LECTURES ON THE SHORTER CATECHISM OF THE WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY OF DIVINES-ADDRESSED TO YOUTH.

(Continued from p. 52.)

LECTURE XXXIII.

Q. What benefits do believers receive from Christ at death?

A. The souls of believers are at their death made perfect in holiness, and do immediately pass into glory; and their bodies being still united to Christ, do rest in their graves till the resurrection."

Having considered the fall and recovery of man, and the benefits which, in this life, result to the people of God from their union with Christ, we are now to consider the benefits which they derive from him at death. True Christians, the genuine disciples of Christ, are, in the answer before us, denominated believers; and they are called so because none but they, really and practically believe none but they believe "with all the heart to the saving of the soul." An historical, speculative, or educational belief of the gospel, although infinitely preferable to deliberate or careless infidelity, because more likely to lead to saving faith, is still not the belief which is connected with the pardon of sin, and with life everlasting.

The faith that is saving affects the heart, as well as the understanding"With the heart man believeth anto righteousness." True practiVol. VI.-Ch. Ad.

cal believers have that "faith which worketh by love"-the faith which the gospel demands as indispensable to salvation; and therefore they are, with an emphasis which is proper and discriminating, called, in the answer before us, believersTo all others death is the king of terrors. Death was the penalty denounced for sin; and to all who remain in their sins, and under the sentence of the violated law, this penalty, in all its extent, is executed when the body dies. They have lived under the influence of spiritual death, and when the soul is separated from the body they suffer an eternal death.

But a most happy difference distinguishes the lot of true believers. In virtue of their union with Christ, they are entirely delivered from the sentence and curse of the law, from the desert and dominion of sin. "The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law." But from both these the believer is freed at the dissolution of the body, and hence even "the king of terrors" becomes a friend to the believer. Death is one of the articles in the inventory of his blessings; and he is enabled to triumph and say "O death where is thy sting: O grave where is thy victory-Thanks be to God who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ."

Death to believers is indeed a great gain. At death they receive benefits from their Redeemer of the 20

most precious kind; which, till then, they could not receive-Their souls are then "made perfect in holiness." Sin first contaminates the soul when it is united to the body, and the contamination will in some degree remain, while the connexion between soul and body lasts. But as we are assured that there shall, in no wise, enter into the New Jerusalem above, "any thing that defileth," it is the divine constitution that all the remaining corruptions of believers shall be dropt, with their bodies; and that their souls shall then be made perfect in holiness, and capable of full and uninterrupted communion with God.

This is an event after which the soul of every saint has earnestly panted. Oh how has it groaned under that body of death, which it has dragged through the whole of its spiritual life! How has it wished and struggled to get free! How has it sighed after a complete deliverance from all sin!-no more to be tormented by the risings of sinful passions, no more annoyed by unholy propensities, no more hindered in holy exercises: And all this is now completely attainedQuitting the earthly tabernacle, all sin is left behind, and the happy emancipated spirit comes forth, as pure as that which animated Adam before the fall; a spirit fitted for glory, fitted for heaven.

And our catechism affirms that it immediately passes into glory. This position is opposed, and was intended to be so, to two gross errors-The first is, the error of those who hold that there is an intermediate state, which they denominate purgatory-The second, that of those who maintain that the soul after death sleeps with the body, till the resurrection. As to first of these-the doctrine of purgatory-it is altogether a human invention, without even a colourable countenance from the word of God. There is not a sentence or a word

of canonical scripture, which has even a plausible bearing on the doctrine of purgatory-That which looks the most like it is in the first epistle of Peter, where it is said, speaking of the Spirit of Christ"that he went and preached unto the spirits in prison, which sometimes were disobedient, when once the long suffering of God waited in the days of Noah." But the meaning of this text appears to be, that the Spirit of Christ influenced Noah, who was "a preacher of righteousness," to warn the unhappy men, whose spirits were then, and still are, in prison, of the danger which was so near them while the ark was preparing-Now, to build such a momentous doctrine as that of purgatory on a passage admitting of this construction, and on one or two others, still more violently tortured for the purpose, shows the total want of a solid foundation for the superstructure which is erected. It may also be added, that even the passages which are brought from the apocryphal writings, which are not canonical scripture, do not warrant this doctrine, as it is held and taught by the church of Rome: And, indeed, some of their most able writers admit, that it has no clear foundation in the sacred oracles. It appears to have been borrowed from the beathen mythology; and although there were some earlier notions in regard to it, the doctrine, as now held by the Papists, did not receive its shape, till more than four hundred years after the death of Christ.

As to the other error I have referred to, namely, that the soul sleeps with the body from death till the resurrection, it not only has no countenance from scripture, but is, I think, directly contrary to it. Even on the principles of natural reason, and the analogy of things, the balance of evidence is against it. For although I will not affirm that the arguments in favour of the natural immortality of the soul are

absolutely conclusive, yet I do think them far more plausible than those of an opposite kind. Divisibility and inaction are two essential properties of all matter; and on the other hand, indivisibility and activity seem to be essential properties of spirit: But things which differ in essential properties, cannot reasonably be supposed to be subject to the same laws. And as to appearances, we see the soul, in some cases, retaining all its powers, when the body is wasted to a shadow, and till the very moment of dissolution. These seem to be strong indications, that the soul may act independently on the body.

