but of the development of God’s kingdom from age to age.  The reader may take, as a single example among many others, the prediction of Isaiah and Micah concerning the establishment of the Lord’s house in the last days in the top of the mountains, the resort of all nations to it, and the universal peace that shall follow.  Isa. 2:2-4; Micah 4:1-4.  That particularism which seeks for the fulfilment of every prophecy in some one specific event of history must go widely astray in its interpretation of Scripture.

IV.  THE QUESTION OF LITERAL AND FIGURATIVE MEANING.

11.  On this question expositors are, as is well known, much divided; one class adopting, as far as possible, the literal meaning of the prophetic announcements, the other freely employing the principle of figurative interpretation.  A full discussion of the claims of these two methods of interpretation, on which so many volumes have been written, would far exceed the limits of the present work.  All that can be done is, to indicate some well-established principles which may help to guide the biblical student in the study of prophecy.

12.  We begin by calling attention to the representative use which the Old Testament prophets make of the events of the past history of Israel; that is, to their habit of representing the future under the imagery of this history.  When Israel journeyed from Egypt to Palestine through the wilderness of Arabia, God dried up the tongue of the Egyptian sea before the people, guided them miraculously by the cloudy pillar, fed them with manna, made streams of water to burst forth from the rock for their refreshment, and finally divided the waters of the Jordan to give them a passage into the promised land.  This primitive history of Israel furnishes for the prophets who lived in later ages a rich treasury of images which it would be absurd to interpret in a literal way.

Thus Isaiah, speaking of the future gathering together of the outcasts of Israel and the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth (chap. 11:11, 12), says:  “And the Lord shall utterly destroy the tongue of the Egyptian sea, and with his mighty wind shall he shake his hand over the river [the Euphrates], and shall smite it in the seven streams, and make men go over dry shod” (ver. 15).  To suppose that the prophet foretells a literal repetition of the miracles wrought upon the Red sea and the Jordan is unnecessary and most improbable.  The meaning is, that God shall remove all obstacles which hinder the return of his people to their own land, as he originally removed all obstacles which opposed their entrance into it.  This is, indeed, the very idea of the following verse:  “And there shall be a highway for the remnant of his people, which shall be left, from Assyria; like as it was to Israel in the day that he came up out of the land of Egypt.”

Again, the prophet foretells that in