sound, and words to the clang of the trumpet:-" Lift up your heads, O ye gates; and be ye lift up, O ye everlasting doors, and the King of glory shall come in:—it is the Lord, strong and mighty, even the Lord mighty in battle. Lift up your heads, O ye gates; and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors, and the King of glory shall come in." (Ps. xxiv. 7, 8, 9.) "And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven. And then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn: and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other." (Matt. xxiv. 30, 31.) The first object to the returning sight will be that of Christ coming to judgment in the glory of his Father, with his holy angels; (* Ib. xvi. 27;) being a very different sight from what any one ever has had or ever can have even of him in this life. "For now

we see through a glass darkly; but then face to face;" (Cor. I. xiii. 12;) that is, qualified to see by a certain affinity. But,

4. With respect to the Scite or Place of the resurrection; considering how the soul flies first from the scene of its earthly existence, of its sorrows and delights, on the event of death, and then in a few years only, or perhaps in a few days, every particle of the body thereafter,-vanishing like snow and ice on a thaw, so that "they are consumed out of their place;" (Job. vi. 15, &c.;) as Job says of his friends, and have no locality remaining;-some may think, where this resurrection may take place, for each of us, or what may be the point of emersion to each individual on his reappearance. And

• The vision here foretold by our Saviour to his disciples was not the same with that intended by him in the following verse, but with that which he foretold the high priest in Matt. xxvi. 64. The last mentioned vision really occurred in six or eight days after its foretelling, as appears from Matt. xvii. 5, &c., Mark ix. 1, &c., Luke ix. 27, &c.

that we may presume to be the same with the point of combustion or interment, or unheeded departure, from the language held in Scripture upon this subject: as for example in Revelations; where its evangelical and prophetic author, describing the day of judgment, reverts to this opening scene, "And the sea gave up the dead which were in it and death and hell (or the charnel-house and the grave) delivered up the dead which were in them, and they were judged, every man according to their works." (Rev. xx. 13.) So Jesus, speaking of himself in the character of the Son of God: and one at the same time having authority given him "to execute judgment also, because he is the Son of man," (continues) "Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, and shall COME FORTH; they that have done good unto the resurrection of life, and they that have done evil unto the resurrection of damnation." (John v. 27, 28, 29.) Such is the point of resurrection--the grave, when we have one, and the beginning of the part to be transacted in "the Vale of Jehoshaphat." (Joel iii. 2, 12.)

5. To indicate the Order or Precedence of the countless millions entering upon this awful stage successively, to be reviewed and sentenced as aforesaid;-it will be very regular and methodical-" every man in his own. order: Christ the First Fruits; afterward, they that are Christ's at his coming." That is to say, the redeemed in all their generations will rise first: "we which are alive and left at present for the coming of the Lord, shall not prevent (or anticipate) them which are asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from Heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: then we which are alive and remain (and may remain to that day, as the time is uncertain) shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in 'the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord." (Thess. I. iv, 15, &c.)

"He that descended is the same also that ascended up far above all heavens, that he might fill all things:" (Eph. iv. 10:) for which purpose it is evident, that he must descend again, spiritually at least, into the lower parts of the earth, in order to bring up the prisoners that are in its bowels. (Ib. 9; Pet. I. iii. 19, &c.) Then the train of the ascendants will appear as follows; - Foremost and high above all, "Christ the First Fruits; afterward they that are Christ's at his coming. Then cometh the end: when he shall have delivered up the Kingdom to God, even the Father: when he shall have put down all rule, and all authority and power."

