i)ISC. XL 4ND JOY AT THE RESURRECTION. 563 den from his sorrows in the dust of death, he requests also that God would appoint a set time for his release, and remember him. His faith seems to have had a glimpse of the blessed resurrection. Our senses and our carnal passions would cry out where is Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and the rest of the ancient worthies, who have been long sleepers in their beds of repose for many thousand years ? But faith assures us, that God numbers the days and the months of the concealment un- der ground, he knowswhere their dust lies, and where to find every scattered atom against the great restoringday. They are unseen indeed and forgotten of men, but then they are under the eye and the keeping of the blessed God : He watches over their sleepingdust, and while the world has forgotten and lost even their names, they are every moment under the eye of God, for they stand writ- ten in his book of life, with the name of the Lamb at the head of them. Jesus, his Son, had but three days ap- pointed him to dwell in this hiding-place, and he rose again at the appointed hour. Other good men who were gone to their grave not long before him, arose again at the resurrection of Christ, and made a visit to many in Jerusalem : Their appointed hiding:place was but for a short season ; and all the children of God shall be re- membered in their proper seasons in faithfulness to his Son to whom he has given them : The head is raised to the mansions ofglory, and the members must not for ever lie in dust. Reflexion. Then let all the saints of God wait with patience for the appointed time when he will call them down to death, and let them lie down in their secret beds of repose, and in a waiting frame commit their dust to his care till the resurrection. " All the days of my ap- pointed time," says Job, " I will wait till my change corne." The word appointed time is supposed to signify " warfare" in the Hebrew : As a centinel, when he is fixed to his post by his general, he waits there till he has orders for a release. And this clause of the verse may refer either to dying or rising again, for either of them is a very great and important change, passingupon human nature, whether from life or death, or from death to life. It is said by the prophet Isaiah, chapter xxviii. 16._ ` He that believeth shall not make haste," that is, 1w 2o2
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