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sheep are brought at nightfall to the folds and there penned by their shepherd, so the wicked, when the night of their desolation arrives, are placed in Hades by Death, who acts the shepherd towards them ( lit. pastorizes them). But the righteous survive to tread upon their dust, and triumph over them. Though despised during their life and trampled to the ground by their lordly foot, yet the tables are now turned, and in the morning succeeding their death the righteous have dominion, as the children of Israel had dominion over the Egyptians in the morning after their destruction in the Red Sea or as an enemy might be said to have triumphed in the morning over the army of Sennacherib slain in the night. Their goodly forms, with all their beauty, are now turned to loathsome masses of putrefaction, and become the prey of corruption and worms; and however splendid the dwellings they have left, yet now they are doomed to remain for ever, without hope of redemption, in the gloomy regions of Hades to which they have gone down. But thanks be to God, my prospect is not like theirs. I have hope in my death. Though I may be called to submit to the universal law of 'dust to dust,' yet I shall not, like them, remain irrevocably under the power of the grave (hades). God will redeem my soul from its thraldom and graciously receive me to the joys of his presence for

ever."

This we deem, in the main, a correct paraphrase of a passage, the literal construction of which has given rise to vast perplexity among commentators. It yields to our

minds no evidence of the resurrection of the body, unless it can be shown that 'soul' means 'body;' and if the soul be understood as denoting the spiritual body (yuzh) we do not object to it. But on this view the resurrection takes place when the spiritual body leaves the material, which, as before remarked, we believe to be the true doctrine. As to interpreting the morning' here of the morning of the resurrection, we can only say it is a sense of the phrase

which can carry with it no authority, for it is sustained by no proof. It rests only upon a fancied analogy, which gives rise to an apparently apt and happy mode of speech. A cardinal tenet of theology needs a more solid basis to stand upon. The general sentiment of the passage is strikingly akin to that of Prov. 14. 32, “The wicked is driven away in his wickedness, but the righteous hath hope in his death.” The prevailing tenor of the Old Testament intimations undoubtedly is, that as the wicked in this life are really sunk in a moral or spiritual death, so this state of death continues interminably, and nothing is said of their being ever awakened from it. It is on this ground doubtless that the current of Jewish interpretation denies that they have any part in the resurrection; but this fact is very far from teaching that they do not actually live in an immortal and miserable existence beyond the grave. But our concern with the Psalmist's words is simply in their relation, or apprehended relation, to the resurrection of the body.

The following additional passages, which are characterized by a general identity of import, may be properly classed together:

Ps. 73. 23, 24, "Nevertheless I am continually with thee; thou hast holden me by the right hand. Thou shalt guide me with thy counsel, and afterward receive me to glory."

Ps. 33. 18, 19, "Behold, the eye of the Lord is upon them that fear him, upon them that hope in his mercy; to deliver their soul from death, and to keep them alive in famine."

Ps. 56. 13, "For thou hast delivered my soul from death; wilt thou not deliver my feet from falling, that I may walk before God in the light of the living?"

We wave all remarks on these citations, as the reader will have no difficulty in judging for himself how much or how little relation they have to the general subject under discussion. That they may be construed into a remote reference to a future life, is perhaps to be admitted; but as their relation to our present theme is still more remote, we

can better appropriate the space that might otherwise be bestowed upon them. We advert to passages of a different character.

the vail that is spread over all

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And he will destroy in this mountain the face of the cover

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ing cast over all people, and הַלוֹט הַיּוֹט עַל־כָּל־הָעַמִּים .nations וְהַמַּסֵּכָה הַנְסוּכָה עַל־כָּל־

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faces and the rebuke of his אדי יְהוָה דִּמְעָה מֵעַל כָּל־

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He will swallow up death in victory; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from off all

people shall be taken away from off all the earth: for the Lord hath spoken it.