The earth will present a cheerless spectacle to those who shall be forced to stay behind, as the most honoured of their acquaintance successively depart from their observation. "There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when ye shall see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and all the prophets in the Kingdom of God, and you yourselves thrust out," (Luke xiii. 28,) said our Saviour to some who had a very fair title to the Kingdom apparently. And that may very well happen; since "there are last which shall be first, and there are first which shall be last" (Ib. 30) upon earth. Thy dead men shall live; (says he)-together with my dead body shall they arise. Awake and sing ye that dwell in the dust; for thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast out the dead. Come my people, enter thou into thy chambers, and shut thy doors about thee; hide thyself, as it were, for a little moment, until the indignation be overpast. For behold the Lord cometh out of his place to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity: the earth also shall disclose her blood, and shall no more cover her slain." (Isai. xxvi. 19, 20, 21.)

But if the order of the resurrection be regular and successive, its movement will be as rapid as its beginning is sudden and instantaneous. It will be like the lightning which walks by steps, though swift; or like the imagina

tion which moves with swifter vestiges. "Who hath wrought and done it, calling the generations from the beginning? I, the Lord, the first, and with the last; I am he." (Isai. xli. 4.) And this wonderful transition of multitudes every moment from death to life, of whatever sort, which you have just heard of-will not be a moment's work for its Author: one word from him, and the congregation under ground is dismissed, as it was said, "in the twinkling of an eye." For if subjects drop into the grave one by one, as they drop into church, they will emerge from the same more suddenly, as they depart from this place: then the fields, lanes, and highways are presently full of them; and so will they be again with the congregation of death upon its general rising or resurrection. For the last living will be changed as well as the first, by a superficial, if not by a subterraneous process: and the first dead will be the first to rise-" every man in his own order." So the first that were shall be the first again, as far as any distinction can be conceived in the work of a moment: we shall be present to our seniors and cotemporaries, and they will be present to us again, and theirs to them as they were, with the same essential constituents, the same scenes and accompaniments; and the roll of the world, which has been drawn out to so many thousand years, will be turned over again in an instant from beginning to end,-every individual on the record being judged and sentenced in his generation as the same comes forward at his post or point of emersion. Such is the honour of the tomb: which may be very splendid-but that will not signify when the former things shall pass away, and all things be made new. (Rev. xxi. 4, 5.)

One might imagine many waking scenes in life, my brethren, of very different characters, some pleasing, some distressing; some grand and serious, some pitiful and ludicrous: but none like the awful and sublime picture of the resurrection of which I have been endeavouring

to give you an idea from divine revelation: and I have not endeavoured to exaggerate. Neither do I conceive, that it can be any part of a minister's duty to trouble the minds of his audience with FANCIED HORRORS. The prospects that are real, and in which mankind are really interested he is bound to hold up to their view: they are displayed in God's Word; it is God's Word that requires their demonstration and proclaiming as it were by sound of trumpet ; (Isai. lviii. 1;) warning is a part of our duty as well as teaching: (Col. i. 28 :) and, seeing these things must needs come around in the manner before described, whether we will or no,-it were idle, it were treacherous, it were more like a fiend or an apostle of the devil, than like a St. John and a friend of the human race to dissemble these things: which be far from me!

§ 2. It should also be out of the way, or rather unusual, for a preacher of the Kingdom of God in Christ to proclaim events or contingencies relating to the same, of the reality of which he is not persuaded. For it is to be supposed, that we are not mere mouth-pieces for the trumpet of salvation, but believers ourselves, as well as those whom we address, in what we proclaim or preach: that we prophesy according to our proportion of faith; (Rom. xii. 6;) and so advisedly, that we may be ready always, " to give an answer to every man that asketh us a reason of the hope that is in us." (Pet. I. iii. 15.) Seeing therefore, that the hope of the resurrection is openly rejected by some, and covertly by more, in the present generation, I shall now proceed to offer the Defence that I proposed in aid of the doctrine which has now been advanced; 1, considering the Evidences; 2, exposing and confuting the Errors and Objections to which it may seem liable.

1. All the Evidence that we can collect for "the hope of the resurrection of the dead," our present question, (Acts xxiii. 6) must be derived from one of these two sources, and named accordingly, 1, of Authority; 2, of Reason or Inference. And