Pharaoh on the side of the devil, and the covenant people on the side of the seed of the woman.  This struggle in Egypt, again, foreshadowed the still higher contest between truth and error in the land of Canaan—­a contest which endured through so many centuries, and enlisted on both sides so many kings and mighty men; and which, in its turn, ushered in the grand conflict between the kingdom of Christ and that of Satan, a conflict that began on the day of Pentecost, and is yet in progress.  This continual foreshadowing of the future by the present is essentially of a typical nature, yet it does not constitute, in and of itself, what we understand by a type in the ordinary usage of the term.

3. A type is a symbol appointed by God to adumbrate something higher in the future, which is called the antitype.  This definition includes three particulars:  (1.) The type must be a true adumbration of the thing typified, though, from the very nature of the case, the adumbration must be inadequate—­a shadow only of the antitype, and not its substance.  Thus the paschal lamb was a type of Christ, though there is infinitely more in the antitype than in the type. (2.) The symbol must be of divine appointment, and as such, designed by God to represent the antitype.  We must carefully remember, however, that, from the very nature of the case, the divine intention cannot be clearly announced when the type is instituted.  The paschal lamb typified “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world;” but it was not till centuries after the institution of the passover that God began to intimate by the prophets the approaching sacrifice of the great Antitype (Isa. chap. 53; Zech. 13:7), and the full import of the type was revealed only when the sacrifice of “Christ our passover” had been accomplished on Calvary. (3.) Since the type is “a shadow of good things to come,” it follows that the antitype must belong to the future.  A pure symbol may belong to the present or the near future.  It may represent something that now exists, or is coming into existence, in respect to which concealment is not necessary.  Hence we find the sacred writers freely explaining the meaning of the symbols which they employ (Numb. chap. 17; Josh. 4:1-7; 1 Sam. 7:12; 10:1, and the same symbol of anointing often elsewhere; 1 Kings 11:29-39; 22:11, where a false prophet uses a symbol; Isa. chap. 20; Jer. 1:11-14; 13:1-11, and elsewhere; Ezek. chap. 3, and in many other passages; Amos 7:1-9; 8:1-3; Zech. 1:8-11, and elsewhere).  The true type, on the contrary, reckoned from the time of its institution, looks forward to the distant future.  The high reality which it foreshadows may be intimated by the prophets “as in a glass darkly,” but the appearance of the antitype can alone furnish a full explanation of its meaning.

The types of the Old Testament have been variously classified.  We propose to consider them under the two divisions of historical and ritual types.