symbolic of Christ and Christian institutions. But, as Trench well says, “it is indeed far better to find Christ everywhere in the Old Testament than to find Him nowhere” (p. 54). In his effort to display the unity and harmony of all Scripture (to which he was forced by the controversy with the Manichæans) he often strains after comparisons; and this came to be so much of a habit with him, that, where he had no special purpose to gain, he is guilty of the same excess. An instance among many is furnished in the opening chapters of the Sermon on the Mount (iv. 11), where a close comparison is instituted between the Beatitudes and the seven Spiritual operations of Isa. xi. 2, 3. The historical element is nowhere denied, but something else is constantly being superinduced upon it, especially in the Old Testament. A single illustration of Augustin’s allegorical interpretation will suffice. Turning away from the Psalms, where his imagination is particularly fertile along this line, I extract one on the parable of the five loaves and two fishes, as found in the XXIV. Homily on John. The five loaves mean the five Books of Moses. They are not wheaten, but barley, because they belong to the Old Testament. The nature of barley is such that it is hard to be got at, as the kernel is set in a coating of husk which is tenacious and hard to be stripped off. Such is the xii letter of the Old Testament, enveloped in a covering of carnal sacraments. The little lad represents the people of Israel, which, in its childishness of mind, carried but did not eat. The two fishes signify the persons of the Priest and King, which therefore point to Christ. The multiplication of the loaves signifies the exposition into many volumes of the five Books of Moses. There were five thousand people fed, because they were under the Law, which is unfolded in five books. “They sat upon the grass;” that is, they were carnally minded, and rested in carnal things. The “fragments” are the truths of hidden import which the people cannot receive, and which were therefore entrusted to the twelve apostles. The excessive taste for this style of interpretation, in which the homilists and Biblical writers of a thousand years had revelled, was sternly rebuked by the Reformers. Especially did Luther utter his protest, on the ground that the fancies into which this method was apt to lead had a tendency to shake confidence in the literal truth of the sacred volume. He re- marks, “Augustin said beautifully that a figure proves nothing;” but, probably from the high regard he had for the great theologian, he did not condemn his allegorizing exegesis.2 However much the great African bishop may have laid himself open to the rebuke of a more critical and mechanical age in this regard and others, his exegesis will continue to be admired for the diligence with which the sacred text is scanned, the reverent frame of heart 2 The passage is quoted in full by Trench (p. 64). His work, St. Augustin on the Sermon on the Mount, 4th ed., London, 1881, contains an elaborate introductory essay on Augustin as an Interpreter of Scripture. His use of allegory is considered in a separate chapter (iv). An older work is by Clausen: Augustinus, Sac. Script. Interpres, pp. 267, Berol. 1828. 11 Introductory Essay. St. Augustin as an Exegete.