assurance of the ultimate resurrection of the whole human race, there can be no ground whatever, but for our looking forward with the most confident anticipation, and regarding the event as indubitably certain. That which he has been able to accomplish in one case, he is able to accomplish in other and similar cases; and whereas he has not deceived us in one instance, we are warranted to conclude, that he I will not deceive us in other and similar instances.

As applying only to the resurrection of believers, the argument may be exhibited thus. Believers are not merely such as Christ has redeemed; but they are persons, between whom and Christ, there exists a sacred and an indissoluble union. The grace of which they have been made the partakers, and the faith by which they are enabled to cleave to his merit, at once entitle them to the deliverance he came to effect, and render them, as to all the beneficial consequences of his great undertaking, virtually one with him. They are the members of a mystical body, of which he is the head. What was his destiny is their destiny;-what were his interests are their interests;-what were his prospects are their prospects; and while, in his obedience and sufferings, he is to be regarded as the substitute and surety of the church, in the triumphs and glories of which they were the purchase, he is to be considered as his people's

representative and forerunner; and since the resurrection of Christ was, undoubtedly, one of the most signal of the triumphant and glorious results of his righteousness and atonement, it is a necessary inference, that when he rose, he rose as the first-fruits of them that sleep, and that because he lives they shall live also.

Thus you perceive, we are enabled, by the assistance of scripture, to gather an argument from the resurrection of our Lord, which tells equally for a future resurrection both of the righteous and the wicked; and when employed in reference more particularly to the former class, you observe the argument strengthens, by branching out into an entirely new and distinct species of evidence.

The other argument which has been adverted to, or the argument derived from the nature and extent of Christ's mediatorial dominion, bears alike upon the resurrection of just and unjust, and may be presented in this manner. Christ's mediatorial dominion is a peculiar economy or modification of Divine government, adapted to circumstances rising out of the introduction of moral evil into this portion of the universe. It consists in the authority and power with which he has been solemnly invested for the redemption and glorification of believers, or which constitute him Head over all things to the church. Of this dominion he is eventually to make an open and a public resignation. He is to "de

liver up the kingdom to God even the Father, that God may be all in all." Previously, how

6

ever, to the arrival of the period at which that interesting transaction is to take place, Jehovah has pledged himself to the Mediator's vanquishment of every opposing power:-"Sit Thou at my right hand until I make thine enemies thy footstool." "He must reign till he hath put all enemies under his feet." Among the enemies thus to be overcome, DEATH is found to occupy a conspicuous station: "The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death."" Death is the privation of life, or is that negatively in relation to the idea of being, which life is positively. Consequently, the destruction of death will be a destruction of the privation or negation of life; and a destruction of the privation or negation of life, must be an act identical with the restoration of life, or the introduction of positive being. For where the privation or absence of life is not to be found, life itself must be in a state of actual existence; or where the negation of life is removed, that which is the reverse of the negation of life, must be the inevitable consequence. If, therefore, Christ, as Mediator, must reign till death be destroyed, he must reign till a period when there shall no longer be the privation or negation of life; that is to say, in other words,

51 Cor. xv. 24. 7 1 Cor. xv. 26.

6 Psalm cx. 1. 1 Cor. xv.

25.

B

till a period when all who shall have undergone that privation, or respecting whom that negation shall have been a fact, are liberated from the captivity of the tomb, and made the possessors of a principle of immortal existence.

You see, then, from what we have now brought before you, that to a man who believes in the authenticity and inspiration of the New Testament, the doctrine of a final resurrection of all the dead, presents itself as resting upon the most solid basis, and as supported by the most powerful evidence of which it is possible for us to conceive. He can appeal for its truth to numerous and explicit assurances, couched under almost every kind of phraseology; and, in addition to those assurances, he is enabled to construct arguments out of statements relating to other doctrines, which carry with them all the force of moral demonstration. You see, moreover, how intimate a connection subsists between the different parts of revealed truth, and how impracticable it is, consistently to maintain some, whilst others are rejected. We cannot receive the scriptural accounts of the union of believers to Christ, without being also assured that the bodies of believers will be eventually raised to newness of life. We cannot receive the scriptural accounts of our Lord's resurrection, without also admitting the destined resurrection of mankind. Nor can we receive the scriptural accounts of the mediatorial kingdom,

without coming to the same conclusion. And it might easily be shown, were this a proper place or a suitable occasion, that the doctrine of the mediatorial kingdom,-the doctrine of our Lord's resurrection,-and the doctrine of the union of believers to Christ, are all of them, in various ways, dependant one upon the other.

5. We further consider it to be the doctrine of the Divine Word, that the resurrection of the righteous, and the resurrection of the wicked, are to be effected simultaneously, and that there will not be, as some theologians maintain, a distinct resurrection of the just, prior to the millennial period. This point might, indeed, have been enumerated along with the several particulars specified at the commencement of these illustrations, were it not that while they have never been matters of controversy, at least never to any serious extent, and the bare mention of them was obviously sufficient,-this has been so unhesitatingly denied, and scepticism relative to it, has taken so firm a hold upon the minds of not a few, as to require its being deliberately and largely discussed, and as to leave any discourse of a nature like the present, very incomplete without such a treatment of it. We have chosen to intimate, that we consider the doctrine of the Divine Word to be against the theory of two distinct æras of resurrection, because we apprehend that that theory is not only unsup ported by the correct interpretation of the pas