ing was to be mental; in the other bodily. In the latter case, positive personal pain was the gist of the matter: in the former the heart might be pierced and the mind be overwhelmed without the necessity of any such incurable afflictions as children's deaths amount to. God's mercy may well have allowed the evil one to overreach himself: and when the restoration came, how double was the joy of Job over those ten dear children.

Again, if any one will urge, that, in the common view of the case, Job at the last really has twice as many children as before, for that he has ten old ones in heaven and ten new ones on earth;—I must, in answer, think that explanation as unsatisfactory to us, as the verity of it would have been to Job. Affection, human affection, is not so numerically nor vicariously consoled: and it is perhaps worth while here to have thrown out (what I suppose to be) a new view of the case, if only to rescue such wealth as children from the infidel's sneer of being confounded with such wealth as camels. Moreover, such a paternal reward was anteriorly more probable.

NOTE TO NEW EDITION.-I have been asked to make a practical application of the rule of Probabilities to a few more Scriptural worthies; as thus. With respect to Enochwas his translation probable? Why not?— In the midst of an evil and perverse generation, "Enoch walked with God," as a man walketh with his friend; as John walked with Jesus. It is noticeable that, of old time, the appearance of God to his saints was that of the human figure of Christ, whose delights were even then with the sons of men. Christ was after His sacrifice again to rise bodily: the Resurrection of the flesh, of all flesh, hereafter, was likely to be prefigured, to be præ-exemplared in every great era of man's history on earth. It was probable that the Patriarchal age should have its special witness to that strange but clear fact, the body's resurrection and ascent. Who would be more fit for this than Enoch? If Cain had been selected, or Lamech, or Tubal,-the moral character of the witness would have been an objection to his probability. So also, if Abel had been chosen, men would have

thought it a special grace to martyrdom: if Methusaleh, the sole prerogative of extreme age if Adam, that of the first man. But Enoch would be merely a sample of the 'resurrection of the just,'—the 'first resurrection' wherein those who are of Christ's body, and are alive when He cometh, "shall be caught up together in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air." Enoch was a type of the Christian Church, and his translation was far from an unlikelihood anteriorly.

Take, also, the analogous case of Elijah: the Mosaical period would want the same. sort of bodily witness; who more fitting than one of the prophets? If Moses himself,-it might have been considered an individual privilege, merely for the great lawgiver: if Joshua, for the great conqueror: if Solomon, for the great king. But Elijah, however eminent as a prophet, was not individualized, nor as it were a chief. He seems to have even lost his office,-as Moses his reward,through murmuring: Elisha had a double portion of his spirit: Daniel was more eminent for chronological prophecy; Isaiah for

Christian revelation; Ezekiel for Jewish promises. But Elijah, as "one of the prophets" (who believed himself to be the sole witness for truth in a Baal-loving age), was fitting to be taken up, the Jewish foretaste of the body's resurrection. His translation, also, was an antecedent likelihood. "In the mouth of two or three witnesses a matter is established:" it was probable, upon grounds of Mosaic legislation, that, with the ascended body of Christ should be associated the ascended body of two others, one of each previous dispensation.

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JOSHUA.

How many unthinking readers have been staggered at the great miracle recorded of Joshua: and how few comparatively even of the deeper sort may have discerned its aptness, its science, and its anterior likelihood: "Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon; and thou, moon, in the valley of Ajalon." Now, let us consider whether we cannot vindicate even this stupendous event from the charge of improbability.

Baal and Ashtaroth, chief idols of the Canaanites, were names for sun and moon. It would manifestly be the object of God