. 15).  If, now, Paul so regarded it, Luke, his companion in travel and labor, cannot have taken a different view of it, nor any other of the evangelists.  But if the death and resurrection of Jesus are recorded as true historic events, the whole mythical theory vanishes at once into thin air.

(4.) In regard to those prophecies which relate to the distant future, it may sometimes be difficult to determine whether we are to look for a literal or a figurative fulfilment of them.  But this subject will come up for consideration in another place.

3.  In regard to the different kinds of figures a few words may be in place.

(1.) The term trope (Greek, tropos, a turn) is applied, in a general sense, to figures of words and speech of every variety; but, in stricter usage, to a word or sentence turned from its literal signification to a figurative sense.  Quintilian adds (Inst.  Orator. 8. 6. 1) that this must be with good effect (cum virtute); that is, it must add clearness, force, or beauty to the thought.

The principal varieties of the trope are the metonymy and the metaphor.  The metonymy is founded on the relation of one thing to another.  Thus when Abraham says to the rich man:  “They have Moses and the prophets, let them hear them” (Luke 16:29), Moses and the prophets are put for their writings; that is, the authors for their works.  “A soft tongue,” says the wise man, “breaketh the bone.”  Prov. 25:15.  Here the word tongue is put for speech, the instrument for the thing effected, and this metonymy is joined with a metaphor. (See below.) The synecdoche, in which a part is put for the whole, as the sword for war, is in its nature essentially a metonymy.  Rhetoricians give elaborate classifications of metonymies, but they are of little value to the scriptural student, since all are interpreted according to the few simple principles given in the preceding chapter.