long-lost tribes, we can, on Divine warrant, assert do con. tain also and embody, chiefly, the mystery of the first resurrection, the resurrection of the righteous; which shall be at the last trump. In that glorious change and resurrection which is described 1 Cor. xv. 50-54, and hath nothing to do whatever with the resurrection of the wicked, which is corruption and the second death; in that act, I say, of the resurrection of the saints, which is the first resurrection, a thousand years before the resurrection of the dead, it is said (ver. 54), "So, when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory." This seals the import of the first clause of Isaiah's prophecy; and for the second, "The Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces," I find it to be taken into the Book of the Revelation, and applied to the condition of the risen saints in the New Jerusalem (Rev. vii. 17): "For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters; and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes." And again, Rev. xxi. 4: "And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away." Doubt, therefore, can there be none, that the resurrection of those, who shall not be hurt by the second death, is the thing prophesied to take place at the time of the coming of the Lord of Hosts to reign in mount Zion, at the time of his bringing down the terrible ones which have destroyed his earth, at the time of his making in mount Zion a feast of fat things unto all peoples, and there destroying the veil that is spread over all nations, and making the rebuke of his people to be taken away from off all the earth; "for the Lord hath spoken it." (Isaiah xxv.) Thus firmly and fixedly is the event of the first resurrection, and the New-Jerusalem's glory, indented and dove. tailed in among the events of real history, the revolutions of this very earth. But this glad hope of the faithful and victorious church of Christ hath a further and more distinct opening in these two chapters of Isaiah. After describing in most fearful wise the destruction of Moab in that day, and setting forth the triumphant song of delivered Judah; which song is too large for the mere his

torical event of Israel's restoration, though including it, and not to be divorced from it, as being the great historical type of a greater historical event, which is the recovery of the church from death's hand; the Holy Spirit doth use that symbol of a woman's travail, which by our Lord is used, John xvi. 21, of the same day of his coming, and by Paul, in Rom. viii. 22, of the emancipation of the elemental world from Satan's thraldom, in that same glorious day.

Now be it observed, there is not in nature such an image as woman's travail for expressing that event; which, looking to the substance of it, is the bringing again of the Son, out of the womb of the invisible, into the visible world, for ever to abide therein; which, looking to the circumstances of it, is with long-deferred hope, growing towards the consummation into longing desire, and accomplished with rending pangs, yet issuing in joy, transport of joy, that the Man-child is born into the world; which, again, for the time of it, is fixed and definite, but as it approaches all uncertain as to the very hour, inducing continual preparation and readiness, yea, and longing, until the fierce trial be overpast, and the joy be come. By this most expressive similitude, dignifying and sanctifying that sorest trial of humanity, having expressed the condition of the parturient church, and the weakness to which at length she is brought, and her own lamentation over her own unprofitableness in the earth,—“we have as it were brought forth wind; we have not wrought any deliverance in the earth"the Holy Spirit comforteth the church with these words, spoken in the person of the Christ, "Thy dead shall live; my dead body shall they arise :" which words, without any gloss whatever of an interpreter, convey their own meaning to be, that the deliverance which the church lamented she had not wrought upon the earth should be wrought by the raising of her dead men, who are promised this, among other things, that they should rule the nations with a rod of iron and break them in pieces like a potter's vessel. These dead men of the church he honours by the name of his dead body, according to the universal symbol of the Apostle Paul, which representeth the church as the body of Christ, the fulness of him that filleth all in all. Thy dead shall live, my dead body shall they arise." Then there follow two invocations; the

one to the dead, the other to the living saints. That addressed to the dead saints is in these words: " Awake and sing, ye that dwell in the dust; for thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast out the dead!" This is the first resurrection. Why in this and in other places, as in the cxth Psalm, should it be compared to the dew of the morning, which resteth upon every herb, refresheth and cherisheth it, and maketh it to profit from the rising sun, which otherwise would scorch up its verdure; herein seems to me to consist the propriety and significance of this beautiful symbol, that the children of the resurrection, unlike the fly of Egypt, and the bee of Assyria, or the palmer worm, or the locust, or the canker, or the caterpillar which rest upon all bushes, and upon all herbs of the fruit-bearing earth, (symbols these of successive tyrannies consuming the life of man's blessedness,) the children of the resurrection shall be unto the grass, as the dew for purity, and as the drops of the dew for number; and by their refreshing influence shall make all withered places verdant, and all desolate places to bud and blossom like the rose; under whose benign and righteous government the sun shall not smite by day, nor yet the moon by night. For this benediction of the fruit-bearing earth, for this invigoration of all life, for this refreshing of all faintness, shall the dead rise in the morning, awaking from the dust and singing the songs of the morning; and, like the morning star, shedding the hope of a bright and a glorious day over the troubled face of nature. These inhabitants of the dust having first invoked, (for the dead in Christ must rise first,) God speaking in the person of the Son doth next invoke the living saints according to the order mentioned by the same Apostle, 1 Thess. iv. 17, "Then we which are alive and remain, shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air and so shall we ever be with the Lord." And to these living ones what doth the Son of God proclaim? He summoneth them up into the chambers of salvation with these words, "Come, my people, enter thou into thy chambers, and shut thy doors. about thee: hide thyself as it were for a little moment, until the indignation be overpast" (Isai. xxvi. 20): which I make no doubt referreth to a deliverance of the living

