8
iv.
And not only is there Progression in the Revelations of the Bible but also Accommodation. By Accommodation is meant not merely the use of sensible images and purely human expressions in the conveyance of spiritual ideas, or of types and symbols, and parables and allegories, in the exhibition or explanation of invisible Realities: but more than this, namely, the temporary permission and sanction of existing modes of thought and feeling with regard to Religious Truth and Duty which were not merely inadequate but partially untrue, and which it was intended subsequently to supersede by fuller Revelations. The earlier anthropomorphic representations of Deity are of this kind: and indeed throughout the whole Law of Moses god is spoken of in terms which require a translation into other language with which the later Revelations have furnished us before we can heartily accept them as Divine. It is only indeed on this principle of Accommodation that we can learn willingly to associate some portion of the Hebrew Scriptures with the Revelations of the Gospel of CHRIST.
And when we turn from the region of Truth to that of Morality we find this assumption still more necessary. We find the polygamy of the Patriarchs and of David and of Solomon, and the warrior spirit of the Judges, and many acts of treachery and of cruelty from Jael to Jehu, sanctioned rather than rebuked by prophetic communications. And throughout the whole of the Mosaic Teaching there is a constant tendency to put the observance of rites and ceremonies on the same level with the performance of moral duties and the cultivation of spiritual dispositions: and so ungraduated an estimate of Duty as this bears on the face of it irresistible evidence that in the degree that it was a Divine Revelation it could be also but a Temporary Accommodation.
Indeed what was Judaism itself—as a whole and in all its parts—but a great system of Accommodation—a signal instance of the special adaptation of Perfect Wisdom to the imperfection
