verse: "having a desire to depart and be WITH Christ which is FAR BETTER" than remaining in the flesh. There is a text even still more explicit; for it proves, that what the Apostle means by being with Christ is, the enjoyment of his visible presence. Therefore we are always 'confident, knowing that whilst we are at home in the body we are 'absent from the Lord; (for we walk by faith, not by sight :) we are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body ' and present with the Lord.'g : These two Scriptures are very embarrassing to Dr. Burnet and those writers who follow him in this particular; and they struggle greatly to get rid of their force: but in my humble estimation they entirely fail. I cannot pretend to follow them through all their elaborate arguments I shall select only one or two which appear to me to be the strongest. Another respectable Writer in the Morning Watch has translated and given in that work the fourth chapter of Burnet "De statu Mortuorum, &c.” adding copious notes; and as he does full justice to the original, and handles the subject ably, I shall quote from his translation. Again, in such expressions as we are considering, the object is evidently an antithesis : as ' indeed may easily be remarked, both in Corinthians and Philippians; the words words "to be with Christ" being contrasted with our continuance in this world. For, indeed, when we quit this life, we are not extinct, we are not annihilated; and where are 'we? With God, with Christ: we live unto God. (Luke xx, 38.) We are present to Christ; and he 'will bring us back, flourishing and full of life, with himself also, to the theatre of this world. We therefore shall not wonder to find St. Paul exclaiming, For to me to die is gain." (Phil. i, 21.) We are rather surprised that he says so little than that he says so much in favor of death, when so many evils, so many troubles, so many perils, so many labors, encompassed him; who had endured 'both hunger and thirst, with cold, and nakedness, and wounds, and stripes, and prisons, and rocks, and shipwrecks, and every sort of affliction, both by sea and land. 'That death should be esteemed 'more desirable than such a life, who can wonder? If it be only rest, and a remission of trials, still it is so far "gain."-Let us, then, 'learn to think somewhat more moderately concerning our wretch'ed selves and our reward; and no longer promise to ourselves and ' others the beatific vision of God upon the instant of our eyes being 'closed; when we see the Apostle ' of the Gentiles (who of all men best merited any reward which the ' christian religion holds forth) presenting no such hope, either to ' himself or to others." Vol. I, p. 676. His Translator and Commentator in a copious note begins the subject at verse 5 of the above place in Corinthians, and writes thus : ́ ́ Now he that hath wrought us for the self-same thing"-Who is he? Is it not the Holy Ghost; 'the whole Godhead Triune ?-as the Apostle writes: Now he that hath wrought us for the self-same thing is God! who hath also given unto us [already] the earnest of the Spirit ;" therefore we are always confident, knowing that while we are at home g 2 Cor. v, 6—8. ' in this unredeemed body; (which, like the microscope, is at once the 'means of boasted investigation, and at the same time the preventive of almost all sight;) whilst we are enveloped with this shroud, the flesh; while all things are distorted by its impurity and nothing seen aright by reason of its re'fraction, while sin is mingled in our every thought; and the better they are the more literally that is crucified;" while we are at home while we are at home ' in the body, we are absent from the Lord.' P. 672. The first thing I notice in these extracts is, that the Doctor, by coupling the two texts together, adroitly diverts our attention from the antithesis in 2 Cor. v, and treats only of that in Phil. i. The second thing I notice is, that his Translator, when giving his own opinion on the former passage, entirely passes over the important parenthesis,-"For we walk by faith not by sight;" which is nevertheless the key to the right understanding of the whole. For what may the Apostle mean by these words? To me he appears to anticipate the objection which would immediately present itself to spiritual man, when the Apostle spake of being absent from the Lord :-How can we be absent from him, when to live is Christ, and every believer walks with him, and enjoys the sense of his presence? Yes, (answers the Apostle,) we certainly live and walk with him now; but whilst in the body it is by faith, and not by sight: but no sooner are we absent from the body, than we shall walk in the enjoyment of his visible presence-by sight and not by faith. This I consider the real antithesis of the passage. a If I understand the view which Dr. B.'s Translator takes, it is, that the presence to be enjoyed when apart from the body is a spiritual one;— the Holy Ghost having given to us an earnest now, will then give us a greater fulness. I grant that we have here many drawbacks and hindrances, which prove a clog upon our spiritual enjoyment; but in the heart of every believer Christ does nevertheless dwell by the Spirit;h and his body, though