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fulness and extent of all spiritual and eternal good which the saints there enjoy, and the glorious dignity to which they are advanced; they are made kings and priests unto God and the Father; they receive a crown of life which fadeth not away. Heaven is also called "a house not made with hands," to denote the unspeakable glory of the heavenly mansions, beyond the most stately or splendid palaces built by the hands of men. To intimate its satisfying nature, it is called "an inheritance, incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away." It is also denominated "a better country," to show that there is no adequate comparison between the things which are seen and temporal, and the things which are unseen and eternal.

It now only remains to take a short notice of the conclusion of the answer before us, which relates to the bodies of believers "Their bodies being still united to Christ, do rest in their graves till the resurrection." When believers are united to Christ by faith, his union with them is with their whole persons, both soul and body; and the passages of scripture are not few, in which the bodies of the saints are represented as the peculiar property of Christ, as well as their souls. It is remarkable that when the Apostle Paul bids a kind of holy challenge, for any one to tell what shall separate the saints from their Lord, he expressly states that death shall not separate them-As their souls are immediately translated to glory, so their bodies also are considered as the present property of Christ-as members of his mystical body; and as such, after they shall have mouldered to dust, they shall certainly be raised glorious and incorruptible. "As at the death of Christ, though his human soul was separated from his body, yet neither the one nor the other was separated from his Divine person; so neither the soul nor the body of the believer shall be separated from Christ, when parted from each other by death; but both of them shall remain indissolubly united to him forever. Hence the grave, which is a prison to the wicked, where their bodies are kept in custody to the judgment of the great day, is to the saints a

place of rest. For them their Redeemer, when he entered the tomb, sweetened and hallowed it, and they are said to rest in their graves. Their graves are like beds of ease, where their bodies lie in safety, till they be joyfully awakened in the morning of the resurrection. Hence, too, their resting in the grave is expressed, in scripture, by "sleeping in Jesus;" intimating that they sleep in union with Jesus, and that his Spirit keeps possession of their dust, which he will quicken and rebuild as his temple, at the last day." These ideas are expressed with equal beauty and justice by Dr. Watts, in the 18th hymn of his first book, and the 110th of the second

Hear what the voice from heaven proclaims

For all the pious dead!

Sweet is the savour of their names,

And soft their sleeping bed.

They die in Jesus, and are bless'd;
How kind their slumbers are!
From suff'rings and from sins releas'd,
And freed from every snare.

Far from this world of toil and strife,
They're present with the Lord;
The labours of their mortal life

End in a large reward.

And must this body die?

This mortal frame decay?

And must these active limbs of mine
Lie mould'ring in the clay?

Corruption, earth, and worms,
Shall but refine this flesh,
Till my triumphant spirit comes
To put it on afresh.

God my Redeemer lives,

And often from the skies

Looks down and watches all my dust,

Till he shall bid it rise.

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* Altered from Fisher's Catechism.

Array'd in glorious grace

Shall these vile bodies shine,
And every shape and every face
Look heavenly and divine.

These lively hopes we owe
To Jesus' dying love:

We would adore his grace below,
And sing his power above.

Dear Lord, accept the praise

Of these our humble songs,
Till tunes of nobler sound we raise

With our immortal tongues.

My dear youth, although I have lived many more years than you, yet even since these lectures commenced, I have stood by the side of the death bed of some of your number: Nor is it improbable, although my life is more uncertain than the most of yours, that I shall stand by the death bed of some of you, who now hear me. And when I stand there, tell me, shall I witness in you the benefits which believers receive from Christ at their death? Shall I see you welcome the king of terrors? Shall I see you triumph over him? Shall I see you joyfully anticipating the approaching moment, when your souls shall be made perfect in holiness, and pass immediately into glory? Or shall I see all the reverse? O shall I see you filled with agonizing fear! Utterly unprepared to die, and yet forced to meet your Judge!—The one side or the other of this interesting alternative, you may experience, although I should not witness it. And remember, you are likely to die with joy, or with horror, according as you are, or are not, believers, in the sense of the answer before us. Will you not, then, seek that faith in Christ, and that union. with him, which will be found so infinitely important in a dying hour, and in all the dread eternity which follows? Will you trifle away your precious time of probation, and run the risk of being summoned to death and judgment, without any preparation? Oh if I could see you seeking a saving interest in Christ!-could see you in earnest and deeply solicitous to be the Lord's-it would afford the happiest presage.

early shall find me." To you it is now adAt a more advanced

God hath said, "they that seek me Seize on this promise while you may. dressed. You are now in early life. age, even if you should live to such an age-as you have no certainty that you will-you will not be able then to plead this promise. Will not 'some of you, therefore-nay, will not all of you, resolve this very hour, in the strength of God, that you will begin to seek his favour in earnest; determined never to give over the suit, till you have satisfactory evidence that you are vitally united to the Lord Jesus Christ-that you have "believed on him to life everlasting."-Amen.

LECTURE XXXIII.

What benefits do believers receive from Christ at the Resurrection?

HAVING seen, in the order in which they are exhibited in our catechism, the primitive holy and happy state of man; his loss of his original rectitude, and the miseries consequent on that loss; the provision made for his restoration in the redemption by Christ; and the rich and inestimable benefits which believers receive from that redemption, both while they live and when they die-we are now to contemplate the consummation of their felicity, at the resurrection in the last day" At the resurrection, believers being raised up in glory, shall be openly acknowledged and acquitted in the day of judgment, and made perfectly blessed in the full enjoying of God to all eternity."

The doctrine of the resurrection of the dead, is derived wholly from the Bible. The heathen had some notions of a future state of rewards and punishments, where the souls of good men would be happy, and those of bad men miserable. But they had not, in all their systems, a single trace of the doctrine, that the body is to be raised and rendered immortal.

Hence we are told that when Paul discoursed on Mars' hill, at Athens, the most distinguished city of Greece, and the most renowned for science in the pagan world--" when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked." That there should be a resurrection of the body, was an idea that had never been presented to their minds before; and as they believed themselves far superior in knowledge to a barbarous Jew-which was the character of Paul in their estimation— they could not restrain the expression of their contempt and scorn, at the promulgation of this novel, and as they esteemed it, extravagant and absurd notion. Yet it will be found, my children, that this doctrine, which human reason of itself never glanced at, commends itself to our reason, now that it is revealed: that is, it may be shown to be correspondent to those notions of the perfect equity of the Deity, which reason teaches. The whole of every human being, both body and soul, has been concerned in all the good or the evil done in this life: And although the body has been no more than the servant or instrument of the soul, yet it may serve to illustrate the goodness of God on the one hand, and the strictness of his justice on the other, when even that which was instrumental to good or evil, is connected with the proper agent, in glory or in dishonour.

As to the possibility of a resurrection, none can refuse to admit that Almighty power, by which matter was formed out of nothing at first, and by which our bodies were organized and animated before their dissolution, can reorganize and reanimate them anew, after they shall have been dissolved. There is one analogy in proof and illustration of this, constantly occurring in nature, which is noticed in scripture, first by our Lord himself, and afterwards by the Apostle Paul-It is, that grain, after it is sown, perishes utterly, before a new growth arises. Speaking of his own death and resurrection, our Lord says "Verily, verily, I say unto you-Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit." St. Paul, speaking of the general resurrection, goes more at

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