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Page 75
Be it so, it may be said;--�Still, it is to Christianity the world
owes the consoling doctrine of a life to come. Life and immortality
were brought to light by the Gospel,� say the Christian divines; and
they assert, that the doctrine of a resurrection was not known to
Jew or Gentile, till they learned it from Jesus� followers. The Old
Testament, (say they,) taught the Jews nothing of the glorious
truths concerning �the resurrection of the body, and the life
everlasting,� their �beggarly elements� confined their views to
temporal happiness, only.� These assertions I shall prove from the
Old Testament itself, to be contrary to fact; for the Jews both knew,
and were taught by their Bibles to expect a resurrection, and
believed it as firmly as any Christian can, or ever did. For proof
hereof, I shall, in the first place, quote the 37th chapter of Ezekiel,
and which is as follows, �The hand of the Lord was upon me, and
carried me out in the spirit of the Lord, and set me down in the
midst of the valley, which was full of bones. And caused me to
pass by them round about, and behold there were very many in the
open valley, and behold they were dry.--And he said unto me.
Son of man, can these bones live? and I answered, O Lord God,
thou knowest. Again he said unto me. Prophecy upon these bones,
and say unto them, O ye dry bones, hear the word of the Lord.
Thus saith the Lord God unto these bones, behold I will cause
breath to enter into you, and ye shall live, and I will lay sinews
upon you, and will bring up flesh upon you; and cover you with
skin, and put breath into you; and ye shall live, and know that I am
the Lord. So I prophesied as I was commanded, and, as I
prophesied, there was a noise, and behold, a shaking, and the bones
came together, bone to his bone. And �when I beheld, lo, the
sinews and the flesh came up upon them, and the skin covered
them above; but there was no breath in them. Then said he unto
me. Prophecy son of man, and say unto the wind, thus saith the
Lord God, come from the four winds, O breath! and breathe upon
these slain, that they may live. So I prophesied as he commanded
me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood up
again upon their feet, an exceeding great army.�
A plainer resurrection than this is, I think never was preached
either by Jesus or his followers. Again, Daniel the prophet says,
�Many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some
to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt,�
Daniel xii. 2. Now Ezekiel lived almost six hundred years before
Jesus, and Daniel was contemporary with the former; and is it not a
little surprising, that the Jews should learn, for the first time, the
doctrine of a resurrection of the followers of Jesus Christ, when
they knew of the resurrection almost six hundred years before he
was born? Isaiah also, (who lived before either Ezekiel or Daniel),
in the 26th chapter of his prophesies, (exciting the Jews to have
confidence in God, and not to despair on account of their captivity,
and the troubles and afflictions which they should suffer therein),
foretells to them that death would not deprive them of the reward
of their piety and virtue; for God would raise them from the dead,
and make them happy. �Thy dead men shall live, my dead bodies#
(i. e., the bodies of God�s servants) they shall arise. Awake! and
sing! ye that dwell in the dust, for thy dew is as the dew of herbs,�
The meaning of the last clause is--that, as the grass, which in
Oriental countries becomes brown and shrivelled by the heat of the
sun; from the effects of the dew it changes and springs up, as it
were, in a moment, green and fresh and beautiful; so, by the
instantaneous influence of the word of God, the dry and decayed
remains of mortality shall become blooming with immortal
freshness and beauty. See also Hosea xiii. 14. I might easily
multiply passages from the Old Testament, to prove that the
doctrine of a resurrection was familiar to the ancient Israelites, but
I suppose that what I have already produced, is sufficient. Those,
however, who wish to see the subject more thoroughly examined,
are referred to �Greave�s Lectures on the Pentateuch,� a work
lately published in Europe, highly honourable to the author. See
also a Tract upon this subject, published by Dr. Priestley, in 1801.
I shall only add one observation more on this subject, viz., that it is
very singular that Christian divines should assert, that �life and
immortality were first brought to light by the Gospel,� when the
New Testament itself represents the resurrection of the dead as
being perfectly well known to the Jews, and describes Jesus
himself as proving it to the Sadducees out of the Old Testament!!!
CONCLUSION.
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