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condescension; what will be the degree of bliss we shall know when we shall be for ever perfected with him in his native kingdom, we must die to know, and be separated from every thing earthly ere we shall be fitted for such extatic pleasures.

Our Lord having finished the work allotted to him in this world, he is as Mediator elevated to the highest glory in heaven. The days of his abasement are terminated, his sorrows are ended, the crown of honour and dignity he has purchased he now wears, and his everlasting kingdom will never end. He was neglected and despised in the day of his humiliation, but when be returned to his native land the angels sang his deserved praise. The depth of the Saviour's abasement may be contrasted with the exalted state that he possessed before he left the bosom of the Father. The royalties and glory of that world were his, but his love moved him to lay them aside, and appear at the bar of equity on their behalf for whom he had contracted with the Father." The covenant of peace was between both." Grace makes its appearance in this plan by saving the lost, pardoning the guilty, and maintaining the rights of the divine government. The salvation of the church is as just as it is gracious. The death of Christ is a real and meritorious atonement to divine justice for the sins of his people. "He humbled himself to the death of the cross, wherefore God also hath highly exalted him." If the Saviour is exalted as a recompence conferred upon him for the work he has accomplished, it is quite certain that his dignity and influence in the court of heaven are equal to the worth of the work he performed upon earth. "He hath obtained eternal redemption for us." Our Lord

is exalted upon this basis to the highest dignity in his Father's kingdom; and as he has said, "I go to prepare a place for you,' his life in heaven is an argument for our believing the word of his grace his influence with God is ever employed in the behalf of his church. When the divine Redeemer entered the world of glory, he took possession of it in the name of his brethren. It is very pleasant to believe this fact, that our forerunner entered within the veil in our name. Interest in the love, and union to the person of Christ, is the reason why we do not finally decline from the paths of righteousness. Faith sees her passage to the skies opened in the work of the cross; hope tastes the sweet liberty the Saviour bought with his blood; love cleaves to his person at all times; and patience waits for the home Immanuel has promised, and is now preparing for all that love his appearing. While thus we long for that happy day we are building upon a rock.

The enquiry of an awakened sinner is, shall I be found amongst the chosen of God on the day of final decision? He who resigns all hope of salvation from the law as a covenant of works, and looks to the merciful Redeemer, who is the end of it for righteousness, he it is who shall appear without fault in the day of judgment. To such persons the Saviour calls from Calvary, and the amazing love of their redeeming Lord soon melts their hearts, and they find their peace and

perfection in the blood that he shed, and in the righteousness he has wrought. These people are formed for an everlasting enjoyment of God in the world of supernatural perfection; and as they draw near the goal of destination the world recedes from their view, and the glories of heaven open to their mind with increasing lustre. At length the kind messenger death arrives, the body of flesh in which they now reside is put off, and their disembodied spirits fly to the world of unclouded vision, and enjoy perfect peace in the society of God for ever and ever.

The wisdom of God is manifested in the death of his people. Death entered as the fruit of sin, and God has appointed that by death sin should be destroyed. The corruptible body is committed to its kindred earth for a small season, but when the voice of the archangel will awake the dead, they will leave the tomb and arise in the likeness of their glorious Lord. Angels, and all the host redeemed by blood, will raise their loud songs of praise to the conqueror of sin, death, and hell. Christ will publicly acknowledge all his risen saints as his brethren, and present them faultless before the throne of Divine Majesty. The ends of the divine government being closed in a consistent manner, those who with Jesus enter the world of spirituality will be perfected in sanctity, and while everlasting ages endure the joy of heaven will be perpetuated.

London, Nov. 8, 1827.

(For the Spiritual Magazine.)

ON THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD.

