place, and great was the effect that followed; nor is there any power or authority that will not, sooner or later, yield to the same Almighty influence: "Nations, the learned and the rude, Are by these heavenly arms subdued; And hates the doctrine of the cross." The victory which Joshua achieved was a type of the conquest of Christ, 3. In its appropriation. * Joshua put the people of Israel in possession of the land that had been long promised to their fathers, and divided to them their inheritance in it. This he did by lot, and in all his conduct acted according to the design of the Almighty, and the previous direction he had received from him. This was an honour which God conferred on his servant-a reward for the services performed by him, and the zeal he had displayed. And like him, though in a manner as much superior as one excelled the other, Jesus, having conquered his enemies, will divide to his people their inheritance in the heavenly Canaan; but still, while doing so, will have regard to the covenant made in eternity, and the decisions of the council of heaven. JONAH. There are few individuals whose claim to a place among the personal types has been more disputed than that of Jonah. Even Mather only admits him to the rank of a partial type; but his right to any place among them has been * Joshua xiii. altogether denied by Alexander, who thinks that the words of our Lord, "An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas: for as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale's belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth," are to be regarded as only an allusion, and maintains that he could not be a type, because the main things in which he is thought to have been one, namely, his being three days and three nights in the belly of the fish, and then cast upon the dry ground, were circumstances which no person witnessed; whereas, it is essential to the nature of a type, that it should be seen and known. † To this it might be answered, not only that this would apply to some other persons and their actions, or parts of their conduct, which are admitted to have been types, but the objection will lay also with equal propriety against his having been a sign, which our Lord says he was; for if he was a sign to the people of Nineveh, in the matter of his having been cast into the sea and restored again, it must have been by his informing them of it, otherwise they would have remained in ignorance of the whole affair; but if he himself told them that he was such in this particular, it seems almost impossible that he should not make them acquainted with the entire circumstances: nor was there anything to prevent their regarding the whole as intended to teach them, as well as a part, or prevent their * Matt. xii. 39; Luke xi. 30. † Con. Lect., pp. 407-8. See Fairbain. concluding that he was a sign in one thing as well as the other. From the manner in which Jonah is spoken of in the Scriptures, it is evident that he delivered other prophecies besides that against Nineveh, and that they are not recorded as well as this it is difficult to account for, except it be upon the supposition that this was deemed worthy of particular notice, on account of the miracle with which it was connected. Besides which, it is a matter of doubt whether his going to Nineveh, and the circumstances involved in it, are sufficient to account for this miracle, if nothing typical was intended by it. But what seems to give most strength to the conclusion that Jonah was intended to be considered a type of Christ, is the express declaration of the Apostle with respect to the resurrection of Christ having been taught previously to his setting it forth. In writing to the Corinthians he says, "Christ was buried, and rose again the third day, according to the Scriptures.' By the Scriptures here, some understand the account given of the death and resurrection of Christ by the Evangelists, who wrote of these things before the date of this Epistle. This opinion, however, is objectionable; and it may be doubted whether there is any place in which the writings of the New Testament are called the Scriptures;"t and even supposing the expressions "according to the Scriptures" to refer to the third day, as well as the raising again from the dead, this does not help the matter, * 1 Corinthians xv. 4. † See Dr. Adam Clarke's Com. on the text. for there is no place in the Old Testament where this is spoken of, nor can it be said to have been taught in any way but by those events by which it is thought to have been typically represented. Amongst these, the circumstance of Jonah's being three days and three nights in the belly of the fish, is properly considered one of the chief. Taking all these things into consideration, then, it seems right to conclude that Jonah was a type of Christ in relation to his death and resurrection. Both events were miracles, and there are five respects in which as such they were alike: 1. In their character The coincidences were very remarkable. For three days and three nights both were lost to the world, and as little anticipation as the mariners had that Jonah would appear upon the earth again alive, was the expectation when Christ was put to death that he would so soon revive. His own disciples did not know what the resurrection from the dead could mean; hence, when he laid in the tomb, they considered their loss irreparable; and two of them, on the way to Emmaus, declared, "We trusted that it had been He which should have redeemed Israel: and besides all this, to-day is the third day since these things were done.”* The restoration, in both instances, was miraculous. Whether the fish which received Jonah were really a whale, as was supposed by some of the ancients, or, which is more probable, some other sea monster, has been made matter of * Luke xxiv. 21. dispute among learned men; but whatever it may have been, the circumstance of a human being living so long within any creature, is a phenomenon which carries upon the very face of it the stamp of a supernatural character. On this account, those who wish to diminish the number of Scripture miracles, have treated this event as a popular error; and by some, in like manner, and for reasons of a similar kind, the resurrection of Jesus Christ, after he had been three days and three nights in the grave-that greatest of all his miracles-is attributed to natural causes; but still both remain events which can be accounted for only by a reference to the supernatural interposition of God: nor can the miraculous character of the resurrection of Christ be denied, without sapping the whole foundation of the Christian system-depriving the Apostles of Christ of the character of honest men, and denying a large part of the Sacred Volume. Jonah, it is true, did not really die-while Christ actually resigned his life; but still, as in the one case, when the third day appeared, the fish cast forth the Prophet, because it could no longer contain him; so it is written of him, of whom these things were typical, that "God loosed the pains of death: because it was not possible that he should be holden of it; neither his flesh did see corruption."* The miracles in both cases were altogether unique. Accustomed as the Jewish prophets were to Divine interpositions on their behalf, they could *Acts ii. 24-31. |