saints before the judgments fall in upon the nations. Up within the skirts of that glorious cloud in which he shall come to execute his Father's faithful word, of deliverance unto Judah and Israel, of perdition unto Antichrist, of all sorest calamities to the world,-up within the skirts of that cloud which once arose over Egypt to guide the children of the Lord from thence, and confounded Pharaoh and his host, and inwrapped the summit of Sinai, and rode marching in the heavens through the wilderness, and rested in Shiloh in the tabernacle, and in the temple of Jerusalem made its seat, and departed from the earth in the days of Ezekiel; and hath not visited us again save at times, as in the mount of transfiguration and unto Saul in his way to Damascus, but which Ezekiel, with the Psalmist, assureth us shall come again,-up within the skirts of that cloud with which Messiah shall come again, not manifestly but in his sign riding upon the cherub (Psal. xviii.), which is his. church,-up thither, which, with the sound of the last trumpet shall we, his waiting-people, be summoned into the ark of salvation, into the chambers of his presence, being counted worthy to escape all these things which are coming upon the earth, and to stand before the Son of Man. The full manifestation of this glorious mystery, to which all the world is asleep, and the church also, I am daily expecting before that seventh vial be outpoured. God is rewarding my labours with this most cheerful hope, with this most gladdening expectation; and I can not only say to the congregation; Wait for him, but I can say unto himself, I do wait for thee. And O, all ye who hear and read these words, cast away your fear of him; cut the Gordian knot of your argumentation and sophistry, O ye worldlywise; ye doubters, ye self-sanctifying doubters, be ashamed of your doubt and believe. All ye virgins, by times while it is called to-day, before the night cometh when no man can work, trim your lamps, gird your loins, up, go forth, meet the bridegroom, who saith "Come, my people, enter thou into thy chambers, and shut thy doors about thee: hide thyself as it were for a little moment, until the indignation be overpast" (Isai, xxvi. 20). For behold what follows, after all hath been gathered from the tares in the harvest, when the children of the kingdom have been taken up within the foldings of the glorious cloud; hear and tremble, O children of men, ye "For behold the Lord

cometh out of his place to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity: the earth also shall disclose her blood, and shall no more cover her slain. In that day the Lord with his sore and great and strong sword shall punish leviathan the piercing serpent, even leviathan that crooked serpent, and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea." (Isai. xxvii. 1). This is the action of judgment upon the nations, which Christ and his people, which the man-child personal and the man-child mystical, which the head and the body, which the Word of God upon the white horse, clothed in a garment dipped in blood, and the armies of heaven likewise riding upon white horses; in one word, without a figure, which the Lord of Hosts from the white cloud scattereth and shooteth forth like arrows of lightnings and tempests of hail upon his enemies, to rid the world of its oppressors, as it is written in the xith and the xviii th Psalms, and in all the Scriptures, "He that hath an ear to hear let him hear."

Having thus detailed this instance of what I hold to be the universal law of God's revelation; that the first resurrection, the triumph over death, the deliverance from the injury of the second death which is the substance of the promise before us, is the continual reward held out to the faithful; I do now proceed for the full exposition of the promise before us, to consider in a few words what is properly signified by escape from the second death, and what really is this second death from which we have escaped. This also we will best learn from the Book of Revelation, which is not only the interpreter of the other Scriptures, but its own interpreter. In the 14th verse of the xxth chapter, it is written; "And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire: this is the second death. And whosoever was not found written in the book of life, was cast into the lake of fire." And again, chap. xxi. 8; "But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death." From these passages we learn, that the second death is the condition of conscious beings subsisting in the lake of fire. Now of this lake of fire we have many intimations in Scripture, of which it will be good to