576 / 674
856
SAFETY
7N
THE
G1tAVE.',
[t)1SC.8t
;place
for
his
people
:"
It
is
his
appointed shelter
and
retreat
for
his
favourites, when
he finds them over
-
pressed
either
with
present
dangers or
calamities, or
when
he
foresees
huge
calamities and dangers,
like storms
and
billows,
ready
to
overtake
them
;
Is.
lvii.
1.
"
The
righteous
is
taken
away fronz the evil
to come,"
God
our
heavenly
Father
beholds this
evil
advancing
forward
through
all the
pleasant
smiles
of
nature,
and all the
peaceful
circumstances
that
su;round
us.
He
hides
his
children
in the grave from
a
thousand
sins,
and
sorrows,
and
distresses
of
this
life, which
they foresaw
not
:
And
even
when they are
actually beset behind and
before,
so
that
there
seems
to be
no
natural
way
for
their
escape,
God
calls
them aside into the chambers
of
death,
in the
same sort of language
as
he uses in
another
case
;
Is.
xxvi.
20
"
Came my people,
enter
thou
into
thy
cham-
bers,
and shut
thy
doors
about
thee, hide
thyself
as
it
ttverefor
a
little
moment,
until
the
indignation
be
over-
passed."
And vet perhaps
it
is
possible
that
this very
language
d
the
Lord
in
Isaiah
may
refer
to
the grave,
as
God's
biding-place, for the
verse before promises
a resurrec-
tion.
"
Thy dead
men
shall
live;
together
with
my
dead
body
shall
they
arise
:
Awake,
and sing
ye
that
dwell
in
the
dust
:
For
thy
dew
is
as the
dew
of
herbs,
and
the
earth
shall
cast out the
dead."
And
if
we may
suppose
this
last
verse to
Lave
been transposed
by any
ancient
transcribers,
so
as to have followed
originally
'verse
20,
or
21,
it
is
very
natural then
to
interpret
the
whole
paragraph concerning
death,
as
God's
hiding
-place
for
his
people, and
their
rising again
through
the
virtue
of
the
resurrection of Christ
as
their joyful
release.
Many
a
time
God
is
pleased
to
shorten
the labours,
and
travels, and
fatigues
of
good
men in this
wilderness, and
he opens
a
door
of
rest
to them where he
pleases, and
perhaps
surprizes
them
into
a state of
safety
and
peace,
"
where the weary
are
at
rest,
and the
wicked cease
from
troubling
;"
and
holy
Job
seems
to desire
this favour
from
his
Maker here
;
Job
iii. 17.
Sometimes indeed, in
the history
of
this book,
he
seems to
break out
into these desires
in
too
rude
and
an-
gry a
manner of
expression
;
and in
a
fit
of
criminal
im-
patience
he
murmurs against God
for upholding
him in
the land
of
the living
:
But at other
times,
as
in
this text,