J. B. T.

THE volume of inspiration contains every important truth which is needful for man to know, in order to form a true idea of the character of God, and of that salvation of which he is the author. Every truth therefore which the bible reveals, is important in its own nature, as being a part of the whole system; and every part of that whole is designed to display the glory of its great Author, and is truly precious to all who feel its influence in their hearts, and are favoured to have sweet fellowship with it, under the sacred teachings of the Holy Ghost. Some of those truths more particularly open to the view of faith, God's sovereign and gracious choice of the church in Christ, and her union to him in love; her exalted dignity as thus united, her unforfeit able interest in his person, perfections, and possessions, and her unalienable title to his kingdom of glory. Some of them lead us to view what our loving Lord has done in a way of merit, when he appeared in this world of sorrow as his church's Surety under the law, to cancel all her guilt and wash her crimes for ever away; while she appears in the royal robe of his righteousness, which is imputed to her for justifica tion, in which he delights to view her, and in love's most endearing language says, "thou art all fair, my love, there is no spot in thee." Cant. iv. 7. Others again lead us to contemplate what our ever-loving

Lord is doing now he has entered into heaven: "for when he had by himself purged our sins, he sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high." Heb. x. 3. What a most blessed employment for the believer to rise by faith within the veil, and there behold him who loved and died ever living to make intercession. For as Aaron bore the names of Israel's chosen tribes upon his breast-plate, so our great High Priest ever bears his own spiritual Israel upon his heart, representing them before his Father's face.

But there is one glorious truth, a most important article of the christian faith, upon which I propose to offer a few remarks, viz. the resurrection of the dead, or first resurrection. This truth was known by the Old Testament saints, and they rejoiced in it, although it was not so clearly and fully opened as in the New Testament; yet Job, in a most sublime strain of prophecy, describes the latter day, when his Redeemer should stand upon the earth, and was fully assured that although worms should destroy this body, yet in his flesh he should see God. The great apostle Paul treats upon this subject at greater length than any other inspired writer, and sets it forth in a more clear and striking light in his Epistle to the Corinthians, xv. The ground of his argument is the resurrection of Christ; and a most solid ground it is: for when we consider that he is the pattern like unto which his church was predestinated finally to appear, it necessarily follows, that as he is risen from the dead they must rise also; and what Jehovah in his sovereign will purposed, his power will effect." He shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is ABLE even to subdue all things unto himself." Phil. iii. 21.

Not only the power of Christ will then be displayed, but his redemption also. The ransom price he paid was for the bodies as well as the souls of his people: and although they are appointed unto death (with all mankind) as the consequence of transgression, yet even this shall only give an occasion for the further display of his redemption, and the right of his claim. As the grave received the body of our Lord, and death held him captive as it were for a moment, only to display more fully his triumph over both, so it shall be with respect to all his redeemed. "Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints." Their dust is precious, because redeemed by price, and is waiting to be redeemed by power; or as the apostle expresses it, "waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of the body." The dust of righteous Abel, and of all the patriarchs and prophets, and all the righteous dead since their day, is kept secure by him who bought their freedom when he died on Calvary, and who will claim them as his right when he shall come the second time without sin unto salvation: for what he purchased by the price of his blood, he will most certainly claim by the power of his sceptre.

What the form and appearance of the bodies of the saints will be on that illustrious morning, cannot in this imperfect state be conceived, much less described. But it is certain there will be nothing

of the earthly Adam's image remaining; for although we have borne the image of the earthly, we then shall bear the image of the heavenly; and when he shall appear we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is, in his transforming brightness.

As to the quality of their bodies, it is described by the apostle as being as opposite to the quality they now are, as any two opposites can possibly be. "It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption: it is sown in dishonour; it is raised in glory: it is sown in weakness; it is raised in power: it is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body." This last sentence of the apostle seems to crown the whole, and contains more than can be described. As it will be the same body as to identity, the change must therefore be in quality: and it being a spiritual body when put on in the resurrection morning, it will be the same kind or quality as the soul; everlastingly free from all that is gross and filthy.

