Abraham, and all the Patriarchs, were men who looked forward to a better inheritance than they had here below. "They looked for a city which had foundations." "They desired a better country, that is, an heavenly." (Heb. xi. 10 — 16.) The words of our own seventh Article are clear and unmistakeable : "They are not to be heard which feign that the old fathers did look only for transi- tory promises." This witness is true.
Let us anchor our own souls firmly on this great foundation truth, " that we shall all rise again." What- ever ancient or modem Sadducees may say, let us believe firmly that we are not made like the beasts that perish, and that there shall be " a resurrection of the dead, both of the just and unjust." (Acts xxiv. 16.) The recollection of this truth will cheer us in the day of trial, and comfort us in the hour of death. We shall feel that though earthly prosperity fail us, there is a life to come where there is no change. We shall feel that though worms destroy our body, yet in the flesh we shall see God. (Job XIX. 26.) We shall not lie always in the grave. Our God is " not a God of the dead, but of the living."
Notes. Lukb XX. 27 — 40.
27. — [Certain of the Sadducees.] The only certain thing which we know about the sect of the Sadducees is this, that they denied that there was any resurrection, or angel, or spirit. (Acts xidii. B.) The common opinion that they rejected all the books of the Old Testament, excepting the five books of Moses, appears to be a vulgar error. There is no foundation for it. Josephus, the historian, was a Pharisee, and not likely to spare the errors of Sadducees in describing them. But though he charges them with rejecting traditions, he nowhere charges them with reject- iDg any of the sacred books.
^Any resurrection.] Campbell has a long note to prove that by this tenn " resurrection ** we are not to understana the reunion
342 BXPOsnoRT thotjohts.
of soul and body, but simply a renewal of life, in whatever man- ner this may happen. He holds that the fundamental error of the Sadducees was not barely the denial of the resurrection of the body, but the denial of the immortality of the soul, and that our Lord's argument in this passage tends to prove no more than that the soul survives the body and subsists after the body is dissolved.
The opinion must be received with caution. It solves some difficulties undoubtedly, but involves us in others.
28. — [His brother should take his wife!] The law of Moses here referred to, (Deut. xxv. 6.) ought to be carefully studied, and compared with Leviticus xviii. 16. It is clear that marriage with a deceased husband's brother was only allowed under certain neculiar circumstances, and as a general rule was unlawful. How any Bible reader can advocate a man's marriage with a deceased wife's sister, in the face of such texts as Leviticus xviii- J 6 and xx. 21, is, to my mind, quite incomprehensible. If it is wrong for a woman to marry two brothers, it must be wrong for a man to marry two sisters. The exceptional permission to a woman to marry two brothers was only granted when the first brother had died without leaving any children. To argue from this permission that a man may marry two sisters in succession, on the ground that the first wife left children, who need an aunt's care, seems very singular logic !
29. — [First took a wife, and died childless.'] Let it be noted that Ambrose and Jerome attach allegorical meanings to this story, and regard the woman as an emblem of the Jewish synagogue. The idea seems utterly improbable.
31. — [The seven also ,.,, left no children.] The possibility of such a thing happening as that which is here described, of course can- not be denied. The gross improbability of it, however, must he evident to all reflecting minds. The most probable view is that the story was a supposed case invented to supply a foundation for a difficulty.
34. — [Children of this world marry.] We must beware that we do not allow these words to give any sanction to Eoman Catholic notions of the superior holiness of the state of virginity to the state of matrimony. The distinction our Lord draws implies no reflection on matrimony. It is simply a declaration ^at the condition of men and women in a world to come is utterly unlike their condition in this world.
" The children of this world," we must remember, do not in this place signify unconverted people, but simply people who are living on earth.
35. — [The resurrection from the dead.] The Greek words here are