vile, is nevertheless the temple of the Holy Ghost.i It therefore destroys the essential distinction between the righteous and the ungodly, to say, that here Christ is not with the former. former. And it destroys the antithesis of this passage; which is not the having less of the Spirit whilst in the body, and out of it the fulness: but the walking in the body with Christ by faith, and when out of it being with Christ by sight. I must here however observe, that though I feel assured, that the enjoyment of Christ with the saints is a visible one; yet am I equally persuaded, that they have not yet ascended up on high to be present with him in the heavens. In the interesting paper of NIL, contained in the last number of the Investigator,k he conjectures, that as Paul had occasionally seen Jesus Christ in the flesh,and likewise had been caught away into paradise,* where he presumes he might again have conversed with Christ, he might anticipate similar occasional enjoyments when delivered from the burden of the flesh. Afterwards however Nil appears diffident of this solution, and seems disposed to adopt the interpretation which I have last refuted. To me it appears i 1 Cor. vi, 19. h John xiv, 18, 21, 23; Rom. viii, 10; 2 Cor. xiii, 5. * NIL imagines that 2 Cor. xii, 1-4 describes one and the same vision. I beg to suggest to him, whether the language made use of is not decidedly against him. The that there may be a mode of enjoy- "They rest from their labors ;' words which, though apparently of a negative signification, do nevertheless, when duly considered, prove that the righteous dead enjoy a decided increase of positive blessedness. They will evidently be delivered from all bodily pain and disease, and from all the various corporal evils attendant on poverty,-viz. hunger, thirst, heat, cold and the like. The peasant, the mechanic, the bondman, will likewise have done with all their toil and fatigue: not indeed that the spirit will be without active employment; for I consider a state of inertness to be incompatible with its happiness. And in respect to weariness of the flesh-aye and weariness of the spirit-even christian labors of love are not without their drawback: the very phrase labor of love" implies an imperfection. They may be cheerfully entered upon, and they are not unfrequently attended by real gratification: but yet, alas! through the present infirmity of man, they are a weariness. To visit the abodes of wretchedness, filth, and contagion,-to endeavour to bring the spiritually dead to a sense Apostle says, "I will come to visions and revelations," in the plural: and he accordingly relates two visions; the one relating to the third heaven, the other to paradise. The exact repetition, in both instances, of his ignorance whether he was in the body or not, seems further to preclude its limitation to one and the same event and it encourages the inference also, that in paradise, though it be the place of separate spirits, there is no sensible diminution of any of that intellectual or spiritual enjoyment experienced in the body; or surely the Apostle would have been able to have judged of his condition in this respect. * I say the assumed locality of paradise, because though great probability attaches to the opinion that it is in the heart of the earth, yet there are difficulties in the way which prevent my full conviction. H. B. whose paper in the Morning Watch I have before mentioned, lays great stress, and justifiably, upon the numerous passages of Scripture which speak of the dead as descending, or going down into Hades. But that which creates the greatest difficulty in my mind is, that there are other passages, referring to separate spirits, which describe them as ascending or having ascended. Thus: "All are of the dust and all turn to dust again. Who knoweth the spirit of man that goeth upward, and the spirit of the beast that goeth downward to the earth." (Eccles. iii, 21.) "Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was, and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it." (Ibid. xii, 7.) "Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all." (Gal. iv, 26.) What is this, but the Church, the spirits of the just made perfect, the New Jerusalem which is to come down from God out of heaven? (Rev. xxi.) of their danger;-to instruct the dull, the prejudiced, the unbelieving; --and frequently from all these classes to meet with ingratitude in return for our exertions : these things are for the present not joyous but grievous. But the dead REST from all this. In the next place it is a rest from sin-which rest must be one of the most blessed sources of enjoyment to a renewed spirit. He rests from sin outwardly, since he no longer is doomed to dwell with those who vex his righteous soul from day to day by their ungodliness: "there the wicked cease from troubling :"m there "the Lord hides him in His tabernacle from the strife of tongues." And he rests from the conflict with sin inwardly. For though, through grace, he is able to enjoy a dominion over sin, so that he does not obey it in the lusts thereof; yet is he continually galled and annoyed by its inward emotions. Sometimes when he would enjoy spiritual things, his soul cleaveth to the dust;-when he would do good, borne by the angels to the general assembly of the spirits of the just. • I must postpone the consideration of the resurrection state until my next; only reminding the Reader of what I have stated at page 18 of No. I. of the Investigator; viz.