What can all those passages in Scripture mean, in which we read over and over again, that the righteous and the meek are going to inherit and possess the earth? We read in the 37th Psalm, that "they that wait upon the Lord shall inherit the earth,"� and again, that "the meek shall inherit the earth,"� and then that "the upright shall have an inheritance that shall be forever,"� and again that "those who are blest of God shall inherit the earth,"� and again that "when the wicked are cut off, then the righteous shall inherit the land and dwell therein forever,"� and again that "those who keep in the way of the Lord shall be exalted to inherit the land,"� — all these promises in one Psalm, and in a great many other Psalms the same truth is expressed in a multitude of ways; that "God will give His people the heritage of the heathen,"� and Isaiah speaks of God's saints "inheriting the holy mountain."� Jesus affirms: "Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth."� There are scores of such promises in Scripture, and what can they mean? It is certain that such promises have never yet been fulfilled, for the saints in all generations, instead of inheriting the earth, have mostly been poor and persecuted and defrauded, and instead of the earth being their possession it has been a grave for their bodies. All these promises put together do not refer to simply getting to Heaven, or to some ethereal residence in distant spaces, or to simply being happy in the age to come, for they refer expressly to this very earth on which we are now living; and they include something more than salvation, or resurrection, or glorification, for they affirm in every possible form of expression, a promise of "dominion "� and "authority"� and "possession"� that is to last to the ages of the ages, and in a sense more absolute than any right, or title, or proprietorship which is now held by anyone in the world. The unholy habit of spiritualizing all such Scriptures, utterly destroys their meaning, and perverts the Word of God, and weakens Christian faith, and sows the seed of infidelity. As truly as God lives. He means in all these passages about inheriting the earth, exactly what He says.

If we want a scriptural outline, or parable, as to how these promises will come to pass, we can find it in the case of Abraham and his children.

1. God made an everlasting covenant with Abraham, that "he should be the heir of this world,"� and especially of the land of Canaan. We read in Genesis 17 at the time that God called Abraham to a life of perfect faith and love (some seventeen years after his obtaining the witness of justification), and at the time God changed his name from Abram to Abraham; "He made a covenant that Abraham should be the father of a multitude of nations, and that from him should come a race of beings, and that to him and his seed. He would give the land wherein he was a stranger, for an everlasting possession."� St. Paul in the 4th of Romans, commenting on that Scripture, says that "God promised that Abraham should be the heir of the world."� Yet Abraham died without owning a foot of earth except the spot he purchased for a grave, and his children for several generations passed away without owning a foot of this world. God cannot lie, and the Scriptures cannot be broken, so there must come a day when Abraham and his righteous children, those who are of the faith of Abraham, as stated by St. Paul, will rise from the dead, and enter upon the inheritance of Canaan, and of the whole earth according to God's immutable promises.

2. We can trace out a parable of this inheritance of Abraham and his faithful children as applied to God's true saints, the Church of the Firstborn, and their possession of the world in the coming age. Abraham was a stranger in the land of Canaan, and so the true children of God are now strangers and pilgrims in this world, most of them being too poor to own a temporary home or a burying-place. When Abraham lived in Canaan, it was held in possession by the ungodly heathen, people who hated God, and despised Abraham's faith, which is exactly the case still. God assured Abraham that all that land, with its treasures, should be his and his children's; and God still assures the meek followers of Jesus that the wicked are to be dispossessed of every atom of this earth, and all its fulness shall be given to the blessed Jesus and His spiritual followers, who have the faith of Abraham.

3. The children of Abraham went down into Egypt, which was a sort of national graveyard, for Egypt is a type not only of sin, but of the darkness of the grave. In like manner for many slow-paced centuries, the saints of God have been dying, and their bodies going down into the grave and mingling with the very dust, which God has promised shall blossom with beauty and everlasting verdure, and be their inheritance in the ages to come.

