y of the Christian Church; and oracles they
remained for centuries: eternal life or death, infinite happiness or
agony, as well as ordinary justice in this world, being made to depend
on shifting interpretations of a long series of dark and doubtful
utterances--interpretations frequently given by men who might have been
prophets and apostles, but who had become simply oracle-mongers.

Pressing these oracles into the service of science, Philo became the
forerunner of that long series of theologians who, from Augustine and
Cosmas to Mr. Gladstone, have attempted to extract from scriptural myth
and legend profound contributions to natural science. Thus he taught
that the golden candlesticks in the tabernacle symbolized the planets,
the high priest's robe the universe, and the bells upon it the harmony
of earth and water--whatever that may mean. So Cosmas taught, a thousand
years later, that the table of shewbread in the tabernacle showed forth
the form and construction of the world; and Mr. Gladstone hinted,
more than a thousand years later still, that Neptune's trident had a
mysterious connection with the Christian doctrine of the Trinity.(463)

(463) For Philo Judaeus, see Yonge's translation, Bohn's edition; see
also Sanday, Inspiration, pp. 78-85. For admirable general remarks on
this period in history of exegesis, see Bartlett, Bampton Lectures,
1888, p. 29. For efforts in general to save the credit of myths by
allegorical interpretation, and for those of Philo in particular, see
Drummond, Philo Judaeus, London, 1888, vol. i, pp. 18, 19, and notes.
For interesting examples of Alexandrian exegesis and for Philo's
application of the term "oracle" to the Jewish Scriptures, see Farrar,
History of Interpretation, p. 147 and note. For his discovery of symbols
of the universe in the furniture of the tabernacle, see Drummond, as
above, pp. 269 et seq. For the general subject, admirably discussed
from a historical point of view, see the Rev. Edwin Hatch, D. D., The
Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages upon the Christian Church, Hibbert
Lectures for 1888, chap. iii. For Cosmas, see my chapters on Geography
and Astronomy. For Mr. Gladstone's view of the connection between
Neptune's trident and the doctrine of the Trinity, see his Juventus
Mundi.

These methods, as applied to the Old Testament, had appeared at times
in the New; in spite of the resistance of Tertullian and Irenaeus, they
were transmitted to the Church; a