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The Typology of Scripture

By Patrick Fairbairn
Published by Smith & English, 1854

Adapted from scan available at:
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p. 342-377

SECTION SIXTH.

THE INHERITANCE DESTINED FOR THE HEIRS OF BLESSING.

The covenant made with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, was connected not only with a seed of blessing, but also with an inheritance of blessing destined for their possession. And in order to get a correct view both of the immediate and of the ultimate bearing of this part of the covenant-promise, it is not less necessary than in the other case, to consider the specific object proposed in its relation to the entire scheme of God, and especially to bear in mind, that it forms part of a series of arrangements, in which the particular or the individual was selected with a view to the general, the universal. In respect to the good to be inherited, as well as in respect to the persons who might be called to inherit it, the end proposed on the part of God was from the first of the most comprehensive nature; and if for a time there was an immediate narrowing of the field of promise, it could only be for the sake of an ultimate expansion. To see more distinctly the truth of this, it may be proper to take a brief retrospect of the past.

From the outset, the earth, in its entire extent and compass, was given for the domain and the heritage of man. He was placed in paradise as his proper home. There he had the throne of his kingdom, but not that he might be pent up within that narrow region; rather that he might from that, as the seat of his empire, and the centre of his operations, go forth upon the world around, and bring it under his sway. His calling was to multiply and replenish the earth, and subdue it; so that it might become to its utmost bounds an extended and peopled paradise. But when the fall entered, though the calling was not withdrawn, nor the possession finally lost, yet man's relative position was changed. He had now, not to work from paradise as a rightful king and lord, but from the blighted outfield of nature's barrenness to work as a servant, in the hope of ultimately reaching a new and better paradise than he had lost. The first promise of grace, and the original symbols of worship, viewed in connection with the facts of history, out of which they grew, presented him with the prospect of an ultimate recovery from the evils of sin and death, and put him in the position of an expectant through faith in God, and toil and suffering in the flesh, of good things yet to come. The precise hope he cherished respecting these good things, or the inheritance he actually looked for, would at first naturally take shape in his imagination from what he had lost. He would fancy, that though he must bear the deserved doom for his transgression, and return again to dust, yet the time would come, when, according to the revealed mercy and loving-kindness of God, the triumph of the adversary would be reversed, the dust of death would be again quickened into life, and the paradise of delight be re-occupied anew, with better hopes of continuance, and with enlarged dimensions suited to its destined possessors. He could scarcely have expected more with the scanty materials which faith and hope yet had to build upon; and with the grace revealed to him, he could scarcely, if really standing in faith and hope, have expected less.

We deem it incredible, that with the grant of the earth so distinctly made to man for his possession, and death so expressly appointed as the penalty of his yielding to the tempter, he should, as a subject of restoring grace, have looked for any other domain as the result of the divine work in his behalf, than the earth itself, or for any other mode of entering on the recovered possession of it, than through a resurrection from the dead. For, how should he have dreamt of a victory over evil in any other region than that where the evil had prevailed? Or, how could the hope of restitution have formed itself in his bosom, excepting as a prospective reinstatement in the benefits he had forfeited? A paradise such as he had originally occupied--but prepared now for the occupation of redeemed multitudes--made to embrace, it may be, the entire territory of the globe--wrested for ever from the serpent's brood, and rendered through all its borders beautiful and good -- that, and nothing else, we conceive, must have been what the first race of patriarchal believers hoped and waited for, as the objective portion of good reserved for them.

But in process of time the deluge came, changing to a considerable extent the outward appearance of the earth, and in certain respects also the government under which it was placed, and so preparing the way for a corresponding change in the hopes that were to be cherished of a coming inheritance. The old world then perished, leaving no remnant of its original paradise, any more than of the giant enormities which had caused it to groan, as in pain, to be delivered. But the new world, cleansed and purified by the judgment of God, was now, without limit or restriction, given to Noah, as the saved head of mankind, that he might keep it for God, replenish and subdue it,---might work it, if such a thing were possible, into the condition of a second paradise. It soon became too manifest, however, that this was not possible; and that the righteousness of faith, of which Noah was heir, was still not that which could prevail to banish sin and death, corruption and misery, from the world. Another and better foundation yet remained to be laid for such a blessed prospect to be realized. But the promise of this very earth was nevertheless given for man's inheritance, and with a promise securing it against any fresh destruction. The needed righteousness was somehow to be wrought upon it, and the region itself reclaimed so as to become a habitation of blessing. This was now the heritage of good set before mankind; to have this realized was the object which they were called of God to hope and strive for. And it was with this object before them, an object, however, to which the events immediately subsequent to the deluge did not seem to be bringing them nearer, but rather to be carrying them more remote, that the call to Abraham entered. This call, as we have already seen, was of the largest and most comprehensive nature as to the personal and subjective good it contemplated. It aimed at the bestowal of blessing--blessing, of course, in the divine sense, including the fullest triumph over sin and death, (for where these are, there can be but the beginnings or smaller drops of blessing;) and the bestowal of them on Abraham and his lineal offspring, first and most copiously, but only as the more effectual way of extending them to all the families of mankind. The grand object of the covenant made with him was to render the world truly blessed in its inhabitants, himself forming the immediate starting-point of the design, which was thereafter to grow and germinate, till the whole circle of humanity were embraced in its beneficent provisions. But in connection with this higher and grander object, there was singled out a portion of the earth for the occupation of his immediate descendants in a particular line--the more special line of blessing; and the conclusion is obvious, even before we go into an examination of particulars, that unless this select portion of the world were placed in utter disagreement with the higher ends of the covenant, it must have been but a stepping-stone to their accomplishment--a kind of first-fruits of the proper good--the occupation of a part of the promised inheritance by a portion of the heirs of blessing to image and prepare for the inheritance of the whole by the entire company of the blessed. The particular must here also have been for the sake of the general, the universal, the ultimate.

Proceeding, however, to a closer view of the subject, we notice, first, the region actually selected for a possession of an inheritance to the covenant-people. The land of Canaan occupied a place in the ancient world that entirely corresponded with the calling of such a people. It was of all lands the best adapted for a people who were at once to dwell in comparative isolation, and yet were to be in a position for acting with effect upon the other nations of the world. Hence it was said by Ezekiel, ch. v. 5, to have been "set in the midst of the countries and the nations"-- the umbilicus terrarum. In its immediate vicinity lay both the most densely-peopled countries, and the greater and more influential states of antiquity--on the south, Egypt, and on the north and east, Assyria and Babylon, the Medes and the Persians. Still closer were the maritime states of Tyre and Sidon, whose vessels frequented every harbour then known to navigation, and whose colonies were planted in each of the three continents of the old world. And the great routes of inland commerce between the civilized nations of Asia and Africa, lay either through a portion of the territory itself, or within a short distance of its borders. Yet bounded as it was on the west by the Mediterranean, on the south by the desert, on the east by the valley of the Jordan, with its two seas of Tiberias and Sodom, and on the north by the towering heights of Lebanon, the people who inhabited it might justly be said to dwell alone, while they had on every side points of contact with the most influential and distant nations. Then, the land itself, in its rich soil and plentiful resources, its varieties of hill and dale, of river and mountain, its connection with the sea on one side, and with the desert on another, rendered it a kind of epitome of the natural world, and fitted it peculiarly for being the home of those who were to be a pattern-people to the nations of the earth. Altogether, it were impossible to conceive a region more wisely selected, and in itself more thoroughly adapted, for the purposes on account of which the family of Abraham were to be set apart. If they were faithful to their covenant engagements, they might there have exhibited, as on an elevated platform before the world, the bright exemplar of a people possessing the characteristics, and enjoying the advantages of a seed of blessing. And the finest opportunities were, at the same time, placed within their reach of proving in the highest sense benefactors to mankind, and extending far and wide the interests of truth and righteousness. Possessing the elements of the world's blessing, they were placed where these elements might tell most readily and powerfully on the world's inhabitants; and the present possession of such a region was at once an earnest of the whole inheritance, and, as the world then stood, an effectual step toward its realization. Abraham, as the heir of Canaan, was thus also "the heir of the world" as a heritage of blessing. (Rom. iv, 13.) [1]

But, next, let us mark the precise words of the promise to Abraham concerning this inheritance. As it first occurs, it runs, "Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will shew thee, and I will make of thee a great nation," &c. Gen. xii. 1. Then, when he reached Canaan, the promise was renewed to him in these terms: "Unto thy seed will I give this land," v. 7. More fully and definitely, after Lot separated from Abraham, was it again given: "Lift up now thine eyes, and look from the place where thou art northward; and southward; and eastward, and westward: for all the land which thou seest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed for ever." xiii. 14, 15. Again, in chap. xv. 7, "I am the Lord that brought thee out of Ur of the Chaldees, to give thee this land to inherit it" and toward the close of the same chapter, it is said, "In the same day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river." In chap. 17th, the promise was formally ratified as a covenant, and sealed by the ordinance of circumcision; and there the words used respecting the inheritance are, "I will give unto thee, and to thy seed after thee, the land wherein thou art a stranger, all the land of Canaan for an everlasting possession, and I will be their God." We read only of one occasion in the life of Isaac, when he received the promise of the inheritance, and the words then used were, "Unto thee, and unto thy seed, will I give all these countries, and I will perform the oath which I sware unto Abraham thy father," chap. xxvi. 3. Such also were the words addressed to Jacob at Bethel, "I am the Lord God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac, the land whereon thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed;" and in precisely the same terms was the promise again made to Jacob many years afterwards, as recorded in chap. xxxv. 12.

It cannot but appear striking, that to each one of these patriarchs successively, the promise of the land of Canaan should have been given, first to themselves, and then to their posterity; while, during their own lifetimes, they never were permitted to get beyond the condition of strangers and pilgrims, having no right to any possession within its borders, and obliged to purchase, at the marketable value, a small field for a burying-ground. How shall we account for the promise, then, so uniformly running, "to thee," and to "thy seed?" Some, as Ainsworth and Bush, tell us that and here is the same as even, to thee, even to thy seed; as if a man were all one with his offspring, or the name of the latter were but another name for himself! Gill gives a somewhat more plausible turn to it, thus: "God gave Abram the title to it now, and to them the possession of it for future times; gave him it to sojourn in now where he pleased, and for his posterity to dwell in hereafter." But the gift was the land for an inheritance, not for a place of sojourn; and a title, which left him, personally without a foot's-breadth of possession, could not be regarded in that light as any real boon to him. Warburton, as usual, confronts the difficulty more boldly: "In the literal sense, it is a promise of the land of Canaan to Abraham and to his posterity; and in this sense it was literally fulfilled, though Abraham was never personally in possession of it; since Abraham and his posterity, put collectively, signify the Race Of Abraham; and that race possessed the land of Canaan. And surely God may be allowed to explain his own promise: now, though he tells Abraham, he would give him the land, yet, at the same time, he assures him, that it would be many hundred years before his posterity should be put in possession of it, Gen. xv. 13, &c. And as concerning himself, that he should go to his fathers in peace, and be buried in a good old age. Thus we see, that both what God explained to be his meaning, and what Abraham understood him to mean, was, that his posterity, after a certain time, should be led into possession of the land." [2]

But if this were really the whole meaning, the thought naturally occurs, it is strange so plain a meaning should have been so ambiguously expressed. Why not simply say, "thy posterity," if posterity alone were intended, and so render unnecessary the somewhat awkward expedient of sinking the patriarch's individuality in the history of his race? Why, also, should the promise have been renewed at a later period, with a pointed distinction between Abraham and his posterity, yet with an assurance that the promise was to him as well as to them: "And I will give unto thee, and to thy seed after thee, the land wherein thou art a stranger?" And why should Stephen have made such special reference to the apparent incongruity between the personal condition of Abraham and the promise given to him, as if there were some further meaning in what was said than lay on the surface--"He gave him none inheritance in it, no not so much as to set his foot on, yet he promised to give it to him for a possession, and to his seed after him?" Acts vii. 5.

We do not see how these questions can receive any satisfactory explanation, so long as no account is made of the personal standing of the patriarchs in regard to the promise. And there are others equally left without explanation. For no sufficient reason can be assigned on that hypothesis, for the extreme anxiety of Jacob and Joseph to have their bones carried to the sepulchre of their fathers, in the land of Canaan--betokening, as it evidently seemed to do, a conviction, that to them also belonged a personal interest in the land. Neither does it appear how the fact of Abraham, and his immediate offspring, "confessing that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth," which they did no otherwise, that we are aware of, than by living as strangers and pilgrims in Canaan, should have proved that they were looking for and desiring a better country, that is, an heavenly one. And then, strange to think, if nothing more were meant by the promise than the view now under consideration would imply, when the posterity who were to occupy the land did obtain possession of it, we find the men of faith taking up precisely the same confession as to their being strangers and pilgrims in it, which was witnessed by their forefathers, who never had it in possession. Even after they became possessors, it seems, they were still like their wandering ancestors, expectants and heirs of something better, and faith had to be exercised, lest they should lose the proper fulfilment of the promise, (Ps. xxxix. 12, xcv., cxix. 19; 1 Chron xxix. 15.) Surely if the earthly Canaan had been the whole inheritance they were warranted to look for, after they were settled in it, the condition of pilgrims and strangers no longer was theirs--they had reached their proper destiny--they were dwelling in their appointed home--the promise had received its due fulfilment.

These manifold difficulties and apparent inconsistencies will vanish--(and we see no other way in which they can be satisfactorily removed)--by supposing, what is certainly in accordance with the tenor of revelation, that the promise of Canaan as an inheritance to the people of God was part of a connected and growing scheme of preparatory arrangements, which were to have their proper outgoing and final termination in the establishment of Christ's everlasting kingdom. Viewed thus, the grant of Canaan must be regarded as a kind of second Eden, a sacred region once more possessed in this fallen world--God's own land --out of which life and blessing were to come for all lands--the present type of a world restored and blessed. And if so, then we may naturally expect the following consequences to have arisen: --First, that whatever transactions may have taken place concerning the actual Canaan, these would be all ordered so as to subserve the higher design, in connection with which the appointment was made; and second, that as a sort of vail must have been allowed meanwhile to hang over this ultimate design, (for the issue of redemption could not be made fully manifest till the redemption itself was brought in), a certain degree of dubiety would attach to some of the things spoken regarding it--these would appear strange, or impossible, if viewed only in reference to the temporary inheritance--and would have the effect, with men of faith, as no doubt they were intended, to compel the mind to break through the outward shell of the promise, and contemplate the rich kernel enclosed within. Thus the promise being made so distinctly and repeatedly to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, while personally they were allowed no settled footing in the inheritance bestowed, could scarcely fail to impress them, and their more pious descendants, with the conviction, that higher and more important relations were included under those in which they stood to the land of Canaan during their earthly sojourn, and such as required another order of things to fulfil them. They must have been convinced, that for some great and substantial reason, not by a mere fiction of the imagination, they had been identified by God with their posterity as to their interest in the promised inheritance. And so, they must have felt shut up to the belief, that when God's purposes were completely fulfilled, his word of promise would be literally verified, and that their respective deaths should ultimately be found to raise no effectual barrier in the way of their actual share in the inheritance; as the same God who would have raised Isaac from the dead, had he been put to death, to maintain the integrity of his word, was equally able, on the same account, to raise them up.

Certainly the exact and perfect manner in which the other line of promise, that which respected a seed to Abraham, was fulfilled, gave reason to expect a fulfilment in regard to this also, in the most proper and complete sense. Abraham did not at first understand how closely God's words were to be interpreted; and after waiting in vain for some years for the promised seed by Sarah, he began to think, that God must have meant an offspring that should be his only by adoption, and seems to have thought of constituting the son of his steward his heir. Then, when admonished of his error in entertaining such a thought, and informed, that the seed was to spring from his own loins, he acceded, after another long period of fruitless waiting, to the proposal of Sarah regarding Hagar, under the impression, that though he was to be the father of the seed, yet it should not be by his proper wife; the expected good was to be obtained by a worldly expedient, and to be his only in a kind of secondary sense. Here again, however, he was admonished of error, commanded to cease from such unworthy devices, and walk in uprightness before God; reminded that He, who made the promise, was the Almighty God, to whom, therefore, no impossibility connected with the age of Sarah could be of any moment, and assured that the long promised child was to be the son of him and his lawful spouse. [3] And when Abraham was thus taught to interpret one part of the promise in the most exact and literal sense, how natural was it to infer, that he must do the same also with the other part? If when God said, "Thou shalt be the father of a seed," it became clear that the word could receive nothing short of the strictest fulfilment; what else, what less could be expected, when God said, "Thou shalt inherit this land," than that the fulfilment was to be equally proper and complete? The providence of God, which furnished such an interpretation in the one case, could not but beget the conviction, that a similar principle of interpretation was to be applied to the other, and that as the promise of the inheritance was given to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as well as to their seed, so it should be made good in their experience, not less than in that of their posterity.

