Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 47.djvu/161

Rh Old Testament, they had appeared at times in the New; in the work of the early fathers they bloomed forth luxuriantly.

Justin Martyr and Clement of Alexandria vigorously extended them. Typical of Justin's method is his finding, in a very simple reference by Isaiah to Damascus, Samaria, and Assyria, a clear prophecy of the three wise men of the east who brought gifts to the infant Saviour, and in the bells on the priest's robe a prefiguration of the twelve apostles. Any difficulty arising from the fact that the number of bells is not specified in Scripture, Justin overcame by insisting that David referred to this prefiguration in the nineteenth Psalm: "Their sound is gone forth through all the earth and their words to the end of the world."

Working in this vein, Clement of Alexandria found in the form, dimensions, and color of the Jewish tabernacle a whole wealth of interpretation—the altar of incense representing the earth placed at the center of the universe, the high priest's robe the visible world, the jewels on the priest's robe the zodiac, and Abraham's three days' journey to Mount Moriah the three stages of the soul in its progress toward the knowledge of God. Interpreting the New Testament, he lessened any difficulties involved in the miracle of the barley loaves and fishes by suggesting that what this really means is that Jesus gave mankind a preparatory training for the gospel by means of the law and philosophy, because, as he says, barley, like the law, ripens sooner than wheat, which represents the gospel, and because, just as fishes grow in the waves of the ocean, so philosophy grew in the waves of the Gentile world.

Out of reasonings like these, those who followed, especially Cosmas, developed, as we have seen, a complete theological science of geography and astronomy.

But the instrument in exegesis which was used with most cogent force was the occult significance of certain numbers. The Chaldean and Egyptian researches of our own time have revealed the great source of this line of thought; the speculations of Plato upon it are well known; but among the Jews and in the early Church it grew into something far beyond the wildest imaginings of the priests of Memphis and Babylon.

Philo had found for the elucidation of Scripture especially deep meanings in the numbers 4, 6, and 7; but other interpreters