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I will ransom them," says the Deity, "from the Hos. 13.14 power of Sheol." The soul then, without the body, cannot put forth any such acts as might induce a change of condition, or of character. Repentance, mortification, a divine life, victory over temptations, are now become wholly impossible. If righteous, it has now ceased from its labours; if reprobate, the graces and virtues of the Christian life are, by the fall of the body, rendered altogether impracticable. impracticable. Its present lot is to brood in sad contemplation over that wrath, which it is conscious is awaiting it, termed by the apostle, "a fearful looking for of judgment." Heb. 10. 27.

Such is the importance of the body, considered as the organ of the soul, that the period of the first union is called the accepted time, and the day of salvation; when Jehovah says, he is near, and invites men to seek him while he may be found. "If the bread is to be cast upon the waters; if a Eccles. portion is to be given to seven; if in the morning -3,6 the seed is to be sown;" all this can be done only through the medium of the body. Death arrests the character, and sets the seal upon it for eternity." As the tree falls, whether to the north or to the south, there it will be found." But while death, in its temporary effects, is penal, it is in the final issue an unspeakable advantage; the invery fliction of it being a step taken in the great work. Death, in the demolition of the human frame, is

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one great advance towards its consummation. The gold is melted down in order to be rid of the dross, that at the day of Christ it may come forth in all its purity. A tumor, distended with putrid matter, may be painful in the act of amputation, but vigorous health is found to follow: so death performs on the body the painful but friendly operation: it separates, for a little, the spirit from its corrupted mass. Short sighted man may mourn, "but the trivial inconvenience of losing the body, is soon to be compensated by the recovery of the same, now wearing the crown of righteousness, and shining as the sun.

This temporary separation of body and soul, is not even a suspension of the work of bringing man to glory, honour, and immortality. It is merely the winter of the body, and a preparation for the ensuing spring; when the seed that has for ages lain concealed under the furrow, shall emerge into day in all its native comliness and beauty.

From the words of St. Paul it would seem, that while the body is in the grave, and the soul in the invisible state, something like a secret process was carrying on as preparatory for the resurrection; Phil..6. "for," says he, "he who hath begun the good work in you, will perform it up to the day of Christ." Of this, however, a more full discussion is reserved to another part of the work.

It has been thought, but to my judgment some

what

what improperly, that the soul, by itself, is a distinct and perfect existence; while the body is viewed in no other light than that of a prison, out of which it is fain to make its escape by death. We naturally imbibe this prejudice from the Greek and Roman authors; men, who never entertained the remotest idea or expectation of a resurrection. Without being aware of sliding into their track of thinking, we are too prone to view the body as the clog of the soul, and to which no more regard is to be paid than to any other extraneous matter. Such is the language of the philosophic Seneca ; "But as we neglect 'the hair, when shaven from the beard, so also that divine spirit, on the eve of its departure from the body, pays no regard to what becomes of its receptacle, whether the fire burn it, or wild beasts tear it, or the earth cover it: it accounts it no more part of itself than it accounts the after birth a part of the infant after it has come into the world." Similar to this is that passage of the Emperor Antoninus: "as thou, in the natural course of things waits, when being an embryo, thou shalt come out of thy mother's womb, so in like manner expect the hour when thy infant soul shall drop out of its integument." Here the body, like a shell when broken, is set at nought, as a thing which they have not the smallest expectation of ever seeing renewed. Owing to this prejudice, perhaps it is, that that respectable

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respectable author, and worthy divine, Dr. Butler, Bishop of Durham, observes, in his Analogy, that our bodies are masses of matter, in which, except that they are united to us, we are not much interested in, more than in any other foreign matter, which we employ to convey information to the percipient-such as perspective glasses, to assist us in surveying distant objects; or poles, to reach to things that lie beyond the extension of our arms. "There is not," says his Lordship, "any probability that we have any other kind of relation to them (the bodily members) than what we have to any other foreign matter, formed into instruments of perception or motion: suppose into a miscroscope or a staff." Now, I apprehend, this is setting the body considerably below the Scripture scale, and carrying things to an extreme. The bodily organs, and the most adroit instruments we can form, can never come into comparison. To the latter, no moral blame or praise attaches. In a case of murder, the sword and the dagger are not punished, but the arm that wields them is. The patriarchs seem to have had another idea of the matter: they were uncommonly anxious that their bodies should be laid in the tombs of their ancestors, but they did not manifest a like anxiety with regard to any favourite instrument, that it too should be deposited in the grave. Undoubtedly the soul must leave behind it, the body as well as the mi

croscope

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croscope or the staff; but then it expresses no desire to recover the latter, while it fondly expects the period when it is to be re-united to the former. Scripture teaches us that the body, although not the principal, is an essential part of man, and which, even in a state of separation, is not to be considered as equally alien to the soul as any other 'portion of matter; but that although no longer visible, it is still in the view of HIM,who is intimately acquainted with all the particles of matter, through their endless varieties and relations.

As we unwillingly resign the body, so Christ propounds it as an object, to revive the drooping spirit, that he will raise up the body at the last day. The very baptism of the first Christians involved in it a promise of the restoration of the body; "if the dead rise not wholly," i. e. both body and soul, says St. Paul, "why are we baptized for the dead?" 1.Cor. 15.29.

We, indeed, experience that we are fettered by the body, and that it does not possess that willingness to accede to, nor that agility and vigour to execute the purposes of the soul: but let it be remarked, that this was not its original constitution. Then every faculty was free and perfect, and employed to its worthiest end. Reason lighted up at the lamp of heaven ruled, and every member gave quick and unconstrained obedi

ence.

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