No doubt, such a belief implied, that there must be a resurrection from the dead before the promise could be realized; and to those, who conceive that immortality was altogether a blank page to the eye of an ancient Israelite, the idea may seem to carry its own refutation along with it. The Rabbis, however, with all their blindness, seemed to have had juster, because more scriptural, notions of the truth and purposes of God, in this respect. For, on Ex. vi. 4, the Talmud in Gemara, in reply to the question, "Where does the law teach the resurrection of the dead?" thus distinctly answers, "In that place where it is said, I have established my covenant with thee, to give thee the land of Canaan. For it is not said, with you, but with thee, (lit. yourselves.)" [4] The same answer substantially, we are told, was returned by Rabbi Gamaliel, when the Sadducees pressed him with a similar question. And in a passage quoted by Warburton (B. vi. sec. 3,) from Manasseh Ben-Israel, we find the argument still more fully stated: "God said to Abraham, I will give to thee, and to thy seed after thee, the land wherein thou art a stranger. But it appears, that Abraham and the other patriarchs did not possess that land; therefore it is of necessity that they should be raised up to enjoy the good promises,--else the promises of God should be vain and false. So that we have here a proof, not only of the immortality of the soul, but also of the essential foundation of the law, namely, the resurrection of the dead." It is surely not too much to suppose, that what Jewish Rabbis could so certainly draw from the word of God, may have been perceived by wise and holy patriarchs. And the fact, of which an inspired writer assures us, that Abraham so readily believed in the possible resurrection of Isaac to a present life, is itself conclusive proof, that he would not be slow to believe in his own resurrection to a future life, when the word of promise seemed no otherwise capable of receiving its proper fulfilment. Indeed, the doctrine of a resurrection from the dead--not that of the immortality of the soul--is the form which the prospect of an after-state of being must have chiefly assumed in the minds of the earlier believers, because that which most obviously and naturally grew out of the promises made to them, as well as most accordant with their native cast of thought. And nothing but the undue influence of the Gentile philosophy on men's minds could have led them to imagine, as they generally have done, the reverse to have been the ease.

In the writings of the Greeks and Romans, especially those of the former, we find the distinction constantly drawn between matter and spirit, body and soul,---and the one generally represented as having only elements of evil inhering in it, and the other elements of good. So far from looking for the resurrection of the body, as necessary to the final well-being of men, full and complete happiness was held to be impossible so long as the soul was united to the body. Death was so far considered by them a boon, that it emancipated the ethereal principle from its prison-house; and their visions of future bliss, when such visions were entertained, presented to the eye of hope, scenes of delight, in which the disembodied spirit alone was to find its satisfaction and repose. Hence it is quite natural to hear the better part of them speaking with contempt of all that concerned the body, looking upon death as a final, as well as a happy, release from its vile affections, and promising themselves a perennial enjoyment in the world of spirits. "In what way shall we bury you?" said Crito to Socrates, immediately before his death. "As you please," was the reply. "I cannot, my friends, persuade Crito, that I am the Socrates that is now conversing, and ordering every thing that has been said; but he thinks I am that man, whom he will shortly see a corpse, and asks how you should bury me. But what I have all along been talking so much about,--that when I shall have drunk the poison, I shall no longer stay with you, but shall, forsooth, go away to certain felicities of the blest.---this I seem to myself to have been saying in vain, whilst comforting at the same time you and myself." And in another part of the same dialogue (Phaedo), after speaking of the impossibility of attaining to the true knowledge and discernment of things, so long as the soul is kept in the lumpish and impure body, he is represented as congratulating himself on the prospect now immediately before him: "If these things are true, there is much reason to hope, that he who has reached my present position, shall there soon abundantly obtain that, for the sake of which I have laboured so hard during this life; so that I encounter with a lively hope my appointed removal." No doubt such representations give a highly coloured and far too favourable view of the expectations which the more speculative part of the heathen world cherished of a future state of being,--for to most of them the whole was overshadowed with doubt and uncertainty, too often, indeed, the subject of absolute unbelief. But in this respect the idea it presents is perfectly correct, that so far as hope was exercised toward the future, it connected itself altogether with the condition and destiny of the soul; and so abhorrent was the thought of a resurrection of the body to their notions of future good, that Tertullian did not hesitate to affirm the heresy, which denied that Christian doctrine to be the common result of the whole Gentile philosophy. [5]

It was precisely the reverse with believers in ancient and primitive times. Their prospects of a blessed immortality were mainly associated with the resurrection of the body; and the dark period to them was the intermediate state between death and the resurrection, which even at a comparatively late stage in their history, presented itself to their view as a state of gloom, silence, and forgetfulness. They contemplated man, not in the light in which an airy, speculative philosophy might regard him, but in the more natural and proper one of a compound being, to which matter as essentially belongs as spirit, and in the wellbeing of which there must unite the happy condition both of soul and body. Nay, the materials from which they had to form their views and prospects of a future state of being, pointed most directly to the resurrection, and passed over in silence the period intervening between that and death. Thus, the primeval promise, that the seed of the woman should bruise the head of the serpent, taught them to live in expectation of a time when death should be swallowed up in victory; for death being the fruit of the serpent's triumph, what else could his complete overthrow be than the reversal of death--the resurrection from the dead? So also the prophecy embodied in the emblems of the tree of life, still standing in the midst of the garden of Eden, with its way of approach meanwhile guarded by the flaming sword, and possessed by the cherubim of glory--implying, that when the spoiler should be himself spoiled, and the way of life should again be laid open for the children of promise, they should have access to the food of immortality, which, they could only do by rising out of death and entering on the resurrection-state. The same conclusion grew, as we have just seen, most naturally, and we may say inevitably, out of that portion of the promises made to the fathers of the Jewish race, which assured them of a personal inheritance in the land of Canaan; for dying, as they did, without having obtained any inheritance in it, how could the word of promise be verified to them, but by their being raised from the dead to receive what it warranted them to expect? In perfect accordance with these earlier intimations, or ground-promises, as they may be called, we find, as we descend the stream of time, and listen to the more express utterances of prophecy regarding the hopes of the church, that the grand point on which they are all made to centre, is the resurrection from the dead; and it is so, no doubt, for the reason, that as death is from the first represented as the wages of sin, the evil pre-eminently under which humanity groans, so the abolition of death by mortality being swallowed tip of life, is understood to carry in its train the restitution of all things.

The Psalms, which are so full of the experiences and hopes of David, and other holy men of old, while they express only fear and discomfort in regard to the state after death, not unfrequently point to the resurrection from the dead as the great consummation of desire and expectation: "My flesh also shall rest in hope, for thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, neither wilt thou suffer thine holy one to see corruption," Ps. xvi. 9, 10. "Like sheep they are laid in the grave; death shall feed on them; and the upright shall have dominion over them in the morning; and their beauty shall consume in the grave from their dwelling; but God will redeem my soul from the power of the grave, for he shall receive me," xlix. 14, 15. The prophets, who are utterly silent regarding the state of the disembodied soul, speak still more explicitly of a resurrection from the dead, and evidently connect with it the brightest hopes of the church. Thus Isaiah, "He will swallow up death in victory," xxv. 8; and again, "Thy dead men shall live, together with my dead body shall they arise; awake and sing, ye that dwell in the dust," xxvi. 19. To the like effect, Hosea xiii. 14, "I will ransom them from the power of the grave, I will redeem them from death; O death, I will be thy plagues; O grave, I will be thy destruction," The vision of the dry bones, in the thirty-seventh chapter of Ezekiel, whether understood of a literal resurrection from the state of the dead, or of a figurative resurrection, a political resuscitation from a downcast and degraded condition, strongly indicates, in either case, the characteristic nature of their future prospects. Then, finally, in Daniel, we read, ch. xii., not only that he was himself, after resting for a season among the dead, "to stand in his lot at the end of the days," but also that at the great crisis of the church's history, when they should be for ever rescued from the power of the enemy, "many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth should awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt."

Besides these direct and palpable proofs of a resurrection in the Jewish scriptures, and of the peculiar place it holds there, the Rabbinical and modern Jews, it is well known, refer to many others as inferentially teaching the same doctrine. That the earlier Jews were not behind them, either in the importance they attached to the doctrine, or in their persuasion of its frequent recurrence in the Old Testament scriptures, we may assuredly gather from the tenacity with which all but the Sadducees evidently held it in our Lord's time, and the ready approval which he met with when inferring it from the declaration made to Moses, "I am the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob." It is nothing to the purpose, therefore, to allege, as has often been done, against any clear or well-grounded belief, on the part of the ancient Jews, regarding a future and immortal state of being, such passages as speak of the darkness, silence, and nothingness of the condition immediately subsequent to death, and during the sojourn of the body in the tomb. For that precisely was the period in respect to which their light failed them. Of a heathenish immortality, which ascribed to the soul a perpetual existence separate from the body, and considered its happiness, when thus separate, as the ultimate good of man, they certainly knew and believed nothing. But we are persuaded, no tenet was more firmly and sacredly held among them from the earliest periods of their history, than that of the resurrection from the dead, as the commencement of a final and everlasting portion of good to the people of God. And when the Jewish doctors gave to the resurrection of the dead a place among the thirteen fundamental articles of their faith, and cut off from all inheritance in a future state of felicity, those who deny it, we have no reason to regard the doctrine as attaining to a higher place in their hands, than it did with their fathers before the Christian era. [6]

There was something more, however, in the Jewish faith concerning the resurrection, than its being simply held as an article in their creed, and held to be a fact that should one day be realized in the history of the church. It stood in the closest connection with the promise made to the fathers, as some of the foregoing testimonies shew, and especially with the work and advent of Messiah. They not only believed that there would be a resurrection of the dead, to a greater or less extent, when Messiah came (see Lightfoot, Hor. Heb. John i. 21, v. 25), but that his work, especially as regards the promised inheritance, could only be carried into effect through the resurrection. Levi [7] holds it as a settled point, that "the resurrection of the dead will be very near the time of the redemption," meaning by the redemption the full and final enjoyment of all blessing in the land of promise, and that such is the united sense of all the prophets who have spoken of the times of Messiah. In this, indeed, he only expresses the opinion commonly entertained by Jewish writers, who constantly assert that there will be a resurrection of the whole Jewish race, to meet and rejoice with Christ, when he comes to Jerusalem, and who often thrust forward their views regarding it, when there is no proper occasion to do so. Thus, in Sohar, Genes, fol. 77, as quoted by Schoettgen, II. p. 367, R. Nehorai is reported to have said, on Abraham's speaking to his servant, Gen. xxiv. 2, "We are to understand the servant of God, his senior domus. And who is he? Metatron (Messiah), who, as we have said, will bring forth the souls from their sepulchres." But a higher authority still may be appealed to. For the apostle to the Gentiles thus expresses--and with evident approval as to the general principle--the mind of his countrymen in regard to the Messiah and the resurrection: "I now stand and am judged for the hope of the promise made of God unto our fathers; unto which promise our twelve tribes, instantly serving God day and night, hope to come--for which hope's sake, king Agrippa, I am accused of the Jews. Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you, that God should raise the dead?" [8] The connection, in which the resurrection of the dead is here placed with the great promise of a Messiah, for which the Jews are represented as so eagerly and intently looking, evidently implies, that the two were usually coupled together in the Jewish faith, nay that the one could reach its proper fulfilment only through the performance of the other, and that in believing on a Messiah risen from the dead, the apostle was acting in perfect accordance with the hopes of his nation.

But now, to apply all this to the subject under consideration, the promised inheritance,--if that inheritance was promised in a way, which from the very first implied a resurrection from the dead, before it could be rightly enjoyed; and if all along, even when Canaan was possessed by the seed of Abraham, the men of faith still looked forward to another inheritance, when the curse should be utterly abolished, the blessing fully received, and death finally swallowed up in victory,--then, a twofold boon must have been conveyed to Abraham and his seed, under the promise of the land of Canaan; one to be realized in the natural, and the other in the resurrection state,--a mingled and temporary good before, and a complete and permanent one after, the restitution of all things by the Messiah. So that, in regard to the ultimate designs of God, the land of Canaan would serve much the same purpose as the garden of Eden, with its tree of life and cherubim of glory--the same, and yet more,---for it not only presented to the eye of faith a type, but also gave in its possession an earnest of the inheritance of a paradisiacal world. The difference, however, is not essential, and only indicates an advance in God's revelations and purposes of grace, making what was ultimately designed for the faithful more sure to them by an instalment, through a singular train of providential arrangements, in a present inheritance of good. They thus enjoyed a real and substantial pledge of the better things to come, which were to be fulfilled in the kingdom of God.

But what were these better things themselves? What was thus indicated to Abraham and his believing posterity, as their coming inheritance of good? If it was clear that they must have attained to the resurrection from the dead, before they could properly enjoy the possession, it could not be Canaan in its natural state, as a region of the present earth, that was to be inherited. For that considered as the abode of Abraham and all his elect posterity, when raised from the tomb and collected into an innumerable multitude, must have appeared of far too limited dimensions, as well as of unsuitable character. Though it might well seem a vast inheritance for any living generation that should spring from the loins of Abraham, yet it was palpably inadequate for the possession of his collected seed, when it should have become like the stars of heaven for multitude. And not only so, but as the risen body is to be, not a natural, but a glorified one, the inheritance it is to occupy must be a glorified one too. The fairest portions of the earth, in its present fallen and corruptible state, could be a fit possession for men only so long as in their persons they are themselves fallen and corruptible. When redeemed from the power of the grave, and entered on the glories of the new creation, the natural Canaan will be as unfit to be their proper home and possession, as the original Eden would have been with its tree of life. Much more so, indeed--for the earth in its present state is adapted to the support and enjoyment of man, as constituted, not only after the earthly Adam, but after him as underlying the pernicious effects of the curse. And the ultimate inheritance destined for Abraham and the heirs of promise, which was to become theirs after the resurrection from the dead, must be as much higher and better than any thing which the earth, in its present state, can furnish, as man's nature, when glorified, shall be higher and better than it is while in bondage to sin and death.

Nothing less than this certainly is taught in what is said of the inheritance, as expected by the patriarchs, in the Epistle to the Hebrews: "These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. For they that say such things, declare plainly, that they seek a country. And truly, if they had been mindful of that country from whence they came out, they might have had opportunity to have returned. But now they desire a better country, that is, an heavenly; wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he hath prepared for them a city." [9] Without entering into any minute commentary on this passage, it cannot but be regarded as perfectly conclusive of two points: First, that Abraham, and the heirs with him of the same promise, did understand and believe, that the inheritance secured to them under the promise of Canaan (for that was the only word spoken to them of an inheritance), was one in which they had a personal interest. And then, secondly, that the inheritance as it was to be occupied and enjoyed by them, was to be not a temporary, but a final one,--one that might fitly be designated a "heavenly country," a city built by divine hands, and based on immoveable foundations,---in short, the ultimate and proper resting-place of redeemed and risen natures. This was what these holy patriarchs expected and desired,---what they were warranted to expect and desire;--for their conduct in this respect is the subject of commendation, and is justified on the special ground, that otherwise God must have been ashamed to be called their God. And, finally, it was what they found contained in the promise to them, of an inheritance in the land, in which they were pilgrims and strangers; for to that promise alone could they look for the special ground of the hopes they cherished of a sure and final possession.

But the question again returns, what is that possession itself really to be? That it cannot be the country itself of Palestine, either in its present condition, or as it might become under any system of culture of which nature is capable, is too obvious to require any lengthened proof. The twofold fact, that the possession was to be man's ultimate, heavenly inheritance, and that it could be attained only after the resurrection from the dead, clearly forbids the supposition of its being the literal land of Canaan, under any conceivable form of renovated fruitfulness and beauty. This is also evident from the nature of the promise, that formed the ground of Abraham's hope, --which, made mention only of the land of Canaan,--and which, as pointing to an ulterior inheritance, must have belonged to that combination of type with prophecy, which we placed first, viz. having the promise, or prediction, not in the language employed, but in the typical character of the object which that language described. The promise made to Abraham was simple enough in itself. It gave assurance of a land distinctly marked off by certain geographical boundaries. It was not properly in the words of that promise that he could read his destiny to any future and ultimate inheritance; but putting together the two things, that the promised good could only be realized fully in an after-state of being, and that all the relations of the church then were preparative and temporary representations of better things to come, he might then perceive, that the earthly Canaan was a type of what was finally to be enjoyed. Thus the establishment of his offspring there would be regarded as a prophecy, in fact, of the exaltation of the whole of an elect seed to their destined state of blessing and glory. But such being the case,--the prediction standing altogether in the type,--the thing predicted and promised must in conformity with all typical relations, have been another and far higher thing than that which served to predict and promise it, --Canaan could not be the type of itself,--it could only represent, on the lower platform of nature, what was hereafter to be developed on the loftier arena of God's everlasting kingdom,--and as far as the things of fallen and corrupt nature differ from, and are inferior to, those of redemption, so far must the rest of Canaan have differed from, and been inferior to, "that rest which remaineth for the people of God."

What that final rest or inheritance, which forms the antitype to Canaan, really is, we may gather from the words of the apostle concerning it in Eph. i. 14, where he calls the Spirit "the earnest of our inheritance, until the redemption of the purchased possession." [10] It is plain, that the subject here discoursed of, is not our persons, but our goods; not what believers in their souls and bodies are to be hereafter, but what is prepared for their enjoyment. For the inheritance which belongs to a person, must always be separate from the person himself. And as that which is called an inheritance in the one clause, is undoubtedly the same with that which in the other is named a possession, purchased or acquired, but not yet redeemed, the redemption of the possession must be a work to be accomplished for us, and not to be wrought in us. It must be a change to the better, effected not upon our persons, but upon the outward provision secured for their ulterior happiness and well-being.

It is true, that the church of God, the company of sound and genuine believers, is sometimes called the inheritance or purchased possession of God. In Old Testament Scripture his people are styled his "heritage," "his treasure;" and in New Testament Scripture we find St Peter addressing them as "a peculiar people," or literally, a people for a possession--namely, a possession of God, acquired or purchased by the precious blood of his dear Son. The question here, however, is not of what may be called God's inheritance, but of ours; not of our redemption from the bondage of evil as a possession of God, which he seeks to enjoy free from all evil, but of that which we are ourselves to possess and occupy as our final portion. And as we could with no propriety be called our own inheritance, or our own possession, it must be something apart from, and out of ourselves, which is here to be understood, --not a state of being to be held, but a portion of blessing and glory to be enjoyed.

Now, whatever the inheritance or possession may be in itself, and whatever the region where it is to be enjoyed, when it is spoken of as needing to be redeemed, we are evidently taught to regard it, as something that has been alienated from us, but is again to be made ours; not a possession altogether new, but an old possession, lost, and again to be reclaimed from the powers of evil, which now overmaster and destroy it. So was it certainly with our persons. They were sold under sin. With our loss of righteousness before God, we lost, at the same time, our spiritual freedom, and all that essentially belonged to the pure and blessed life, in the possession of which we were created. Instead of this we became subject to the tyrannous dominion of the prince of darkness, holding us captive in our souls to the foul and wretched bondage of sin, and in our bodies to the mortality and corruption of death. The redemption of our persons is just their recovery from this lost and ruinous state, to the freedom of God's children, and the blessedness of immortal life in his presence and glory. It proceeds at every step by acts of judgment upon the great adversary and oppressor, who took advantage of the evil, and ever seeks to drive it to the uttermost. And when the work shall be completed by the redemption of the body from the power of the grave, there shall then be the breaking up of the last bond of oppression that lay upon our natures,--the putting down of the last enemy, that the son of wickedness may no longer vex or injure us.

In this redemption-process, which is already begun upon the people of God, and shall be consummated in the glories of the resurrection, it is the same persons, the same soul and body, which, have experience both of the evil and of the good. Though the change is so great and wonderful, that it is sometimes called a new creation, it is not in the sense of any thing being brought into existence, which previously had no being. Such language is simply used on account of the happy and glorious transformation, that is made to pass upon the natures which already exist, but exist only in a state of misery and oppression. And when the same language is applied to the inheritance, which is used of the persons of those who are to enjoy it, what can this indicate, but that the same things are true concerning it? The bringing in of that inheritance, in its finished state of fulness and glory, is in like manner called "the making of all things new;" but it is so called only in respect to the wonderful transformation which is to be wrought upon the old things, which are thereby to receive another constitution, and present another aspect, than they were wont to do before. For that the possession is to be redeemed, bespeaks it as a thing to be recovered, not to be made,--a thing already in being, though so changed from its original destination, so marred and spoiled, overlaid with so many forms of evil, and so far from serving the ends for which it is required, that it may be said to be alienated from us, in the hands of the enemy, for the prosecution of his purposes of evil.

Now, what is it, of which this can be affirmed? If it is said heaven, and by that is meant what is commonly understood, some region far removed from this lower world, in the sightless realms of ether, then, we ask, was heaven in that sense ever man's? Has it become obnoxious to any evils, from which it must be delivered? or has it fallen into the hands of an enemy and an oppressor, from whose evil sway it must again be redeemed? None of these things surely can be said of such a heaven. It would be an altogether new inheritance, a possession never held, consequently never lost, and incapable of being redeemed. And there is nothing that answers such a description, or can possibly realize the conditions of such an inheritance, but what lies within the bounds and compass of this earth itself, with which the history of man has hitherto been connected both in good and evil, and where all the possession is, that he can properly be said either to have held or to have lost. 

Let us again recur to the past. Man's original inheritance was a lordship or dominion, stretching over the whole earth, but extending no farther. It entitled him to the ministry of all creatures within its borders, and the enjoyment of all fruits and productions upon its surface--one only excepted, for the trial of his obedience (Gen, i. 28-31; Ps. viii.) When he fell, he fell from his dominion, as well as from his purity; the inheritance departed from him; he was driven from paradise, the throne and palace of his kingdom; labour, servitude, and suffering, became his portion in the world; he was doomed to be a bondsman, a hewer of wood and drawer of water, on what was formed to be his inheritance, and all that he has since been able, by hard toil and industry, to acquire, is but a partial and temporary command over some fragments of what was at first all his own. Nor is that the whole. For with man's loss of the inheritance, Satan was permitted to enter, and extend his usurped sway over the domain, from which man has been expelled as its proper lord. And this he does by filling the world with agencies and works of evil,--spreading disorder through the elements of nature, and disaffection among the several orders of being,--above all, corrupting the minds of men, so as to lead them to cast off the authority of God, and to use the things he confers on them for their own selfish ends and purposes, for the injury and oppression of their fellow-men, for the encouragement of sin and suppression of the truth of God, for rendering the world, in short, as far as possible, a region of darkness and not of light, a kingdom of Satan and not of God, a theatre of malice, corruption, and disorder, not of love, harmony, and blessedness.

Now, as the redemption of man's person consists in his being rescued from the dominion of Satan, from the power of sin in his soul, and from the reign of death in his body, which are the two forms of Satan's dominion over man's nature; what can the redemption of the inheritance be, but the rescuing of this earth from the manifold ills, which through the instrumentality of Satan have come to lodge in its bosom,--purging its elements of all mischief and disorder,--changing it from being the vale of tears and the charnel-house of death, into a paradise of life and blessing,--restoring to man, himself then redeemed, and fitted for the honour, the sceptre of a real dominion over all its fulness,--- in a word, rendering it in character and design what it was on creation's morn, when the sons of God shouted for joy, and God himself looked with satisfaction on the goodness and order and beauty, which pervaded this portion of his universe? To do such a work as this upon the earth, would manifestly be to redeem the possession, which man by disobedience forfeited and lost, and a new title to which has been purchased by Christ for all his spiritual seed; for were that done, the enemy would be completely foiled and cast out, and man's proper inheritance restored.

But some are perhaps ready to ask, is that, then, all the inheritance that the redeemed have to look for? Is their abode still to be upon earth, and their portion of good to be confined to what may be derived from its material joys and occupations? Is paradise restored, to be simply the re-establishment and enlargement of paradise lost? We might reply to such questions by putting similar ones regarding the persons of the redeemed. Are these still, after all, to be the same persons they were during the days of their sojourn on earth? Is the soul, when expatiating amid the glorious scenes of eternity, to live in the exercise of the same powers and faculties, which it employed on the things of time? And is the outward frame, in which it is to lodge and act and enjoy itself, to be that very tabernacle, which it bore here in weakness, and which it left behind to rot and perish in the tomb? Would any one feel at a moment's loss to answer such questions in the affirmative? Does it in any respect shock our feelings, or lower the expectations we feel warranted to cherish concerning our future state, when we think, that the very soul and body, which together constitute and make up the being we now are, shall also constitute and make up the being we are to be hereafter? Assuredly not; for however little we know what we are to be hereafter, we are not left in ignorance, that both soul and body shall be freed from all evil; and not only so, but in the process shall be unspeakably refined and elevated. We know it is the purpose of God to magnify in us the riches of his grace by raising our natures higher than the fall has brought them low---to glorify, while he redeems them, and so to render them capable of spheres of action and enjoyment beyond, not only what eye has seen or ear has heard, but even what has entered into the mind of man to conceive.

And why may we not think and reason thus also, concerning the inheritance which these redeemed natures are to occupy? Why may not God do a like work of purification and refinement on this solid earth, so as to transform and adapt it into a fit residence for man in glory? Why may not, why should not that, which has become for man as fallen, the house of bondage, and the field of ruin, become also for man redeemed the habitation of peace, and the region of pre-eminent delight? Surely He, who from the very stones can raise up children unto Abraham, and who will bring forth from the noisome corruption of the tomb, forms clothed with honour and majesty, can equally change the vile and disordered condition of the world, as it now is, and make it fit to be "the house of the glory of his kingdom,"--a world, where the eye of redeemed manhood shall be regaled with sights of surpassing loveliness, and his ear ravished with sounds of sweetest melody, and his desires satisfied with purest delight,--aye, a world, it may be, which, as it alone of all creation's orbs has been honoured to bear the footsteps of an incarnate God, and witness the performance of his noblest work, so shall it be chosen as the region, around which he will pour the richest manifestations of his glorious presence, and possibly send from it, by the ministry of his redeemed, communications of love and kindness, to the farthest bounds of his habitable universe!

No; when rightly considered, it is not a low and degrading view of the inheritance, which is reserved for the heirs of salvation, to place it in the possession of this very earth, which we now inhabit, after it shall have been redeemed and glorified. I feel it for myself to be rather an ennobling and comforting thought; and were I left to choose, out of all creation's bounds, the place where my redeemed nature is to find its local habitation, enjoy its redeemer's presence, and reap the fruits of his costly purchase, I would prefer none to this. For if destined to so high a purpose, I know it will be made in all respects what it should be,-- the paradise of delight, the very heaven of glory and blessing, which I desire and need. And, then, the connection between what it now is, and what it shall have become, must impart to it an interest, which can belong to no other region in the universe. If any thing could enhance our exaltation to the lordship of a glorious and blessed inheritance, it would surely be the feeling of possessing it in the very place, where we were once miserable bondsmen of sin and corruption. And if any thing should dispose us to bear meekly our present heritage of evil, to quicken our aspirations after the period of deliverance, and to raise our affections above the vain and perishable things around us, it should be the thought, that all we can now either have or experience from the world is part of a possession forfeited and accursed, but that it only waits for the transforming power of God to be changed into the inheritance of the saints in light, when heaven and earth shall be mingled into one.

But if this renovated earth is to be itself the inheritance of the redeemed,--if it, in the first instance at least, is to be the heaven where they are to reap life everlasting, how, it may be asked, can heaven be spoken of as above us, and represented as the higher region of God's presence? Such language is never, that we are aware of, used in Scripture to denote the final dwelling-place of God's people; and if it were used there, as it often is in popular discourse, it would need, of course, to be understood with that limitation, which requires to be put upon all our more definite descriptions of a future world. To regard expressions of the kind referred to, as determining our final abode to be over our heads, were to betray a childish ignorance of the fact, that what is such by day, is the reverse of what is so by night. Such language properly denotes the superior nature of the heavenly inheritance, and not its relative position. God can make any region of his universe a heaven, since heaven is there, where he manifests his presence and glory; and why might he not do so here, as well as in any other part of creation?---But is it not said, that the kingdom, in which the redeemed are to live and reign for ever, was prepared for them before the foundation of the world; and how, then, can the scene of it be placed on this earth, still waiting to be redeemed for the purpose? The preparation there meant, however, cannot possibly be an actual fitting up of the place which believers are to occupy with their Lord; for wherever it is, the apostle tells us, it still needs to be redeemed; in that sense it is not yet ready; and Christ himself said, in reference to his leaving the world, that he was going to prepare it, which he does by directing, on his throne of glory, the events which are to issue in its full establishment. Still, from the first it might be said to be prepared, because destined for Christ and his elect people In the mind of God, even as they were all chosen in him before the foundation of the world; and every successive act in the history of the mediatorial kingdom is another step toward the accomplishment of the purpose.--Are we not again told, however, that the earth is to be destroyed, its elements made to melt with fervent heat, and all its works consumed? Unquestionably this is said--though not by any means necessarily implying, that the earth is really to be annihilated. We know, that God is perpetually causing changes to pass over the works of his hands, but that he actually annihilates any, we have no ground, either in nature or in Scripture, to suppose. If in the latter we are told of man's body, that it perishes, and is consumed by the moth, yet of what are we more distinctly assured, than that it is not doomed to absolute destruction, but shall live again? When we read of the old world being destroyed by the flood, we know that the material fabric of the earth continued as before. Indeed, much the same language that is applied to the earth in this respect, is also extended to the heavens themselves; for they too are represented as ready to pass away, and to be changed as a vesture, and the promise speaks of new heavens as well as a new earth. And in regard to this earth in particular, there is nothing in the language used concerning it to prevent us from believing, that the fire which, in the day of God's judgment, is to burst forth with consuming violence, may, like the waters of the deluge, and in a far higher respect than they, act as an element of purification--dissolving, indeed, the present constitution of things, and leaving not a wreck behind of all we now see and handle, but at the same time rectifying and improving the powers of nature, refining and elevating the whole framework of the earth, and impressing on all that belongs to it a transcendent, imperishable glory--so that in condition and appearance it shall be substantially a new world, and one as far above what it now is, as heaven is above the earth.

