ceiving his condition and his need of another righteousness than his own, asks how can man be just with God, Christ is revealed to him as the 'Lord our rightousness;' or in other words, through Christ he is justified, or, made righteous in the legal sense. Then his next great want is to be made noly; and Christ begins and carries on the work of rendering him morally meet for an inheritance on high, by his word and example and spirit; so that he becomes holy by Christ. But though enlightened, pardoned, and made holy, he must die, and then what advantageth it him, what will he be the better for all that he has experienced? Christ is still further revealed to him as his Redemption, that is, (here) as he who will redeem him from death and the grave, [according to the use of the word, Rom. viii. 23 and Hos. xiii. 14, which last passage Paul quotes to this effect 1. Cor. xv. 44-5.] So then Christ crowns his enlightening, justifying, and sanctifying work, by gloriously raising such from the dead, the day of which is called the day of redemption,' unto which the believer is sealed, Eph. iv. 30.

All that this passage is quoted for, is additionally to show the greater stress the apostle laid on the resurrection than we are accustomed to do, who (unlike Paul, who represents himself and fellow christians-Rom. viii. 23, as groaning within themselves, waiting for the resurrection-the adoption, to wit the redemption of our body,) long to be unclothed, to lay down the body, and find ourselves in the world of spirits, which we represent as possessing all the advantages which inspired men expected only in the resurrection state. But we so conceive of the 'intermediate state' as to make the resurrection state comparatively unimportant. Perhaps it might be found not quite impossible to harmonise perfectly the confident expectation of more than all the blessings we promise ourselves at death, with the general tenor of the apostolic scriptures; but this is no part of our proposed design. And the present chapter may best conclude with a summary which will connect it with the subject we have undertaken, and which, laying down only general principles, will commit us to no particular theory.

i. There is a resurrection of the dead, generally. This however, which is no deduction of reason, is a doctrine peculiar to revelation, and constitutes one of its grandest disclosures.

ii. The final judgment of each individual, with its award to heaven or hell, is consequent upon resurrection.

iii. The resurrection state was that which apostles longed for, earnestly desiring to find themselves in their house from heaven, or heavenly house, that is, their second, their spirit body.

iv. Future conscious existence is connected with, and dependent upon, if not identical with, resurrection, so thatNo resurrection, no future life.

v. The resurrection grows out of the mediatorship of Christ, so that-No Mediator, no resurrection, and therefore, no future state.' I am the resurrection and the life.'

From which it follows, that had not the mediatorial system supervened on the fall of man, and had the sentence been consequently executed on Adam and remained in force, he would have utterly ceased to exist at death. But while, to repeat a remark already made, he was only made a living soul or creature, liable to dissolution, the second Adam is a life-giving Spirit, who will by his mighty power bring all the dead to life again, to be judged every man according to his work. When all that are found to have embraced the salvation of the Son of God, shall, according to his promise, have everlasting life; they shall not die any more; shall never perish; shall have a right to the tree of life, and crowned with immortality shall dwell in his blissful presence, 'where there is fulness of joy, and pleasures for evermore.' What follows however upon the resurrection we had better inquire in a distinct chapter. It suffices here to connect the present with the preceding, and to have shown how the scripture doctrine of the resurrection supports the views already suggested.

And thus we recognise how unutterably important is the evangelical doctrine of the resurrection, and with what reason apostles laid so much stress upon it as they did. For, first among their own countrymen, most of whom already reckoned confidently on a resurrection, accounting highly thereof as a prerogative peculiar to their favored nation,these perfectly taught teachers of a pure christianity, 'preached through Jesus the resurrection from the dead. And when they entered among the Gentiles it was evidently one of the very few simple but grand truths which they laid down as a basis; and so Paul, in the very metropolis

of Grecian literature and refinement, 'preached unto them Jesus and the resurrection. While, as we have seen, they were accustomed to soothe their own agitated minds, and to animate their spirits, with the thought of being raised up by Jesus.

But while this is not the proper point at which fully to reply to an obvious objection, we may be allowed just to glance at the difficulty, and suggest a solution. It will occur then to some, that, if for future existence we are dependent on a resurrection, and for a resurrection we are dependent on a Mediator, this doctrine, while it shines with a divine brightness on the saved, bears with intense awfulness on all those who rise to shame and everlasting contempt,' and to - endure the horrors of the Second Death! The intervention of Christ, it will be said, while an unutterable blessing to the righteous, is absolutely a heavy curse on the impenitent; for, had there been no such Mediator, at death they would have ceased to be, whereas now they are raised up to be judged, and 'punished with everlasting destruction. Good had it been for them if there never had been a Saviour at all. This is true. We admit it to be a most just and weighty remark.

But it does not bear against us as an objection any more than it bears against the popular view. For on the common notion, will it not be unutterably worse, and to all eternity, for those who reject Christ, than if they had never heard his name, or there had been no Redeemer? Is not precisely this the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light?' And is it not perfectly in keeping with all God's other principles of government, that our responsibilities are proportioned to our advantages, and that our greatest curses grow out of our greatest blessings neglected. It is true that the mediation of Christ, as the Shekinah between the Israelites and the Egyptians was all light and glorious to the one people, and gloom and darkness and terror to the other,--is an infinite blessing only to the righteous, and that it does render the lot of those who obey not the gospel greatly more terrible than it would have been, had Christ never died for our offences, and rose again for our justification, and besought us to come unto him and be saved. This is the very doctrine of scripture, and it is level to our own sense of right.

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CHAPTER THE FIFTH.

New Testament Doctrine of Immortality-Two distinct classes of texts-Living for ever promised on one hand, Everlasting Destruction threatened on the other-Meaning-Christ the Great Teacher, 2. Tim. i. 10.-Eternal Life and Second Death-how to be understood-literally or metaphorically-Prefatory Considerations-five-Literal sense preferred-only possible sense in many passages-in some where Life is a matter of promise-Objections considered-Result-Inference.

LET the reader pardon a momentary recapitulation in order to connect the present with the preceding chapters.

As, on the one hand, reason cannot prove the immortality of man, so neither, on the other, do we find the doctrine recorded on the first page of revelation, as a truth which Adam knew on the first day of his creation. Contrariwise, the evidence leads us to believe that our first parents must have understood the threatening of death as denoting a return to that state of blank nothingness from which the Almighty fiat had so recently called them, and from which we are saved only by the mediatorial scheme, of which the resurrection is a part.

But having ourselves reminded the reader of a distinction between a future state and immortality, and perceiving, as every one must at a glance, that even a universal resurrection does not necessarily imply a universal immortality, since it is quite conceivable, to say the least, that one who shall live again may die again; the very next question which arises is,-Will the incorrigible sinner, who for sufficient reasons may live again after death, live for ever? or What is his final destiny?

And here we are reminded that, according to an apostle, Christ is especially the grand teacher of immortality; so that instead of lingering in the groves of Eden, or passing

our time in the tents of nomadic patriarchs, or interrogating the God-favored leader of the Israelites, we turn at once to the pages of the new testament, as on such a theme our most explicit and every way most satisfactory oracle.

§ What then does the new testament reveal concerning immortality? We have not found it the inherent, absolute, and inalienable prerogative of man as man, prior to our entering the school of Christ; what shall we find here? Much about Life,'Eternal Life,' 'Immortality,'-But what? We will bring the various passages together, with those also which speak of those unhappy and inexcusable sinners who do not come to Christ for the blessings of salvation, and then see to what conclusion they conduct us.