and the perpetuity of the relation.

God, in this

reasoning, is set forth as the giver of life to whatever lives, the free unchanging giver of it, that he, to whom God is Elohim, cannot but live. All this is inferred from the word; for our Lord reasons ex vi terminorum: all this is therefore included in the meaning of the word."

These reflections are of great importance. But we may observe, that whatever communications of good, or of well-being, the relative meaning of Elohim implied, it must of course presuppose actual existence in life: whatever relation, therefore, Elohim implies, the force of our Lord's argument consists in this, that Jehovah should own that relation, as still existing between him and Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, when he spoke to Moses from the bush, more than three hundred years after they had been gathered to their people. But the Elohim is not Elohim to the dead; therefore they all lived to him.' For an acknowledged relation, acknowledged as now existing, supposes the existence of the correlative. The relationship of Father ceases, among men, when the children are no more: the widower is no longer a husband. But the argument of our Lord with the Saducees, from the force of the term Elohim, goes certainly farther. He is not content with proving that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, were then alive to God; but, admitting they were 'dead' in one sense, he argues "now that the dead are raised even Moses shewed you at the bush."

of modern growth among the fallen children of Adam. The existence of the soul after death, in a state of separation from the body, was the unanimous persuasion of all ancient nations. Neither among the worshippers of the true Elohim, nor among the worshippers of idols, do we ever find the notion, that death was an extinction of being altogether. And this is some proof that the children of men did not understand that the sentence of temporal death pronounced upon them in Adam after his fall, implied the annihilation of the spirit, as well as the dissolution of the body. But whatever the idolaters meant, when they applied the term Elohim to the objects of their worship, the term itself was evidently borrowed from the faithful patriarchs. Among them we know for certain, that the term Elohim, with whatever difficulties and uncertainty the tracing of its etymology may be now attended, implied a relation of a most blessed kind.

The late Bishop Horsley remarks, and his observations, as far as they go, will be of the greatest service in guiding our inquiries, "Our Saviour argues from the strict sense of the words, I am, the God of Abraham,' &c., from the force of the Hebrew ELOHIM that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, must rise again, because Jehovah is their Elohim, and he cannot hold the relation of Elohim to dead men: therefore, those to whom he holds that relation must live. The relation, therefore, is that in which the donation of life and well-being is implied,

and the perpetuity of the relation. God, in this reasoning, is set forth as the giver of life to whatever lives, the free unchanging giver of it, that he, to whom God is Elohim, cannot but live. All this is inferred from the word; for our Lord reasons ex vi terminorum: all this is therefore included in the meaning of the word."

These reflections are of great importance. But we may observe, that whatever communications of good, or of well-being, the relative meaning of Elohim implied, it must of course presuppose actual existence in life: whatever relation, therefore, Elohim implies, the force of our Lord's argument consists in this, that Jehovah should own that relation, as still existing between him and Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, when he spoke to Moses from the bush, more than three hundred years after they had been gathered to their people. But the Elohim is not Elohim to the dead; therefore they all lived to him.' For an acknowledged relation, acknowledged as now existing, supposes the existence of the correlative. The relationship of Father ceases, among men, when the children are no more: the widower is no longer a husband. But the argument of our Lord with the Saducees, from the force of the term Elohim, goes certainly farther. He is not content with proving that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, were then alive to God; but, admitting they were dead' in one sense, he argues "now that the dead are raised even Moses shewed you at the bush."

The term Elohim, then, the relation being admitted, pledged a state of well-being of a particular kind, which implied a resurrection from the dead: it implied that the correlative, neither with respect to his spirit, nor with respect to his body, should be left. where he was.

The words of our Lord, in his previous answer to the Sadducees, replying to their favorite dilemma, ،، Whose wife shall she be ? are full of interest and information. He draws a distinction between "the children of this world," and "they which shall be counted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead." "They neither marry, nor are given in marriage; neither can they die any more, for they are equal to the angels: and are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection." These last expressions are particularly to be noted. Are the children of God;' this in Hebrew would be Beni Elohim ",' expressing the correlative of Elohim: we see, therefore, the kind of life' and well-being, which the force of the relative term Elohim somehow or other implies, not merely that God is, as Creator, "the giver of life to whatever lives," but as He is "the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness nor shadow of turning, who of his own will begat us, by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of first-fruits of his creatures;" as he is the AUTHOR OF ETERNAL LIFE to

.בני האלהים or בני אלהים 8

them that obey him. It refers not to that state of being which we now receive from him, by descent from our first Parents, whereby we become sons of Adam; no, nor to that life' which sustains the separated spirit of every man in the mansions of the dead; but it refers to that gift of 'new life,' in spiritual regeneration, whereby we become the children of God,' and 'heirs of the world to come.' It is remarkably added, "being the children of the resurrection;" the resurrection is the consummation of regeneration. "Flesh and blood cannot

inherit the kingdom of God, neither doth corruption inherit incorruption;" and therefore, though those who are baptized into Christ by adoption, and by the gift of life, in Christ, are now the sons of God; yet they cannot appear as such, nor are they fully such till they become the children of the resurrection;' the resurrection is "the manifestation of the sons of God" of the Beni Elohim. Therefore, with regard to the 'sons of God who are in the flesh,' this 'corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality;' and, with regard to the Beni Elohim which are in the mansions of the dead, they must rise again from the state of death in which they are; and if Abraham and Isaac are sons of Elohim, they must rise again: the adoption is not fully received but in the redemption of the body.

This, and not less than this, by our Lord's argument, must have been the force of the relative term Elohim. It pledges the new relation in which