DISC. VIII.) A SOUL PREPARED FOP. HEAVEN.*. 469 Noah, to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, or to Moses himself? Andwere it not for some expressions in the NewTesta- ment, and by that xi. chapter to the Hebrews, where we are told, that.these good men sought a heavenly country, and hoped for happiness in a future and invisible state, we should sometimes be ready to doubt whether they knew almost any thing of the future resurrection and glory. That great and excellent man Job, had one or ,two lucid intervals of peculiar brightness, which shone upon him from heaven, in the midst of his distresses, and raised him above and beyond the common level of the dispensation he lived in ; yet in the main, when he describes the state of the dead, bow desolate and dole- some is his language, and what heavy darkness hangs upon his hope ? See his expressions ; Job x. 20, 21, 22.r " Let me alone, that I may take comfort a little, before. I go whence I shall not return, even to the land of dark- ness, and the shadow ofdeath, a land of darkness as dark- ness itself, and of the shadow, of death without any order, and where the light is' as darkness." Mark .how this good man heaps one darkness upon another, and makes so formidable a gloom, as was hardly to be dis- pelled by the common notices given to men in that age. And if we look into the Jewish writings, in and after the days of Moses, we find the men of righteousness, fre- quently entertained with promises of corn, and wine, and ° oil, and other blessings of sense ; and few there were amongst them who saw clearly, and firmly believed the heavenly inheritance through the types, and shadows, and figures of Canaan, the promised land, which flowed with milk and honey. It is granted there are some hints, and discoveries of a blessedness beyond the grave in the writings of David, Isaiah, Daniel, and some of the prophets ; But the brightest of these notices fall ,far short of what the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ' has set before us.. The Son of God, who came down from heaven, where he had lived from before the creation of this world, has revealed to us infinitely more of the invisible state than all that went before him : He tells us of the pure in heart enjoying the sight of God, and conversing with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the ancient saint.§ : He as 2x2
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