4. God told Abraham that the Ammonites and other nations living in Canaan had not yet filled their cup with iniquity, and though they were very bad when Abraham sojourned among them, yet during the three hundred years that Abraham's children were in Egypt the wicked nation grew worse and worse, every principle of sin working itself out to its horrible fruitage, until their corruption was so mature that in the days of Joshua God declared the land vomited out its inhabitants, as if the very earth became nauseous of its population. This is all to be repeated again on a world-wide scale. While the saints are constantly being taken from the earth, the wickedness of the nations and the rejection of the Son of God and His Gospel grow more criminal, more God-insulting as the years go by, and every principle of iniquity is rapidly pushing itself to maturity, and just as soon as those who have the faith of Abraham are taken out of the world, every principle of sin in the human race will rush rapidly to its last fruitage; the antichrist will be manifested; the world will stagger as a drunken man with the intoxication of wickedness: the various worldly sectarian denominations that are left in the tribulation period will be vomited out of Christ's mouth, as He positively affirms; and the cup of iniquity for the human race will be full, and as the land of Canaan vomited out its inhabitants at the coming of Joshua, so the whole earth, according to the prophecy in Revelation, will be shaken by a great earthquake, such as never has been known in all history; the battle of Armageddon will transpire, and "the wicked shall be cut off,"� and cease to own this world or govern it any more, for God declares that "the evildoer shall be cut off and the place of the wicked shall not be found; but those that wait upon the Lord, they shall inherit the earth."� (Ps. 37: 9-11.)

5. We have a striking type of the first resurrection in this parable of Abraham and his children, in the fact that Jacob, though he died in Egypt, was brought up and buried in the land of Canaan with Abraham and Isaac, and also in the fact that Joseph died and was embalmed in Egypt, yet his bones were brought up with the Israelites when they left that country. These things are not without significance, for they form a part of the "all Scripture which is by inspiration of God, and profitable for doctrine."� Thus the saints of God are to be raised from the Egyptian grave and come up into their full inheritance.

6. When Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt, they were formed into a portable city, and organized into an army of invincible heroes for the conquest of Canaan. Thus, when Jesus comes and raises out from among the dead the Church of the Firstborn, those who have like faith with Abraham and Jacob and Joseph, He will form them into a portable city, a white-horsed army for the overthrow of antichrist, and the conquest of the world, like Gideon's band, and like the army under Deborah, that overthrew Sisera and his hosts.

7. The conquest of Canaan, and the giving of it to the twelve tribes, as an inheritance, by Joshua, is a prophetic, historic type of the overthrow of all sinners at the close of the tribulation, and the giving of the world into the possession of the meek and patient ones who have for BO many generations waited for their inheritance.

To say that the promise God made to Abraham about inheriting Canaan, and being the heir of the world, has been fulfilled in the little time that the Israelites reigned in Canaan, is to belittle the Word of God, minify the promises and mock the faith of God's saints through all the ages. The possession of Canaan by the Hebrews, at the best, is but a faint type of the inheritance of the whole earth by the saints of the Lord. On that memorable day when the sun and moon stood still, and Joshua and his soldiers utterly discomfited the five confederated kings of Canaan, "it came to pass when they brought out those five kings from their hiding place, that Joshua called for the captain of the men of war which went with him, and said. Come near, put your feet upon the necks of these kings,"� and they did so. Now mark the prophetic words of the Holy Ghost: "And Joshua said unto them. Fear not, nor be dismayed, for thus shall the Lord do to all your enemies against whom ye fight."� (Josh. 10:25.) is coming of which that memorable day was a type, for that day when the sun stood still marked the great transition of the proprietorship of the land of Canaan from the haters of the Lord to the possession of God's people, and a similar day with similar world-wide results is speedily approaching. Isaiah saw this in vision when he swept his harp and said: "The oppressor hath ceased, the Lord hath broken the staff of the wicked and the scepter of the rulers, and smitten with wrath all that ruled the nations in anger, and hath made the whole earth to be at rest and in quietness, and caused it to break forth into singing, for the extortioner is at an end, the oppressor is consumed out of the land, and in mercy the throne is established; and the Lord shall sit upon it in truth in the tabernacle of David, judging and seeking judgment and hasting righteousness."� (Isa. 14:4-7; 6:4, 5.)