(2.) For the purpose of pointing out the application of the passage quoted to some statement or description in the context into which it is introduced. From the circum- stance that several of the passages thus adduced are, in the phraseology of the New Test., as well as in that of the Rabbinical writings, said to be " fulfilled," it has been hastily inferred by some that they are all to be re- garded as designed prophecies of the events to which they are applied. For this opinion, however, no ade- quate support seems to be afforded by the phrase in question. The general idea attached to the verb 7r\?j- poio is that of filling up to its full capacity anything of which it is predicated. Thus the Jews are said by Christ to have filled up the measure (TrXtipwaarE to fisrpov) of their fathers (Matt, xxiii, 32). The phrase in question consequently is susceptible of application to whatever is thought of as supplying the complement of any given capacity, and that whether it is used in a lit- eral or tropical sense. Hence it is appropriately used in the New Test, with respect to passages quoted from the Old Test, in the following cases :
First. When it announces the accomplishment of a prophecy contained in the words quoted. As the predic- tion is a mere empty declaration, as it were, until the fact predicted has occurred ; so that fact, by giving mean- ing and force to the prediction, is viewed as its comple- ment or filling up. Thus, the New-Test, writers, in re- cording the facts of our Lord's history, when they come to any which formed the subject of ancient prophecy, whether explicit or typical, direct the attention of their readers to the circumstance by adducing the prediction and intimating its fu/f Intent in the fact they have re- corded.
Secondly. When it introduces some description or statement which affords a parallel to what the writer has been saying. Such a description being regarded as involving a fact of general applicability to the human race, or to certain portions of it, is thought of as being, so to speak, in a state of deficiency until the measure of its applicability has been filled up. Each new case, therefore, which affords a parallel to that to which the description was originally applied goes so far to supply this deficiency by affording another instance in which the description holds ; and hence the New-Test, writers are in the habit of quoting such descriptions as having been fulfilled in the cases to which they are applied by them. Thus a passage from the prophecies of Jeremiah, in which a description is given of the desolation caused by the divine judgments upon the Jews, under the beautiful personification of Rachel rising from the dead looking in vain for her children, and refusing to be com- forted because they are not, is adduced by Matthew (ii, 17, 18) as fulfilled in the sorrow which was produced by the massacre of the babes in Bethlehem by order of Herod. No person who studies the context of the pas- sage as it occurs in the Old Test, can suppose for a mo- ment that it contains a ]irediction of the cruelties which were perpetrated on the occasion related by the evan- gelist. The sole purport of the quotation seems to be to intimate, as bishop Kidder remarks, that "such an- other scene of sorrow appeared then (upon the murder of the innocents) as was that which Jeremy mentions upon another sad occasion" (Demonstration oftheMes- sias, pt. ii, p. 215). See, also, Sykes, Essay on the Truth of the Christian lit ligion, etc., p. 217, 218 ; Blaney, ad loc. ; Henderson, ad loc, and On Hos.ii, 1 ; De Wette, On Matt. ii, 17, 18; and Marsh's Notes to Michcelis, i, 473. Comp. Matt, xv, 7, 8, with Isa. xxix, 13; Matt, xiii, 14 with Acts xxviii, 25 and Isa. vi, 9, etc.
It appears, then, that even when a quotation is intro- duced by a part of the verb irXijpooj, it does not neces- sarily follow that it is to be regarded as containing a prophecy. This is true as well of the conditional for- mula iva (oTruig) nXriptoSrj, as of the more direct tote tTrXrjpioSi], for these particles, as used in the New Test., frequently express nothing more than that occasion is given for a particular action or remark.
Besides the passages introduced asfulflled, there are others referable to the same general head, which are in- troduced by others of the formula; above mentioned. Of these, some belong to both the classes just described — prophecies of which the New Test, announces the ful- filment, and general descriptions to which something parallel is brought forward. Another class consists of moral and religious maxims, which are adduced as ap- plicable to the state of things of which the writer or speaker is discoursing, and which, though not said to be fulfilled thereby, are quoted under essentially the same idea. Such sentences embody, as it were, certain laws of human nature and conduct, certain general facts in the human economy, of which we are to expect the verification wherever the necessary conditions are ex- emplified. Like the laws of physical science, therefore, they are dependent for their verification upon the ex- amination of the phenomena appropriate to that region to which they belong ; and as no law of science can be said to lie absolutely beyond the possibility of refuta- tion until every one of the phenomena which it em-