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Month after month and

and the love of Christ draws us. year after year, does our wilderness here become more dreary. We know, our inmost souls teach us, that we are out of our proper orbit, and are wandering in a strange land. A sense of disquiet pervades our whole being. We feel that we are not what we should be, and are capable of becoming. We hunger and thirst, and yet know that Christ stands ready with the bread of life, and the water of life, to satisfy our wants. Shall we persist in our rebellion, shall we continue to fight against God, and truth, and heaven, and our own souls, or shall we at last turn and make peace? Fellow sinner, let us turn back; let us repent of our sins; let us crave the pardon we need; let us confess our wrong, and sin and shame; and resolys with God's grace, that henceforth, come what w'some favill faithfully serve God. We must be born again. From this low, worldly life, we must rise up to a life that is spiritual and divine.

Sinner, there is room for thee yet; there is hope for thee yet; there is peace for thee yet, if thou wilt but turn. Behind thee, thirsty one, flows the fountain of living waters. The sun is shining there, thou that walkest in darkness, and knowest no day. Turn and his beams shall be thine. There, thou weary one, is the land of eternal rest; there, thou sorrowful one, are rivers of joy. There is the God thou hast forsaken; the love thou hast despised; the Saviour thou hast crucified; the truth thou wouldst not seek; the heaven thou hast so long striven to forego. Repent, repent, for to thee the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Repent of all thou hast done amiss, of all thou hast neglected to do. Repent of thy ignorance, of thy idleness, of thy little faith and little love, of all thy follies and sins. Reflent on thy whole life. Compare it calmly with the life which the gospel requires and which Christ led. Let thy conscience smite thee; for thy waywardness and thy transgressions. Let the bitter tears of repentance flow; and up from thy inmost soul, out of pain and anguish, let the holy resolution rise to change this whole scene, to reform, to consecrate thyself to God and to a new and better life.

T. J. S.

ART. XVIII.

Exposition of 1 Thessalonians, iv. 13–18.

(13.) But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope. (14.) For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him. (15.) For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord, shall not prevent them which are asleep. (16.) For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven, with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God; and the dead in Christ shall rise first: (17.) Then we which are alive, and remain, shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord. (18.) Wherefore, comfort one another with these wo let the

THERE are several reasons which seem to justity as us in offering this exposition, some of which we will specify. 1. The subject matter of the passage above quoted,-embracing the resurrection of the dead, the second coming of Christ, the gathering of his faithful followers, living and dead, to meet him and share in the joy and triumphs of his spiritual reign,-is, and ever must be, in the highest degree interesting to Christians of every name and in every age. 2. The passage has generally been deemed somewhat obscure and difficult, as is shown by the conflicting interpretations of commentators. M. Saurin thought this to be one of the hardest texts in the New Testament; and Macknight, from his elaborate and extended notes on it, undoubtedly thought so too. And when we consider the doctrines they held, and the principles of interpretation adopted by them, we do not wonder that the passage tried their critical and exegetical skill to the utmost. 3. We are convinced that the passage has generally been misunderstood by all classes of expositors. Nay, we think that in the whole compass of the New Testament there is no passage which has been so grossly and so generally misapprehended and misapplied as this one. By the whole body of Orthodox commentators, ancient and recent, so far as we know, it is referred to the far-distant future, a supposed day of judgement at the end of time; which interpretation, as we believe, violent

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ly wrenches the passage from its context, is at variance with the whole tenor of the Epistle, and with the general current of the teachings of the Saviour and his apostles when they treat on the same topics. 4. But, more than this, though we have had able essays on the general subject of Christ's second coming, from writers of our denomination, yet we are obliged to say that with a single exception, we have never seen any interpretation of this passage which has given us satisfaction. And in the excepted case to which we refer, the genuine sense of the passage is only incidentally mentioned, not fully developed nor sustained at any great length, as this did not fall in with the plan of Prof. Crosby's Essay. The current interpretation of this portion of Scripture by the leading writers of our denomination, who all agree in referring it to some far distant future period, we are compelled to dissent from; and we shall give the reasons for our dissent, bearing in mind our own liability to mistake, seeking to know nothing but the truth, meaning to bow to no authority but the authority of truth, and desiring to promote no cause but the cause of truth.

