487 / 674
DISC.
VIII.)
A
SOUL
PREPARED
FOP.
HEAVEN.*.
469
Noah,
to Abraham, Isaac,
Jacob,
or
to Moses
himself?
And
were
it not
for some
expressions
in
the New
Testa-
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
of
death,
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