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THE GOSPEL
OP
THE RESURRECTION.
BY
JAMES MORRIS WHITON, Ph. D.
BOSTON:
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY.
1881.
Copyright, 1881,
By JAMES M. WHITON.
All rights reserved.
The Riverside Press, Cambridge:
Stereotyped and Printed by H. 0. Houghton & Co-
To THE
BROTHERHOOD OF THE BEREAVED,
WHO LONG TO KNOW ALL THAT MAT BE KNOWN
OF THE
STATE OF THE DEAD,
&§w #tutrteg upon tfje Bestirocttott
ARE DEDICATED
BY
ONE OF THEIR NUMBER.
CONTENTS.
>
CHAPTERS. PAGE
I. The Present Difficulty — Christian
Thought outgrowing the Creeds . . 11
Note A. — The Testimony of the Principal Chris-
tian Creeds 24
Note B. — The Opinions of the Jews concerning
the Resurrection 34
II. The Eesurrection a Continuous Reality . 38
Note A. — Christ's Argument with the Saddu-
cees. — Luke xx. 34-38 49
Note B. — Resurrection now and henceforth. —
John v. 24-29 51
III. The Resurrection Exemplified in the Risen
Christ 56
Note A. — Christ's Resurrection not completely
manifested till his Ascension. — John xx. 14-17 69
Note B. — Resurrection distinct from Reanima-
tion. — 1 Cor. xv. 20 72
Note C. — The Resurrection of the Jewish Saints.
— Matt, xxvii. 51-53 73
Note D. — Where was Christ between his Death
and Resurrection ? — Luke xxiii. 43 . . . 75
Note E. — Mortal Bodies quickened. — Rom. viii.
10-14 78
Note F. — The Redemption of our Body. — Rom.
viii. 23 81
IV. The Resurrection an Object of Christian
Endeavor, Attained at Death . . .83
Note A. — Anastasis and Exanastasis. — Phil. iii.
11 102
Note B. — Augustine's view of Future Punish-
ment 103
6 CONTENTS.
V. The Coming of Christ in his Kingdom a
Reality of the Past, the Present, and
the Future 105
Note A. — "The Regeneration." — Matt. xix.
28 % . . 127
Note B. — The Angels' Prophecy of Christ's
Coming. — Acts i. 10, 11 130
Note C. — The Resurrection at Christ's Corning.
— 1 Cor. xv. 22, 23 133
VI. Judgment a Present and Perpetual Reality
in both Worlds 139
Note. — Judgment as represented in the Creeds . 154
VII. The Last Judgment not Delayed till the
Resurrection 157
VIII. Particulars Elucidated by Principles . 187
Note A. — Resurrection a Realit y prior to the
Historical Appearance of Christ. — 1 Cor. xv.
20 ' . .217
Note B. — The Doctrine of a Past Resurrection.
— 2 Tim. ii. 18 218
Note C. — David's Resurrection. — Acts ii. 34 . 220
Note D. — The End of the World at the Day of
the Lord. — 2 Pet. iii. 10-13 . . . .222
EK. The Resurrection a Development, not a
Miracle . 224
Note A. — The " Thousand Years," or " The Mil-
lennium."— Rev. xx. 4 250
Note B. — " The First Resurrection." — Rev.
xx. 5 253
Note C. — The Binding and Loosing of Satan,
connected in Prophecy with the First Resur-
rection. — Rev. xx. 1-3, 7-9 .... 255
Note D. — " The End " — " God All in all." —
1 Cor. xv. 24-28 261
X. Summary and Conclusion .... 265
PREFACE.
What the Scriptures say, as distinguished
from what they seem to say, or have been
supposed to say, is an inquiry which Chris-
tian study must continually prosecute.
Probably no subject can be named upon
which a greater variety and a greater uncer-
tainty of belief prevail than the Resurrec-
tion, its nature, its time, and its manner.
The subject is, indeed, of such a nature
that a careful thinker must often decline
the conjectures of speculation, and wait for
the disclosures of experience. And yet
some positive statements have been made
by Divine Revelation. To read these out
of the Scriptures, as far as they go, care-
fully separating them from the opinions
and glosses that have been read into them,
is an undertaking from which we may
8 PREFACE.
expect good results. The vagueness and be-
wilderment that seem to embarrass Chris-
tian thought upon the Resurrection appar-
ently demand a scholarly reinvestigation of
the subject, whose results shall be put in a
condensed and comparatively popular form
for general reading.
Such an attempt is, however, beset with
difficulty, partly by the inseparable connec-
tion of the subject with such doctrines as
that of the so-called "Second Advent of
Christ," and the " Last Judgment," —
partly by the abundance of texts which
make dark corners for difficulty to retreat
to when cleared away from the main path.
As to the latter, the broom has been carried
into such corners by critical notes appended
to the successive chapters, so as to leave the
main course of thought unincumbered for
the reader. As to the former, it has been
necessary to devote three chapters to an ex-
position of the indissolubly cohering sub-
jects of the Advent and the Judgment.
Those readers who are not at once discour-
PREFACE. 9
aged by this statement, remembering what
wearisome fiction and absurdity have been
spread upon these subjects, will probably
find these chapters quite as interesting as
any portion of the book. Controversy,
however, is not now in hand, but earnest
and candid inquiry into the precious things
of the Christian Hope. Where this in-
volves criticism of untenable fictions and
decaying beliefs, it surely ought not to be
spared.
The larger portion of the following pages
has been given, in another form, to my own
congregation, especially at the Easter sea-
son. Their interest in hearing and reiter-
ated requests for publication have led me to
offer these studies, after thorough elabora-
tion, to the wider circle of all who are
thoughtfully questioning about the Resur-
rection, when f what ? and how f
Newark, N. J., February 16, 1881.
THE
GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION.
CHAPTER I.
THE PRESENT DIFFICULTY : CHRISTIAN THOUGHT
OUTGROWING THE CREEDS.
" They all shall wax old as doth a garment." — Hebreios i. 11.
Whoever will take the trouble to glance
at the testimony of the principal creeds, as
cited in the following pages, will be made
aware of a wide difference between their
testimony on the subject of the resurrec-
tion and the views which are gaining pre-
dominance among educated people. It is a
misfortune that such a difference should ex-
ist even in appearance. The time-honored
phrase of the most ancient of all the creeds,
"I believe in the resurrection of the body,"
suggests the idea that the buried body is to
be raised out of its grave, an idea which
modern thought generally repudiates. This
idea is not necessarily connected with that
12 GOSPEL OF TEE RESURRECTION.
venerable phrase,1 but is so closely related
to it as to require to be disavowed and dis-
sociated from it. When, however, one finds
on examination that this was the very idea
which that phrase originally carried — " the
resurrection of the flesh " (according to the
exact translation of the original) — when
one finds, moreover, other and more modern
creeds affirming the resurrection of "the
bodies," of " the self-same bodies and none
other," it becomes apparent that the gener-
ality of Christian believers down to recent
times have agreed in a belief which is now
regarded as impossible by multitudes of
thinking people both in the church and out
of it. That this belief affects one of the
cardinal doctrines of the Christian faith
renders it all the more important to know
whether it is the substance or only the form
of the doctrine that is challenged. For so
closely connected with each other are all the
leading truths of the Christian system, that
the loosening of faith in any one of them is
speedily followed by a loosening hold on the
rest.
It is a common mistake, both of skeptics
and of believers, to identify the permanent
1 See chapter iii.
TEE PRESENT DIFFICULTY. 13
substance of truth with the transient form
in which, for the time, it is presented, and
to imagine that if the form is untenable the
substance is indefensible. Thus an outworn
and untenable form of Christian doctrine
may become a serious stumbling-block to
intelligent minds, and a mischievous hin-
drance to the reception of the substance of
Christian faith.
The interest of Christian thought has for
some time been flowing in a stronger cur-
rent toward the study of the Biblical testi-
mony to "the things that shall be here-
after." Among these things the resurrec-
tion has always been classed. To those
who are now or at any time living in this
world, the resurrection is of course one of
the future things. The belief has reigned
throughout the Christian world from the
time of Christ, and from before Christ's
time among the Jews, that the resurrection
is still future to those in the world of the
dead, just as it is to those in the present
state of being, — that it is an event to occur
hereafter at the same moment to all mortals
who have ever passed through the gate of
death into the unseen. The general thought
of Christian believers to-day is, that, at that
14 GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION.
"far off Divine event,
To which the whole creation moves,"
the countless multitudes of the dead, till
then waiting, disembodied, in some middle
state, shall in a moment be clothed with
bodies, which bodies are to be reconstituted
out of some, at least, of the elements of the
long since buried bodies which have re-
turned to dust. This being done, these re-
embodied spirits are to assemble before the
judgment throne of the Christ, whose com-
ing in visible glory has given the resurrec-
tion-call, and, after hearing their final sen-
tence, to depart into their final state, either
heaven or hell.
That the Christian world has for eighteen
centuries been at rest in this belief will be
to many a sufficient evidence of its truth.
Those, however, who know that Christian
study has hitherto been turned mainly upon
other doctrines, will deem it not unlikely
that study may make such improvements in
the statement of this doctrine as it has con-
fessedly made in the statement of others.
Nor can any one whose desire it is to secure
such statements of Christian doctrine as are
most consonant with the teachings of Christ,
least vulnerable to anti-Christian objections,
TIIE PRESENT DIFFICULTY. 15
least puzzling to candid inquirers, and most
strengthening to Christian hope, fail to re-
gard with a benevolent fairness a sincere
attempt, like this, in that direction.
But if the Christian world has rested for
eighteen centuries in the doctrine of the
resurrection above outlined, it is, as I think,
not merely because study has been turned
mainly upon other doctrines. Why has
study of this doctrine, appealing as it does
to our strongest hopes and fears, been so
postponed ? Not because there is any lack
of material in the Holy Scriptures, which
contain "the Gospel of the Resurrection."
But rather, as I am disposed to think, be-
cause of certain prejudgments, which oper-
ated to foreclose the case. Such are these :
(1.) The resurrection pertains not to the
present course of things, but to the far fut-
ure. But may it not, though future to us,
be present to those who have entered the
unseen ?
(2.) It is an event hereafter to be wrought
by a catastrophic Divine power, operating
by an external miracle, and simultaneously
on all alike. But may it not be a process,.
continuously going on by uniformly work-
ing laws of spiritual growth, according to
16 GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION.
individual endeavors and the resulting con-
ditions ?
(3.) Chiefly, however, this : the resur-
rection is to be the mighty work of Christ
at his coming. But what if Christ, in the
true significance of his promise, has already
come, and is ever coming, in the power of
his resurrection, with a constantly increas-
ing glory ?
Such, as I think, are the prejudgments,
borrowed from Jewish believers 1 in a res-
urrection at the advent of the Messiah,
which have operated to " seal the book " on
this subject, as a subject on which no more
can be known a till the time of the end."
Together with these prejudgments, false
principles of interpretation have operated
as a blind in the same direction.
One of these may be described as put-
ting Paul before Christ, or rather, putting
what we understand Paul to say before
what every one may readily perceive that
Christ has implied.
For instance, in Christ's argument with
the Sadclucees (see note A, chapter ii.), he
considers it enough to prove that the dead
rise by showing that the dead live. His ar-
1 See Note B, appended to this chapter.
THE PRESENT DIFFICULTY. 17
gument rests on the assumption that living
after death and rising after death are equiv-
alent terms. So, in his dialogue with Mar-
tha (see chapter ii.), he asserts a present
agency as the Resurrection-Power in the
same emphatic present tense in which he de-
clares his present and perpetual activity for
our salvation in other respects : " I AM the
Resurrection and the Life." But Paul, in
his letters to the Corinthians and Thessalo-
nians, speaks of the resurrection as future
(as indeed it must ever be to all on earth).
And so we have discarded the obvious im-
plication of the Master's teaching, that the
resurrection is not that far-off and catas-
trophic event to all at once that Martha
and her countrymen supposed. If we think
we find an inconsistency between the pres-
ent resurrection that Christ plainly implies,
and the future resurrection that Paul proph-
esies, is it not the wiser way — whatever we
are able to make of the Apostle's words —
to put Christ before Paul, by accepting
the Master's teachings, in their obvious and
natural meaning, as the groundwork of our
belief ? We shall do this, unless we think
we may rely on our understanding of the:
18 GOSPEL OF TEE RESURRECTION.
Epistles better than on our understanding
of the Gospels.
Another road to wrong conclusions seems
to have been unhappily followed in all the
controversies of Christian sects, namely, the
suppressing of texts that look one way, and
the magnifying of those that look the other.
The Calvinist and the Arminian, the Lu-
theran and the Zwinglian, the Churchman
and the Independent, the Trinitarian and
the Unitarian, the Restorationist and the
Annihilationist, have all had their favorite
proof texts to hurl at each other. Where
one party is weak the other is strong, and
vice versa. The same opportunity exists on
the subject of the resurrection for a Pre-
sentist and a Futurist view, in opposition
to each other. To realize this opportunity,
it is only needful to follow the track which
almost all religious discussions have gone,
namely, first, to make up one's mind, and
then to look up proof texts. These can
be found, or can be shaped for use, on both
sides, both in the sayings of Christ and in
the sayings of the Apostles. Paul is gener-
ally regarded as teaching the Futurist view,
and yet he has spoken quite as emphatically
for the Presentist.
TEE PRESENT DIFFICULTY. 19
" There is a spiritual body."
" So is the resurrection of the dead."
" It is raised in glory."
" We have the heavenly [house]."
These, and much more than these, the
teachings of Christ, have been generally
overlooked under the influence of a Jewish
bias toward the Futurist view, which has as-
similated to its own way of thinking what-
ever it could. And yet these testimonies
are on the record, appealing to all whose
study is to seek truth rather than to but-
tress opinions preconceived or inherited.
Happily, the doctrine of the resurrection is
one where such latitude of opinion is ac-
corded within the limits of recognized or-
thodoxy, that the malign influence of relig-
ious timidity and theological suspicions need
not be feared, as in some other directions,
as likely to restrict the freedom and lessen
the candor which are requisite to a fair
hearing of both sides, in order to find that
true point of view which includes all the
facts, and does equal justice to apparently
conflicting testimonies.
A third principle, absurd as well as false,
which deserves notice, is the rejection, at
sight, of whatever view, or interpretation
20 GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION.
of a text, has been associated with names
deemed unsound or heretical. I knew a
Presbyterian minister, a thorough-going de-
fender of the Nicene Creed, to be taken, in
Mississippi, as a Unitarian, because of a
sermon which he preached on the Human-
ity of Christ. And I am quite sure that,
in the minds of such as follow this method
of forming conclusions, the idea advanced
in this volume, that the resurrection is now
going on in the future state, will be scouted
at once as " Swedenborgian." If it would
be of any benefit to say it, I would say to
such that I utterly dissent from the " Swe-
denborgian " view of Holy Scripture, and
am no more a " Swedenborgian " than I am
a Romanist, in however few or many par-
ticulars I may agree with each of those re-
ligious denominations. If one is conceited
enough to assume that Ms " doxy " holds
all the truth, and any other " doxy " holds
none of it, then it will be a sure method, as
well as a swift one, to dispose of this book
by saying, " You're a Swedenborgian." And
I shall be quite content, at this point, to
leave all such readers where they belong, in
the company of that "orthodox" church
which the Eev. Mr. Murray describes in his
THE PRESENT DIFFICULTY. 21
notorious lecture on " Deacons," as declar-
ing that they would allow only beef sand-
wiches at their picnic, because the Unitari-
ans used ham sandwiches.
Lastly, I am aware that some exception
will be taken to any mode of studying this
subject which refuses to be bound by the
obvious sense in which the Apostles seem
to have used the language which they em-
ployed in delivering their testimony to the
fact. " It is time," says an able advocate
of views which I criticise throughout this
volume, " that the language of the Sacred
Books should be used in its own sense, the
sense which it is manifestly intended to
convey." Yes, but by ivhom intended — by
the human seer, or by the Spirit from whom
the human seer derived his message ? The
limitation of the teaching of the Spirit of
prophecy by the conceptions of the prophet
is flatly against the declaration of Scripture,
that "no prophecy is of any private inter-
pretation " (2 Pet. i. 20), that is, limited
by the mind of the individual interpreter.
It is as absurd as to limit the ideas of a
statesman by the ideas of the schoolboy
who declaims the statesman's oration. The
teaching power of the Divine Oracles is cut
22 GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION.
down thereby to the measure of the minds
that have transmitted them to us. The
promise of our Lord that his Spirit, when
come, should " guide into all truth," can-
not be regarded as limited to the first gen-
eration of the church. Greater insight into
u the things pertaining to the kingdom of
God " than even Apostles possessed, who
believed the final catastrophe of the phys-
ical heavens and earth to be imminent in
their own lifetime, must be accorded to
those who have the teaching of Christ's
Spirit together with the commentary upon
Christ's words which is furnished by the
instructive experience of the Christian cent-
uries.
The claim, however, that " the obvious
sense " which we deem that any writer in
the Scriptures must have attached to proph-
ecies which we deem inspired, determines
the sense which we must attach to them,
may be tested by a case in which Christ
himself has declared a prophecy to have
been fulfilled. Malachi had prophesied the
coming of " Elijah the prophet" before the
coming of the Lord. Christ affirms that
this was fulfilled in the advent of John the
Baptist.
THE PRESENT DIFFICULTY. 23
The Prophecy. The Fulfillment.
Behold I will send you For all the prophets and
Elijah the prophet before the the law prophesied until
coming of the great and John.
dreadful day of the Lord. And if ye will receive it,
Mai. iv. 5. this is Elias, which was for
to come.
Matt. xi. 13, 14.
It is far most likely that Malachi and his
contemporaries understood this prophecy as
we know it was generally understood by
the Scribes in Christ's time, in the sense of
an actual return of the ancient Elijah. It
was something that only experience could
disclose, that the fulfillment would not be
literal, but spiritual, by the coming not of
Elijah, but of an Elijah who would come
not in the form of Elijah but " in the spirit
and power of Elijah." (Luke i. 17.) The
Scribes, when they pressed against the
claims of Jesus the prophecy that " Elias
must first come " (Mark ix. 11), were simply
holding to the literal and obvious sense, as
contended for to-day. After such a failure
it will not do to press their principle in the
interpretation of prophecy, however we are
sometimes required by the nature of the
subject, as in precepts and in arguments,
to insist upon it.
24 GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION.
The object of these studies upon the res-
urrection is to redeem a vital Christian doc-
trine from obsolete and obsolescent crudi-
ties of statement which proyoke skepticism,
and to promote clearness and consistency
in Christian thinking upon the great Chris-
tian hope, as based upon Christ's words of
life. Thus it is hoped to contribute some-
what toward a thoroughly Biblical doctrine
of the resurrection that shall be congruous
with the best tendencies of modern thought.
NOTE A.
THE TESTIMONY OF THE PRINCIPAL CHRISTIAN
CREEDS UPON THE DOCTRINE OF THE RESUR-
RECTION.
The Apostles' Creed.
This was developed during the second century.
Its testimony on this subject is comprised in the
words : " He ascended into heaven, and sitteth on
the right hand of God the Father Almighty. From
thence he shall come to judge the quick and the
dead. I believe in ... . the resurrection of the
body and the life everlasting."
Ireoaeus (a. d. 180) uses the words : " his appear-
ing from heaven in the glory of the Father .... to
raise up all flesh of all mankind .... and that he
TESTIMONY OF THE CREEDS. 25
may execute righteous judgment over all." Ter-
tullian (a. d. 200) uses the words: "coming to
judge the quick and the dead also through the res-
urrection of the flesh." Also the following form :
" He will come again with glory to take the saints
into the enjoyment of eternal life and the celestial
promises, and to judge the wicked with eternal fire,
after the resuscitation of both, with the restitution
of the flesh."
All the ancient forms of the Apostles' Creed which
refer to the resurrection of mankind use the phrase
crapubs apdaracrip, " carnis resurrectionem," the resur-
rection of the flesh. See Table in Schaff's Creeds of
Christendom, ii. pp. 52-55, covering the period from
200 to 650, A. d.
The Nicceno Constantinopolitan Creed, A. D. 381.
[Consented to by all Trinitarian churches, — Greek, Roman,
Protestant.]
— He shall come again with glory to judge both
the quick and the dead ; whose kingdom shall have
no end And I look for the resurrection of
the dead, and the life of the world to come.
The Athanasian Creed.
[Originating probably in the seventh century, and current
mostly in the Catholic churches of Western Europe.]
— He ascended into heaven, he sitteth on the
right hand of the Father God Almighty, from whence
he shall come to judge the quick and the dead. At
whose coming all men shall rise agjain with their
bodies, and shall give account for their own works.
26 GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION.
And they that have done good shall go into life ever-
lasting, and they that have done evil into everlast-
ing- fire.
The Council of Trent, A. D. 1563.
%
This is the authoritative exponent of Roman
Catholicism, and bears testimony on this subject
only in reaffirming the words of the Nicaeno Con-
stantinopolitan Creed, quoted above.
The Orthodox Confession of the Eastern Church
A. D. 1643.
[Setting forth the faith of the Greek (and Russian) Church.]
Q. CXX. What is the eleventh Article of the
faith?
A. I look for the resurrection of the dead.
Q. CXXI. What does this Article of the faith
teach ?
A. It teaches positively and with perfect truth,
that there will be a resuscitation of human bodies,
alike of the righteous and the wicked, from the
death that has passed upon them Moreover
they shall be altogether the same bodies with which
they have lived in this world.
The confession of the Eastern Church, above
quoted, is in the form of a catechism upon the an-
cient Mcene Creed, as the quotation shows. Some-
what more explicit we find —
The Longer Catechism of the Eastern Church, A. d.
1839.
Q. 367. How shall the body rise again, after it
has rotted and perished in the ground ?
TESTIMONY OF TIIE CREEDS. 27
A. Since God formed the body from the ground
originally, he can equally restore it after it has per-
ished in the ground. The Apostle Paul illustrates
this by the analogy of a grain of seed, which rots in
the earth, but from which there springs up after-
wards a plant or tree.
Q. 369. When shall the resurrection of the dead
be?
A. At the end of this visible world.
According to the statements of this Catechism, the
resurrection is to be ushered in by the coming of
Christ in visible glory, to execute judgment upon all
mankind.
Luther's Small Catechism, A. d. 1529.
[In use among the Lutheran churches of America.]
This, besides teaching the Apostles' Creed, teaches
upon it the comment that Christ ' ' will raise up me
and all the dead at the last day, and will grant ever-
lasting: life to me and to all who believe in Christ."
The Scotch Confession, A. d. 1560.
Art. XXV.
.... Secondly, in the general judgment there
shall be given to every man and woman resurrection
of the flesh. For the sea shall give her dead; the
earth, they that be therein enclosed ; yea, the Eter-
nal our God shall stretch out his hand on the dust,
and the dead shall arise incorruptible, and that in
the substance of the self-same flesh that every man
now bears, to receive according to their works, glory
or punishment, etc.
28 GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION.
The Belgic Confession, a. d. 1561.
[Of the Reformed (Dutch) Church in America.]
Art. XXXVII. Of the Last Judgment.
Finally, we believe, according to the Word of
God, when the time appointed by the Lord (which
is unknown to all creatures) is come, and the num-
ber of the elect complete, that our Lord Jesus Christ
will come from heaven, corporally and visibly, as
he ascended, with great glory and majesty, to de-
clare Himself Judge of the quick and dead, burning
this old world with fire and flame to cleanse it. And
then all men will personally appear before this great
Judge, both men and women, and children, that
have been from the beginning of the world to the
end thereof, being summoned by the voice of the
archangel, and by the sound of the trumpet of God.
For all the dead shall be raised out of the earth, and
their souls joined and united with their proper
bodies in which they formerly lived. As for those
who shall then be living, they shall not die as the
others, but be changed in the twinkling of an eye,
and from corruptible become incorruptible. Then
the books (that is to say, the consciences) shall be
opened, and the dead judged according to what they
have done in this world, whether it be good or evil,
etc.
The Thirty-nine Articles of Religion of the Church of
England, A. d. 1562.
These, held likewise in a revised form by the
Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of
America, are marked by greater reserve upon this
TESTIMONY OF THE CREEDS. 29
subject than any of the other creeds. The only
reference to it is the following : —
IV. Of the Kesurrection of Christ.
Christ did truly rise again from death and took
again his body, with flesh, bones, and all things ap-
pertaining to the perfection of man's nature ; where-
with he ascended into heaven, and there sitteth,
until he return to judge all men at the last day.
The Anglican Catechism, A. D. 1549,
teaches on this subject simply the Apostles' Creed.
The Heidelberg Catechism, A. D. 1563.
[Of the German Reformed Church of the United States.]
Q. 52 [upon the Apostles' Creed']. What comfort
is it to thee that Christ shall come again to judge
the quick and the deadV
A. That in all my sorrows and persecutions, with
uplifted head, I look for the self-same One who has
before offered himself for me to the judgment of
God, and removed from me all curse, to come again
as Judge from heaven ; who shall cast all his and
my enemies into everlasting condemnation, but shall
take me, with all his chosen ones, to himself, into
heavenly joy and glory.
Q. 57. What comfort does the resurrection of the
body afford thee ?
A. That not only my soul, after this life, shall be
immediately taken up to Christ its Head, but also
that this my body, raised by the power of Christ,
shall again be united with my soul, and made like
unto the glorious body of Christ.
30 GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION.
The Westminster Confession, A. d. 1647.
[Of the Presbyterian churches generally.]
Chapter XXXII. Of the State of Men after Death,
AND OF THE KeSURRECTION OF THE DEAD.
I. The bodies of men, after death, return to dust,
and see corruption; but their souls (which neither
die nor sleep), having an immortal subsistence, im-
mediately return to God who gave them. The souls
of the righteous, being then made perfect in holiness,
are received into the highest heavens, where they
behold the face of God in light and glory, waiting
for the full redemption of their bodies ; and the souls
of the wicked are cast into hell, where they remain
in torments and utter darkness, reserved to the
judgment of the great day. Besides these two
places for souls separated from their bodies, the
Scripture acknowledgeth none.
II. At the last day, such as are found alive shall
not die, but be changed, and all the dead shall be
raised up with the self-same bodies and none other,
although with different qualities, which shall be
united ao-ain to their souls forever.
III. The bodies of the unjust shall, by the power
of Christ, be raised to dishonor ; the bodies of the
just, by his Spirit, unto honor, and be made con-
formable to his own glorious body.
Chapter XXXIII. Of the Last Judgment.
I. God hath appointed a day wherein he will
judge the world in righteousness by Jesus Christ, to
whom all power and j udgment is given of the Father.
In which day, not only the apostate angels shall be
TESTIMONY OF THE CREEDS. 31
judged, but likewise all persons that have lived upon
earth shall appear- before the tribunal of Christ, to
give an account of their thoughts, words, and deeds;
and to receive according to what they have done in
the body, whether good or evil.
II Then shall the righteous go into ever-
lasting life, and receive that fullness of joy and re-
freshing which, shall come from the presence of the
Lord ; but the wicked, who know not God, and obey
not the gospel of Jesus Christ, shall be cast into
eternal torments, and be punished with everlasting
destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from
the glory of his power.
The Savoy Declaration, A. d. 1658.
[Adopted by the Congregational churches of England.]
Affirms the same as the Westminster, above
quoted.
The Boston Confession, a. d. 1680.
[Adopted by the Congregational churches of New England.]
Affirms the same as the "Westminster, above
quoted.
The Methodist Articles of Religion, A. D. 1 784.
These agree on this subject with the Thirty-nine
Articles of the Church of England, above quoted, of
which Dr. Schaff says that the Methodist Articles
" are a liberal and judicious abridgment " of them.
32 GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION.
The Declaration of The Congregational Union of
England and Wales, a. d. 1833.
XIX. They believe that Christ will finally come
to judge the whole human race according to their
works; that the bodies of the dead will be raised
again ; and that, as the Supreme Judge, he will
divide the righteous from the wicked, will receive
the righteous into " life everlasting," but send away
the wicked into " everlasting punishment."
The New Hampshire Baptist Confession, A. D. 1833.
[Widely adopted by Baptists, especially in the Northern and
Western States.]
XVIII. Of the Woeld to Come.
We believe that the end of the world is approach-
ing ; that at the last day Christ will descend from
heaven, and raise the dead from the grave to final
retribution ; that a solemn separation will then take
place ; that the wicked will be adjudged to endless
punishment and the righteous to endless joy ; and
that this judgment will fix forever the final state of
men in heaven or hell, on principles of righteous-
ness.
Confession of the Free Will Baptists, a. d. 1834,
1868.
Chapter XVIII. Death and the Intermediate State.
1. Death. — As a result of sin, all mankind are
6ubject to the death of the body.
2. The Intermediate State. — The soul does
not die with the body ; but immediately after death
TESTIMONY OF TIIE CREEDS. 33
enters into a conscious state of happiness or misery,
according to the moral character here possessed.
Chapter XIX. Second Coming op Christ.
The Lord Jesus, who ascended on high and sits at
the right hand of God, will come again to close the
gospel dispensation, glorify his saints, and judge the
world.
Chapter XX. The Resurrection.
The Scriptures teach the resurrection of the bod-
ies of all men at the last day, each in its own order;
they that have done good will come forth to the res-
urrection of life, and they that have done evil to the
resurrection of damnation.
Chapter XXI. The General Judgment and Future
Eetributions.
1. The General Judgment. — There will be a
general judgment, when time and man's probation
will close forever. Then all men will be judged ac-
cording; to their works.
2. Future Eetributions. — Immediately after
the general judgment the righteous will enter into
eternal life, and the wicked will go into a state of
endless punishment.
The Declaration of Faith of the National Council of
Congregational Churches, Boston, A. D. 1865.
This, after a declaration of adherence " substan-
tially " to the older confessions, i. e., of the Boston
Confession and its predecessors, above quoted, goes
on to say : —
We believe also in the organized and visible
3
34 GOSPEL OF TEE RESURRECTION.
Church, in the ministry of the Word, in the Sacra-
ments of Baptism and the Lord's Supper, in the
resurrection of the body, and in the final judgment,
the issues of which are eternal life and everlasting
punishment.
Articles of Religion of the Reformed Episcopal Church
in America, a. d. 1875.
Art. HE. Of the Resurrection of Christ and His
Second Coming.
Christ did truly rise from death, and took again
his body with flesh, bones, and all things appertain-
ing to the perfection of man's nature, wherewith he
ascended into heaven and there sitteth, our High
Priest and Advocate, at the right hand of the Fa-
ther, whence he will return to judge the world in
righteousness. This Second Coming is the blessed
hope of the Church. The heavens have received
him till the times of the restitution of all things. To
those who look for him shall he appear a second
time without sin unto salvation. Then shall he
change the body of our humiliation that it may be
fashioned like Amto his glorious body. He will take
to himself his great power, and shall reign till he
have put all enemies under his feet.
•
NOTE B.
ON THE OPINIONS OF THE JEWS CONCERNING THE
RESURRECTION.
The Resurrection was a current doctrine of the
Jews in the time of Christ, but so presented as to
provoke a degree of skepticism, which, in the case
OPINIONS OF TIIE JEWS. 35
of the Sadducees, went to the length of denying the
resurrection utterly. Some of the Rabbis taught a
purer doctrine, holding that in the resurrection the
just would neither eat, drink, nor marry. But the
majority, both of the Rabbis and of the people, held
a doctrine extremely gross. The dead were to be
raised not only in their former bodies, but even with
their bodily appetites and passions. They would
eat and drink and marry. The case of the woman
with seven husbands, which the Sadducees proposed
to Christ, might have been suggested to these skep-
tics by a case in one of the books, in which it was
decided that a woman who had had two husbands
would be given to the first. If men were buried in
their usual clothes, in these clothes they would rise,
and even their bodily blemishes and defects would
be perpetuated in the resurrection.
While the extreme grossness of these notions dis-
appeared in the thinking of the Christians, the Jews'
general conception of the resurrection passed over
into Church teaching, as the writings of many of the
Fathers show. Witness such a passage as this in
the writings of Augustine : —
" Every body, however dispersed here, shall be re-
stored perfect in the resurrection. Every body shall
be complete in quantity and quality. As many hairs
as have been shaved off, or nails cut, shall not re-
turn in such enormous quantities to deform their
original places, but neither shall they perish: they
shall return into the body into that substance from
which they grew."
Ezekiel's vision of the resurrection of the dry
bones in the valley, which he narrates in his 37th.
36 GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION.
chapter, furnished the original type of this doc-
trine, around which the later accretions grew in the
course of speculation. It was believed that at the
coming of the Messiah all Israelites would be gath-
ered from their dispersion throughout the world to
the Holy Land, and that the resurrection of the
dead would take place thereupon.
Thereupon, also, it was believed that a final judg-
ment would take place in the Valley of Jehoshaphat,
as the ravine which separates Jerusalem from the
Mount of Olives on the east was called. That val-
ley became in consequence a favorite burial place, as
the place where the Messiah, as was believed, would
appear to raise the dead preparatory to that final
judgment. The last wish of the venerable Rabbi
was to be laid there with staff in hand, in readiness
for the coming of the Messiah.
Joel's prophecy (iii. 2, 12) of a judgment of " all
nations ' ' in the Valley of Jehoshaphat gave rise to
these expectations. It is doubtful, however, whether
that ravine to the east of Jerusalem bore the name
of the Valley of Jehoshaphat in Joel's time. Je-
hoshaphat signifies "the judgment of Jehovah,"
and might apply to any valley in which a signal
overthrow in battle took place. Some such event
was probably the object of Joel's reference.
To match the Jews' belief concerning the appear-
ance of the Messiah in the Valley of Jehoshaphat,
the Christians had their generally received belief,
that the Mount of Olives, from which Christ as-
cended, was to be the locality of his second advent,
to raise the dead and judge the world.
Whoever will trace the doctrine of the Advent,
OPINIONS OF TUB JEWS. 37
the Resurrection, and Final Judgment that pre-
vailed while as yet the Temple stood, will not fail to
mark the likeness, at least in general outline, but es-
pecially in the whole mechanical way of conceiving
the subject, as things externalized to the senses in
show and catastrophe, in which these doctrines
passed over from the Temple to the Church, to flour-
ish in the Church to this day.
Whether this Jewish mode of thought upon the sub-
ject has not been the grand mistake which the
Church has made in its doctrine of the Kingdom of
Christ — whether it is not to-day a prodigious an-
achronism in a period which Christians speak of as
"the Dispensation of the Spirit," can by no means
be deemed a groundless question.
CHAPTER II.
THE RESURRECTION A CONTINUOUS REALITY.
" I am the Resurrection and the Life." — John xi. 25.
The general subject of the resurrection
divides into three main questions : When
shall it be ? What shall it be ? How shall
it be ? To each of these the words of Christ
give clear and sufficient answers. Only one
of these questions, however, can be answered
at a time. Which, then, shall we take
first ? If we should first take up the ques-
tion, How? we might find reason in the
words of Christ to think that the resurrec-
tion is not a miraculous operation from
without, but a natural development from
within the man.1 This of itself would go
far to show, when the resurrection shall
be ; that it is no long-waiting and far-off
event but a continuous reality now mani-
fest in the unseen world. Such, however,
has been the predominance of mistaken
conceptions, that they will only give way
1 For this, see chapter ix.
A CONTINUOUS REALITY. 39
gradually, if they give way at all. For a
gradual approach to a true conception, it
is better to take the other question first,
namely : When is the resurrection ? We
may thus, perhaps, the better extricate our-
selves, point by point, from the grasp of
false ideas, and gradually prepare the basis
of conclusions in which we may intelli-
gently rest.
