ransom them from the power of the grave, I will redeem them from death; O death, I will be thy plagues; O grave, I will be thy destruction." The vision of the dry bones in the thirty-seventh chapter of Ezekiel, whether understood of a literal resurrection from the state of the dead, or of a figurative resurrection, a political resuscitation from a downcast and degraded condition, strongly indicates, in either case, the characteristic nature of their future prospects.* Then, finally, in Daniel we read, ch. xii., not only that he was himself, after resting for a season among the dead, “to stand in his lot at the end of the days," but also that at the great crisis of the church's history, when they should be for ever rescued from the power of the enemy, "many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth should awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt."

Besides these direct and palpable proofs of a resurrection in the Jewish scriptures, and of the peculiar place it holds there, the Rabbinical and modern Jews, it is well known, refer to many others as inferentially teaching the same doctrine. That the earlier Jews were not behind them, either in the importance they attached to the doctrine, or in their persuasion of its frequent recurrence in the Old Testament scriptures, we may assuredly gather from the tenacity with which all but the Sadducees evidently held it in our Lord's time, and the ready approval which he met with when inferring it from the declaration made to Moses, "I am the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob." It is nothing to the purpose, therefore, to allege, as has often been done, against any clear or well-grounded belief, on the part of the ancient Jews, regarding a future and immortal state of being, such passages as speak of the darkness, silence, and nothingness of the condition immediately subsequent to death, and so long as the body rests in the tomb. Of a heathenish immortality, which ascribed to the soul a perpetual existence separate from the body, and considered its happiness in such a state as the ultimate good of man, they certainly knew and believed nothing. But we are persuaded, no tenet was more firmly and sacredly held among them from the earliest periods of their history, than that of the resurrection from the dead, as the commencement of a final and everlasting portion of good to the people of God. And when the Jewish doctors give to the resurrection of the dead a place among the thirteen fundamental articles of their faith, and cut off from all inheritance in a future state of felicity, those who deny it, we have no reason to regard the doctrine as attaining to a higher place in their hands, than it did with their fathers before the Christian era.

There was something more, however, in the Jewish faith concerning the resurrection, than its being simply held as an article

Nunquam enim poneretur, etc. "For never (says Jerome on Ez. xxxvii.) would the image of the resurrection have been employed to signify the restitution of the Jewish people, unless the resurrection itself had been a reality, and had been believed in as a coming event; since no one thinks of confirming uncertain things by others, which have no existence."

in their creed, and held to be a fact that should one day be realized in the history of the church. It connected itself peculiarly with the promise made to the fathers, as some of the foregoing testimonies show, and especially with the work and advent of Messiah. They not only believed, that there would be a resurrection of the dead, to a greater or less extent, when Messiah came, (see Lightfoot, Hor. Heb. John i. 21, v. 25,) but that his work, especially as regards the promised inheritance, could only be carried into effect through the resurrection. Levi* holds it as a settled point, that "the resurrection of the dead will be very near the time of the redemption," meaning by the redemption the full and final enjoyment of all blessing in the land of promise, and that such is the united sense of all the prophets, who have spoken of the times of Messiah. In this, indeed, he only expresses the opinion commonly entertained by Jewish writers, who constantly assert that there will be a resurrection of the whole Jewish race, to meet and rejoice with Christ, when he comes to Jerusalem, and who often thrust forward their views regarding it, when there is no proper occasion to do so. Thus, in Sohar, Genes. fol. 77, as quoted by Schoettgen, II. p. 367, R. Nehorai is reported to have said on Abraham's speaking to his servant, Gen. xxiv. 2, "We are to understand the servant of God, his senior domus. And who is he? Metatron, (Messiah,) who, as we have said, will bring forth the souls from their sepulchres." But a higher authority still may be appealed to. For the apostle to the gentiles thus expresses-and with evident approval as to the general principle-the mind of his countrymen in regard to the Messiah and the resurrection; "I now stand and am judged for the hope of the promise made of God unto our fathers; unto which promise our twelve tribes, instantly serving God day and night, hope to come-for which hope's sake, king Agrippa, I am accused of the Jews. Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you, that God should raise the dead?" (Acts xxvi. 6-8.) The connexion, in which the resurrection of the dead is here placed with the great promise of a Messiah, for which the Jews are represented as so eagerly and intently looking, evidently implies, that the two were usually coupled together in the Jewish faith, nay that the one could reach its proper fulfilment only through the performance of the other, and that in believing on a Messiah risen from the dead, the apostle was acting in perfect accordance with the hopes of his nation.

