' SENSE (s'ens). 1. (Heb. seh'kel, intelli gence, meaning). Thus it is said that Ezra and others "read in the book, and gave the sense" (Neb. viii:8), i. e., caused the people to understand.
2. Gr. alcrOvrhpiop, ahee-sthay-tay'ree-on, faculty of the mind for perceiving, understanding, judg ing (Heb. v:14).
Some theologians attribute a fivefold sense to the Scripture: (I) A Krammatical, which is what is naturally exhibited by the express words; but it is plain this must not be always rested in, otherwise we must believe God to be corporeal, having eyes, ears, feet, and yet to be a Spirit. (2) Literal or historical, wherein a narrative is taken according to the express terms of the text, as that Abraham had a son called Ishmael by Hagar. (3) The allegorical, whereby the terms and events of a history are taken to signify something spiritual, as Hagar to signify the Jewish church, and Sarah the Christian, and Ishmael legalists, and Isaac true believers. (4) The analogical, whereby we under stand terms and things relating to this world, as relating also to the world to come ; as the Sabbath to the heavenly rest, Canaan to heaven. (5) Tra pological, whereby we understand a text as hint ing some instruction of moral duty ; as the not muzzling the mouth of the ox, to import, that min isters should have the subsistence from their hear ers. Thus the word Jerusalem, according to them, grammatically signifies the vision of peace; his torically, the chief city of Judah; allegorically, the church militant ; analogically, the church tri umphant ; and tropologically, a faithful soul. But
to attempt finding all these senses in every pas sage of Scripture, is to suppose the oracles of God a perplexed chaos. It is true, the same text may be improved to manifold uses; for every word of God is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness; but the simplicity of divine truth, and the necessary in telligibleness of scripture, require the real sense of every passage to be, not manifold, but one, and which we may call literal; not indeed as if the terms used to express it, if distorted from their connection with other passages, could bear no other ; but that it is that which was in such and such words intended by the Holy Ghost. Nay, in as far as the analogy of faith and the context will admit, we must adhere to the natural signification of the very words of scripture. The sense, how ever, is often complex; the same phrase relating to more objects than one. Nothing typical is rightly understood, except we consider it as both descriptive of the type, and of the antitype. In metaphoric passages, the material images are not at all the sense. but are to be understood merely as a means of pointing to the true objects in tended. Prophecies, as has been hinted, have va rious steps of fulfillment, which arc not different senses, but different steps of the same complex sense. (See INTERPRETATION OF THE OLD TESTA MENT.)