fathom; neither to add an atom of mine to what the sacred Scripture hath stated. Here is enough to satisfy the most capacious desires of my awakened soul. On Him, would I beg for grace, to fix and feast my ravished eyes, who hath "abolished death, and brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel."

It will not be said, I hope, that our Lord's complete victory over sin and death hath any difficulty of apprehension, in that the bodies of His redeemed ones, in common with mankind, go down to the grave and see corruption. For this, in fact, is their mercy; and, by a voice from heaven, they are declared to be "blessed that die in the Lord." Death, in nature, is more a privilege than an evil to the Lord's people, for the "sting of death is sin ;" and the Lord hath taken it out when He put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself; and neither the serpent, no more than the bee deprived of its sting, can injure. Nay, sin being removed, it ceaseth to be death, for it is but a sleep, where, after the example of our dear Lord, the dead in Christ retire, as into the chambers of repose, until the resurrection morning. In death, they are for ever freed from all sorrows, pains, and toils of life. They sleep in Jesus. And as it was by their glorious Head, so will it be, from their participation in His triumphs, with them. Jesus is gone before as their forerunner, and has taken possession for them, and keeps possession in their name, until the time appointed of the Father. Being "reconciled by His death, much more shall they be saved by his life." His own promise runs thus, "Because I live, ye shall live also ;" and "faithful is He who promised, who will also do it." The earnest given, assures the whole

of the promise; and therefore, though foes and fears may be found in the Wilderness, and though Jordan roll between the Wilderness and Canaan, yet the ark of the Lord will make a dry and safe passage for His purchased people to enter into rest.

CHAPTER XXI.

Death Sweet; the Contemplation Gain-The Resurrection; Opening Views of an Endless Happy Eternity-No Condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus.

The Prophet Jeremiah, looking into Gospel times, and contemplating the Lord Jesus in his resurrection morning, describes him as thus speaking: "Upon this I awaked and beheld! and my sleep was sweet unto me.' Precious Jesus! and was that interval between the cross and the resurrection sweet; when thou arisedst from the grave, and in that didst behold the fruit of thy finished redemption extending to all thy members. And will not the whole and every one of thy mystical body feel their proportion of blessedness when rising from the grave, from their triumphs in Thee, and say, "my sleep was sweet unto me."

Here, then, we evidently gain more by being one with Christ than we lose by being one with Adam, for the covenant with him had no knowledge of a resurrection to eternal life by Jesus Christ. Though sin has debased our frame and made our bodies vile, yet grace shall con

* Jer. xxxi. 26.

form them to the glorious body of our Lord and Saviour, so that when our eyes behold Him as he is, we shall be conscious of wearing a perfect likeness to Him.

Blessed Jesus, our hopes are fixed on immortality, on Thee, the Risen Saviour, who has entered within the veil, who has prepared a place for us among the mansions in Thy Father's house; we will gladly and patiently wait for Thy salvation until we come in full possession. Being children of God, we shall be children of the resurrection. In that morning, we shall not only have our bodies purified from all the effects of sin, but furnished with qualities superior to those which our progenitor knew in his happy garden. The qualities of our bodies in the resurrection will far exceed those of our present fallen state; our corporeal system shall wear a perfection of suitability to all the employ and the blessedness of our Father's kingdom; no wish for inferior sensations, their absence will be our comfort and joy.

A scene here opens to our view as endless as Eternity, and as full of blessedness as it is endless. The Prophet Isaiah, contemplating the glorious Person of our dear Lord and Saviour in the bringing of it in, and the wonders which would follow, thus expressed the vast subject of both: "He will destroy in this mountain the face of the covering cast over all people, and the vail that is spread over all nations. He will swallow up death in victory; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from off all faces: and the rebuke of his people shall he take away from off all the earth: for the Lord hath spoken it."* There is, indeed, by the fall of man, the face of the cover

* Isaiah xxv. 7, 8.

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ing, and a vail of ignorance, blindness, and corruption, which now obscure our perfect vision. And this was symbolically represented in the Jewish temple, in the vail that separated between the most holy place, and the outer sanctuary for daily services. But in the moment that our dear Lord and Saviour, by His death, "abolished death, and brought life and immortality to light through His Gospel," behold, say the Evangelists with one voice, "the vail was rent in twain from the top to the bottom." The separation was for ever removed. The Son of God had now entered, not, indeed, into the "temple made with hands, but into heaven itself, there to appear in the presence of God for us." And His whole body, the Church, is said to have "boldness to enter in by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way, which he hath consecrated for us through the vail, that is to say His flesh; and having an High Priest over the house of God, we are commanded to draw near with true hearts, in full assurance of faith."*

The Lord of His infinite mercy cause this subject to sink deep into the hearts of all His redeemed ones. I would say to every child of God, let us frequently take wing, and, in the warmth of the most animated faith and joy, light down near the tomb, whence, on the resurrection morn, our most glorious Lord arose to show us the way to His glory. From thence the first clear and distinct views were taken of the future abode of the blessed. From hence I would say, as in imagination I behold the sepulchre where my Lord had once lain, here our glorious Lord opened the path to life and immortality!

*Heb. x. 19-22.

From hence He arose to show all the members of His mystical body the certainty that they shall assuredly follow him that where He is, there they shall be also. And in the daily contemplation of this same blessed hope, I would sing to the same triumphant notes as the Apostle, and with the same full assurance of faith: "O death, where is thy sting! O grave, where is thy victory! Thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory, through our Lord Jesus Christ."*

Here I would make a pause, and say, blessed change from weak to strong, from natural to spiritual, from corruptible to incorruptible, and from mortal to immortal! The musing on this scene is almost heaven itself. Who now shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect? Not even he who is the accuser of the brethren can now allege one single article of condemnation against any one of the number. Will he there say Manasseh had sold himself to do evil? that the Apostle Paul was a blasphemer? or that Mary Magdalene was an eminent sinner?

Will he say that the Galatians were idolaters? or that the Corinthians were guilty of almost every crime that could be named? and that there is not so much as one on whom there might not be found some fixed imputation or other? It is all granted, to the praise and glory of redeeming love, that they were great sinners, but "they were washed, they were sanctified, they were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God." And now there remaineth no condemnation for them, and nothing shall ever separate them from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus.