such as stupefied the vinegar that was tendered dying lips and entered into the spices that were prepared for the embalming. The retiring olive and the forward fig bordered the fields, the pale leafage of the former betokening the modesty of true sanctity, and the bold configuration of the latter, with its seed-full fruit, the fecundity of the principles of that kingdom which after, like a tree overshadowing the earth, will doubtless shoot its branches till they enmesh the stars. Round about the shepherd's vale are the glistering escarpments of the dolomite, gleaming like sheeted ghosts risen at the resurrection, and the white rock is streaked with scarlet as though earth itself was struggling after Incarnation. Here then are fit place and persons for the Herald Angels' song. "Fear not for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you, ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill toward men." Let us go with the new reading: "Peace among men of good will"-for was there not always goodwill toward men on the part of God, but between the first and second advents there is no peace but among the men of goodwill. "On earth peace." Near two thousand years have passed, and Bethlehem contains the most turbulent and resentful community in Palestine. Frederika Bremer stumbled through the stubble of an adjacent field upon whose standing corn the Bedouin had swooped to wreck it, invited by a Bethlehemite family thus to avenge a private feud. Tristram saw the cultivators in Galilee holding the plough with one hand and a weapon in the other, while the shepherds of Esdraelon were mounted and laden with arms; this is his account of the "Peace on earth" in Palestine, and how the Turks are governing the country. He is crossing the famed plain of Esdraelon, and says, "The corn of this year's harvest had never been reaped, owing to the war. Only a few weeks ago the Sakk's Bedouin, the strongest tribe on the west side of Jordan, made a raid and swept off the whole of the cattle on the plain. The protection of the Government has been found worse than the enemy. The Turkish troops judiciously selected the finest fields of standing corn for their camping ground, to save trouble in foraging, and in many instances levied heavy fines on the luckless villagers for the crime of non-resistance to the Sakk's. When they appealed against this on the ground of helplessness, they were told that the males ought to have fled in and reinforced the Turkish troops. Finally, after the Turkish locusts had eaten everything the Arabian hailstorm had left, the Pasha of Acre published despatch announcing the retreat of the invaders before his trium phant legions (who always kept two days between them and the fugitives), and the campaign closed for the year." The promise of the First Advent will not be fulfilled until the Second. HENRY DEACON. Bristol. MAN'S ONLY HOPE OF IMMORTALITY. An Exposition of Christ's Argument Against the Sadducees. --- BY WILLIAM GLEN MONCRIEFF. No. III. III. OUR LORD'S REPLY. FIRST. THE AUTHORITATIVE PORTION OF THE REPLY 34" And Jesus answering said unto them, The children of this world "age" marry, and are given in marriage: 35-"But they which shall be counted worthy to obtain that world"-age-" and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor are given in marriage: 36-"Neither can they die any more for they are equal unto the angels; and are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection." Though we have divided the Reply into two portions, it must be admitted, and taken into account, that to a certain extent they run into each other; or, which is nearly the same thing, have a close mutual bearing, as well as an independent nature and significance of their own. The vital idea in the whole response is the Resurrection; every ray converges down into that. While Jesus blamed the Sadducees, according to Matthew, for not discerning what was presented in their Scriptures, we are not, however, thereby required to hold them inexcusably ignorant as to all He delivered on this occasion in their hearing. For instance, His announcement that the resurrected, being worthy, are to stand on an equality with the angels of light, has all the appearance of being a fresh revelation, since it is never even once hinted at, so far as our knowledge extends, in the Hebrew Scriptures. But even if that peculiar feature of the resurrection-life is to be excepted, the questioners might have found the fundamental doctrine itself in the sacred oracles, along with certain indications that supreme and sovereign Mercy designed the new existence to be perpetual. As to that, error could be inscribed on their opinions. And thus, though the sections are not perfectly dissimilar, there is enough to warrant the proposed division, and to serve the object of perspicuity it has been adopted. Having thus written a word in explanation of our method, we proceed to examine what the Lord delivers AUTHORITATIVELY, that is, IN HIS OWN NAME, as the "Word "-Revealer-" of God," without any direct appeal to the Old Testament, which would have thrown it, like the second portion, into the argumentative form. In the AUTHORITATIVE PART We find several points of instruction : 1st.-There is to be another world for man. In This is not the only scene of existence they are to witness, "they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world ”. |"the world in store for resurrected men. It is the same word in the original translated "world" in the two expressions found in the reply, "this world," verse 34, and "that world," verse 35. both it means age, or condition of things. In the present age, or epoch, its sons, or its inhabitants, marry, and are given in marriage; but in that age, or under that constitution of things, there will be a different arrangement for its sons, those who are privileged to behold its wonders. In the meantime it would be out of place for us to enter on an inquiry as to the locality of the promised age, or new system of things; and for the present it will answer all purposes to put heaven instead of " that world," and then earth may take the place of" this world." By this arrangement the contrast is brought out more vividly and perspicuously; the contrast between men on earth as it is now, with the existing social state on the planet, and men in heaven, the paradisiacal region. 2nd.