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PART III.

LECT. IV.

SECT. II.

DANIEL, xii. 2.

Many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall "awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and "everlasting contempt."

THE passages we have hitherto adduced, from the history recorded by the Jewish Lawgiver, and which shew that he himself believ-> ed a future state of retribution, and contain such proofs of it as would naturally impress that belief on every pious and reflecting mind; have been chiefly taken from the Book of Genesis. In the remaining part of the Pentateuch we are not to wonder, that the rewards and punishments of a future life are not expressly introduced. It has been shewn that God exercised over the Jews an extraordinary providence,

warding

two hundred and fifty years. A great part of this time the Jews were powerful and wealthy; their minds were gradually enlightened by commerce and softened by peace, and the conviction of Jehovah's over-ruling providence gradually established by a still increasing length of expérience; and thus a foundation laid for a more firm reliance on the divine promises respecting a future life.

And while the temporal discipline and fortune of the Jews thus prepared the way for the reception of religious instructions; we observe that Samuel founded the schools of the Prophets, where numbers of the Levites, and probably other pious Jews, were trained from their youth to study and expound the word and the will of God, to warn the people against idolatry impiety and vice, and become instruments of extending the knowledge of the Jewish religion, and the worship of the great Jehovah; we now perceive Providence raising up for them instructors, first in the persons of their two most distinguished kings, David and Solomon, the former as a prophet, the latter chiefly as a moral sage: their works, from

the

the dignity of their authors, and from the very form of their compositions must have been extremely popular: the pious hymns of the inspired Psalmist, praising the wonderful works of God for his chosen people, and adorning the sentiments of piety with: all the charms of poetry and music, must have been read with avidity and remembered with delight; and the sententious maxims of the royal Preacher, the pride of his nation for wisdom power and majesty, could scarcely fail of exciting attention to religious truth and moral duty.

We after these, behold a series of prophets, delivering their admonitions and predictions, with the most intrepid resolution and the most awful menaces, to the kings and the assembled multitudes of Judah and Israel. We see some of their predictions immediately accomplished in the most im-: portant public events, and therefore their remaining prophecies must have excited general attention and anxious expectation. In truth, the schools of the prophets, established first by Samuel, supplied for ages the civil historians as well as the religious

instructors

instructors of Judea; and the most distinguished prophets were so deeply engaged in public events, that their lives and writings were blended with every thing interesting in history, and preserved as parts of the national records.

The important doctrine of a future state of retribution was, by these various inspired teachers, gradually developed with perpetually increasing clearness and force, as the circumstances of the Jewish people required its promulgation, as well from the extension of their views, by the improvement of their intellectual character, as from the gradual cessation of that extraordinary providential superintendance, which became unnecessary for the support of religious and moral principle, in proportion as the people became more sensible of the perpetual providence and moral attributes of the Divinity; and therefore more capable of being duly impressed with the divine promises of a future retribution.

And here though the learned Prelate so often alluded to, hurried away, it should seem, by a zeal for establishing his sys

tem

tem on the broadest possible basis, seems originally to have maintained, that no ideas of a future state were to be found amongst the Jews, previous to the Captivity: yet he afterwards found it necessary to admit they were gradually inculcated by the * Prophets subsequent to David. But assuredly he ought to have included this inspired Psalmist in the number of those who promulgated this great truth, not indeed with the same clearness as the last Prophets, but yet sufficiently to prove his own firm belief of it, and to suggest it to the consideration of every pious and reflecting mind.

In the sixteenth psalm, after solemnly attesting his warm attachment to the pious, that t "his delight was upon the saints

that

* Vide Warburton, V. 5. p. 9, and the first section of this Lecture, p. 253 and 254.

+ In this passageI use the translation of our prayer book; it seems clearer than that in our bible, and full as accurate. In the meaning of the three last verses all the interpretations agree, except that the Syriac translates the last clause, " I "shall be satisfied with the pleasures of victory at thy right

hand." Vide Biblia Waltoni. Yet even this does not exclude the idea of eternity; " æternitatem significat, sic "dictam quasi victoriam temporis," says Rivetus, and adds, "Nomen hic in adverbii naturam transit; est hoc adjunctum "perpetuum beatitudinis, quæ alioqui beatitudo non esset, "si perpetua non foret." Vide Poli Synopsin.