-“ If the Reader will suspend his judgement, until I have gone through 'the whole series of essays which I am now bringing before him, he will find I most unreservedly en'tertain the opinion, that the souls of believers do, immediately after death, enjoy a blessed and a conscious rest; and that they do visibly behold the Lord: but this is not the great promise of the Scriptures ;—this is not the glory which the New Testament holds up to believers: that glory (whether it refer to their throne, their crown, their inheritance, their degree, or their incorruptible body) is invariably deferred by the apostles until the coming of the Lord. know not of one Scripture, which 'clearly and directly speaks of the believer as entering into his glory, ' death."* I he finds evil present with him, (inor partaking of the promise, at his motives and tempers perhaps,) and he groans in this body of death being burdened. But, when he dies, he rests from all his warfare, and from his fears, and doubts, and prejudice, and jealousies, and is m Job iii, 17. Indeed the three following pages of that article must be borne in recollection, as necessarily qualifying what I have written in this essay. ABDIEL. n Ps. xxxi, 26. * A note which I appended to this passage concerning Dr. Wardlaw, (stating that the words "immediately passed into glory," placed in inverted commas in his Sermon, might lead some to suppose them a quotation from Scripture, which they are not ;) is liable to misapprehension. I was not sufficiently familiar with the Assembly's Catechism to be aware that they were a quotation from that work, and would be as well known in Scotland as the Scriptures; but I certainly never for a moment supposed the Doctor intended to impose them upon any as Scripture. I may take this opportunity also of adding, that through the kindness of a Correspondent of the Investigator, another error has been pointed out to me in my paper in reply to P. R. I have included Lord Napier among the direct Millennarians; whereas he did not hold the expectation of the thousand years, but was a Millennarian only in the sense in which Latimer and others were, expecting the personal advent and kingdom of Christ to be immediately at hand. I likewise omitted to add Dr. Goodwin to the number of those Millennarians who were of the Assembly of Divines. REVIEW OF BOOKS. (5) CUNINGHAME on the Seals and in the view which on these principles he has adopted: yet is he apparently sensible, that it will have to encounter opposition from the advocates of previously received and settled systems; and he first publishes a single part for the express purpose of inviting a critical examination of his hypothesis. We must do him the justice to observe, notwithstanding these circumstances, that he writes with modesty; and though it will be seen, from the ensuing strictures, that we are not convinced of the correctness of his views in general, yet there are isolated portions of his Essay which are worthy of a careful consideration, whilst the whole is written with an ability that commands respect. : In regard to his principles of exposition, he considers that all the systems, as yet offered to the public, To pass then at once to the chief do only follow a 'political method features of the work from the cirof interpretation ;" and though much cumstance that the Apostle is enlight may have been thrown by them joined to write the things which on certain portions of Scripture, yet he had seen-and the things which that they are "lamentably below ́are-and the things which shall the thoughts which the expressive be hereafter," Biblicus infers, that symbols and powerful metaphors of the scope of the vision includes in it the inspired writers are calculated past, present, and future; and on to inspire."- The evidence of this foundation he carries back the past as far as the creation of the world! As the words, Write the things which thou hast seen," (contra-distinguished from the things which are and the things which shall be hereafter,") claimed in a similar sense by other expositors, we shall offer an argument or two against this interpretation of them. doubtful histories and curious calculations he considers entirely in ́ admissible in the interpretation of spiritual things. That which is 'not proved from Scripture he will ' not call on any to consider proved ' at all: his reasoning will, as much as possible, be confined to the comparing spiritual things with spiritual; and this not in words of man's wisdom, but in the language of that volume which the Holy Spirit has caused to be written for our learning." . This Writer mentions the increasing confidence which every fresh perusal of the Bible gives him are Mr. Cuninghame justly observes on this point, (in opposition to Mr. Faber, who asserts that three of the seals related to things already passed,) that as the word Apocalypse signifies a discovery or revelation, things passed cannot with any con |