284 ESSAY TOWARD THE [SECT. II. Bence, or forcible proof, and may possibly be interpreted to another sense, I shall not long insist upon them however, it may not be amiss just to mention a few of them, and pass away. Ps. lxxiii. 24, 26. " Thou shalt guide me with thy counsel, and afterward receive me to glory : My flesh and my heart faileth, but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever." In these verses, " re- ceiving to glory," seems immediately to follow aguidance through this world ; and when the flesh and heart of the Psalmist should fail him in death, God continued to be his portion for ever. God would receive him to himself as such a portion, and therebyhe gave strength, or cou- rage, to his heart, even in a dying hour. It would be a very odd and unnatural exposition of this text, to inter- pret it only of the resurrection, thus, " thou shalt guide me, by thy counsel, through this life, and, after the long interval ofsome thousand years, thou wilt receiveme to glory." .Eccles. xii. 7. " Then shall the dust return to the earth, as it was, and the spirit to God that gave it." It is confessed, the word spirit, in theHebrew, is the same with " breath ;" and is represented, in some places of scrip- ture, as the spring of animal life to the body : Yet it is evident, in many other places, the word spirit signifies the conscious principle in man, or the intelligent being, which knows and reasons, perceives and acts. The scripture speaks of being " grieved in spirit;" Is. liv. 6. of rejoicing in spirit;" Luke x. " The spirit of a man knoweth the things of a man ;" 1 Cor, ii. 11. " There is a spirit in man ;" that is, a principle of un- derstanding; Job xxxii. S. And this spirit, both of the wicked and the righteous, at death, returns to God ; Eccles. xii. 7. to God, who, as I hinted before, is the judge of all the world of spirits, probably to be further determinedand disposed of, as to its state of reward or punishment. Is. lvii. 1, 2. " The righteous is taken away from the evil to come, he shall enter into peace, they shall rest in their beds, each one walking in his uprightness:" The soul ofevery one, that walketh uprightly, shall, at death, enter into a state of peace, while- his body rests in the bed ofdust.
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