The answer to the question, When ? is
given in our Lord's answer to Martha in
her mourning for Lazarus's death : u I am
the Resurrection and the Life."
I. In order to understand an answer, we
must know the question to which the an-
swer came. So here. These words of our
Lord were spoken in answer to the implied
denial of a present resurrection which Mar-
tha had just made. As she wept for her
dead brother, Christ said, " Thy brother
shall rise again." We must not suppose
these words to bear a special sense, to refer
to the miracle he was about to perform in
restoring the brother to the sister. That,
strictly speaking, was reanimation, not res-
urrection.1 Christ's following utterances
show that he was speaking, in a general
1 See Note B, appended to the next chapter.
40 GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION.
way, of the resurrection, as the truth most
comforting to any mourner. But to Martha,
with her ideas of it, it was poor comfort.
She knew that her brother should rise
again. But like the Jews of her time, aye,
like most Christians now, who inherit their
resurrection-doctrine more from the Jews
than from Christ, Martha thought only of
a grand and general resnrrection-day far
distant. Long ere that day she would be
with her brother in the supposed place of
expectant souls, in waiting till the buried
body should be raised and given back. " I
know," she cried, "that he shall rise again
in the resurrection at the last day."
This was equivalent to saying : " Yes, he
will rise again, but not till that far-off day
shall come. Tell me more and better than
that; tell me something I do not know, if
you would comfort me now."
To meet this want, to show a consolation
stronger than that far-off hope because a
reality of the present hour, our Lord re-
plied, " I AM the Resurrection and the Life."
Poorly did Martha comprehend it, as the
sequel showed, though she sincerely de-
clared her belief in it. Poorly do many
other sincere believers to-day comprehend
A CONTINUOUS REALITY. 41
the comforting significance of this sublime,
" I AM." Whoever would comprehend it
must start from this fact, that by these
words our Lord undertook to comfort a
mind, uncomforted by a far-off hope, with
the disclosure of a present reality. If the
reality was not a thing of the present, then
it was no better than the far-off hope. But
our Lord offers it as evidently better.
II. Two truths are presented in our
Lord's words to Martha which demand dis-
tinct recognition.
1. The first is that of a Power. " I am "
expresses personality, and personality is not
an event, but a power. The central idea
of the resurrection is not that of an occur-
rence, an event, an effect. It is that of a
spiritual cause, a vital power. Paul seems
to have understood it thus, when he de-
scribed his own endeavor, " that I may
know him, and the power of his resurrec-
tion." Our Lord here declares himself to
be the personal power which is the efficient
cause of what we call the resurrection.
Observe, that it is in a derived and second-
ary sense that we speak of the effect of this
power as the resurrection. This personal
power and the manner of its working will
42 GOSPEL OF TEE RESURRECTION.
be understood when we come to study the
resurrection as a development. (Chap, ix.)
Only let it be borne in rnind from the first,
to avoid misunderstandings, that it is power
working by orderly growth from within the
man, not by miraculous operation from with-
out. Power, spiritual power, is the com-
prehensive word which sums up Christ's
gifts to us : " As many as received him, to
them gave he power to become the sons of
God." (John i. 12.)
2. The second truth involved in our
Lord's words is that his resurrection-power
is a power in present activity. He did not
say, " I shall be," but " I AM." We should
never fail to place emphasis on the word
AM, in our reading of this passage.
The full significance of this short but
pregnant word grows upon us, as soon as
we place it in the list to which it belongs,
of these sublime self-assertions with which
our Lord declared the various relations of
his saving power to mankind. In every
instance, at least until we come to this, he
expresses by the words, u I AM," the ptresent
activity of that power.
" I am the Light of the world." We
know that his light-giving power is opera-
tive constantly.
A CONTINUOUS REALITY. 43
" I am the Good Shepherd." We know
that his pastoral care is in exercise to-day.
" I am the Living Bread." We know
that he is now the nourisher of believing
sonls.
" I am the Door." We know that he is
now and constantly our means of coming
into spiritual life to God.
How is it, then, that any one can doubt
him to be the resurrection-power, with the
same present efficiency, the same continuity
of action, which we ascribe to him as the
Light-giver, the Shepherd, the Food, the
Door? How can we deem it any more
doubtful that his power raises the departed
Christian to-day into the fullness of spirit-
ual life in the spiritual body, than that he
to-day enlightens and guides and feeds the
Christian in his pilgrimage to " the heav-
enly country ? "
I have no doubt that here we have been
misled by a misunderstanding of some other
parts of Holy Scripture, — chiefly those
which relate to the coming of the Lord, —
into a palpable perversion of our Lord's di-
rect testimony. Dominated by preposses-
sions inherited from the Jews of Christ's
time, our minds have been blinded to the
44 GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION.
significance of some of his most precious
words. And this is the poor result we have
come to on the subject of the resurrection :
All the other powers which our Lord, by
his majestic " I AM," asserts as his present
prerogative, we regard as in present and
perpetual activity. Not so, however, his
resurrection-power. This, though claimed
for the present, like all the others, by the
same significant " I AM," we conceive of as
somehow reserved, suspended, inactive, la-
tent, to be exhibited all at once and explo-
sively, at some " last day " of time, pre-
cisely as Martha and other Jews supposed,
— precisely as our Lord forbade her to sup-
pose, when he answered her disconsolate
ignorance, — " I AM the ResurrectiOjST."
We see the other powers claimed by our
Lord all in active operation to-day. His
resurrection-power, claimed in the same
terms as all the rest, is the only one of all
which we do not see. Has the exceptional
denial of its present and perpetual activity
any more valid ground of support than the
fact that the sphere of its activity lies be-
yond our sight ?
III. Here, then, is the answer that we
must give to the question, When is the res-
A CONTINUOUS REALITY. 45
urrection ? If we do not regard our Lord's
resurrection-power as somehow outside the
circle of the powers which he claims un-
der his peculiar and oft-repeated " I am,"
though we can assign no more valid reason
for so regarding it than that its activity is
hidden from our sight ; if we do not feel
competent to alter his solemn words, and
transform " I AM " into I shall be, then must
we, in all consistency, believe that he exer-
cises that mysterious power to-day ; that he
has ever exercised it since he first asserted
it, — perhaps also before, as I think we shall
find reason to believe ; * that he will con-
tinue to exercise it henceforth as hereto-
fore ; that he exercises it, just as he exer-
cises all his powers, according to the eternal
laws of spiritual action, that is, according to
our endeavor here to prepare the conditions
of the resurrection, and our resulting fit-
ness there to experience the resurrection in
power and in joy.2 In other words, and
more briefly, men are raised from the dead
through the power of Christ, according to
their capacity to rise, through their having
received that power. This is a fact of to-
day as really as of any future day.
1 See chapter viii., Note A. 2 See chapter iv.
46 GOSPEL OF TEE RESURRECTION.
Does this seem to be a great conclusion to
build on a little word ? Some little words,
such as yes and no, are strong enough to sus-
tain the most extensive conclusions. Such
a word as I AM is strong eriough to claim
for the present whatever it is coupled with.
Were this all it would be enough to rest on.
But it is not all. We shall find, as we go
forward with our inquiry, that other mate-
rial comes in to broaden the base of our con-
clusion. As we view the subject in other
lights, we shall find a brightening assurance
that we are on the track of the truth.
IV. With reference to other points to
come up hereafter, thus much may be ad-
vanced here by way of anticipation.
Whatever notions we may have imbibed
to the contrary, the fact will be clear to any
careful reader of the Bible that the simul-
taneous resurrection of all the dead, which
the creeds teach, is not taught by the Bible.
Nay, more than this is true. The Bible ex-
plicitly affirms, so that I wonder how it can
be thought otherwise, that the resurrection
of the dead is not simultaneous ; that they
do not rise all together, but in a certain suc-
cession. Moreover, the Bible teaches that
the resurrection, in the Christian sense of
A CONTINUOUS REALITY. 47
the word, is not a power that operates on
all, as the spring sun operates on the leaf-
buds, irrespective of personal volition, but
a power which, like the wind which the sail
is set to catch, must be appropriated by vol-
untary action in Christian endeavor, labor-
ing, like Paul, to " attain unto the resurrec-
tion of the dead."
From such teachings we shall find, as we
advance, that fresh light is shed upon that
declaration of our Lord which we have now
studied. In every generation of those that
are born, through death, into the unseen
world, he is not a remote and waiting, but
the immediate and active resurrection-power
to as many as " hear the voice of the Son
of God," to as many as are led by his Spirit,
and in fellowship with him. Through " Je-
sus Christ, the same yesterday and to-day
and forever," the invisible world beholds
" the spirits of just men made perfect " ris-
ing evermore from the dead in the spiritual
body, " clothed upon with our house which
is from heaven."
V. This truth, when we have grasped it,
will give us a more vivid sense of the rela-
tion which Christ holds to us, as the Lord
both of the present and of that veiled future
48 GOSPEL OF TEE RESURRECTION.
to which we are advancing. It enforces his
great saying (Rev. i. 18), "I hold the keys
of death and of the unseen " (common ver-
sion, "hell"). Near as maybe the disso-
lution of our house of clay, 'so near is our
resurrection in the spiritual body. We need
not imagine any such thing as that
"that still garden of the souls
In many a figured leaf enrolls
The total world since Time began."
We need not think of the departed Chris-
tian as in any house of detention, however
comfortable, or in a middle state of disem-
bodiment, awaiting a distant day to obtain
a body, and with a body the full measure of
such life as his relation to Christ capacitates
him for. Christ not only is our Life, but
he is also our Resurrection. This " is " is
more than a shall be. It assures us that im-
mediately beyond the valley of the shadow
there rise the hills of light ; that One is
there, who, if we hear his voice, will take
our hand at once, and lead us quickly
through the shadow into the light, and up
the mount of God in an undelayed progress
of power, purity, and peace, in a full expe-
rience of " the power of his resurrection."
CHRIST AND THE SADDUCEES. 49
NOTE A.
on Christ's argument with the sadducees.
And Jesus answering said unto them, The chil-
dren of this world marry, and are given in mar-
riage :
But they which shall be accounted worthy to ob-
tain that world, and the resurrection from the dead,
neither marry, nor are given in marriage :
Neither can they die any more: for they are equal
unto the angels; and are the children of God, being
the children of the resurrection.
Now that the dead are raised, even Moses showed
at the bush, when he called the Lord the God of
Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of
Jacob.
For he is not a God of the dead, but of the living:
for all live unto him. (Luke xx. 34-38.)
There is a marvelous force in this argument, which
must be apparent to any one who is at all competent
to judge of arguments according to the recognized
laws of logic.
Christ is here arguing with Sadducees, who deny
that there is any resurrection. (Acts xxiii. 8.)
He aims to prove to them "that the dead are
raised," or, translating more literally, that the dead
rise. He deems it sufficient for this, simply to prove,
by a quotation from the Old Testament, that the'
dead live. But the living of the dead could prove
the rising of the dead only on the assumption tjiafr
living and rising are equivalent terms.
Moses, says Christ, shows that the dead rise, be-
4
50 GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION.
cause lie calls God the God of Abraham, Isaac, and
Jacob, who died long ago. But since God is not a
God of the dead, but the God of the living, Abra-
ham, Isaac, and Jacob are now living. Therefore
the dead rise. But this would be no demonstration
at all, but a complete non-sequitur, except on the as-
sumption that life after death is life in the resurrec-
tion state. On this assumption only can Christ's
reasoning be logically good. If this assumption be
made, then, indeed, all that will be necessary, in or-
der to establish the fact of a resurrection , will be to
establish the fact of life after death, as Christ does
by his quotation.