These words come in as part of a splendid pæan or triumphal song, anticipative of the victory of the Lord's people over all their enemies, in the period referred to. This period is by all but universal consent assigned to the times of the Messiah; but as this is a very general designation, we seem to be guided by the items of the text to that particular era of the Messiah's reign, when the great antichristian city, the mystical Babylon, shall be destroyed, and the redeemed saints made to exult over the ruins to which it is reduced. It is intimated that at that time this illustrious triumph should be celebrated as with a joyous feast, in which all believing people should be partakers, who are represented as convened for the purpose at Mount Zion in Jerusalem, which then becomes the magnetic centre of all true worshippers. At that time, it is moreover predicted, the Lord God will abolish death forever, and obliterate the tokens of sorrow from the faces of all his servants. The faces of the vail or covering,' (b) i. e. the veiled faces-veiled in sign of grief and affliction-shall then be utterly done away, and

every one assume "the garments of praise for the spirit of heaviness." As to the 'death' here spoken of, we hesitate not to understand it with Vitringa, Rosenmüller, and others, not as 'death' in its natural and ordinary acceptation, but as another term for all manner of grievous afflictions, persecutions, wars, pestilences, sicknesses, every thing, in fact, of a deadly and desolating nature-every thing which causes grief, mourning, and tribulation. It is that kind of death of which the Psalmist speaks when he says, Ps. 44. 22, “For thy sake are we killed all the day long," and of which it is predicted in the parallel prophecy of the New Jerusalem, Rev. 2. 1. 4, "There shall be no more death," i. e. no more premature death by disease, pestilence, casualty, the sword of war, broken hearts, or any form of wasting judgments. This is the kind of death that shall be swallowed up in victory, or, as the term is otherwise rendered, 'forever,' at the time to which the oracle points forward. That this time is not the end of the world, or the winding up of the great mundane dispensation, is perfectly obvious from the context. For it will be seen that this hallowed carnival of Zion is merely the ushering in of a state of permanent rest, peace, prosperity, and glory, during which Moab, or all the alien enemies of the church, shall be put down, and all the promises of abiding blessedness to the Christian kingdom be realized.

But it will be said that Paul has quoted this passage, 1 Cor. 15. 54, and unequivocally applied it to the grand era of the resurrection of the dead, which must, of course, be synchronical with the termination of this world's destinies and the final scene of judgment: "So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying which is written, Death is swallowed up in victory." To this we reply, that such cannot be the meaning of Paul, provided it be not the meaning of Isaiah. The Spirit that presided over both cannot utter oracles at variance with

themselves.

But nothing can be more obvious, from the whole drift of the prophet's strain, than that he is not speaking of the end of the world. He is merely setting before us one of the links in the great chain of events which are to distinguish the latter days of Zion's welfare. How then is the apostle's quotation to be understood? An alternative of constructions is presented. He either cites the language of Isaiah as containing an announcement, the words—the letter-of which are strikingly applicable to the state of things which he is describing, without assuming that they were originally intended to refer to it; or, acting the part of an inspired expositor of Isaiah, he applies his language to the period of time which the Holy Ghost had in view in inditing it through the prophet; and this brings us irresistibly to the conclusion, that the epoch of the resurrection described by Paul is not to be placed at the end of the world, which Isaiah's abolition of death certainly is not. This idea is doubtless somewhat favored by the mention, in the same connexion, of the 'sounding of the last trumpet,' which, as it must be considered as identical with the seventh Apocalyptic trumpet, announces an order of events to commence with "the kingdoms of this world becoming the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ," as is evident from Rev. 11. 15: "And the seventh angel sounded, and there were great voices in heaven, saying, The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ; and he shall reign forever and ever." But this, so far from being the final consummation of the globe or the human race, is merely the commencement of its ultimate bliss and glory. With the data now before him the reader must form his own judgment of the principle on which the apostle's quotation is made, as also of the degree of evidence which the present passage affords of the doctrine of the resurrection of the body. If, as we shall endeavor to show in the sequel, the language of Paul in the 15th of Corinthians

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