remembered, that our blessed Lord used the very same terms to express the conversion of souls to him notv, and their rising again to judgment in the last day : " Verily, verily, I say luito you, The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God : and theij that hear shall live .... Marvel not at this : for the hour is coming, in the which all ■that are m the graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth ; they that have done ^good, unto the resurrection of life ; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation'." Here our Lord distinguishes the two resurrections, both ef- fected bj his almighty power ; the one upon the souls of men, tUid the other on their bodies : the one, in order to their reign- ing with him on earth, (for " they are made kings and priests unto God;") and the other, in order to their reigning with him in glory.
Thus the very terms themselves are best explained in refe- rence to a spiritual resurrection ; whilst, if taken in a literal sense, they would establish a doctrine not found in any other part of HoJy Writ. To all of which I may add, that the text «peaks oniy of their souls living, which is never once in all the Scriptures used to designate the resurrection of the body.
In confirmation of the foregoing statement, I proceed to ohserve,]
1. That the event which a literal sense of them would establish, is neither probable nor desirable —
[One cannot conceive that the saints in glory should be brought down from heaven, where their happiness is complete and without alloy, and be placed again in a situation where they must be encompassed with infirmities, and be subjected even to death itself; or that the Saviour should leave his bright abodes, to sojourn here again in a tabernacle of clay for the space of a thousand years. If indeed he had plainly de- clared such an event, we should most readily submit to his all-wise determinations, and should expect assuredly that he would ultimately be glorified by it : but, when there is no other passage of Scripture that sanctions such an idea ; and all similar expressions have confessedly a spiritual import ; and the spiritual or figurative sense accords with innumerable other declarations of Holy Writ; I cannot hesitate about the true interpretation of the words, or about the expectations which tliey teach me to form respecting the glory of the latter day.
In this view of the passage I am confirmed by the circumstances which will take place at the close of the Mil- lennium : " Satan will then be loosed out of his })rison, and will go forth to deceive the nations, and to gather them together
to ' John v. 25, 26, 29.