LECTURE VII.

THE RESURRECTION.

ACTs xxvi. 8.

Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you, that God should raise the dead?

I WILL briefly restate the argument of the course of Lectures which I am now drawing near to a close.

The covenant between God and his people is a covenant of faith. That is, He on his part has revealed to them certain important things affecting their eternal interests; and requires of them on their part, that practical and absorbing conviction of the truth of these things, which we know by the name 'faith.' And this faith arises not from prejudice, nor from ignorance, but is the result, spread over the affections and the conduct, of the well-assured and intelligent conclusions of the reason, that loftiest power wherewith we are endowed. Now Scripture informs us that this faith has been man's part of

this covenant since the entrance of sin into the world in other words, that a clear and intelligent conviction, grounded on sufficient evidence, has been the reason for the servants of God obeying him, loving him, and seeking him, in all ages.

This being the case, we have directed our attention to that revelation which God has made to man of the redemption which is in Christ. We have seen it assuming as a preliminary truth, the corruption and ruin of mankind by sin; disclosing his recovery from this corruption and ruin by God's grace; the providing of that recovery by the incarnation, death, and triumph of the Redeemer; the progress of that recovery in man by the indwelling and renewing work of the Holy Spirit; the completion of that recovery by the reception of the members of the covenant of faith into eternal glory. We have seen that on these great verities our faith rests: while at the same time we try and prove them by all proper tests and evidences, and strive to be able to give to every man that asketh, a reason of the hope that is in us.

My endeavour has been to make it plain, that these foundation truths of the Gospel have been in all ages sufficiently known to the Church of God to render the faith of its members a wellgrounded and reasonable conviction: that, while the prophetic word pointed their expectations

forward to the future display of the facts of redemption on the stage of the world, their spirits rejoiced to see that day, and saw it and were glad-even in its results, the pardon of sin, and the new creation unto holiness.

Thus far have we advanced, establishing and illustrating our argument from the Scriptures of the Old Testament, the comments and religious works of the Jews, and those passages in the New Testament which imply an acquaintance on the part of the hearers or readers with the things treated of.

Now, after having traced down from the very earliest times, knowledge of the corruption of human nature by sin,-of its recovery by a slain but glorified Redeemer,-of its becoming the tabernacle of God's Holy Spirit; it might be thought hardly necessary to shew that there was, co-ordinate with this knowledge, a belief that the blessings promised in redemption were eternal, and not temporal; hardly possible that any persons, knowing what ruin it was which sin had wrought, could interpret God's redemption of man from it to have respect to this present world only, and regard the great work of holiness advancing within them as one which should be cut short in the midst of the days. Yet such has been the opinion of one divine of our own Church especially,' and of others who have followed him.

1 Warburton, Divine Legation of Moses.

And I mention this, not to intimate any intention of contesting with him the position which he has undertaken to make good, but merely to remind you that his argument, if confined within its proper limits, interferes not with mine; and that it is only when he exceeds those limits, and confounds, as it appears to me, things perfectly distinct, that I have any cause of difference with him. The author of the Divine Legation of Moses has undertaken to prove Moses to have been a divinely commissioned legislator, from the circumstance of his law containing no allusions to a future state of rewards and punishments; and has devoted much of his treatise to establishing this latter point. But in doing this he has not unfrequently wandered out of the Mosaic dispensation, and included the patriarchs and the prophets, who formed no part of that economy, in ignorance of the doctrine of a future state.

And in this notion he has found some at

2 To expose the inconsistencies of Warburton, might consume more space than labour. Two examples may be sufficient here. In book v. § 5, we find him asserting in one page, that "the holy Prophets speak of no other but temporal rewards and punishments:" to prove which he quotes. Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Zechariah. On the opposite page we find him contrasting the plain account of the assumption of Elijah, with the obscurely hinted translation of Enoch, and saying, "The reason of this difference is evident when the history of Elijah was written, it was thought expedient to make a preparation for the dawning of a future state of reward and punishment, which in the time of Moses had

least willing to agree with him, even in our own times. It may not therefore be unnecessary or unprofitable to direct your attention to the enquiry, how far the doctrine of an eternal state, and as connected with it that of the resurrection of the dead, were known to the ancient Churches.

In doing this, I shall first notice a concession made by the author himself to whom I have alluded. " Among the Jews indeed," he writes,3 "the Resurrection was become a national doctrine some time before the advent of the Messiah." It would have been perhaps too bold an attempt, though scarcely more bold than some which he had already made, to disprove or explain away the belief in a future state which prevailed in our Saviour's time. I take then what is here conceded, and presume none will be found dis

been highly improper." Strange then indeed, that the day which dawned when the books of Kings were written, should again have given place to darkness in the time of the latter prophets.

In the same section (1. 3.) we find him allowing that the patriarchs were favoured with revelations concerning the redemption of mankind, which he says Moses purposely omitted; and this caution, he continues, arose from a wish "to keep out of sight that doctrine which he had omitted in his institutes of law and religion." Here is a clear admission that the patriarchs were acquainted with the doctrine of a future state. Yet, from his own reasoning in the same section, (5.) if they were acquainted with it, the word of God which brought life and immortality to light by the Gospel, is rendered of none effect.

3 Book vii. ch. v. 2, note.