-Into that world"-the celestial land-men enter by a resurrection. The age is in the future, beyond death and the grave. As they sleep" during the interval between death and the resurrection, just as happened in the case of our Lord Himself, they must be summoned from Sheol to life that they may enter on the resplendent age; in other words, a resurrection is essential to their admission within its bounds. Since the resurrection is not yet past, we know where they are at present; but, thank God, the bars of their gloomy dungeon are by-and-bye to be broken for their escape. Here is a direct contradiction of the Sadducees-THERE SHALL BE A RESURRECTION; and those who read can make a choice, and the choice involves eternal consequences, between the denial of the questioners and the affirmation of the Son of God. But there is more than an announcement of a resurrection. A peculiarity exists in the case of those who are to reach that world— the heavenly clime-by rising from the dead, and it will strike persons acquainted with the Greek in a moment. Resurrection for them is essentially eclectic; it is a resurrection not merely from the dead, but from amongst the dead. A literal translation of the original rendered in our version, "the resurrection from the dead," would run thus: the resurrection, that one (that special or distinctive one) from amongst (EK) the dead men, or corpses. The following passages illustrate the same peculiarity. In all of them the preposition ek (its other form is ex) indubitably expresses 66 election and preference. John xv. 19, “I have chosen you out of (exelexamen) the world," &c. ; Acts vi. 3, "Wherefore, brethren, look ye out from among (ex) you seven men of honest report," &c.; Acts xv. 14, Simeon hath declared, how God at the first did visit the Gentiles, to take out of (ex) them a people for His name; Acts xxvi. 23, "That Christ should suffer, and that He should be the first that should rise from (ex, out from among) the dead," &c.; Heb. v. 1, "For every high priest taken from among (ex) men is ordained for men in things pertaining to God," &c. Thus we discover that the promise of Jesus, when its complete force is apprehended, amounts to this: saints are to be resurrected out from among the dead; and when so understood it affords us clear vision into the significance of Paul's words, "If by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead” (Philip. iii. 11). To the ordinary reader, that is not, all things taken into account, a very intelligent statement; let the Greek, however, be rendered exactly, and immediately we realise and appreciate the intensity of his desires, the resurrection from amongst the dead. To win that— "the better resurrection "-he was striving, enduring tribulation, and at all times prepared even for martyrdom itself. No wonder, for he knew beyond a doubt that it, and it only-resurrection from amongst the dead-would conduct him into "that world" spoken of by his Lord and Redeemer. His intense anxiety was to be assigned a part in the "first resurrection "--" the resurrection of the just -at the commencement of the Millennium, being aware that over him then, and over all in his gracious position, the "second death" would have no power. "Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: on such the second death hath no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with Him a thousand years" (Rev. xx. 6). 3rd. In "that world" marriage is unknown: they "neither marry nor are given in marriage." The Sadducees asked Him whose wife the woman would be in the resurrection, and this is His reply. In order to make His doctrine appear absurd, at the least to thrust forward a difficultyan insuperable difficulty, as they thought-which it suggested to their embittered acumen, they framed their question, and Jesus sweeps it away by merely announcing that the institution of marriage would then be abolished, society would then be differently constituted, and the propagation of the race would cease. contend that the distinction of sex will then be done away, would be extracting from the words more than they contain, and we decline to indulge in any speculations on the subject. Time will disclose the full meaning of the prediction, and we may tarry in contentment for the arrival of the celestial era, when we shall know even as we are known. 66 To 4th. The resurrected, being worthy, are to be immortal: 'neither can they die any more." How are we to interpret "die" here? Exactly as the Sadducees understood it. With them death was the opposite of conscious life, as when they narrated to Jesus the fact that "the woman died also." Then, the death believers can never be subjected to again. is identical in kind with that under whose dominion the Patriarchs, for instance, were held at the hour of the interview, and long before it occurred. They were unconscious in Sheol, the grave; their souls, the men themselves, were there. They, not a part of them merely, had seen corruption. For the present, they were as if they had never been. But to that state of desolation and oblivion they can by no possibility return after the resurrecting fiat has summoned them to newness of life. In their eternal home" there shall be no more death" (Rev. xxi. 4). Now they rest in hope of a revival to conscious being, and that hope is one to which the infinity of Heaven's power, and the inviolability of Heaven's promise, is pledged. "These all, having a good report through faith, received. not the promise "-they did not at death ascend heavenward to enter on its possession-" God having provided some better thing for us, that they WITHOUT US should not be made perfect" (Heb. xi. 39, 40). Now let us observe what a miserable lessening, as we view it, of the import of this assurance the common idea of a Christian's death produces on the Saviour's language. Surely it is unnecessary to explain at length what that conception is. Suffice it to write : the religious teaching of the period represents them-or their souls or their spirits-passing away at the final hour to glory. There is a little period of gloom, and then all is bright in the "Happy Land; "they are admitted forthwith to the beatific vision; they stand before the throne of the Lamb, and in an ecstasy of gratitude and adoration cast their crowns at His feet, singing the while, in concert with the angelic throng, the anthems of triumph and gladness. In all sobriety of mind, IS THAT DEATH? Bears it any resemblance to death? Rather is it not life in its sublimest form ? One wonders what they need a resurrection for, and where the immense comfort lies in the sacred pledge, "neither can they die any more." The first death was the gate to heaven, surely no great calamity; a second might only once more be a transient eclipse, and another heaven bursts upon their enraptured gaze! Enoch was translated that he might not see death, or die; but between his case and that of the saint who expires in the presence of weeping friends, and in the twinkling of a star is in heaven, where lies the immense difference? They are both in glory, and it greatly puzzles us to know, if the saint who sees death is immediately carried by angels to eternal bliss, how much more favoured the ancient translated worthy could be. The "Master" must intend far more than our limping theology assigns to His speech. He employed no vain, meaningless words; and when He conveyed a promise, and especially such a magnificent one as this seems to |