But after all, it is the word of God that must decide this point. And to my apprehension it decides clearly-To-day thou shalt be with me in paradise"-said our Lord to the penitent malefactor. Yes, say our opponents-" But one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day." And did our Saviour, I ask, say "one day," or "in one day," thou shalt be with me in paradise. No-he said "to-day," or "this day"-It is the same original word, nepov, rendered "this day" in the Lord's prayer. And it seems undeniable that he could mean no other than the natural day on which he spoke-for there can be no reasonable doubt that the malefactor so understood the declaration, and we cannot believe that our Lord would deceive him by an equivocal expression. No, assuredly-that very day the soul of this penitent thief was to meet, and we doubt not did meet, his Saviour, in the paradise above. As to those who would read the passage-" To-day I say unto thee" or, "I say unto thee to-day, thou shalt be with me in paradise," I know not whether so gross a cavil ought even to be mentioned. According to this arrangement of the sentence, the words "to-day," could have no other use

than to render our Lord's declaration emphatick. But that, you will observe, had been done already"Verily I say unto thee"-Not one of the ancient versions,* some of them made when the Greek was yet a living language, but disproves this rendering of the original; and I am persuaded it never would have been thought on, if it had not been sought for, with a view to serve and save a favourite hypothesis.

Again-In what our Saviour says of the rich man and Lazarus, the whole representation rests on this supposition, that souls experience happiness or misery in a future world, while their bodies are sleeping in the dust. I know it is said that this is but a parable. The scripture, however, does not say or intimate that it is a parable. But admit the whole representation to be parabolical, still it must be remembered that parables are intended to illustrate facts and truths; and every other parable that our Saviour ever spoke might, for any thing it contains, be a simple statement of facts. He never spake parables out of nature: And to suppose that he has grounded this representation on a state of things which never happens, and never can happen, is contrary to the whole tenour of our Lord's discourses. It therefore certainly does teach that souls live and act-are happy or miserable-while the bodies which they once animated, are yet in their graves.

But there is one of our Saviour's lessons of instruction, which should put this point beyond all controversy; because its whole force and meaning rests solely on the fact, that after the bodies of men are turned to dust, their spirits live and are conscious. I refer to the manner in which he silenced the Sadducees, who denied a future state altogether; though they professed to be the disciples of Moses,

* See Walton's Polyglott..

and to believe his writings. Our Saviour confounded these men by quoting a sentence from the writings of Moses, and making one short comment on it. The sentence is this "I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob"-Then follows the comment-"God is not the God of the dead, but of the living"-That is, plainly, God spake these words to Moses, some hundred years after Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were dead as to their bodies, and yet they were still living, as to their souls. In other words, he spake of living men, whose bodies had long been turned to dust. The whole pertinence, force, and meaning of our Saviour's words turn on this very point, that the patriarchs were living, when God spake to Moses. Here, therefore, we have our Saviour's seal set on this truth. If you make the experiment you will find that you can make no sense or meaning of our Lord's argument, nor tell how, or why, it confounded the Sadducees, but only this-that God spake of men as living whose bodies had long been dead. I repeat it, therefore, the Saviour has here, professedly and unequivocally, set the seal of his authority, on this truth-that the soul lives when the body dies.

Agreeably to this teaching of his Divine Master, the Apostle Paul speaks of being "absent from the body, and present with the Lord." Now, this, it is plain, would be absolutely impossible, if the spirit never can subsist when absent, or separated from the body. In like manner, when he says" Whether in the body, or out of the body, I cannot tell"-he evidently supposes both to be possible. It virtually falsifies his language to say -that to be out of the body is impossible; for this is one of his suppositions-a circumstance which he supposes might have taken place in fact. He also had "a desire to depart, and to be with Christ, which

is far better." To depart from what? From the world certainlyand we think from the body too. But no, say our opponents-He was to depart from the world, and to sleep some three or four thousand years in the dust of death, all of which would seem but a moment, till the resurrection, and after that he should be with Christ. Is this

let common sense pronounce, for common sense is one of the best interpreters of scripture-Is this the meaning which naturally suggests itself when the apostle says"I have a desire to depart and to be with Christ"-No, it is not. The words plainly import, and the apostle, there is no doubt, meant, that to depart and to be with Christ, were events to take place at the same time. The two things were, in his mind, indissolubly and immediately connected.

We return from this long, but not unimportant digression, to dwell for a moment on the delightful thought, that "the souls of believers do, at death, immediately pass into glory." The moment the connexion between the soul and the body is dissolved, the happy spirit of the saint-perhaps, like that of Lazarus, convoyed by angels-wings its way to glory. How new and interesting the state in which the emancipated spirit now finds itself! All pain, and sickness, and sorrow, and sin, left for ever behind: all danger, and doubt, and conflict, and imperfection, forever terminated: all the principles of immortal health, vigour, activity, holiness, and happiness unutterable, expanding their best and sweetest influence. Thus the soul of the believer enters into glory; a glory which "eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor of which the full conception hath entered the heart of man."

Yet to give us some faint idea of that which our powers at present are inadequate fully to comprehend or sustain, God hath