was to silence them. They have been so killed, by a power assuming the name of Christ-by a power fulfilling, to the minutest point, what was prophesied of it. They have come alive again at the time appointed. The little book is now OPEN;' and John, as well as all the apostles and prophets, is now prophesying again before many peoples, and nations, and tongues, and kings.'

Coming with such authority-with such evidence of their heavenly commission, 'Let the world hear, and all the dwellers therein.' 'The Lord, the mighty God, hath spoken, once, yea, twice; and called the earth from the rising of the sun to the going down thereof.' He sent the apostles, personally, to bear the first testimony to the gentiles. He is now sending these two witnesses, the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament, like Elias (Elijah and Elisha,) 'before that great and notable day of the Lord come-lest He come and smite the earth with a curse.'

Their voice must be heard, for a witness. Babylon herself must hear it. 'Blessed are they that hear, and they that keep, the sayings of their testimony; for the time is at hand?

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CHAPTER XXX.

THE TIMES OF REFRESHING.

AMONG other consequences of the moral and spiritual darkness which Antichrist brought over christendom, a great gulf has been fixed' between the ancient and the modern world;-such an interruption or pollution of the stream of history and tradition, and such a severing of sympathies, has taken place, that the old line of feeling and of thought is not easily resumed. When the spirit of life from God entered into the witnesses, and light began to dawn from them, upon a benighted and insulted world, the attention of mankind was almost exclusively directed to the corruptions of doctrines and of forms of worship, which the Man of Sin had effected. To the exposition and correction of these, the Reformers and their successors have mainly applied the light of the Scriptures: and truly the mass of absurdity and filth was so great, that there has been sufficient employment both for their time and their energies. To this cause it seems to have been owing, that so little attention has been, comparatively, paid to some subjects, which, in the early

times both of the New and the Old Testament Church appear to have been uppermost in the minds of the disciples. In our day the subjects to which we allude are rather considered to form the higher branches of theology-whereas of old they seem to have constituted the first principles-the foundation on which christianity rested, and from which its doctrines derived most of their importance and consolation.

Of these ancient matters one of the most important, and one to which we have already referred in the course of this enquiry, was the doctrine of the Resurrection. It would appear, from the passages formerly quoted, that the views on this subject were in ancient times as simple as they were explicit. To the day of the resurrection of the Messiah first, and after him the resurrection of his people, all the worship and feasts of the Old Testament pointed. As that worship and the law explanatory of it became corrupted, this ancient hope of the church became corrupted also. But when our Lord and his Apostles took away the veil from the Old Testament, we find the restoration of this primitive hope, the leading object and design of their doctrine.

When we examine their doctrine on this head, we find that the hope of the re-union of the soul with the body, is both vindicated as an ancient and primitive hope, and is explicitly set forth as THE special and grand object for which the Lord Jesus died. We are far from saying that the hope of the resurrection is not now preached, as connected with the death and resurrection of the Lord of Glory.

But there is a manner of speaking and of writing, by no means uncommon, regarding heaven, which makes this hope rather a secondary matter; which would make it of very little consequence whether it were ever fulfilled or not. We repeat that we mean neither to assert that the hope of the resurrection is denied, nor the disquisitions which are entered into, regarding heaven and the state of the soul there, altogether without foundation in Scripture; but if our limits admitted of quotations, we could very easily show that, too generally, vague ideas of heavenly bliss are substituted for the explicit and often-expressed hope of the Scriptures, regarding the resurrection of the Just-a time of happiness and of joy, which is more than to compensate for the evil and distress of this lifea time of bliss to be enjoyed in the body, then to be raised in glory.

Were this a mere speculative or doctrinal matter, however interesting or important, we should not consider it as coming within the scope of our enquiry. But as the Scripture account of it not only vindicates, as we have seen, the faith of the elders, but affects the views we may entertain of the whole Christian economy, it deserves the careful attention of the reader. We shall not detain him by referring to those passages in the New Testament, in which the certainty of the resurrection of the body is plainly and clearly set forth. These are adduced in all their simplicity and force, in the burial service of the church established in our country; and are admitted by all, who do not affect infidelity, to be

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amongst the most beautiful as well as the most explicit passages in the Scriptures. We wish rather to direct his attention to a few of those which point out the time of that resurrection as the period which was peculiarly the hope, the desire, and the expectation of the Apostles and Prophets.

In the first place, we find the apostle Paul saying, that it was to that time that 'the twelve tribes instantly serving God day and night hoped to come." When the apostle Peter preached to the Jews, at the Beautiful gate of the Temple, he said, 'Repent therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out when THE TIMES OF REFRESHING shall come from the presence of the Lord;' and that there might be no mistake as to what time he meant, he adds, and he shall send Jesus Christ, who before was preached unto you, whom the heaven must receive until THE TIMES OF RESTITUTION OF ALL THINGS, which God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began!' We had intended to bring forward other passages, but in quoting these words, we feel it would be doing injustice to this grand preaching of the Apostle, were we to adduce one other word to prove that the hope of the morning of the resurrection was the hope of the church in every age.

But when and how was this hope preached, by all the Prophets, since the world began? We formerly quoted acts and words, from the Old Testament, which vindicate the language of the Apostle, respecting the antiquity and universality of that hope. There was another mode in which it was