But now, to apply all this to the subject under consideration, the promised inheritance,-if that inheritance was promised in a way, which from the very first implied a resurrection from the dead, before it could be rightly enjoyed,—and if all along, even when Canaan was possessed by the seed of Abraham, the men of faith still looked forward to another inheritance, when the curse should be utterly abolished, the blessing fully received, and death finally swallowed up in victory-then, a twofold boon must have

* Dissertations on the Prophecies of Old Test., vol. I., p. 56.

been conveyed to Abraham and his seed, under the promise of the land of Canaan; one to be realized in the natural, and the other in the resurrection state,-a mingled and temporary good before, and a complete and permanent one after, the restitution of all things by the Messiah. So that, in regard to the ultimate designs of God, the land of Canaan would serve much the same purpose as the garden of Eden, with its tree of life and cherubim of glory-it was to the eye of faith a type, and a pledge of the final inheritance, the everlasting rest which remaineth for the people of God. There was this difference, indeed, between the two, that the former was a type only to the eye, but this in some measure also to the taste -the one could only be seen and contemplated by the heirs of promise, while the other was actually possessed by them. The difference, however, is not essential, and only indicates an advance in God's revelations and purposes of grace, making what was ultimately designed for the faithful more sure to them by their instalment, through a singular train of providential arrangements, in a present inheritance of good. They thus enjoyed a real and substantial earnest of the better things to come, which were to be fulfilled in the kingdom of God.

But what were these better things themselves? What was thus indicated to Abraham and his believing posterity, as their coming inheritance of good? If it was clear that they must have attained to the resurrection from the dead, before they could properly enjoy the possession, it could not be Canaan in its natural state, as a region of the present earth, that was to be inherited. For that considered as the abode of Abraham and all his elect posterity, when raised from the tomb and collected into an innumerable multitude, must have appeared of far too limited dimensions, as well as of unsuitable character. Though it might well seem a vast inheritance for any living generation, that should spring from the loins of Abraham, yet it was palpably inadequate for the possession of his collected seed, when it should have become like the stars of heaven for multitude. And not only so, but as the risen body is to be, not a natural, but a glorified one, the inheritance it is to occupy must be a glorified one too. The fairest portions of the earth, in its present fallen and corruptible state, could be a fit possession for men only so long as in their persons they are themselves fallen and corruptible. When redeemed from the power of the grave, and entered on the glories of the new creation, the natural Canaan will be as unfit to be their proper home and possession, as the original Eden would have been with its tree of life. Much more so, indeed, for the earth in its present state is adapted for the support and enjoyment of man, as constituted, not only after the earthly Adam, but after him as underlying the pernicious effects of the curse; and the ultimate inheritance destined for Abraham and the heirs of promise, which was to become theirs after the resurrection from the dead, must be as much higher and better than any thing, which the earth can furnish as it now is, as man's nature, when glorified, shall be higher and better than it is while in bondage to sin and death.

Nothing less than this certainly is taught in what is said of the inheritance, as.expected by patriarchs, in the Epistle to the Hebrews: "These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. For they that say such things, declare plainly, that they seek a country. And truly if they had been mindful of that country, from whence they came out, they might have had opportunity to have returned. But now they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly; wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he hath prepared for them a city." (Heb. xi. 13-16.) Without entering into any minute commentary on this passage, it cannot but be regarded as perfectly conclusive of two points: First, that Abraham, and the heirs with him of the same promise, did understand and believe, that the inheritance secured to them under the promise of Canaan, (for that was the only word spoken to them of an inheritance,) was one in which they had a personal interest. And then, secondly, that the inheritance as it was to be occupied and enjoyed by them, was to be not a temporary, but a final one, -one, that might fitly be designated a "heavenly country," a city built by divine hands, and based on immovable foundations,-in short, the ultimate and proper resting-place of redeemed and risen natures. This was what these holy patriarchs expected and desired, -what they were warranted to expect and desire, for their conduct in this respect is the subject of commendation, and said to be the necessary result of God's not being ashamed to be called their God; and it was, finally, what they found contained in the promise to them, of an inheritance in the land, in which they were pilgrims and strangers, for to that promise alone could they look for the special ground of the hopes they cherished of a sure and final possession.

But the question again returns, what is that possession itself really to be? That it cannot be the country itself of Palestine, either in its present condition, or as it might become under any system of culture of which nature is capable, is too obvious to require any lengthened proof. The twofold fact, that the possession was to be man's ultimate, heavenly inheritance, and that it could be attained only after the resurrection from the dead, clearly forbids the supposition of its being the literal land of Canaan, under any conceivable form of renovated fruitfulness and beauty. This is also evident from the nature of the promise, which formed the ground of Abraham's hope,-which made mention only of the land of Canaan, and which, as pointing to an ulterior inheritance, must have belonged to that combination of type with prophecy, which we placed first, viz. having the promise or prediction, not in the language employed, but in the typical character of the object, which that language described. The promise made to Abraham was simple enough in itself, holding out for an inheritance the land of Canaan, as distinctly marked off by certain geographical boundaries; it was not properly in the words of that promise, that he

could read his destiny to any future and ultimate inheritance; but putting together the two things, that the promised good was to be realized only in an after-state of being, and that all the relations of the church then were preparative and temporary representations of better things to come, he might then perceive, that the earthly Canaan was a type of what was finally to be enjoyed, that the establishment of his offspring there would constitute a prophecy, in fact, of the exaltation of the whole of an elect seed to their destined state of blessing and glory. But that being the case,-the prediction standing altogether in the type,-the thing predicted and promised must, in conformity with all typical relations, have been another and far higher thing than that which served to prediet and promise it,-Canaan could not be the type of itself,-it could only represent, on the lower platform of nature, what was hereafter to be developed on the higher platform of the kingdom of God,--and as far as the things of fallen and corrupt nature differ from, and are inferior to, those of redemption, so far must the rest of Canaan have differed from, and been inferior to, "that rest which remaineth for the people of God."

What that final rest or inheritance, which forms the antitype to Canaan, really is, we may gather from the words of the apostle concerning it in Eph. i. 14, where he calls the Spirit "the earnest of our inheritance, until the redemption of the purchased possession."* It is plain, that the subject here discoursed of, is not our

* That the received translation gives here the sense of the original with substantial correctness, I am fully satisfied. The latter part of it, us añoдUTOWOIV TYG #EQITons, has been variously understood, and its natural import too commonly overlooked. Robinson in his Lexicon makes it, arouтgwon The EQIMOINE Our, the redemption acquired for us,—a violent change, for which there is no necessity, and for which no parallel use of the word can be produced. The only two senses, in which the word occurs in the New Testament, are, 1. Acquiring, acquisition, obtaining, 1 Thess. v. 9; 2 Thess. ii. 14; Heb. x. 39; 2. The thing obtained or acquired, possession, in which sense, unquestionably, it is used in Mal. iii. 17, and in 1 Pet. ii. 9. In both of these places it is applied to the church, as God's acquired, purchased possession, and is equal to his peculium, or property in a peculiar sense, his select treasure, which is related to him as nothing else is, which he has acquired or purchased, Toon 270, by his own blood, Acts xx. 28, comp. also Ex. xix. 6; Deut. vii. 6; Tit. ii. 14. Calvin, and the great majority of interpreters, are of opinion, that because in these passages 70s is used as a designation of the church, considered as God's peculiar property, it has the same meaning here, "unto, or until the redemption of his purchased people," as Boothroyd expressly renders. But this view is liable to three objections. 1. The word regu, is nowhere absolutely and by itself put for "purchased people," or "church;" when so used, it has the addition of xaos. 2. The redemption of the church would then be regarded as future, whereas it is always represented as past. We read of the redemption of the bodies of believers as yet to take place, but never of the redemption of the church; that is uniformly spoken of as having been effected by the death of Christ. 3. It does not suit the connexion; for the apostle is speaking of the indwelling of the Spirit as the earnest of the inheritance, to which believers are destined, and as an earnest is given as a temporary substitute for the inheritance or possession, the term to which, or the end in respect to which it is given, must be, not some other event of a collateral nature, but the coming or receiving of the possession itself. Then, while these objections apply to the common view, there is no need for resorting to it; while it does violence to the word, it only obscures the sense. Eis regirointi, both (Ecumenius and Theophylact on 1 Pet. ii. 9, hold to be, is xtativ, els xangovoμizy, for a possession, for an inheritance. And Didymus on the same place, as quoted by Steiger, says, “that is giлom, which, by way of distinction, is reckoned among our substance