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Belief vf this Patriarch * and Israelites tn « Future State . 275
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Belief of the Patriarchs and Israelites in a Future State . ( Continued from p . 144 . ) WHETHER the history of Job be a real or a fictitious one , the moral philosophy to be derived from it is the same : some parts are
evidently figurative or dramatic . We may have heard hi Christian pulpits portions introduced from this book , as indicative of the writer or the hero ' s disbelief of a future state . " There is hope of a tree—but man goeth down to the grave , and where is he ? " But this is " wresting the Scriptures , " not explaining- them ; it is quoting
imperfectly , or by halves , without regard to the connexion ; and , therefore , such arguments are built only on the sand . " Man , " says Job , " lieth down and riseth not again , till the heavens be no more ; " till then " they shall not awake nor be raised out of their sleep . If a man die , shall he live a 2-ain ? " No , certainly , not in this
world ; but what follows ? " All the days of my appointed time will I wait , till my change come ! " But there are other passages still more explicit , without alluding to that controverted text , " I know that my Redeemer liveth . " Job had , upon the whole , comfortable views of the Divine
providence and government , which convinced him that " the righteous should hold on his way , and he that had clean hands should wax stronger and stronger ; " and induced him to cry out , in the midst of his sufferings , " Though he slay me , yet will I trust in him !" This text alone is in itself " an host . " Solomon , though not a prophet , was endowed with extraordinary natural powers ; and , in his bright and
golden days , was furnished with the most copious stores of religious wisdom . In his beautiful personification of this divine quality , Prov . viii . &c , lie says , " Whoso f indeth me , findeth lite . " In eh . xxiii ., denouncing those that " remove the ancient land-marks , ami
enter the fifekfs of the fatherless /' }| e observes , " Their Redeemer ifc ln ^ l » ty , he shall plead their cause with i [ }^ : » and in ch . xiv . 32 , " The righteous hath hope in his death !" "i the book of £ cclesiastpes , generally supposed to have 'f tg&n written by him , and of which it bears the strongest i nternal testimony , he is more precise
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and emphatic : ** If thou seest oppression and violent perversion of judgment , marvel nof ; for He that is higher than the highest regardeth it , and there be higher than they . Reioice , O young man , in thy youth , &c ,
but forget not that for all these things " ( if misapplied and abused ) " God will bring thee into judgment . " And he sums up the whole in these remarkable words : " For God will bring every work into judgment , with every secret thing , whether it be good or whether it be evil . "
But , in this view of the Old-Testament writers , Da ?? id appears with a peculiar lustre . Thus , in a serene and silent midnight sky , though every star shines with a distinct flame , yet some emit a more vivid brightness , and irresistibly attract the eye of the beholder : hence the pious hymns of the royal poet will remain among tine chief standards of a rational and sublime devotion to the end of time . "To the poet , " says a modern lecturer *— "To the poet ever
* -Mremain the lovely forms of animate and inanimate nature ; all that is interesting to humanity , to sympathy , to imagination . While there is a star in heaven , it shall speak to the poet ' s eye of another and a better world . In poetry is to be found a reservoir of the holier feelings of our nature . It is as a robe of light , spread over the face of things , and investing them with super-human
splendour . There is in poetry a sort of intrinsic revelation , leading man to consider this existence as the wreck of other systems , or the germ of a future being ! " But the Psalmist of Israel was a prophet as well as a poet and a philosopher ; hence he became eminently qualified for the moist profound researches into the , history of Providence , the works and ways of the
Almighty ; for magnifying his name and celebrating "his praises ; and in this delightful work , when Toosed froih the bondage of iniquity , and rejoicing in a sense of the Divine Favour and acceptance , he pours out liis soul before him in the most ecstatic transports , and calls upon universal nature to unite with him in khe great design . But the powers of language are exhausted before him in tire prosecution
* Mr . Campbell , at the Royal Institution .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1822, page 275, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2512/page/19/
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