we know that the key and the lock have one and the same author, and are parts of one whole.  The history of Jesus of Nazareth is the key which unlocks all the wards of Old Testament prophecy.  With this key Moses and the prophets open to the plainest reader; without it, they remain closed and hidden from human apprehension.  We know, therefore, that he who sent his Son Jesus Christ to be the Saviour of the world, sent also his prophets to testify beforehand of his coming, and of the offices which he bears for our redemption.

6.  To sum up all in a word, we take the deepest, and therefore the most scriptural view of the Jewish institutions and history, when we consider the whole as a perpetual adumbration of Christ—­not Christ in his simple personality, but Christ in his body the church.  It is not meant by this that the Mosaic economy was nothing but type.  Apart from all reference to the salvation of the gospel, it was to the Israelitish people before the Saviour’s advent a present reality meeting a present want.  The deliverance of the people from the bondage of Egypt, their passage through the Red sea, the cloud which guided them, the manna which fed them, the water out of the rock which they drank—­all these things were to them a true manifestation of God’s presence and favor, aside from their typical import, the apprehension of which indeed was reserved for future ages.  So also the Mosaic institutions were to them a true body of laws for the regulation of their commonwealth, and in their judges, kings, and prophets they had true rulers and teachers.

But while all this is important to be remembered, it is also true that the Mosaic economy was thickly sown by God’s own hand with the seeds of higher principles—­those very principles which Christ and his apostles unfolded out of the law and the prophets.  Thus it constituted a divine training by which the people were prepared for that spiritual kingdom of heaven which “in the fulness of time” the Saviour established.  “All the prophets and the law prophesied until John”—­not the prophets and the law in certain separate passages alone, but the prophets and the law as a whole.  They prophesied of Christ, and in Christ their prophecy has its fulfilment.

7.  The consideration of the extent of the canon of the Old Testament does not properly belong here.  It is sufficient to say that we have no valid reason for doubting the truth of the Jewish tradition, which assigns to Ezra and “the great synagogue” the work of setting forth the Hebrew canon as we now have it.  That this tradition is embellished with fictions must be conceded; but we ought not, on such a ground, to deny its substantial truth, confirmed as it is by all the scriptural notices of Ezra’s qualifications and labors.  It is certain that the canon of the Jews in Palestine was the same in our Lord’s day that it is now.  The Greek version of the Septuagint contains indeed certain apocryphal books not extant in the Hebrew.  These seem to have been in use, more or less, among the Alexandrine Jews; but there is no evidence that any canonical authority was ascribed to them, and it is certain that the Jews of Palestine adhered strictly to the Hebrew canon, which is identical with our own.