Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB

Word of God. He that soweth the good seed is the Son of Man. The harvest is the end of the world; and the reapers are the angels. The good seed are the children of the kingdom; but the tares are the children of the wicked one.” The former, the heavenly husbandman, "will gather into his barn :" but the latter " he will burn with fire unquenchable." Awful and significant emblems of the different destinies of the righteous and ungodly! if by analogies so striking, and by similitudes so strong, they who are constantly witnessing them, are not edified, their insensibility is sinful. If "they that go down to the sea in ships, and occupy their business in great waters, perceive the goodness of the Lord, and his wonders in the deep," how reprehensible must they be, who occupy their business upon the surface of the earth, not to notice the "goodness and wonders" of the same divine hand! If, when he, who is the Resurrection and the Life, after awakening mankind to the attention of

A

these things, cried with a loud voice,

"he that hath ears to hear, let him hear;" all mankind, being deeply interested in the subject, are surely called upon to attend to it.

[ocr errors]

And who has not an opportunity of noticing the analogies here specified? They regard not the works of the Lord, neither do they consider the operations of his hands," was the declared sign or criterion, of a thoughtless and wicked people. Not only, therefore, tillers of the soil, who, from frequency of opportunity, cannot avoid discerning such natural intimations of a resurrection; but every human creature, who has ears to hear, or eyes to see, ought to ponder these things in his heart; knowing, that, like seed sown in the earth, he shall assuredly lie down in the dust; and also, in like manner, shall rise up again, at the last great day, "when all that are in their graves shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and shall come forth they that have done good, to the Resurrection of Life; and they that have done

;

evil, unto the resurrection of damnation." *

Thus we see how Nature and Revelation harmonize with each other on this most important point. The former intimates to man, that he may be raised from the dead; the latter assures him that this will be the case; and to that assurance is superadded positive proof, in the Resurrection of the "Founder and Finisher of our Faith" himself, after dying in the presence of a vast concourse of people, and being pierced through the heart with a spear. Nearly as public was the testimony of his Restoration to Life; having been seen alive again by above five hundred brethren at once,-some of whom not only conversed, but ate and drank with him, after he rose from the dead.

If it be said that this was no new evidence, the prophets Elijah and Elisha, and especially the Great Prophet of the Covenant, Jesus Christ himself, having before raised up others: we answer,

* John v. 29.

that though the persons thus raised were proofs of the same important doctrine, they were proofs of a different kind; evidencing, certainly, a resurrection from the dead, but only to a second transitory life, to die again the common death of all men: whereas, in the person of Jesus, we have an evidence, an earnest of a Resurrection to life eternal; which he promises to bestow on every true believer in his Gospel: "Because I live," says he, "ye shall live also." The body shall moulder into dust, and continue, for a time, blended with the earth out of which it was formed: but, when the all-pervading summons for revival shall go forth from the mouth of Him, "whose voice shaketh both the earth and the heavens, the sea and the dry land," then shall the ponderous tombs be broken, the graves yield up their ghastly millions, and the sea cast out her dead. No human being, throughout unbounded space, shall sleep. "The small and the great shall stand before God; the books shall be opened; and

every one shall be judged according to his works: neither can they die any

more.”

SECTION IV.

The somewhat enlarged view already taken on this subject, and the train of reflections in which we have indulged, will have prepared us to examine what evidence there is, derivable from scripture, that the soul, immediately after the death of the body, is not in a state of sleep or insensibility, but of happiness

or woe.

That any subject involves greater interest to man, will scarcely be asserted. For what can more strongly interest, than ETERNAL HAPPINESS and ETERNAL MISERY?

But, if the soul survive not the body, there is no such thing as eternal happiness, or eternal misery. An interval of

« ZurückWeiter »