What the spirits of the just made perfect now are, in their expanded, their noble and capacious powers, that both soul and body will then be; so that whatever be the glorious perfections which the soul now possesses, that shall be natural and common to both for ever. Now, indeed, frailty and imperfection is sensibly felt, and all our services are marred therewith; and were it not for our blessed Mediator's prevailing intercession must be rejected. But then, for ever free from corruption and every shade of defect, our worship will be pure and sinless, our powers strong to exclude weariness, and the most sacred delight felt in the never-ending worship of God in Christ: that indeed will be "a morning without clouds, the clear shining of the sun after the rain."

The period when this shall take place will no doubt evade every data which man has ventured to affix, for the event only will fully explain prophetic numbers; but it is plain and clear that it will take place at the end of this present dispensation. When the gospel has spread its influence and saving power to all nations under heaven, and all the election of grace are gathered in, then shall the kingdom of Christ be changed, as to its form of administration: the trumpet of the gospel shall cease to be blown, when the trumpet of the archangel shall sound, and the dead in Christ shall rise first. (1 Thess. iv. 16.) "Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection, on such the second death hath no power; but they shall be priests of God and his Christ, and shall reign with him a thousand years." (Rev. xx. 6. and vi. 10.) The ordinances of the gospel which now reveal the Redeemer's face, and through which he is seen, as through the lattice window, shall then be no longer needed, for Jesus shall then be seen with open vision. "And I saw no temple therein, for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it: and the city had no need of the sun, neither the moon to shine in it; for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof." (Rev. xxi. 22, 23.) The people who will be his happy and dignified subjects in this glorious kingdom, are those who have followed him in the regeneration VOL. IV.-No. 45. 2 H

here, who have lived and died in the faith; their dust shall rise from all parts of the globe where it has been scattered; the marble tomb, the grassy hillock, and the watery deep, shall each resign their charge, and not one particle be left behind.

The grandeur of divine worship will also be inconceivably great in the resurrection state. Divine worship under the Old Testament was attended with much outward grandeur, but under the present dispensation no such thing is commanded; it consists of righteousness and true holiness, spirituality, and sincerity, faith and love. Its true grandeur is an inward one, hid from the outward eye, and which outward court worshippers do not possess, nor do they see. But in the resurrection state, the visible display of the divine glory shall beam forth, and irradiate every countenance, and the church, now complete, shall be filled with extatic bliss. The riches and honour, the throne of ivory and gold, which Israel's wisest king once possessed, would be mean and contemptible to the saints' possession in this state of ultimate glory, and vanish like a taper in the meridian splendour of the sun. The resurrection state will also bear some resemblance to the earthly Eden, which our first parents enjoyed in their holy, happy, innocent state: at least, the apostle John in describing it seems to allude to the earthly paradise, where once the honoured pair lived in mutual love and perfect happiness. But in this state of consummate bliss, the dignity, the felicity, the unfading beauty, and undecaying pleasure, will infinitely exceed that which was for ever forfeited by transgression. Here the river of love will flow from the high majestic throne of Deity, exuberantly and incessantly. Here Jesus the tree of life will yield his fruit plenteously and in rich variety, and his people (redeemed from the earth, and distinguished by doing his commandments, as the expression of their love to him their King) shall have right unto it. (Rev. xxii. 14.)

The angels of God also will be deeply interested in that most glorious day. They love to see the empire of their King extended, and take delight in beholding fresh accessions to it; as also in administering to the heirs of salvation while here below. They brought the joyful tidings of his birth to the shepherds; they ministered to him after his severe temptation; they sustained his feeble body when agonizing in Gethsemane; they beheld him condemned and crucified, and witnessed the awful gloom which overspread the universe, and the horror which shook the earth to its centre; they rolled away the stone from his sepulchre; they attended him to the mount of Olives, and ascended with him when he entered his cloudy car, and rode in triumph to his throne; and they assured his wondering disciples that he would descend in like glorious manner.

But when he shall thus appear, in the resurrection morning, to commence his personal reign on earth, how different will it be from that appearing, when he came to be clothed with a body like our own, and tabernacle amongst men. Then John Baptist was his humble harbinger; now the bright legions of heaven shall fly before him and

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