remarkable, that I beg the attention of the reader to them for a little. He opens it by marking the indifference and inconsideration of mankind on the event of a righteous man's death. In this language of the Deity, there seems to be inclosed a reproof to human dullness. That of themselves, without any supernatural light, they might have so far laid this death to heart, as to surmise, from the acknowledged attributes of the Great Governor of the universe, loving righteousness and hating iniquity, that the lots of the righteous and the wicked must be very different. He assumes here the language of earth. "The righteous perisheth" as if he would say, they do not understand, that instead of perishing he is gathered (ne-asaph) and gathered from the evil; i. e. this corrupted state, termed the unclean thing, and its certain issue, endless misery. This is the evil we are taught to beg deliverance from in the Lord's Prayer; not surely from the common evils of life, which, although radically the fruit of sin, yet, in fact, may be many of them blessings in disguise. Jn. 17.15 I pray not," says Christ," that thou shouldest

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take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil," not from being buffetted or reviled, not from imprisonment or death, for these, ultimately considered, are not evils, but from that wrath and condemnation which rests on as many as have not believed on the only begotten son of God,

Their being said to rest on beds, is an adaptation to notions of earth, as if chambers or mansions were assigned them, in which to reside: termed also their lot. So the angel says to Daniel; "Thou shalt rest, and stand in thy lot at the end of the days." ch.12.13

In this happy region they are free from the darkness, uncertainties, and trials incident to the present state, and are refreshed with the consolations peculiar to that abode. They are happy in the reflection that the warefare of life is finished, and that henceforth there is laid up for them the crown of righteousnss, which the Lord the righteous judge will give them at that day. Looking forward to that world, yet to be revealed, they enjoy the prospect of the immense happiness which is then to be their portion. They are bid to wait a little, and to reckon that the intermediate period will soon be past, and that then heaven's boundless day will arise over all.

"Thou shalt go," says Jehovah, to Abraham, Gen./5.15 "into peace to thy fathers. Thou shalt be buried in a good old age." That these two things are perfectly distinct, the one referring to the destination of the spirit, and the other to that of the body, may be proved to a demonstration, by only fixing the eye on that passage where Abraham's death is narrated. There, being gathered to his people, is mentioned as first taking place, and his burial

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burial as coming afterwards. Should it be said, that being gathered unto his people, means to be laid in the tomb of his ancestors, into that he neyer came. In the tomb where he was laid, there was only the body of Sarah. "It is plain," says Gazous, the sophist, "that Moses, in relating this, knew very well the future world, for no body is joined to beings which have no existence." 45.7 In another passage of Isaiah, this region appears to be described, where Jehovah says, "I am the former of light and the creator of darkness; the maker of peace, and the creator of evil." Commentators agree that this is a reply of the Deity to the mistaken theology of the Persians, who believed in two independent principles, Oramasdes and Arimanius; the first the principle of light, or good; the second that of darkness or evil. Jehovah asserts his unity here, that there was no principle co-ordinate in power with him "besides me there is no God." This passage then must be explained, not from the natural theory of light and darkness, but from the theology to which these words are a reply. The Deity himself, however, seems careful to prevent any mistake, by expressing the sentence in paralellisms, that they might be mutually explanatory of each other. To light he gives its natural concomitant, peace: to darkuess, evil, or the abode of Tartarus.

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We turn now to the New Testament, to obtain farther

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farther confirmation of this truth. Of this the words of Christ to his disciples may be viewed as an illustration. "These things have I spoken Jn 16.33 unto you, that in me ye might have peace. this world ye shall have tribulation." Here these two states of peace and suffering are set forth, not as co-existent, but as coming in succession; the one beginning as the other terminates. Betwixt the words me and the world, there is an evident opposition, which would be entirely destroyed, could we suppose, that the peace here promised, was to take place during the period of tribulation. It is true, that some are favoured with uncommon tranquillity of soul, amidst much suffering; but this is the lot of a handful, in comparison of the great bulk of the people of God, who pass their time in a clouded state, and in much uncertainty. Without then opposing the sense in which this is usually taken, I would plead for an extension of it to that land "where the work of righteousness is peace; and the cultivation of righteousness, tranquillity and (Betach) trust through the intermediate period." Isa. xxxii. 17.

The phrase, in me, very well agrees with these other modes of expression. "To depart and to Phil...23. be with Christ; to be found in him." In this view, if the words of Moses be understood as they stand in the 90th Psalm,l." Lord thou hast been our dwelling place through all generations," they

will appear with a peculiar propriety: that while the dwellings of earth were perpetually changing their inhabitants, he was the unchanging abode of departed souls through the revolutions of ages. This cannot be applied to any description of people upon earth, because the time of their sojourn very rarely goes to the extent of one generation, while it exactly meets the states of those who are in the region of peace, and gathered under the Saviour's wings. Age after age sweeps away the frail inhabitants of earth, but the dwelling of these is the same-unsusceptible of disturbance or change.

The very description of Moses through the rest of the Psalm, sets forth an opposition or contrast between God, their dwelling place, and this earth. In the one, its extent is through all generations in the other, they are swept away as with a flood: they are like sleep: they are like grass, which in the morning is in its bloom, but in the evening is cut down. We spend our years as a tale. "We flee hence and soon remove."

To shew that this dwelling place implies a period, the very reverse of what he had witnessed on earth, and a compensation for what they suffered there, he prays, "Give us joy according to the days thou hast afflicted us, the years in which we have seen evil.", 15.

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