To begin at the beginning, and proceed understandingly in this discussion, it will be useful, in the first place, to consider the time when this Epistle was written, and the persons to whom it was addressed. From Acts xvii. we learn that St. Paul was the first to preach the gospel in

1 See this Review, i. 381. vii. 233.

2 "The Second Advent: or, What do the Scriptures teach respecting the Second Coming of Christ, the end of the world, the resurrection of the dead, and the general Judgement? By Alpheus Crosby." This brief but valuable Essay has not been appreciated by the liberal part of the community as it deserves to be. It is the first book we have ever seen which affords a clew to the right understanding and application of this important and much controverted passage. We cannot permit the opportunity to pass without expressing a desire to hear from the accomplished author again through the press, and especially that his accurate scholarship, classic culture and sound judgement may be farther employed in illustration of the Scriptures. While we thankfully acknowledge our indebtedness to his Essay for several valuable suggestions in the preparation of this article, yet it is but justice to ourselves to state that the view we take of the passage under consideration, was held by the writer of this article, and advocated by him in a discourse delivered as long ago as in June, 1840.

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Thessalonica, and that he encountered violent opposition from the Jews, and was compelled to flee for his life to Berea. The Jews had a synagogue at Thessalonica; and some of them believed, and consorted with Paul and Silas; and of the devout Greeks [proselytes to Judaism] a great multitude, and of the chief women not a few." (xvii. 4.) The bulk of the believers in Thessalonica consisted of converts from the Gentiles. After passing through Berea and Athens, preaching the gospel with success in both of those places, St. Paul went to Corinth, and from that city wrote the first Epistle to the Thessalonians, according to the most approved authorities, about A. D. 52. It was the first written of all his Epistles.3 The occasion of his writing it is apparent from the Epistle itself and from the circumstances of the brethren addressed. They were lately converted from paganism, imperfectly instructed in the doctrines of the gospel, and exposed to severe persecution. The obvious design of the Epistle is to preserve them steadfast in the faith, to comfort them under trials and bereavements, and to give them such practical directions and counsels as were adapted to the condition of young converts who were lately pagans, and still far from appreciating the peculiar spirit and excellence of the Gospel.1

Bearing in mind these few facts, we may now proceed to unfold the view we take of the passage under notice, which is briefly this: that it relates to precisely the same coming of Christ and series of events associated therewith, spoken of by the Saviour himself in Matt. xxiv. xxv., and that it received its fulfilment in the apostolic age, when Jerusalem and Judaism were overthrown, and Christianity established as a distinct and permanent institution in the earth. To show this so clearly that no doubt can remain in any unbiassed mind, we will first attend to the language of the passage itself, and then consider what light may be reflected on it from the context, and from the teachings of Christ and his apostles on the general subject of his second coming from heaven in power and glory.

"That the sleep spoken of in this passage is the sleep of

3 Hug, Introd. to New Test. p. 514. Macknight, Prel. Essays, p. 22. 4 Gerard's Institutes, § 407.

death, no one, we think, will question. The word in the original for sleep, or be asleep, is кouaoua, which is used in the New Testament only four times in the sense of literal sleep, but fourteen times to denote the sleep of death. Its use in these verses is also determined by the unequivocal expression, 'the dead.'"5 It will scarcely be doubted that "them which are asleep," v. 13, are the same as those "who sleep in Jesus," v. 14, and called "the dead in Christ," v. 16, and referred to in the phrase," whether we wake or sleep," chap. v. 10, which obviously means, "whether we live or do not live." We may pause here to observe that there is something extremely agreeable and soothing in representing death under the metaphor of sleep. How common this is with the sacred writers is well known to all. "David slept with his fathers."-1 Kings, i. 10. "Our friend Lazarus sleepeth," said Jesus.-John, xi. 11. This mode of speech is significant and instructive in relation to the condition of the dead. We know that sleep is the cessation of toil, care, and trouble, a sweet oblivion of earthly ills; and, by analogy, to preserve the propriety of the figure, it should be so with death. And so the sacred writers represent it. "There the wicked cease from troubling; and there the weary are at rest. There the prisoners rest together; they hear not the voice of the oppressor."-Job, iii. 17. Sleep is the repose of body and mind, the suspension of voluntary motion and conscious existence; yet not the extinction of life nor of any of its powers. Life still remains though its functions and conditions are changed. So death is the end of pain, trouble, and consciousness of evil, but not the annihilation of the soul or spiritual nature of man. That is only liberated from the gross environments of this world to enter into a new realm of being, a world of more refined and noble conditions, free from this bondage of corruption, free from

"The earthly load

Of death, called life; which us from life doth sever." 6

Sleeping implies waking; of which the heathen poets were so sensible that when they described death as a sleep,

5 Crosby on the Second Advent, p. 55.

• Milton's Sonnet on the Religious Memory of Mrs. Thomson.

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