To illustrate this, we would remark, that Jehovah could not be Creator till something were created by him.  He could not be Father till he had an offspring.  He could not be Lord till he possessed property;—­ neither could he be God till there were a worshipper. Jehovah is the only abstract name he could possess, were he solitary and without a universe.  All the other names ascribed to him are relative.  The name God as much pre-supposes the actual existence of a worshipper as that of father does the actual existence of a child.  Remove the child, and the once doating parent is no longer to him a father.  God is not, therefore, the God of the dead, for as such, they could not worship him.  He is, however, Lord of both the dead and the living claiming them as his property.  Abraham, Issac and Jacob were therefore alive, and worshipping him when those words were spoken to Moses, for in no other sense could he have been their God any more than he was before they were born.  The phrase “for all live unto him,” may, in this instance, embrace only the three patriarchs, as no others are involved in the quotation.  The Sadducees believed in the writings of Moses only, and it is not at all probable, that Jesus referred to any persons, not mentioned by Moses, as it would have been no proof to the Sadducees.  His argument is, to prove that the three patriarchs, are raised according to their own writings, not shall be raised.  Now that the dead are raised Moses showed at the bush when he called God the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.  Here we perceive that “the dead” refers to the three persons whom Moses showed were raised.  He then adds—­for he is not the God of the dead but of the living, for all live unto him—­that is, the three patriarchs all live to him.  If the phrase embrace any others, it must be the living in eternity, not the living in the flesh nor the dead as such.  It would make Jesus contradict himself in the same breath.  “He is not the God of the dead, but of the living; for all live unto him.”  To whom does this “all” refer?  To the “living”; not the “dead,” for in that case he would be the God of the dead.

Luke ix. 30. “And behold there talked with him two men, which were Moses and Elias.”  The transfiguration of our Lord is recorded also by both Matthew and Mark, and it is plainly stated that the disciples “saw his glory and the two men that stood with him.”  If Moses and Elias were dead, their bodies crumbled to dust, and their minds in a state of insensibility, then they were not Moses and Elias who talked with him.  Even if God had represented those two persons by other forms, they could no more have been Moses and Elias than Adam and Noah.  It is consciousness and memory which constitute personal identity; and if a conversation was carried on with Jesus by any means that human ingenuity can invent, while Moses