In the language of logicians, Christ's argument is
called an " enthymeme; " a condensed form of rea-
soning, in which a proposition is tacitly, assumed as
true, which, if formally stated, would here constitute
what is called "the major premiss" of " a syllo-
gism." Drawn out in the full form of a syllogism,
this " enthymeme " would stand as follows, the ma-
jor premiss being assumed as true, and the minor
premiss being proved by the quotation : —
Major. Those who live after death live in the
resurrection state.
Minor. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob live after
death.
Conclusion. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob ["the
dead,"] live in the resurrection state.
Supposing that this passage were the only text in
the New Testament on the subject of the resurrec-
tion, should we conclude the resurrection to be a
present reality, or a thing still in the future ?
If our main difficulty in accepting this reasoning
NOW AND HENCEFORTH. 51
as conclusive be the impressions we have derived
from certain statements of the Apostles, is it not
wise, Jirst to let the Master's reasoning make its due
impression, — to let Christ teach us how to use the
sayings of Paul, rather than let Paul teach us how
to use the sayings of Christ. Here let us remember
what our Lord himself has said to us : " One is your
Master, even Christ." (Matt, xxiii. 8.)
NOTE B.
ON RESURRECTION NOW AND HENCEFORTH.
Yerily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my
word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath ever-
lasting life, and shall not come into condemnation;
but is passed from death unto life.
Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour is coming,
and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of
the Son of God : and they that hear shall live.
For as the Father hath life in himself ; so hath he
given to the Son to have life in himself ;
And hath given him authority to execute judg-
ment also, because he is the Son of man.
Marvel not at this : for the hour is coming, in
the which all that are in the graves shall hear his
voice,
And shall come forth : they that have done
good, unto the resurrection of life ; and they that
have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation.
(John v?4-29).
The proper interpretation of this passage strongly
corroborates the exposition above given of John xi.
52 GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION.
25, which, in turn, indisputable by itself, throws
lio-ht on our Lord's true meaning here.
Three great truths are here announced, namely,
(1.) Spiritual awakening to life now to all who receive
Christ's word in faith ; verse 2^fr (s2.) Resurrection
now and henceforth to the dead through obedience to
his life-giving word ; verse 25. (3.) Judgment under
Christ extending ultimately over the entire race of
man in the world of the resurrection ; verses 28, 29.
Upon this outline observe, —
(1.) The emphatic " Verily, verily," which intro-
duces both the 24th and the 25th verses. According
to a very common interpretation, verse 25 refers to
the spiritually dead, to those who are now " dead in
trespasses and sins " (Eph. ii. 1), and now awakened
by the hearing of the Gospel. If so, then verse 25 is
merely a repetition of verse 24. But it is introduced
by the " Verily, verily," with which Jesus custom-
arily prefaces a new as well as striking thought.
(2.) The passage plainly emphasizes the present
in verses 24 and 25, and emphasizes the future in
verses 28 and 29. But, in verse 25, there is a plain
transition from the present to the future, mention of
an hour that is now and is coming, an inclusive em-
phasis both of the present and the future, a result
that is to be now and henceforth. Instead of verse
25 being simply a repetition of what is stated in
verse 24^ as a present fact, it is an emphatic advance
to a new statement. This is marked not only by the
solemn asseveration, " Verily, verily," but also by
the express revelation of an " hour " which includes
both time that is and time that shall be. The spir-
itual awakening that now is (verse 24) leads on,
NOW AND HENCEFORTH. 53
both in thought and in fact, to the resurrection that
is now and is to be henceforth.
(3.) This conception of our Lord's thought in
verse 25, as a marked advance from the doctrine he
had just presented of a present spiritual awakenino-
through faith in him, to the doctrine of a present
and a coming, that is, a continuous resurrection
through the hearing of his voice, is confirmed by
the reference of verse 27 to "judgment." Resur-
rection and judgment are closely united in the New
Testament doctrine of the future. Judgment is here
spoken of because naturally suggested by the restric-
tive clause in verse 2% "they that hear shall live."
All do not hear, therefore all do not live (thouoh
all exist; "live," here used in a pregnant sense,
suggests the difference between mere being and well-
being). Resurrection and judgment, thus coupled
in these two verses (25 and 27), are more explicitly
set forth together in verse 29, where we must read
"resurrection of judgment" instead of "resurrec-
tion of damnation: " The original uses the same
word in both places (aplo-is — judgment).
(4.) The " marvel not," in verse 28, is to be un-
derstood thus : Do not wonder whether I have
claimed the power of such judgment as is connected
with the resurrection. I do claim it ; for the hour
is coming, in the which all that are in the graves
shall hear his voice (for life, as in verse 25, or for
the contrary), etc. The omission here of the words,
" and now is," which occur in the resurrection doc-
trine of verse 25, marks a shifting of the thought so
as to foretell chiefly the ultimate extension of resur-
rection and judgment over all mankind. Not, how-
54 GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION.
ever, so as to deny of the present what it affirms of
the future.
(5.) Hearing the voice is stated in verse 25 as the
means to the resurrection life, but in verse 28 as the
means not only to this, but also to judgment upon
evil. Consequently it bears a wider sense in the
latter verse. Obedient hearing tends to life. But
there is also disobedient hearing, tending to iudg-
ment. All shall ultimately hear the voice of the Son
of God. But while truth accepted is a word of life,
truth rejected is a word of judgment. (John xii. 48.)
Rejected truth shall ultimately make its judgment
voice ring through the spirit that heard and heark-
ened not. Entering into the future with this judg-
ment voice resounding; in conscience is " the resur-
rection of judgment." This, too, is through the
voice of the Son of God, as the truth of Christ as-
serts its judgment power.
(6.) No general, simultaneous event can be sup-
posed intended by " the hour " of verse 28, unless
the same can be understood of " the hour " of verse
25, which no interpreter has ever ventured to do.
(7). With regard to the restrictive clause in verse
25, " they that hear shall live," we observe that it is
precisely similar to the restriction that accompanies
every offer of salvation, " he that believeth shall be
saved." The resurrection of life, as distinct from
the resurrection of judgment, is conditioned upon a
certain hearing of "the voice of the Son of God."
This is not a voice miraculously resounding through
space, but a voice making itself heard within the
obedient spirit. It is on the obedient relation of the
soul to Christ, as the Author of spiritual life through
NOW AND nENCEFORTn. 55
the receiving of the truth, that the result of life, as
distinct from existence, depends. How this is we
shall see from Paul's doctrine of the resurrection as
the object of Christian endeavor. (Chapter iv.)
However the interpretation above given differs
from any that we may have adopted, it is certainly
the one most consonant with the testimony that is in-
disputably borne by our Lord's great saying, " I
am the Resurrection and the Life." This fact alone
speaks with emphasis in its favor. The harmony of
the two speaks for the truth of that view on which
the light of both converges. The resurrection is a
present and perpetual reality in the world of the un-
seen, through the power of Christ, through the obe-
dient hearino; of the voice of the Son of God.
CHAPTER III.'
THE RESURRECTION EXEMPLIFIED IN THE
RISEN CHRIST.
" It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body."
1 Cor.-xv. 44.
I. What is raised ? How could the
Apostle have used the language above
quoted, if the body that is buried is not
raised, — if at least, as in the case of the
seed that is sown, some element of the bur-
ied body is not the germ of a body that is
to rise from the very grave ?
This question betrays two misconcep-
tions.
1. The first of these is a confounding of
two things utterly different, the dead per-
son and the dead body. The dead person
is raised ; the dead body is not raised. This
distinction between the person and his body
is clearly recognized by the inquirer, whose
question about the hind of body to be ex-
pected in the resurrection the Apostle is
here answering. " With what body do
EXEMPLIFIED IN THE RISEN CHRIST. 57
THEY come ? " It is a distinction that has
been before the world, at least ever since
Socrates, in speaking of his own funeral,
said to his friends, " You may bury me if
you can catch me."
It is true, the analogy of the seed, which
the Apostle employs for illustration, directly
suggests the survival in the " spiritual body "
of some element that was present in the
" natural body." But it is begging the
Question to assume that this surviving ele-
ment is of the body, as well as in it. If
Paul was thinking at all (which is uncer-
tain) of an element in the seed that passes
over into the new body to which the germi-
nating seed gives place, we can hardly ques-
tion that he recognized the analogous ele-
ment that passes from our present body to
our future body, as the spirit, which is in
the body but not of it. Not to notice such
a probability as this were to exhibit an ob-
tuseness like that which Paul rebuked by
addressing his questioner as a " simpleton."
But besides this, the notion of a survival
and resuscitation of the buried body, or
some element of it, involves still another
radical misconception, namely : —
2. That personal identity requires, at least
58 GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION.
so far as some germinant element is con-
cerned, identity of material between the
body buried and the resurrection-body. But
what is it that personal identity depends
on ? Surely not on the material that is or-
ganized, but on the 'power that organizes it.
I am the same person that I was twenty
years ago, simply because my body, though
it has changed in every particle twenty
times over, is organized and animated by
the same spirit. People who have not seen
me for twenty years do not always kno\*
me at first sight as the same, but after a
while they recognize my personal identity
in its familiar expression. Identity of per-
son and identity of material are very differ-
ent things. The personal element is the
spirit. Recognition of identity depends on
the expression which the spirit gives to the
organism which it animates.
A thought very precious to many sorrow-
ing hearts is touched by the fact just men-
tioned. It is by no means unlikely that, in
the resurrection-state, recognition after long
separation may be even more immediate
than in this world, conformably to that
more perfect power of self-expression which
we may attribute to the spirit in the spirit-
EXEMPLIFIED IN TIIE RISEN CHRIST. 59
ual body. Parents who have seen infant
children go before them, thither may not ex-
pect that their little ones will be always
babes, or as babes will meet them again.
For life is inseparably connected with
growth. But that they will Jcnow them,
perhaps with a more immediate recognition
than that with which the mother in the
story beholds her long-lost sailor-boy in the
weather-beaten wanderer, who knocks for a
night's shelter at her door, I cannot doubt,
when I reflect that the flesh and blood of
the " natural " body, so often a disguise,
will be exchanged for a more plastic and
perfect organ of self-expression in the " spir-
itual " body.
As to the recognition of friends in the
resurrection-state, it seems plainly taught
in the New Testament. Christ said that
those who had received charity on earth
would welcome their benefactors in heaven.
(Luke xvi. 9.) Paul expected to recognize
his converts hereafter with rejoicing. (1
Thess. ii. 19.)
The misconception, that personal identity
requires the survival and carrying over into
the resurrection-body of some element of the
mortal body, rests partly on a mistaken no-
60 GOSPEL OF TEE RESURRECTION.
tion of the epithets " natural " and " spirit-
ual " which the Apostle applies to the two
bodies. It is supposed that these epithets
refer to the material of which the two
bodies are composed. " Spiritual " is sup-
posed to denote a refined or etherealized
condition of the material, or a part of the
material, which belonged to the " natural "
body, and passed over to the new body in
the resurrection. Whereas, on the contrary,
neither of these terms refer to the stuff out
of which either body is made, but both
refer to the relation to its animating princi-
ple in which each bocty exists. The " nat-
ural," or, as Paul actually said, the " psychi-
cal " 1 body is the body whose life-principle
is in the psyche, the " living soul " (verse
45), which is common to man and the lower
animals — in all essentially a similar assem-
blage of sentient, appetitive, and intelligent
faculties. On the other hand, the " spirit-
ual " body is the body whose life-principle
is in the pneuma, the " spirit," which is
peculiar to man. Instead, therefore, of re-
ferring to some highly sublimated material,
1 For other texts where this word occurs, compare 1 Cor.
ii. 14, and Jude 19, where it is translated "sensual." See,
also, Genesis i. 24, and ii. 7, where "living creature" and
"living soul " stand for the same original.
