state of happiness in another world."-TILLOTSON *.

When the inhabitants of Sodom and the neighbouring cities had offended God by their wicked deeds, he resolved to destroy them; and we are told that there were not even ten righteous persons to be found amongst those profligate people; but without question there must have been some hundreds of children who were in a state of innocence, and yet they all perished in a moment with their wicked parents +.

When Pharaoh and his people had deserved divine punishments, amongst the plagues which were inflicted upon them, one was the death of all the first-born. As they had destroyed the young children of the Israelites, so God dealt with them according to the law of retaliation, and destroyed their children. But most of these children had committed no offence to bring down this evil upon themselves.

In the wilderness, Corah, Dathan, and Abiram rebelled against Moses and against God, and came out and stood in the door of their tents, and their wives, and their sons, and their little children,—and the earth swallowed them up; they and all that appertained to them went down alive into the pit.

* Serm. xiv. vol. ii.

See Le Clerc on Gen. xix.

In the wars which the people of Israel waged with the Canaanites and some other nations, they. slew all the inhabitants, men, women, and male children; and this was done by divine command.

If any city of the Israelites should be guilty of idolatry, the nation was ordered to destroy the place, and every creature that lived there.

When Achan had stolen some of the spoils which were devoted to the Lord, Joshua and all Israel took him, and his sons, and his daughters, and all that he had, and stoned them, and burnt them with fire.

Saul was sent to destroy the Amalekites; and the commandment of God was, Go and smite Amalek, and spare them not, but slay man and woman, infant and suckling.

When the children of the inhabitants of Bethel mocked the prophet Elisha*, he cursed them in the name of the Lord; and there came forth two shebears, and tare forty-two children of them †.

In these, and many other instances, we see the guilty and the innocent involved in the same destruction by the express command or by the miraculous power of God. Upon the supposition of a future state, there is no difficulty in this: for God,

who is the God of those who are dead to men, can adjust all such inequalities of providence in another world; but without this solution it seems impossible to reconcile it with the divine justice or good

ness.

God gave the Law to the Israelites by Moses, and in that Law promises, as well as threatenings, which, literally interpreted, were merely temporal. But the Law, if it added no proofs of another state, yet surely could not take away the causes which good men, from other indications, had to hope and expect it, nor extinguish the light of reason, that lamp of God, which guides every careful and wise and unprejudiced inquirer, and gives him a distant view of another and a better state.

Amongst the laws which God gave by Moses, is this: "Ye are the children of the Lord your God: ye shall not cut yourselves, nor make any baldness between your eyes for the dead *.

"

God would not permit them to imitate the excessive lamentations and the frantic behaviour of the Gentiles at their funeral rites. And this seems to have been a direction to them †, not to sorrow like

* Deut. xiv. 1. Solon, and from him the Romans in the Twelve Tables, made laws of the same kind. Plutarch, Solon. Cicero de Leg. ii. 26.

Spencer de Leg. Hebr. 1. ii. c. 19. § 2.

men without hope, as the apostle expresses it, but to expect another state besides the present.

Joshua says to Achan, "My son, give glory to the Lord God of Israel *."

Hence may be collected, as Grotius observes, some expectation of the soul's continuance after death; for by what other motive could this miserable man be induced to confess a capital crime, for which he and all his family were doomed to inevitable destruction? It appears to have been an opinion amongst the Jews, that the pardon of such crimes could be obtained of God by ingenuously confessing them, and patiently undergoing the death which the Law required.

In the beginning of the Book of Job we read that he had seven thousand sheep, and three thousand camels, and five hundred yoke of oxen, and five hundred she-asses, and seven sons, and three daughters. He lost all these suddenly and miraculously.

In the end of the book we read that God, to recompense his piety and patience, gave him twice as much as he had before. So the Lord blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning; for he had fourteen thousand sheep, and six thousand camels, and a thousand yoke of oxen, and a thou

*Josh. vii. 19.

sand she-asses; and he lived, after he was restored to a state of prosperity, a hundred and forty years, which probably was twice the number of days which he had seen before his afflictions.

also seven sons and three daughters.

He had

The sacred writer is particular in enumerating these double blessings, and in observing that he had not the double number of children, but only just as many as he had lost; and this seems to be an indication that the dead do not cease to exist *.

Suppose that there be another state, and that the children of Job were in a happy condition, he then received just the double, counting those who were alive, and those who were dead. But, on the contrary supposition, Job, who had the double of every thing else, had only the same of that which was the most valuable and desirable. Upon the whole, therefore, there is reason to think that this circumstance was inserted in the history of Job, to confirm, or to insinuate, at least, the doctrine of another and a better life.

Suppose the Book of Job to be an allegory, a parable, or moral fable, yet the remark which we have made will still hold good; for in a parable,

* Addidit Deus duplicia. De possessionibus intellige, non de liberis. Causam reddunt Hebræi, quia et liberi priores ei manebunt apud Deum.-GROTIUS.