CHAPTER III.

THE RECOGNITION OF SAINTS PROBABLE, FROM

SCRIPTURE.

THAT the doctrine now under consideration is not expressly revealed in Scripture, we admit, yet this is no proof that it may not be true. There are so many clear intimations of it in numerous portions of the Bible, that the probability of its being true amounts almost to certainty. 66 Perhaps, indeed," as Bishop Mant remarks," the general silence which is for the most part to be noticed on the subject in holy writ, may be taken for an admission that the knowledge in question will exist. For the supposition is so congenial with our best feelings, and appears to be so natural a consequence of the general doctrine of the resurrec

tion, as clearly set before us by the Word of God, that we might be expected in the common course of things to take it for granted, unless it were contradicted or opposed by that word, or unless it were encumbered by great and insurmountable objections; and I am not aware of any such impediment to its reception."*

That the pious and faithful under the Old Testament indulged this hope, and derived comfort from it, may be fairly inferred from several circumstances connected with the rites of sepulture. On no other principle than the belief of meeting and recognising their friends after death, can we account for the deep solicitude, which many of them expressed to have their bodies deposited in the same burial place with those whom they loved on earth. If we suppose that Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, believed in the resurrection of the

* Mant's Happiness of the Blessed, p. 95.

body, and the recognition and reunion of departed relatives, we have a sufficient reason for their being so desirous of reposing beside their nearest earthly connections. But if they entertained no such hope-if they did not believe that their bodies should rise again from the grave, or, when risen, that they would not recognise each other-then how can we account for that inimitably beautiful and pathetic charge of Jacob to his children just before his death? "I am to be gathered unto my people; bury me with my fathers in the cave that is in the field of Ephron the Hittite; in the cave that is in the field of Machpelah, which is before Mamre, in the land of Canaan, which Abraham bought with the field of Ephron the Hittite for a possession of a burying place. There they buried Abraham and Sarah his wife; there they buried Isaac and Rebekah his wife; and there I buried Leah."*

* Gen. xlix. 29-31.

He

wished to be buried by the side of his nearest kindred, his aged father and mother, and his beloved wife. Why?-but that he hoped to rise with them, to know them again, and to enter with them into the mansions of glory? If not-if there was to be no recognitionthen might he as well have been buried among strangers in Egypt, as insist on being carried all the way to Canaan, to be placed in the cave of Machpelah.

reason.

The same promise was exacted by Joseph of his brethren, and doubtless for the same "And Joseph took an oath of the children of Israel, saying, God will surely visit you, and ye shall carry up my bones from hence."* Nearly two hundred years after, when the Israelites had gained possession of the promised land, we find a record of the fulfilment of this promise, in these words: "And the bones of Joseph, which the children of Israel

* Genesis, 1. 25.

brought out of Egypt, buried they in Shechem, in a parcel of ground which Jacob bought of the sons of Hamor, the father of Shechem, for an hundred pieces of silver; and it became the inheritance of the children of Joseph."* How sacred, in the eyes of a Jew, must have been that oath, which could bind the nation, after the lapse of nearly two centuries, to take the bones of their ancestor with them from Egypt-to carry them in all their wanderings in the wilderness, for the space of forty years-until they had an opportunity to place them in his own burial ground, together with his brethren the other sons of Jacob, whom St. Stephen tells us were buried in Shechem.†

These instances, taken in connection with that expression which is used in reference to the death of each of these patriarchs-he "was gathered unto his people,"‡-would seem to

* Josh. xxiv. 32.

† Acts vii. 10. Gen. xxv. 8. xxxv. 29. xlix. 33.