rection of the just, is, therefore, not
improbably an object of interest with him who, under the God-man, will
have the supervision of the last day. With a view to that harvest of the
earth, he will now see the furrows made, the seed planted, the hill
prepared. He will have a care that every thing lies down, whether by
seeming accident, or by violence, or by design, in just the place from
which the arranging mind of Him who is Lord both of the dead and of the
living, has appointed it to come forth. Every circumstance attending
that event, the great object of hope in heaven and on earth,--our
resurrection,--is of sufficient importance to be the subject of thought
and preparation on the part of Christ, himself the first fruits of them
that slept.

The care of the patriarchs concerning their burial places is like one of
those premonitions in an antecedent stratum of geology, or species of
animals, of a coming manifestation;--a prophesying germ, a yearning,
created by Him who, with all-seeing wisdom, establishes anticipations
in the moral, as well as in the natural, world, concerning things with
regard to which a thousand years are with him as one day.

Not on earth alone, as it seems, is an interest felt in the death and
burial of the righteous.

For when the leader of Israel in the wilderness went up to the hill top
to die, the two great angels, of heaven and hell, met and contended over
his grave.

Denied the privilege of burial in the promised land, Moses may have
appeared to Satan so evidently under the frown of God, as to encourage
his meddlesome efforts to inflict some injury upon him, through dishonor
done to his remains. Perhaps he would convey them back to Egypt, a gift
to the brooding vengeance of the Pharaohs, who would gratify their anger
by preserving that body in the house of their gods;--thus showing their
spiteful satisfaction at the disappointment of the prophet whom Jehovah
would not permit to enter that promised land, in hope of which the
great spoiler had led away the bondmen of Egypt.

Perhaps the devil would gratify the desire of some idolatrous nation,
craving new objects of worship, by leading them to canonize this Hebrew
chief; and thus make of the lawgiver and prophet of Israel a false god.

Perhaps he could even prevail on some of the Israelites themselves, if
not the whole of them, to worship this revered form; or might he but
have the designation and the custody of his grave, he would, pe