EXEMPLIFIED IN THE RISEN CHRIST. 61
which, in ignorance of its nature, may "be
called " spirit," the epithet " spiritual " de-
notes the resurrection-body not as a body
formed out of spirit, but rather formed for
the spirit — perhaps we may find cause to
say, formed by the spirit, the plastic organ
of its self-expression, the obedient instru-
ment of its will.
What is raised then? Can we any longer
use with propriety the venerable phrase of
the Apostles' Creed, " I believe in the res-
urrection of the body," if the buried body
has no part in the resurrection ?
We may on one condition still properly
use this time-hallowed phrase — remember-
ing, however, that it comes to us from out-
side of the New Testament, which speaks
of "the resurrection of the dead" not of
the dead body. We may intelligently class
it with those numerous phrases which are
understood to speak the language of ap-
jjearance, not the language of reality.
We visit the grave of a friend. We point
to the mound, and say, " He lies there."
No, he does not ; it only appears as though
he did. The body in which he always ap-
peared to us lies below the ground, and a
sign of it appears in the hillock of turf
62 GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION.
above it. Common speech is full of this lan-
guage of appearance. We sail out to sea,
and say, " The land sinks below the hori-
zon." That is, it appears .to sink. In
reality, the curvature of the earth inter-
venes, and hides the land from our view.
So we say, " The sun rises." He appears to
rise, but really the earth rolls round and
brings him into view. The same law of
language justifies us in speaking of " the
resurrection of the body," provided we
use it intelligently as the language of ap-
pearance only. A body has disappeared in
the grave ; " the earthly house of this tab-
ernacle is dissolved." Instead of it another
body appears, " a building of God, " " eter-
nal in the heavens." It belongs to the
same person, and is recognizable as his.
Though the change is the substitution of
an entirely different body, the appearance
is as if the body that was put into the
grave had been raised out of the grave.
Yet it is significant, that the Bible, else-
where using so much of the language of
appearance, should strictly avoid it here,
and speak only of " the resurrection of the
dead" as if to keep us out of the Jewish
way of thinking about the resurrection of
the body.
EXEMPLIFIED IN THE RISEN CHRIST. 63
The popular belief on this subject, in
Christ's time, was such as to provoke the
skepticism of the Sadducees. Even bodily-
blemishes and defects were to reappear in
the resurrection-body, so that personal iden-
tity might be recognized. The same way
of thinking continues. It is not long since
some improvement in the city of Marseilles
made it desirable to remove part of the
Jews' burying - ground. The authorities
promised the greatest care in the removal
of the bones to another spot. But the
Jews still feared that portions of different
bodies might be mixed or lost. They ac-
cordingly refused consent on the ground that
it would " embarrass the resurrection I ':
The notion of the actual resurrection of
the buried body, or any particle of it, is
indeed so " embarrassed " by such difficul-
ties in the way of rational and Christian
thought, that it is no longer supported
by any reason, except the very vague and
inappropriate one, that God can do any-
thing.
When we consider the fugitive nature
of the elements which compose our bodies,
it seems unlikely that there is a particle
of dust on the planet to which any human
64 GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION.
being can lay an exclusive claim. Know-
ing what scientific men now tell us, that
the particles of our bodies are entirely dis-
sipated and replaced by fresh ones in the
course of every year that we live, how in-
conceivable it is to suppose that such par-
ticles as happen to compose our bodies at
the particular moment of death will, some-
how, at least some of them, be fixed and
secured to the individual for resumption
ages hence in the resurrection ! Granting
that God could, what shadow of reason for
supposing that God will f If my body to-
day is an entirely different body, so far as
every component particle is concerned, from
what it was a year ago, how much more
may I expect the resurrection-body to be
entirely different from that which is sur-
rendered to the grave ! I shall be raised.
My body will not be raised. Yet none the
less shall I be raised in a body ; — I shall
rise in the " spiritual body."
II. A solitary but glorious illustration of
the difference between the " natural " and
the " spiritual body " is given in the resur-
rection of Christ. The study of this may
somewhat further free the subject from mis-
EXEMPLIFIED IN THE RISEN CHRIST. 65
conception. The resurrection of Christ is
presented in the New Testament as both
the pledge and the pattern of our own.
"If we believe that Jesus died and rose
again, even so them also which sleep," etc.
(1 Thess. iv. 14.) From this the inference is
drawn that, as Jesus rose in the same body
that was " crucified, dead, and buried," even
so shall our resurrection be, as the creeds
say, in " the self-same bodies and no other."
But the question interposes : Would not our
resurrection be essentially like that of Christ,
if it did not go to the length of material
identity between the body buried and the
body raised ? If Christ rose in the spirit-
ual body, if we rise in the spiritual body,
the parallel is complete. The parallel does
not lie in the stuff of which the resurrection-
body is organized, but in the power that or-
ganizes it, and the relation in which that
body exists to the organizing power, the
spirit. The Apostle says, "He shall change
our vile1 (properly, our humble') body, that
it may be fashioned like unto his glorious
body." (Phil. iii. 21.) The promise is ful-
1 Archbishop Trench properly characterizes this mistransla-
tion as a relic of the monastic and ascetic mode of thought,,
which disparaged the body as a polluted thing.
5
66 GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION.
filled, and the parallel sustained, though this
change involve the substitution of a new
body, having, in itself, nothing in common
with the body of flesh and blood.
Now, as to Christ's resurrection, he had
coupled with his sublime claim to be the
Divine Saviour of the world the declaration
that he would rise from the dead on the
third day. There was a moral necessity
that this should be so fulfilled that no unbe-
liever could say to those who proclaimed the
resurrection of the crucified one, "We have
the crucified body in our hands still, and
you have been deceived by a ghost." This
would have been said, if it could have been
said, but it never could be said. The cruci-
fied body had disappeared.
The facts of the reappearance of the Lord
to his disciples are on record, to show that
his body after resurrection manifested new
and surprising powers ; it was able to ap-
pear and vanish in closed apartments; it
was able to change its expression, so as to
prevent recognition by acquaintances ; it
was able to rise into the clouds of heaven
till it disappeared. The record obliges us
to conclude : —
(1.) It could not have been no body,
EXEMPLIFIED IN THE RISEN CHRIST. 67
since it was handled, and ate food, to de-
monstrate that it was a body.
(2.) It was, in some respects, the same
body that had been crucified, since it car-
ried the wounds of the cross, and permitted
them to be examined by the touch, while at
the same time, the crucified body had disap-
peared from its keepers.
(3.) It was, in some respects, a changed
body, for it manifested powers which it had
never before manifested. " It is palpable,
not only as a whole, but also in its differ-
ent parts : — raised above space, so that it
can in a much shorter time than we trans-
port itself from one locality to another ;
gifted with the capability, in subjection to
a mightier will, of becoming sometimes visi-
ble, sometimes invisible. It bears the un-
mistakable traces of its former condition,
but is, at the same time, raised above the
confining limitations of this. It is in a word
a spiritual body, no longer subject to the
flesh, but filled, guided, borne by the spirit,
and yet none the less a body. It can eat,
but it no longer needs to eat ; it can reveal
itself in one place, but is not bound to this
one place; it can show itself within the
68 GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION.
sphere of this world, but is not limited to
this sphere." 1
Such was the change that passed upon
our Lord's body in the resurrection. By
this we are to measure the import of the
Apostolic doctrine of the " spiritual " body,
and the import of the teaching that his res-
urrection is representative of ours. The
great change we anticipate nowise affects
the mortal body ; that has vanished utterly
and forever. It exhibits the living spirit
" clothed upon " with another body, a body
that is subjected to the power of the spirit
as the body of flesh and blood is not. The
risen Christ undoubtedly manifested hiinself
in a body that was raised above the limita-
tions of flesh and blood, raised above sub-
jection to the physical laws that assert su-
premacy over our bodies ; a " spiritual " body,
because thoroughly responsive to the will
of the spirit; a "glorious" body, because
capable of emitting the glory of the inhab-
iting spirit, even as John at Patmossaw
its face like " the face of the sun shining in
his strength." (Rev. i. 16.) In this, we are
to see illustrated what the Apostle says of
our resurrection : "It is raised a spiritual
1 Van Oosterzee.
RESURRECTION AND ASCENSION 69
body," capable, through, its relation to the
organizing and controlling spirit, of mani-
festing, like a glass, what we are, in the
glory or the vileness of character; capable
also of doing — I do not say what we will,
but — what we are able to will.
Here we must pass to another point of
view. Some hints that have been dropped
in this chapter will be taken up and ex-
panded in another connection.
NOTE A.
THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST NOT COMPLETELY
MANIFESTED TILL HIS ASCENSION.
And when she had thus said, she turned herself
back, and saw Jesus standing, and knew not that it
was Jesus.
Jesus saith unto her, Woman, why weepest thou?
whom seekest thou? She, supposing him to be the
gardener, saith unto him, Sir, if thou have borne him
hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will
take him away.
Jesus saith unto her, Mary. She turned herself,
and saith unto him, Rabboni; which is to say, Mas-
ter.
Jesus saith unto her, Touch me not; for I am not
yet ascended to my Father : but go to my brethren,
and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and
your Father; and to my God, and your God. (John
xx. 14-17.)
70 GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION.
We are not to suppose, from verses 14 and 15, that
Jesus had so changed his former expression that
Mary, so familiar as she was with his personal ap-
pearance, supposed, on a direct look, that he was the
gardener. I suppose that her turning, in verse 14,
was a partial turning, just enough to observe the
presence, not the appearance, of the person behind
her. Eyes dimmed with tears, and a preoccupied
mind, together with this half turning, are quite
enough to account for her impression that he was
"the gardener." But when she heard her name
uttered in the familiar tone, "Mary" "she turned
herseli" fully round to see the speaker, and then the
illusion vanished in an immediate recognition : "My
Master!"
But Jesus drew back from the touch with which
she seems to have sought to verify the reality of
which her eyes assured her. Here we come to the
main point of interest in this passage. Why Jesus
should have refused to her the touch to which he in-
vited others, is commonly explained by saying that
touch was necessary to convince others that he was
really in the body, but not necessary to convince
her. This is apparently intimated in what Jesus
says, but more than this is intimated. Jesus mani-
fests an unwonted reserve. His reserve seems to
intimate not only the needlessness of the verifying
touch for her, but also that there is to be more of a
change in him than is yet apparent. " Touch me
not," he says, "for I am not yet ascended. [The
perfect tense is used in the original, 'I have not yet
ascended.'] I am still, as you believe, in the familiar
body of 'flesh and bones' (Luke xxiv. 39), which
RESURRECTION AND ASCENSION. 71
you do not need to touch. I am not yet in the fully
glorified ascension-body, which, if you could, you
mio-ht need to test bv touch. But this flesh and bone
does not inherit the kingdom of God (1 Cor. xv. 50) ;
it does not pass into the heavens. Go, therefore, to
my brethren and say unto them, 'I ascend [or, "I
am ascending"]; I change; through the power of
my spirit I am passing into my ascension-state, to
my Father and your Father, to my God and your
God.'"
To such a body as our Lord manifested to his dis-
ciples on his resurrection-day, plastic to the quick-
ening power of his spirit, a change, even of substance
and of organization, and an ascension to heaven,
seems as natural as anything could be. His resur-
rection and his ascension are rightly viewed as the
beginning and the end of one process of change, and
this process we call his glorification, as the Apostles
call it. (John xii. 16.) These two were separated
from each other by that interval of " forty days " for
his disciples' sake. It was necessary for them to
meet him at intervals to perfect their conviction of
his resurrection, and to receive the indispensable last
instructions and commands. It is noticeable that of
the ten meetings with one or more of the disciples,
which we have record of, five occurred on the resur-
rection-day; but during the remaining time Jesus
seems to have remained for the most part invisible.
