I. HISTORICAL TYPES.

4.  The extravagance of a class of Biblical expositors in converting the Old Testament history into allegory typical of persons and events under the gospel dispensation has produced a strong reaction, leading some to deny altogether the existence of historical types.  But this is going to the other extreme of error.  No man who acknowledges the writers of the New Testament to be true expositors of the meaning of the Old can consistently deny the existence in the Old Testament of such types, for they interpret portions of its history in a typical way.  But it is of the highest importance that we understand, in respect to such history, that it has a true and proper significance of its own, without respect to its typical import.  It is not allegory, which has, literally taken, no substance.  It is not mere type, like the rites of the Mosaic law, the meaning of which is exhausted in their office of foreshadowing the antitype.  It is veritable history, valid for the men of its own day, fulfilling its office in the plan of God’s providence, and containing, when we look at it simply as history, its own lessons of instruction.  We call it typical history because, following the guidance of the New Testament writers, we are constrained to regard it as so ordered and shaped by God’s providence as to prefigure something higher in the Christian dispensation.

No careful student of the New Testament can for a moment doubt that David’s kingdom typified the kingdom of Christ.  There is, indeed, a very important sense in which David’s kingdom was identical with that of Christ; for its main element was the visible church of God, founded on the covenant made with Abraham, and therefore in all ages one and indivisible.  Rom. 11:17-24; Gal. 3:14-18; Ephes. 2:20.  But we now speak of David’s kingdom in its outward form, which was temporary and typical of something higher.  In this sense it is manifest that God appointed it to foreshadow that of the Messiah.  David’s headship adumbrated the higher headship of the Redeemer; his conflicts with the enemies of God’s people and his final triumph over them, Christ’s conflicts and victories.  The same thing was true of Solomon, and in a measure of all the kings of David’s line, so far as they were true to their office as the divinely appointed leaders of the covenant people.  Unless we adopt this principle, the view which the New Testament takes of a large number of Psalms—­the so-called Messianic psalms—­becomes utterly visionary.

But neither David’s kingdom nor his headship over it was mere type.  The nation over which he presided was a historic reality, a true power among the other nations of the earth.  His leadership also, with its conflicts and triumphs, belongs to true history.  It brought to the people of his own day true deliverance from the power of their enemies; and it contains, when we study it without reference to its typical character, true lessons of instruction for all ages.