4.  The interpreter further needs a sound judgment, combined with the power of vivid conception.  These two qualities are named together, because they mutually supplement each other.  A large part of the Bible is occupied with description.  Here the interpreter needs the power of conception, that he may bring before his mind a vivid picture of the scenes described, with the relations of their several parts to each other.  Another large part of the Bible contains the language of poetry and impassioned feeling.  In the interpretation of this, the faculty of conception is especially necessary, that we may place ourselves as fully as possible in the circumstances of the writers, and form a true idea of the emotions which filled their minds and gave form and complexion to their utterances.  Pure cold logic, with the addition of any amount of human learning, will not enable us to comprehend and expound aright the forty-second Psalm.  By the power of imagination, we must go with the poet, in his exile from the sanctuary at Jerusalem, across the Jordan to the land of the Hermonites; must see his distressed and forsaken condition; must hear the bitter taunts of his enemies; must witness the inward tempest of his feelings—­a continual conflict between nature and faith—­before we can have a true understanding of his words.  The same might be said of innumerable other passages of Scripture.

But this power of vivid conception, when not held in check by a sound judgment, will lead the expositor of Scripture into the wildest vagaries of fancy.  Disregarding the plainest rules of interpretation, he will cover up the obvious sense of Scripture with a mass of allegorical expositions, under color of educing from the words of inspiration a higher and more edifying meaning.  That high natural endowments, united with varied and solid learning and indefatigable zeal for the gospel, do not of themselves constitute a safeguard against this error, we learn from the example of Origen and many others.  Not content to let the simple narratives of Scripture speak for themselves and convey their proper lessons of instruction, these allegorical expositors force upon them a higher spiritual sense.  In so doing, they unsettle the very principles by which the spiritual doctrines of Scripture are established.

Origen, for example, in commenting on the meeting between Abraham’s servant and Rebecca at the well in Haran, says:  “Rebecca came every day to the wells.  Therefore she could be found by Abraham’s servant, and joined in marriage with Isaac.”  Thus he gives the literal meaning of this transaction.  But he then goes on to show, among other things, that Rebecca represents the human soul, which Christ wishes to betroth to himself, while Abraham’s servant is “the prophetic word, which unless you first receive, you cannot be married to Christ.”  See in Davidson’s Sacred Hermeneutics, pp. 103, 104.