misery and a curse. Let us never rest till we are one with Christ and Christ in us? and then we may look for- ward with joy to a life to come.*
* The text by which our Lord silenced the Sadducees, and proved the resurrection to be a scriptural doctrine — has been a cause of sur- prise to many Bible readers. Some have wondered that our Lord should have chosen this text, when others far more plain might have been adduced. Some have been unable to see the force and cogency of the text as any proof at all of the resurrection of the body.
As to the particular fitness of the text, as a proof, compared to others we are perhaps very poor judges. It may well be suspected that there is a fulness of meaning in some texts of Scripture, which in our hasty and superficial reading we have not yet fathomed. At any rate it is clear that to a Jewish hearer of the Lord the argument was so forcible as to be unanswerable. This quotation and the fa- mous one in John x. 34, go far to show that the Jewish mind saw a depth of meaning in scriptural expressions which many of us in modern times have not at all seen yet. It is a matter in which we have much to learn.
As to the text, " I am the God of Abraham, &c," being a con- vincing proof of the resurrection of the body, there is a passage in Bishop Pearson, which is worth reading. He says of this text as quoted by our Lord, " With the force of this argument the multitude was astonished, and the Sadducees silenced. For under the name of God was understood a great benefactor, a God of promise, and to be ' their God' was to bless them and reward them ; as in them to be ' his servants,' and ' his people' was to believe in him and obey him. Now Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had not received the promise which they expected, and therefore God after their death desiring still to be called ' their God,' he thereby acknowledge th that he had a blessing and a reward for them still, and consequently that he will raise them to another life, in which they may receive it. So that the argument of our Saviour is the same which the Jews have drawn from another place of Moses. (Exod. vi. 3, 4.) • 'I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, by the name of God Almighty, but by my name Jehovah was I not made known to them. Nevertheless I have established my covenant with them, to give them the land of Canaan.1 It is not said ' to give their sons,' but ' to give them the land,' and therefore because while they lived here they enjoyed it not, they must rise again that they may receive the promise."
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