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when he said, "God is love." Likewise we can speak of
the truth of Truth and of the life of Life, for Christ plainly
declared, "I am the way, the truth, and the life."
(Interior meaning)
Metaphors abound in the Bible, and names are often
expressive of spiritual ideas. The most distinguished
theologians in Europe and America agree that
the Scriptures have both a spiritual and literal
meaning. In Smith's Bible Dictionary it is said:
"The spiritual interpretation of Scripture must rest
upon both the literal and moral;" and in the learned
article on Noah in the same work, the familiar text,
Genesis vi. 3, "And the Lord said, My spirit shall not
always strive with man, for that he also is flesh," is quoted
as follows, from the original Hebrew: "And Jehovah
said, My spirit shall not forever rule [or be humbled] in
men, seeing that they are [or, in their error they are]
but flesh." Here the original text declares plainly the
spiritual fact of being, even man's eternal and harmonious
existence as image, idea, instead of matter (however
transcendental such a thought appears), and avers
that this fact is not forever to be humbled by the belief
that man is flesh and matter, for according to that error
man is mortal.
(Job, on the resurrection)
The one important interpretation of Scripture is the
spiritual. For example, the text, "In my flesh shall I
see God," gives a profound idea of the divine
power to heal the ills of the flesh, and
encourages mortals to hope in Him who healeth all our
diseases; whereas this passage is continually quoted
as if Job intended to declare that even if disease and
worms destroyed his body, yet in the latter days he should
stand in celestial perfection before Elohim, still clad
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