19 The small and great are there; and the servant is free from his master.

"There is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest."-Eccles. 9:10.

Such is the nature of things with respect to the captives of death, good and bad, great and small, while in his custody-prisoners asleep and chained to the sides of the pit, who cannot leave their prison-house, till He who hath the Keys of the Invisible and of Death (Rev. 1:18), comes and unlocks the gates of the unseen.

It is part of the mission of Jesus to do this. Thus in prophecy, the Spirit saith to Christ,

"I, Yahweh, have called Thee, and will give Thee for a covenant of the people, for a light of the Gentiles; to open the blind eyes, to bring out the prisoners from the prison, and them that sit in darkness out of the prison-house."-Isa. 42:6, 7.

And in Zech. 9:10, 11, the Spirit saith of the King who was to ride into Jerusalem upon the foal of an ass, "He shall speak peace unto the nations;" and then addressing him as if present, saith,

"As for these also, by the blood of thy covenant I have released thy prisoners out of the pit, in which is no water."

Paul is one of these prisoners. He is in a pit, in which there is no water of life; and, if ever he get out of it, as he certainly will, it will be by virtue of the blood of the Abrahamic Covenant, which was anti-typically dedicated, and made sanctifying to all the children thereof, by the blood of sprinkling, shed from the side of Jesus; and with which he was sprinkled in obeying the truth. Even when alive, and in the custody of the Roman Dragon, he styles himself

"the prisoner of the Lord;"

for he got into the Satan's clutches in the Lord's service; and as the Lord could have released him, but did not, he was more the Lord's prisoner, than the Roman Devil and Satan's (Rev. 12:9.)

Such, then, is Paul's present condition, "like to a man waiting for his lord," or, as he has it, "waiting for a deliverer-the Lord Jesus"-to come and change the body, of his humiliation, into a like form with the body of his glory. This will be his synthesis-the putting of him together again; the rebuilding of his dust and ashes into the human form-an incorruptible, deathless, and glorious body-with the spiritual, or mental and moral, characteristics of "Paul the aged" incorporated therein.

From this exposition, it will be seen, that we have nothing to reconcile between Paul's words and Psal. 100: 46:3, 4. We do not undertake the impossible task of harmonizing mistranslations, and clerical opinions, with the teaching of the Spirit. The supposed difficulty must be removed by those who fabricate it.

If men say, "the dead are conscious and intelligent in a spirit-world;" and the Spirit say by Solomon, "the dead know not anything"-they create a contradiction by their stupid nonsense; let them, therefore, reconcile it if they can. The fact is, it is irreconcilable; and they place themselves in a strait betwixt two, which imposes upon them the necessity of abandoning their dogma or the Bible. They cannot, before God, believe in both.

Herald of the Kingdom and Age to Come, Mar 1857