This is the error which has been the parent of all perversions of the Bible. Paul says that "all scripture is God-breathed." He admonishes his brethren that God has made them able ministers, not of its letter but of its spirit. And he warns them that "the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life." So it is his delight to extract from sacred history its true spirit. He has little use for its letter, except to draw from narrative or ceremonial command a spiritual explanation which shall lead his hearer's mind, away from the earthly things of which they seem to treat, up to the holier lessons with which he shows them to be full.
In this he does but follow the example of our Lord. Whether in quotations from the old Scripture or in sayings of his own, our Lord ever leads the mind above the letter, above the earthly, to the spiritual lesson with which the literal is filled. Without a parable without a spiritual meaning within the literal saying it is declared that He never spake to them. In this manner the water of Jacob's well became a lesson of that spiritual water the gospel truth of which he who drank would live forever. In this way the story of the destruction and up-building of the temple became, at his lips, a history of his own death and resurrection. Thus the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes became, under his explanation, an illustration of
