did.  For proof hereof, I shall, in the first place, quote the 37th chapter of Ezekiel, and which is as follows, “The hand of the Lord was upon me, and carried me out in the spirit of the Lord, and set me down in the midst of the valley, which was full of bones.  And caused me to pass by them round about, and behold there were very many in the open valley, and behold they were dry.—­And he said unto me.  Son of man, can these bones live? and I answered, O Lord God, thou knowest.  Again he said unto me.  Prophecy upon these bones, and say unto them, O ye dry bones, hear the word of the Lord.  Thus saith the Lord God unto these bones, behold I will cause breath to enter into you, and ye shall live, and I will lay sinews upon you, and will bring up flesh upon you; and cover you with skin, and put breath into you; and ye shall live, and know that I am the Lord.  So I prophesied as I was commanded, and, as I prophesied, there was a noise, and behold, a shaking, and the bones came together, bone to his bone.  And “when I beheld, lo, the sinews and the flesh came up upon them, and the skin covered them above; but there was no breath in them.  Then said he unto me.  Prophecy son of man, and say unto the wind, thus saith the Lord God, come from the four winds, O breath! and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.  So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood up again upon their feet, an exceeding great army.”

A plainer resurrection than this is, I think never was preached either by Jesus or his followers.  Again, Daniel the prophet says, “Many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt,” Daniel xii. 2.  Now Ezekiel lived almost six hundred years before Jesus, and Daniel was contemporary with the former; and is it not a little surprising, that the Jews should learn, for the first time, the doctrine of a resurrection of the followers of Jesus Christ, when they knew of the resurrection almost six hundred years before he was born?  Isaiah also, (who lived before either Ezekiel or Daniel), in the 26th chapter of his prophesies, (exciting the Jews to have confidence in God, and not to despair on account of their captivity, and the troubles and afflictions which they should suffer therein), foretells to them that death would not deprive them of the reward of their piety and virtue; for God would raise them from the dead, and make them happy.  “Thy dead men shall live, my dead bodies# (i. e., the bodies of God’s servants) they shall arise.  Awake! and sing! ye that dwell in the dust, for thy dew is as the dew of herbs,” The meaning of the last clause is—­that, as the grass, which in Oriental countries becomes brown and shrivelled by the heat of the sun; from the effects of the dew it changes and springs up, as it were, in a moment, green and fresh and beautiful; so, by the instantaneous influence of the word of God, the dry and decayed remains of mortality shall