they are all constituent parts of his eternal
plan. That human reason, which cannot see the whole of truth, should
affect to sit in judgment upon them, and to pronounce authoritatively
what God may, and what he may not do, is the height of presumption and
folly.

CHAPTER XXXV.

THE FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE OF SCRIPTURE.

1. When the psalmist says: "The Lord God is a sun and shield" (Psa.
84:11), he means that God is to all his creatures the source of life and
blessedness, and their almighty protector; but this meaning he conveys
_under the figure_ of a sun and a shield. When, again, the apostle James
says that Moses is read in the synagogues every Sabbath-day (Acts
15:21), he signifies the writings of Moses under the figure of his name.
In these examples the figure lies in particular words. But it may be
embodied in a sentence, thus: "It is hard for thee to kick against the
pricks" (Acts 26:14), where Saul's conduct in persecuting Christ's
disciples is represented under the form of an ox kicking against the
ploughman's goad only to make the wounds it inflicts deeper. Figurative
language, then, is that in which _one thing is said under the form or
figure of another thing_. In the case of allegories and parables, it may
take the form, as we shall hereafter see, of continuous discourse.

A large proportion of the words in all languages, in truth all that
express intellectual and moral ideas, were originally figurative, the
universal law being to represent immaterial by material objects.
Examples are the words _exist_, _existence_, _emotion_, _affliction_,
_anguish_, etc. But in these, and innumerable other words, the primitive
physical meaning has become obsolete, and thus the secondary spiritual
meaning is to us literal. Or, what often happens, while the original
physical signification is retained, a secondary figurative meaning of
the word has become so common that its use hardly recalls the physical
meaning, and it may therefore be regarded as literal; as in the words
_hard_, _harsh_, _rough_, when applied to character. In the first of the
above examples: "It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks," the
transfer of the word _hard_ from what is physically hard to what is
painful or difficult, is so common that it can hardly be regarded as
figurative. But the expression that follows is figurative in the fullest
sense of the word.

Rhetoricians divide figures into two general classes, figures of
_words_, and