e most
certain examples is Daniel's prophecy of the _seventy weeks_ that were
to precede the death of the Messiah (chap. 9:24-27), for the details of
which the reader is referred to the commentators. Upon the same
principle we must, in all probability, interpret the "time and times and
dividing of time," that is, three and a half years (Dan. 7:25); the
"forty and two months" (Rev. 11:2; 13:5); and the "thousand two hundred
and threescore days" (Rev. 11:3; 12:6). Compare Ezekiel 4:4-8, in which
symbolical transaction a day is expressly put as the symbol of a year.
On the symbolical interpretation of the six days of creation, see in
Chap. 19, No. 6.

SECOND DIVISION.

INTERPRETATION VIEWED ON THE DIVINE SIDE

* * * * *

CHAPTER XXXVI.

THE UNITY OF REVELATION.

1. "Known unto God are all his works from the beginning of the world;"
and therefore they constitute together a self-consistent whole. To
receive the Holy Scriptures as containing a revelation from God is to
acknowledge that they possess an _essential and all-pervading unity_.
Whoever speaks timidly and hesitatingly of the essential harmony between
the Old Testament and the New, either refuses to acknowledge both as
given by inspiration of God, or he apprehends this great fundamental
truth only in a confused and imperfect manner. If God spake by Moses and
the prophets, as well as by Christ and his apostles, it is vain to
allege any contradiction in doctrine or spirit between the former and
the latter. So absolutely certain is it that the Saviour and his
apostles built on the foundation of the Old Testament, that to deny its
divine authority is to deny that of the New Testament also.

2. But the unity of revelation, like that which pervades all the other
works of God, is a _unity in the midst of diversity_--diversity in its
contemporaneous parts, but especially in its _progress_. Illustrations
without number are at hand. The history of a plant of wheat, from the
time when the kernel is sown in the earth to the harvest, has perfect
unity of plan. But how unlike in outward form are the tender blade, the
green stalk, and the ripened ear! The year constitutes a self-consistent
whole. But can any thing be more dissimilar in form than spring and
autumn? Yet no one thinks of finding a want of harmony between the
fragrant blossoms of the former, and the ripened fruit of the latter.
The path to the harvest lies through the blos