Patrick Fairbairn > Quotes

“They are still incomparably the most perfect expression of the religions sentiment, and the best directory to the soul in its meditations and communings about divine things, which is anywhere to be found. There is not a feature in the divine character, nor an aspect of any moment in the life of faith, to which expression, more or less distinct, is not there given. How could such a book have come into existence, centuries before the Christian era, but for the fact that the Old and the New dispensations—however they may have differed in outward form, or in the ostensible nature of the transactions belonging to them—were founded on the same relations, and pervaded by the same essential truths and principles? No otherwise could the Book of Psalms have served as the great handbook of devotion to the members of both covenants. There the disciples of Moses and Christ meet as on common ground—the one still readily and gratefully using the fervent utterances of faith and hope which the other had breathed forth ages before.”
― Patrick Fairbairn, The Typology of Scripture

“If God has given all things their significance, and defined their bounds according to time, space, power, and number, and if He has appointed certain measurements to regulate things and times, biblical numbers must be symbolical, and be worthy of our study; and if a fit subject for study, the laws by which this symbolism of numbers is controlled, require to be ascertained.”
― Patrick Fairbairn

“Hence, when we are told that Christ appeared in the fulness of time, the fact of which we are mainly assured is, that all was done which was properly required for bringing the Church, whether as to her internal state or to her relations to the world, into a measure of preparedness for the time of His appearing.”
― Patrick Fairbairn, The Typology of Scripture