There is nothing, then, in the other representations of Scripture, which appears, when fairly considered, to raise any valid objection against the renovated earth being the ultimate inheritance of the heirs of promise. And there is much to shut us up to the conclusion that it is so. We have enlarged on one testimony of inspiration, not because it is the only, or the chief one on the subject, but because it is so explicit, that it seems decisive of the question. For, an inheritance, which has been already acquired or purchased, but which must be redeemed before it can really be our possession, can be understood of nothing but that original domain, which with man himself sin brought into the bondage of evil at the fall. And of what else can we understand the representation in the 8th Psalm, as interpreted by the pen of inspiration itself, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, chap. ii. 5-9, and in 1 Cor. xv. 27, 28? These passages in the New Testament put it beyond a doubt, that the idea of perfect and universal dominion, delineated in the Psalm, is to be realized in the world to come, over which Christ, as the head of redeemed humanity, is to rule, in company with his redeemed people. [11] The representation itself in the Psalm, is evidently borrowed from the first chapter of Genesis, and considered as a prophecy of good things to come, or a prediction of the dignity and honour already obtained for man in Christ, and hereafter to be revealed, it may be regarded as simply presenting to our view the picture of a restored and renovated creation. "It is just that passage in Genesis, which describes the original condition of the earth," to use the words of Hengstenberg, "turned into a prayer for us," and we may add, into an object of hope and expectation. When that prayer is fulfilled--in other words, when the natural and moral evils entailed by the fall have been abolished, and the earth shall stand; to man, when redeemed and glorified, in a similar relation to what it did at the birth of creation, then shall the hope we now possess of an inheritance of glory be turned into enjoyment In Isa. xi 6--9, the final results of Messiah's reign are in like manner delineated under the aspect of a world, which has obtained riddance of all the disorders introduced by sin, and is restored to the blessed harmony and peace which characterized it, when God pronounced it very good. And still more definitely, though with reference to the same aspect of things, the apostle Peter (Acts iii. 21), represents the time of Christ's second coming as "the time of the restitution of all things," that is, when every thing should be restored to its pristine condition,--the same condition in kind, all pure and good, glorious and blessed, but higher in degree, as it is the design and tendency of redemption to ennoble whatsoever it touches.

It is precisely on the same object, a redeemed and glorified earth, that the apostle Paul, in the 8th chap. of the Romans, fixes the mind of believers as the terminating point of their hopes of glory. An incomparable glory is to be revealed in them, and in connection with that "the deliverance of a suffering creation from the bondage of corruption, into the glorious liberty of the sons of God." What can this deliverance be, but what is marked in the Epistle to the Ephesians, as "the redemption of the purchased possession?" Nor is it possible to connect with any thing else the words of Peter in his second Epistle, where, after speaking of the dreadful conflagration which is to consume all that belongs to the earth in its present form, he adds,--as if expressly to guard against supposing, that he meant the actual and entire destruction of this world as the abode of man,---"Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens, and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness."

It is only by understanding the words of Christ himself, "the meek shall inherit the earth," of the earth in that new condition, its state of blessedness and glory, that any full or adequate sense can be attached to them. He could not surely mean the earth as it then was, or as it is to be during any period of its existence, while sin and death reign in it. So long as it is in that condition, not only will the saints of God have many things to suffer in it, as our Lord immediately foretold, when he spake of the persecutions for righteousness' sake, which his people should have to endure, and on account of which he bade them look for their "reward in heaven;" but all the treasure it contains must be of the moth-eaten, perishable kind, which they are expressly forbidden to covet, and the earth itself must be that city without continuance, in contrast to which they are called to seek one to come. To speak, therefore, as many commentators do, of the tendency of piety in general, and of a mild and gracious disposition in particular, to secure for men a prosperous and happy life on earth, is to say comparatively little as regards the fulfilment of the promise, that they shall "inherit the earth." If it could even command for them the whole that earth now can give, would Christ on that account have called them blessed? Would he not rather have warned them to beware of the deceitfulness of riches, and the abundance of honours thus likely to flow into their bosom? To be blessed in the earth as an inheritance, must import, that the earth has become to them a real and proper good, such as it shall be, when it has been transformed into a fit abode for redeemed natures. This view is also confirmed, and apparently rendered as clear and certain as language can make it, by the representations constantly made by Christ and the inspired writers, of his return to the earth and manifestation on it in glory, as connected with the last scenes and final issues of his kingdom. When he left the world, it was as a man going into a far country, from which he was to come again; [12] the heaven received him at his resurrection, but only until the times of the restitution of all things; [13] the period of his residence within the veil, is coincident with that during which his people have to maintain a hidden life, and is to be followed by another, in which they and he together are to be manifested in glory. [14] And in the book of Revelation, while unquestionably the scenes are described in typical language, yet when exact localities are mentioned as the places where the scenes are to be realized, and that in connection with a plain description of the condition of those who are to have part in them, we are compelled by all the ordinary rules of composition, to regard such localities as real and proper habitations. What, then, can we make of the ascription of praise from the elders, representatives of a redeemed church, when they give glory to the Messiah, as "having made them kings and priests unto God, and they shall reign with him upon the earth?" Or, what of the closing scenes, where the Evangelist sees a new heaven and a new earth, in the room of those which had passed away, and the new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven to settle on the renovated earth, and the tabernacle of God fixed amongst men? [15] Granting that the delineations of the book are a succession of pictures, drawn from the relations of things in the former ages of the world, and especially under the Old Testament economy, and that the fulfilment to be looked for is not as of a literal description, but as of a symbolical representation, yet there must be certain fixed landmarks as to time and place, persons and objects, which, in their natures or their names, are so clearly denned, that by them the relation of one part to another, must be arranged and interpreted. For example, in the above quotations, we cannot doubt who are kings and priests, or with whom they are to reign; and it were surely strange, if there could be any doubt of the theatre of their dominion, when it is so expressly denominated the earth. And still more strange if, when heaven and earth are mentioned relatively to each other, and the scene of the church's future glory fixed upon the latter as contradistinguished from the former, still earth should stand for heaven, and not for itself. Indeed the most striking feature in the representations of the Apocalypse, is the uniformity with which they connect the higher grade of blessing with earth, and the lower with the world of spirits. As Hengstenberg has justly remarked on ch. xx. 4, 5, it invariably points to a double stage of blessedness, the one awaiting believers immediately after their departure out of this life, the other what they are to "receive when they enter the New Jerusalem, and reign with Christ in glory. But we find the same in our Lord's teaching, as when he said to the thief on the cross, "To-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise," and yet pointed his disciples to the state of things on earth after the resurrection for their highest reward (Matth. xix. 28). And, on the whole, we are forced to conclude with Usteri, that "the conception of a transference of the perfected kingdom of God into the heavens, is properly speaking modern, seeing that according to Paul, and the Apocalypse, (and, he might also have added, Peter and Christ himself,) the seat of the kingdom of God is the earth, inasmuch as that likewise partakes in the general renovation." [16]

Having now closed our investigation, we draw the following conclusions from it.

1. The earthly Canaan was neither designed by God, nor from the first was it understood by his people, to be the ultimate and proper inheritance, which they were to occupy; things having been spoken and hoped for concerning it, which plainly could not be realized within the bounds of Canaan.

2. The inheritance was one which could be enjoyed only by those who had become the children of the resurrection, themselves fully redeemed in soul and body from all the effects and consequences of sin, made more glorious and blessed, indeed, than if they had never sinned, because constituted after the image of the heavenly Adam. And as the inheritance must correspond with the inheritor, it can only be man's original possession restored,--the earth redeemed from the curse which sin brought on it, and, like man himself, rendered exceedingly more beautiful and glorious, than in its primeval state,--the fit abode of a church made like, in all its members, to the Son of God.

3. The occupation of the earthly Canaan by the natural seed of Abraham, was a type, and no more than a type, of this occupation by a redeemed church, of her destined inheritance of glory; and consequently every thing concerning the entrance of the former on their temporary possession, was ordered so as to represent and foreshadow the things which belong to the church's establishment in her permanent possession. Hence, between the giving of the promise, which though it did not terminate in the land of Canaan, yet included that, and through it prospectively exhibited the better inheritance, a series of important events intervened, which are capable of being fully and properly explained in no other way, than by means of their typical bearing on the things hereafter to be disclosed respecting that better inheritance. If we ask, why did the heirs of promise wander about so long as pilgrims, and withdraw to a foreign region, before they were allowed to possess the land, and not rather, like a modern colony, quietly spread, without strife or bloodshed, over its surface, till the whole was possessed? Or, why were they suffered to fall under the dominion of a foreign power, from whose cruel oppression they needed to be redeemed, with terrible executions of judgment on the oppressor, before the possession could become theirs? Or why, before that event also should they have been put under the discipline of law, having the covenant of Sinai, with its strict requirements and manifold obligations of service, superadded to the covenant of grace and promise? Or, why again should their right to the inheritance itself, have to be vindicated from a race of occupants, who had been allowed for a time to keep possession of it, and whose multiplied abominations had so polluted it, that nothing short of their extermination could render it a fitting abode for the heirs of promise? The full and satisfactory answer to all such questions, can only be given, by viewing the whole in connection with the better things of a higher dispensation.,--as the first part of a plan, which was to have its counterpart and issue in the glories of a redeemed creation, and for the final results of which the church needed to be prepared by standing in similar relations, and passing through like experiences, in regard to an earthly inheritance. No doubt, with one and all of these, there were connected reasons and results for the time then present, amply sufficient to justify every step in the process, when considered simply by itself. But it is only when we take the whole as a glass, in which to see mirrored the far greater things, which from the first were in prospect, that we can get a comprehensive view of the mind of God in appointing them, and know the purposes which he chiefly contemplated.

