Twelve Sermons on the Resurrection

Tue hand of God has been upon us heavily this week. An aged deacon, -who has been for more than fifty years a member of this Church, has been removed from our midst; and a sister, the beloved wife of another of our Church-officers, a member for nearly the same term of years, has fallen asleep. It is not often that a Church is called to sorrow over the departure of two such venerable members — let not our ears be deaf to ‘such a double admonition to prepare to meet our God. That they were preserved so long, and upheld so mercifully for so many years, was not only a reason of gratitude to them, but to us also, I am, however, so averse to the preaching of what are called funeral sermons, that I forbear, lest I appear to eulogise the creature, when my only aim should be to magnify the grace of God. —

Our text deserves our profound attention; its preface would hardly have been written had not the matter been of the utmost importance in the judgment of the patriarch who uttered it. Listen to Job’s remarkable desire: “Oh that my words were now written! oh that they were printed in a book! That they were graven with an iron pen and lead - in the rock for ever!” Perhaps, hardly aware of the full meaning of - the words he was uttering, yet his holy soul was impressed with a sense of some weighty revelation concealed within his words; he therefore desired that it might be recorded in a book; he has had his desire

the Book of books embalms the words of Job. He wished to have them; -grayen on a rock; cut deep into it with an iron pen, and then the lines No. 504. - a q QYQ9

inlaid with lead; or he would have them engraven, according to the custom of the ancients, upon a sheet of metal, so that time might not

be able to eat out the inscription. He has not had his desire im that respect, save only-that-upon many and many.a-sepulchre those-words of Job stand recorded, “I know that my redeemer liveth.’ It:is the opinion of some commentators that Job, in speaking of the rock here, intended his own rock-hewn sepulchre, and desired that this might be his epitaph; that, it might be cut deep,.so that ages should. not wear it out; that when any asked, “Where does Job sleep?” as soon as they — saw the sepulchre of the patriarch of Uz, they might learn that he died in hope of resurrection, resting upon a living Redeemer. Whether such a sentence adorned the portals of Job’s last sleeping-place

we know not; but certainly no words could have been more fitly chosen.- Should not the man of patience, the mirror of endurance, the pattern of trust, bear as his memorial this golden line, which is as full

of all the patience of hope, and hope of. patience, as mortal language can be? Who among us could select a more glorious motto for his last escutcheon?’’ Iam sorry to say that a few of those who have written upon this passage cannot see Christ or the resurrection in it at all. Albert Barnes, among the rest, expresses his intense sorrow that he cannot find the resurrection here, and for my part I am sorry for him..If it had been Job’s desire to foretel the advent of Christ and‘his own’ sure resurrection, I cannot see what better words he could have used; and’if those truths are not here taught, then language must have lost its original object, and must have been employed to mystify and not to explain; to conceal and not to reveal. What I ask, does the patriarch. mean, if not that he — shall rise again when the Redeemer stands upon the earth? Brethren, no unsophisticated mind can fail to find here what almost all believers — have here discovered. I feel safe’ in keeping’to the old sense, and we shall this morning seek no new interpretation, but’ adhere to the common one, with or without the consent of ‘our critics! 9) ., In discoursing upon them I shall speak upon three things.: First; let us, with the patriarch, descend into the grave and behold. the ravages.of death. ‘Then, with him, let us look up on high for present consolation. — And, still in his admirable company, let us, in the third place, anticipate

future delights. EO TNs ’ ‘T.’ First of all then, with the patriarch ‘of Uz, LET US DESCEND INTO THE SEPULCHRE.. Lae ae - ‘The body has just been: divorced from ‘the soul. Friends who loved most tenderly have said — * Bury my dead-out of my sight.” The body — is borne upon the bier and consigned to the silent earth; itissurrounded by the earthworks of death. Death has a host of troops.. If the locusts and the caterpillars be God’s army, the worms are the army of death. — These hungry warriors begin to attack the city of man. ‘They commence — with the outworks; they storm the munition, and’ overturn the walls, — The skin, the city wall of manhood, is utterly broken down, and the — towers of its glory covered with confusion, How speedily the cruel — invaders deface all beauty. The face gathers blackness; the coun» tenance is defiled with corruption. Those:cheeks once fair with youth, and ruddy with health, have fallen in, even as a bowing wall and a — io Fs i H Yass:: 5 (TRE fe 3 ra, tottering fence; those eyes, the windows of the mind whence: joy and sorrow looked forth by turns, are now filled up with the dust of death; those lips, the doors of the soul, the gates of Mansoul, are carried away, and the bars thereof are broken. - Alas, ye windows 0 agates and gates of carbuncle, where are ye now? How shalt I mourn’ for thee, O thou captive city, for the mighty men have«utterly spoiled thee! Thy neck, once like a tower of ivory, has become:as’a fallen column; thy nose, so lately comparable to “the tower of Lebanon, which looketh toward Damascus,” is’as a ruined hovel; and thy head, which: towered like Carmel, lies ‘low as’ the clods of the valley. Where. is beauty now? The most lovely cannot be known from the most deformed. The vessel so daintily wrought upon the potter’s wheel, is*cast away upon

the dunghill with the vilest’ potsherds.: Cruel:-have ye been, yewarriors of death, for though ye wield no axes:and bear no ‘hammers, ‘yet have ye broken down ‘the: carved work; and though: ye speak not: with tongues; yet have ye said in your hearts, “We have» swallowed: her up,-certainly. this i is the day that we have looked for; we have found; we have-seen it.” The skin is gone. ‘The’ troops have entered:into»the — town of Mansoul. And: now they pursue their work of devastation; the’ pitiless marauders .all< upon: the sbody »itself.:.: There are’ those

noble aqueducts, the veins through ‘which the streams of llife were

“wont to: flow, these, instead:.of being rivers ‘of “life, ‘have: become blocked up with the soil and wastes: of death, and« now they “must be pulled to pieces; not a single: relic of: them: shall be ‘spared, Mark the muscles and sinews, like. great: highways ‘that: penetrating - the. metropolis, carry ‘the strength and “wealth: ‘of: manhood: along

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