583 / 674
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 knows
where
their dust
lies,
and where
to
find
every
scattered
atom against the
great restoring
day.
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
sleeping
dust,
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
of
glory,
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, passing
upon 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