For example, the fact of Abraham and his immediate descendants, being appointed to wander as pilgrims through the land of Canaan, without being allowed to occupy any part of it as their own possession, may be partly explained, though in that view it must appear somewhat capricious, by its being considered as a trial to their own faith, and an act of forbearance arid mercy toward the original possessors, whose iniquities were not yet full. But if we thus find grounds of reason to explain, why it may have been so ordered, when we come to look upon the things which happened to them, as designed to image other things, which were afterwards to belong to the relation of God's people to a higher and better inheritance, we see it was even necessary that those transactions should have been so ordered, and that it would have been unsuitable for the heirs of promise, either entering at once on the possession, or living as pilgrims and expectants, any where but within its borders. For thus alone could their experience fitly represent the case of God's people in gospel times, who have not only to wait long for the redemption of the purchased possession, but while they wait, must walk up and down as pilgrims in the very region, which they are hereafter to use as their own. when it shall have been delivered from the powers of evil who now hold it in bondage, and purged from their abominations. Hence, if they know aright their relation to the world as it now is, and their calling as the heirs of promise, they must sit loose to the things of earth, even as the patriarchs did to the land of their sojourn,--must feel, that it cannot be the place of their rest, so long as it is polluted, and that they must steadfastly look for the world to come as their proper home and possession. And thus also the whole series of transactions, which took place between the confirmation of the covenant of promise with Jacob, and the actual possession of the land promised, and more especially the things which concerned that greatest of all the transactions, the revelation of the law from Sinai, is to be regarded as a delineation in the type, of the way and manner in which the heirs of God are to obtain the inheritance of the purchased possession. Meanwhile, apart from these later transactions, there are two important lessons, which the church may clearly gather from what appears in the first heirs of promise, and which she ought never to lose sight of:--First, that the inheritance, come when and how it may, is the free gift of God, bestowed by him, as sovereign lord and proprietor, on those whom he calls to the fellowship of his grace: And, second, that the hope of the inheritance must exist as an animating principle in their hearts, influencing all their procedure. Their spirit and character must be such as become those who are the expectants, as well as heirs, of that better country, which is an heavenly. And Christ is never truly formed in the heart, until he be formed as "the hope of glory."

Notes

1. We assume, that the land promised in the covenant to Abraham, and afterwards occupied by his posterity in the line of Isaac and Jacob, was simply what is known as the land of Canaan, lying between the Jordan and the Mediterranean sea, and between Lebanon and the wilderness below Kadesh. This is so clearly and definitely marked out in a multitude of historical passages, and the inhabitants of that precise region are so often named as those whom Israel dispossessed, that any considerations which would assign other limits, cannot possibly be well grounded. There are two or three prophetical passages which mention the Nile and the Euphrates as the two extremities of Israel's possession (Gen. xv, 18 5 xxiii. 31; Deut. i. 7).. But, as in later prophecy, these rivers are merely used as representatives of the countries of Egypt and Assyria, and the meaning is, that in the region lying between, Israel alone should have the dominion--though still the portion to be actually possessed by them was of much narrower dimensions.

2. Legation of Moses, B. VI. sec. 3.

3. Gen. xvii. 1--17.

4. Sic habetur traditio Rah. Simai; quo loco astruit Lex resurrectionem morttiorum? Kempe ubi dicitur, "Aque etiam constabilivi foedus meum cum ipsis, ut dem ipsis terrain Canaan." Non enim dicitur vobis seel ipsis.

5. Ut carnis restitutio negetur, de una omnium philosoplioram schola sumitur, De Praesc. adv. Haeret. § 7.

6. See Appendix C.

7. Dissertations on the Prophecies of Old Test., vol. i. p. 56.

8. Acts xxvi. 6-8.

9. Heb, xi. 13-16.

10. That the received translation gives here the sense of the original with substantial correctness, I am fully satisfied. The latter part of it, I/? ...

11. That this is simply the force of the original here, it may be enough to give the meaning of the main word from the lexicographer Hesychius: ... " is the restoration of a thing to its former state, or to a better; restitution, consummation, a revolution of the grander kind, from which a new order of things arises, rest after turmoil."

12. Math. xxv. 14; Luke xix. 12; John xiv, 3.

13. Acts iii. 21.

14. Col. iii. 4; Heb. ix. 28; 1 John iii. 2; Eev, i. 7.

15. Rev. v. 9, 10, xxi. 1--5.

16. The above passage is quoted by Tholuck, on Eom. viii. 19, who himself there, and on Heb. ii., concurs in the same view. He also states, what cannot be denied, that it is the view, which has been adopted by the greatest number, and the most ancient of the expositors, amongst whom he mentions, though he does not cite, Chrysostom, Theodoret, Jerome, Augustine, Ambrose, Luther, &c. And Rivet, on Gen. viii. 22, states, that the opinion, which maintains only a change, and not an utter destruction of the world, has most supporters, both among the older and the more recent writers, so that it may be called, says he, "the common one, and be said to prevail by the number of its adherents." In the present day, the opposite opinion would probably be entitled to be regarded as by much the most common; and the view here set forth, will perhaps by some be eyed with jealousy, if not condemned as novel. It may be proper, therefore, to give a few quotations from the more eminent commentators. Jerome, on Isa. Ixv. 17, quotes Ps. cii. 26 and 27, which he thinks "clearly demonstrates, that the perdition spoken of, is not a reducing to nothing, but a change to the better;" and having referred to what Peter says of the new heavens, and the new earth, he remarks, that the Apostle "does not say, we look for other heavens and another earth, but for the old and original ones transformed into a better state." Of the fathers generally, as of Justin Martyr in particular, Semish states, that they regarded the future destruction, of the world by fire, "far more frequently, as a transformation, than as an annihilation." (Life and Times of Justin, Bib. Cab. Vol. XLII. p. 366.) Calvin, while he discourages minute inquiries and vain speculations regarding the future state, expresses himself with confidence, on Rom. viii. 21, as to this world being the destined theatre of glory, and considers it as a proof of the incomparable glory to which the sons of God are to be raised, that the lower creation is to be renewed for the purpose of manifesting and ennobling it, just as the disorders and troubles of creation have testified to the appalling evil of our sin, So also Haldane, a man of peculiarly sober judgment, on the same passage, after quoting from 2 Pet. and Rev. continues: "The destruction of the substance of things differs from a change in their qualities. When metal of a certain shape is subjected to fire, it is destroyed as to its figure, but not as to its substance. Thus the heavens and the earth will pass through the fire, but only that they may be purified and come forth anew, more excellent than before. This hope--the hope of deliverance --was held out in the sentence pronounced on man, for in the doom of our first parents the divine purpose of providing a deliverer was revealed. We know not the circumstances of this change, how it will be effected, or in what form the creation--those new heavens and that new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness, suited for the abode of the sons of God--shall then exist; but we are sure it shall be worthy of the divine wisdom, although at present beyond our comprehension." To the same effect Fuller, in his Gospel its own Witness, ch. v. Thiersch says of the promise to Abraham, "Undoubtedly it pointed to a kingdom of God upon earth, not in an invisible world of spirits. Paradise itself had been upon earth, much more should the -earth be the centre of the world to come." (History, I. p. 20). See Olshausen also on Matth. viii. Mr Stuart, in his work on Romans, expresses his strong dissent from such views, on the ground of their being opposed to the declarations of Christ, and requiring such a literal interpretation of prophecy, as would lead to absurd and ridiculous expectations in regard to other predictions. We can perceive no contrariety in our opinion to any declaration of Christ or his apostles, and the other predictions he refers to belong to quite another class, and do not require, or even admit, as might quite easily be shewn, of a strictly literal fulfilment.