The change which transfigured the body that had
been lifted up upon the cross into the body that was
taken up behind the cloud certainly began on the
resurrection-day, and was not completely manifest
till the ascension-day. Between the two days it
72 GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION.
may have had, as Miiller thinks, "a progressive de-
velopment." This seems to be suggested by our
Lord's mysterious saying to Mary. Nevertheless,
it seems impossible to doubt that he has given us, in
the interviews granted to the witnesses of his resur-
rection, an illustration that goes as far as we are yet
capable of going toward the glorious truth which the
Apostle has expressed in saying, " It is sown a nat-
ural body, it is raised a spiritual body."
NOTE B.
ON RESURRECTION AS DISTINCT FROM REANIMA-
TION.
But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become
the first-fruits of them that slept. (1 Cor. xv. 20.)
Before the resurrection of Christ there had been
other instances of what is popularly termed "resur-
rection," as in the case of Lazarus and others whom
Christ raised from the dead. In the Old Testa-
ment period, also, there had been similar cases, as
in the history of Elijah and Elisha. Had the resur-
rection of Christ been like these earlier resurrections,
as we call them, simply the return of the spirit to the
waiting body, and a mere reviving and continuance
of the interrupted life, it is hard to see truth in the
terms frequently applied to Christ as " the first born
from the dead" (Col. i. 18), "the first begotten of
the dead" (Rev. i. 5), " the first-fruits " (1 Cor.
xv. 20, 23). We recognize the appropriateness of
such terms to Christ only when we perceive that his
reappearance within the circle of the friends who had
RESURRECTION OF TEE JEWISH SAINTS. 73
buried him was not on a level with that of Lazarus,
but in a higher mode of life than that which he had
quitted. In Lazarus we behold simply the reanima-
tion of the "natural body," and the resumption of
the fleshly life. In Christ we behold resurrection in
the spiritual body, and assumption of the life of th«
world to come. This is fully demonstrated by the
facts given in the gospel record, and this is required
by the exceptional preeminence which the New Tes-
tament accords to Christ's rising from the dead.
But one instance of veritable resurrection has been
vouchsafed to our knowledge, as a sure pledge of
that which is to come. This is manifest in the risen
Christ, who thereby ' ' was declared to be the Son of
God with power." (Rom. i. 4.) All the partial re-
semblances to this which are found on record are
cases of mere resuscitation or reanimation.
NOTE C.
ON THE RESURRECTION OF THE JEWISH SAINTS.
And, behold, the vail of the temple was rent in
twain from the top to the bottom ; and the earth did
quake, and the rocks rent ;
And the graves were opened ; and many bodies of
the saints which slept arose,
And came out of the graves after his resurrec-
tion, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto
many. (Matt, xxvii. 51-53.)
[As to the question about the genuineness of this
passage see below.]
I. This passage states a notable fact in the follow-
ing particulars, namely : —
74 GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION.
(1.) An earthquake at the crucifixion rent the
tombs cut in the rocky hill-sides.
(2.) Many bodies of holy persons who had died
arose.
(3.) This was evidenced by their appearing to
many after they had gone forth from their tombs.
(4.) This quitting of the tombs and appearing to
witnesses took place after Christ had quitted his
tomb.
II. Upon this we have to observe : —
(1.) The language is evidently that of a narrator
who believes in the resurrection of the dead in the
self-same body that died and was buried. This was
the uniform belief of all Jews.
(2.) The fact conveyed by the language is the ap-
pearance of the departed saints in the spiritual body,
the body of the resurrection-state.
(3.) The explanatory parallel to this fact is found
in the appearance of Moses and Elijah upon the
Mount of Transfiguration in the spiritual body.
The two events are of the same kind. A glorious
event in the history of our Saviour gave occasion for
each. One was as appropriate as the other to the
event in Christ's history with which it was asso-
ciated.
For the question, whether the resurrection of
these Jewish saints (as distinct from the manifesta-
tion of it to witnesses) took place first at Christ's
resurrection, or before, whenever their death took
place, refer to chapter viii.
Upon the necessity of discriminating, in this and
many other passages, between the fact testified to
and the narrator's opinions about the fact, as appar-
ent in his language, refer to chapter viii.
CHRIST "IN PARADISE." 75
The foregoing remarks assume the genuineness of
the statement as from Matthew. If genuine, it must
be so explained. It is not impossible, however, that
the story may have been interpolated into the Gos-
pel from the so-called " Acts of Pilate," a document
existing as early as A. D. 150, and professing to give
a report of Jesus' trial and execution. See Huide-
koper's "Indirect Testimony to the Gospels."
NOTE D.
WHERE WAS CHRIST BETWEEN HIS DEATH AND
RESURRECTION?
And Jesus said unto him, Yerily I say unto thee,
To-day shalt thou be with me in paradise. (Luke
xxiii. 43.)
The Apostles' Creed, as early as a. d. 390, ad-
mitted the clause which in the English version reads,
" He descended into hell," the original of which,
Descendit in Inferna, signifies " He went down into
the lower world," that is, the world of the dead and
buried. This seems to have been based on the
statement in 1 Peter iii. 18-20 : —
For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the
just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God,
being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by
the Spirit :
By which also he went and preached unto the
spirits in prison;
Which sometimes were disobedient, when once
the long-suffering of God waited in the days of Noah,
76 GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION.
while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is,
eight souls, were saved by water.
Many orthodox Protestants have denied the plain
and obvious sense of these words, namely, that
Christ preached the gospel to the sinners who per-
ished in the flood, contending that Peter here refers
to the preaching of Noah to those sinners, before
the flood, through the Spirit of Christ which was in
him. Such an interpretation is evidently a dogmatic
twist, intended to rescue Peter's statement from the
hands of any who might be disposed to extract from
it a hope that gospel offers may be made beyond the
grave.
Some " orthodox " theologians have taught that
Christ after his death went to hell and suffered the
torments of the damned. Others, shrinking from so
revolting a conception, made in deference to the sup-
posed exigencies of a special theory of the Atone-
ment, have held that Christ went from the cross
back to the heaven from which he came, and there
remained till the hour of his resurrection. Our
Lord himself speaks of "Paradise" as the abode
awaiting him and the penitent thief together. " To-
day thou shalt be with me in Paradise." Spoken,
as this was, to a man possessed of only the most
rudimentary notions of the future state, according
to the popular ideas of the time, it must be under-
stood, accordingly, as communicating only what the
hearer could comprehend. Paradise, as the Jews
conceived it, was the part of the underworld appro-
priated to the blessed, as Gehenna was the part re-
served for the tormented. From the Cross to Para-
CHRIST "IN PARADISE." 77
dise was a transition from pain to peace and from
distress to comfort. Nothing more definite than this
is conveyed by our Lord's promise to his fellow-suf-
ferer. All that the New Testament has to say more
definitely of Christ's place or occupation during
those three days is said in the passage quoted from
Peter.
"The natural unforced interpretation of this text,"
says the late. Professor Hadley, of Yale College, "is
this, that Christ preached, that is made the an-
nouncements and offers of the 'gospel, to departed
spirits who were in confinement as a consequence of
their disbelief and abuse of the Divine forbearance
during the days of Noah. This meaning I should
not dare to discard."1 That this preaching of
Christ took place after his death is the natural im-
plication, but not the express assertion, of Peter's
language. However many and important questions
this leaves waiting for answer, it is all that is told
us. Anything beyond this is mere inference and
speculation.
But wherever Christ was, and whatever Christ
did, during that mysterious interval, we can hardly
doubt that when he went forth from the crucified
body he went into no disembodied condition, but
rather into a spiritual body, appropriate to the
world into which ' ' he went and preached to the
spirits in prison." As on entering our present world
he took on him our " natural body," appropriate to
this world, so on his entering the world of "the
spirits in prison " we must think of him as taking
1 See further in my essay, Is Eternal Punishment End-
less t pp. 86-88.
78 GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION.
on a " spiritual body," appropriate to the world of
spirits. We think of him as passing at will from
one habitation or " tabernacle " to another, and that
in each direction. This entrance into the spiritual
body of the invisible world was actual resurrection,
but not manifested resurrection. His resurrection
was not to be made manifest to the chosen witnesses
till " his hour " had come, upon the Lord's Day.
NOTE E.
MORTAL BODIES QUICKENED.
And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because
of sin; but the spirit is life because of righteous-
ness.
But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from
the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from
the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by
his Spirit that dwelleth in you.
Therefore, brethren, we are debtors, not to the
flesh, to live after the flesh.
For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die; but if
ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the
body, ye shall live.
For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they
are the sons of God. (Rom. viii. 10-14.)
The analogy, drawn in this passage from the
resurrection of Christ to the quickening of our mor-
tal bodies, is thought to give some color to the no-
tion of the raising up of " the self -same bodies that
were buried."
Whether this "physical resurrection" was in
Paul's thought we must determine : —
MORTAL BODIES QUICKENED. 79
(1.) From the limitations which other sayings of the
Apostle require us to assign to his meaning here.
The whole drift of his argument in 1 Cor. xv. is to
the otherness of the future body. So, in 2 Cor. v.,
when the earthly is "dissolved" we straightway
"have" the heavenly.
(2.) From the point of his conclusion, verse 12.
Therefore, ye are now obligated to a spiritual life.
No more is to be demanded in the premises than
this ' ' therefore ' ' requires. "We are not to travel
outside of the rano;e of the argument. All that is
required as a ground on which to base the obligation
to a spiritual life now is the ability to lead such a
life, and this flows from a quickening power residing
within the mortal body.
(3.) From the whole drift of his argument. In
chapter vi. 4-11, the Apostle has already drawn an
analogy between the resurrection-life of Christ and
the new spiritual life of the Christian in the present
world. Eeturning to this in the present chapter, he
shows that the seat of this life is in the spirit
(spelled with a small s) not the body, the source
of it in the Divine Spirit, and the channel through
which the quickening power flows from God to man
is righteousness. He reasons thus : —
^The body is dead because of sin." Not that
death, as a physical experience, has been inflicted
on the body by sin in the way of penalty. Death,
in Paul's view, is a spiritual effect, due to sin as the
corresponding spiritual cause.1 In the body, apart
1 The decisive but not the only text for this view is Rom.
vi. 23, as the contrast between " death " and "eternal life "
requires.
80 GOSPEL OF TEE RESURRECTION.
from the spirit, is merely animal life, not spiritual.
As devoid of spiritual life, the body is dead, and re-
mains dead, because of sin, since sin excludes the
Spirit of righteousness, the quickening power. " If
Christ be in you, the body is (thus)' dead " only in
so far as sin, the excluder of spiritual life, is toler-
ated. Also, "if Christ be in you, the spirit is life
because of righteousness," so far as you are intent
on righteousness, which allies it with the Supreme
Life- Giver, and keeps an open channel between the
Divine Fountain and the human vessel.
"And (not 'but,' but And so) if the Spirit of
him that raised up the human Jesus from the dead
dwell in you, he that raised up the divine Christ 1
from the dead shall also (or even) impart the life of
the spirit to your mortal bodies by his Spirit that
dwelleth in you." And this, now ; "so that ye are
not debtors to the flesh," not constrained by your
existence in these bodies to live in sin, "after the
flesh." The life of the spirit shall so control and
quicken your mortal bodies that they shall not be a
"dead" weight upon your spiritual life, but "as
instruments of righteousness " (chap. vi. 13), shall
subserve and further it.
Therefore (so runs the conclusion), this mortal
body is no excuse (see, especially, chap. vii. 23-25)
for supineness as regards the struggles of spiritual
life, for it shall be quickened by that life so far as
we yield ourselves in righteousness to the life-giving
Spirit of God.
1 Observe the significant transition from the term "Jesus,"
appropriate to the physical life, to the term "Christ," ap-
propriate to the spiritual.
THE REDEMPTION OF OUR BODY. 81
NOTE F.
THE REDEMPTION OF OUR BODY.
Waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption
of our body. (Rom. viii. 23.)
Here, as in the passage examined in Note E, the
question is not what these words are capable of
meaning as words, but what they must mean in con-
nection with the circle of ideas in which they stand,
and what significance is cast upon them by other
parts of the Apostle's teaching, as 1 Cor. xv., and 2
Cor. v.
We must weigh this expression, " the redemption
of our body," by the fact that the Pauline terms,
" natural body " and "spiritual body," have their
distinction, not in the substance out of which each
body is organized, but in the organizing, animating,
and controlling -power in each. (See p. 60.) This is
the animal soul {psyche) in the " natural " (psychic)
body that now is, but the spirit (pnewna) in the
"spiritual" (pneumatic) body that shall be. The
distinction is not material, but dynamical; not in the
stuff, but in the power.
Conformably to this distinction, the redemption
of our body is not the transference of the body from
the grave to the sky, or of the same body from the
grosser organization of flesh and blood to the ethe-
real organization of "spirit." The Apostle thinks
of us as always having a body, of the one sort or the
other, never as " unclothed "or " naked " (2 Cor..
v. 3, 4), but always able to say, with the fullest,
6
82 GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION.
sense of possession, " our body." He accordingly
regards its "redemption" as the transfer of the
power which animates and controls " our body" from
the lower life principle to the higher, from the psyche
("soul") to the pneuma ("spirit"). This is as
far as can be from implying any " redemption " of the
buried dust, or any portion of it, from the realm of
dead matter.
It is true, indeed, that the phraseology is precisely
such as any Jewish Rabbi of that time might have
used, with his notions of the resurrection as the re-
animation of the buried body, with all its " natural "
parts, passions, blemishes, and even its clothes. But
those notions and Paul's thoughts are diametrically
opposite. All Paul's reasoning shows that, in the
spiritual life of his thought, that materialistic phrase
itself has passed through a resurrection from the
realm of flesh to that of spirit.
" The adoption " we wait for, as " the children of
God, led by the Spirit of God " (verse 14), will be
consummated, when "our body" is manifested, in
11 the resurrection of life," as no more the " natural
body," in the power of the animal life, or "soul,"
but as the " spiritual body," in the full power of the
spirit, which builds it, controls it, glorifies it. This
resurrection is as if the "natural body " had been
raised and redeemed, but not because of any such
thing. "The earthly is dissolved; we have the
heavenly," as exemplified in the Risen Christ,
" who," says Paul, " shall change our humble body,
that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body,
according to the working whereby he is able even to
subdue all things unto himself." (Phil. iii. 21.)
CHAPTER IV.
THE RESURRECTION AN OBJECT OF CHRISTIAN
ENDEAVOR, ATTAINED AT DEATH.
" They who shall be accounted worthy to obtain that
world and the resurrection from the dead." — Luke xx. 35.
What clear idea do the majority of Bible
readers get from these words of our Lord ?
Do they not deserve an effort to understand
them better ?
The resurrection, we have been taught
to believe, is an event, and an event which,
like the sunrise, the regular course of events
will bring at once to all. It is regarded as
the awaking of all together to judgment to-
gether ; the morning call of the Great and
Last Day. Thus almost all Christians hold
the traditional belief. But here our Lord
speaks of some men, not all men, as " ac-
counted worthy to obtain the resurrection."
The resurrection, then, is a thing which
depends on worthiness. Those who are
not " accounted worthy to obtain "it do
not obtain it. No other inference can pos
sibly be drawn from these words.
84 GOSPEL OF TEE RESURRECTION.
And yet our Lord has taught, with no
less explicitness, that " all that are in the
graves shall hear his voice, and shall come
forth ; they that have done good unto a
resurrection of life, and they that have
done evil unto a resurrection of judg-
ment." (John v. 29.)
Comparing these passages, it would seem
that the resurrection to be obtained by
worthiness is the resurrection of life.
The same thought is obtained by com-
paring two utterances of the Apostle Paul.
Writing to the Philippians (iii. 11), he
speaks of his endeavor to be accounted
worthy of the resurrection : "if by any
means I might attain unto the resurrection
of the dead." Now unless striving and not
striving are the same thing, the results of
striving and not striving cannot be the
same thing. The resurrrection that Paul
strives for cannot be attained by all to-
gether with Paul, because there are many
who do not strive with Paul.
And yet Paul declares, with equal ex-
plicitness, that all shall rise from the dead.
Speaking before Felix, he says : " I have
hope toward God .... that there shall be
a resurrection of the dead, both of the just
and unjust." (Acts xxiv. 15.)
AN OBJECT OF CHRISTIAN ENDEAVOR. 85
I. The only conclusion from these identi-
cal teachings of the Master and his disciple
is this : All rise ; not all alike. The resur-
rection, in the full and ideal sense, " of
life," is attained by Christian endeavor
only. A resurrection, unlike, inferior, " of
judgment," awaits " the unjust," and all
who do not put forth Christian endeavor.
It is what mere neglected nature brings to
pass, without endeavor.
(1.) Observe that this conclusion throws
clearer light upon our Lord's great saying :
" I AM the Resurrection and the Life." He
by whose Spirit the endeavor is inspired
and guided, and the result attained, may
fitly claim to be the personal representation
of the resurrection power. (See p. 41.)
(2.) Observe, also, that this shows the
same distinction in the New Testament use
of the word " resurrection " that we make
in our common use of the word " life." We
know and say that there is life which is
not life. We simply carry into the future
our common distinction between life in the
bare sense and life in the full sense, be-
tween being and well-being, when we think
of the rising of Paul as the resurrection, that
of Judas as simply resurrection. We speak
86 GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION.
out of an intelligence both, profound and
clear, when we say of multitudes in this
world, " not all who live live." What is
the life of " a tramp ? " Ha is alive, but
does not his existence seem to us more like
death and hell than life f Thus our common
speech recognizes, in many words, a physi-
cal or natural meaning and a spiritual one,
a skeleton-like meaning, bare as fleshless
bones of all that constitutes ideal life, and
a vitalized meaning, complete as a perfect
body in all the attributes that can pertain
to perfection of life. Resurrection is one
of these words of double meaning. It may
denote a life condition of fullness and
power, or a life condition of defect and
weakness. Thus only can we consistently
interpret the teachings both of Christ and
of Paul.
(3.) But in what direction do these teach-
ings plainly lead ? Do they not plainly con-
template the resurrection not as an external
event, but as a spiritual condition, resulting
from spiritual processes ?
Another thing is also plainly recognized.
After speaking of his endeavor to " attain
unto the resurrection of the dead," Paul
goes right on to say, " Not as though I had
AN OBJECT OF CHRISTIAN ENDEAVOR. 87
already attained, either were already per-
fect, but I follow after, if that I may lay
hold of that for which also I was laid hold
of by Christ Jesus." That is, in Paul's
view, the attainment of the resurrection is
a present concern. It must be worked out
here. It cannot be laid over till the future
state begins. The result which Paul deems
it necessary to attain before he dies is a cer-
tain spiritual condition. This, potentially,
is the resurrection. It involves it as the
bud involves «fche flower.
Certainly, this way of thinking is not in
the line of the traditional expectation of a
world-wide, external event, to burst upon
all mankind simultaneously, ages hence.
II. We are now introduced to the ques-
tion : When did Paul expect the bud to un-
fold and the flower to appear ? When did
he expect to realize that he had attained
the resurrection fully ?
The conclusion has been already drawn
(chapter i.) from our Lord's great saying :
" I am the Resurrection and the Life,"
that his resurrection-power, like every other
power which he claims in that frequent
assertion, " I AM," is a power in present
and perpetual exercise; that through this
88 GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION.
power the unseen world beholds " the spirits
of just men made perfect" perpetually ris-
ing from the dead in the spiritual body, in
the completeness of the " resurrection of
life."
Further evidence for this is now to come
before us from the Scriptures.
(1.) That this, at least in some, or many,
cases, is not to be delayed till that univer-
sal and simultaneous awakening which the
popular tradition anticipates, appears from
what John tells us of what he calls " the
First Resurrection" (Rev. xx. 5, 6), in
which "blessed and holy" spirits partici-
pate, and enjoy a period of glory for " a
thousand years," during which, he says,
" the rest of the dead lived not again."
However we explain the particulars of this
prophecy (of which due account will be
made in chapter ix. and notes), the gen-
eral fact on the face of it is, that some of
the dead will have their resurrection before
others. But let the fact here be noted, to
be thought on, that except among a limited
number of Christians, who hold what are
called " peculiar views," the doctrine of the
first resurrection has been dropped out of
mind, as an insoluble enigma. It need not.
AN OBJECT OF CHRISTIAN ENDEAVOR. 89
it ought not, to be dropped. We can find
its place in finding a more rational and
scriptural view of the whole subject to
which it belongs.
(2.) Further testimony comes from Paul.
He tells the Corinthians (1, xv. 22) that as
death comes to all from Adam, so resurrec-
tion comes to all from Christ : " For as in
Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be
made alive." " But," he immediately adds,
" every man in his own order " (ray/xa, a
division, like that of an army). What
clearer way of saying " not all at once " ?
This is the natural sense given by the con-
nection of ideas in the parallel between
Adam and Christ. All are not born of
Adam at once, nor do all born of Adam
die at once. They are born and die in
their generations, every man in his own
generation or " order." So of that birth
into the future body which we name the
resurrection, what more congruous with the
Apostle's way of speaking than that it is
in the successive generations, " every man
in his own " ? 1
(3.) Perhaps plainer still is what Paul
1 See, upon this passage, Note C, appended to the next
chapter.
90 GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION.
says in his second letter to the Corinthians
(v. 1) : " We know that, if our earthly house
of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a
building of God, a house not made with
hands, eternal in the heavens." Paul is
here speaking, not merely of the present
and the future state, but of the present and
the future body — being " unclothed " of the
one and " clothed upon " with the other.
If, however, the traditional notions of the
subject are true, Paul does not now have
this anticipated " house," or body, but only
a prospect of having it by and by. But
he does not say, we shall have it, but, we
have it. He plainly thinks, that we have
it when we cease to have the earthly body.
He expects to move directly from the one
"house" into the other. "If the earthly
be dissolved, we have1 the heavenly.1' Then
he goes on to develop his thought. He re-
gards death as not merely an imclothing, a
.<fo'«embodiment of the spirit, but a clothing
upon, a reembodiment, an accession of life
more abundant. " For we that are in this
tabernacle do groan being burdened, not for
1 Compare with this the similar emphatic assertion which
Paul makes that the spiritual body of the resurrection is a
present reality, " There is a spiritual body." (1 Cor. xv. 44.)
AN OBJECT OF CHRISTIAN ENDEAVOR. 91
that we would be unclothed, but clothed
upon, that mortality might be swallowed
up of life." But how could mortality be
thus " swallowed up " — every trace of it
obliterated — if such a trace of it remained
as a naked, disembodied spirit, in waiting
for a new body, still carrying unsatisfied the
longings of mortality which Paul expressed
in his "earnestly desiring to be clothed upon
with our house which is from heaven " ?
Paul expressly intimates his hope of the
contrary, though not so clearly in the Eng-
lish version as in the original. He uses a
phrase by which the Greek denotes a suppo-
sition as taken for granted, and says : " since1
(English, if so be that) being clothed [as I
anticipate] we shall not be found naked,"
or without a body.
(4.) In close connection with what Paul
says of the earthly and the heavenly house,
or body, may be put what Christ said to the
covetous (Luke xvi. 9), urging them to be-
neficence, " that when riches fail you 2 [at
death] they [your beneficiaries] may wel-
1 Robinson's Lex., p. 139, translates el ye ko.1, etc. " if in-
deed also [as we may take for granted, that is, since] being
clothed we shall not be found naTced."
2 This is now the accepted reading of the passage, ' ' that
when it [mammon] fails."
92 GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION.
come you into the everlasting habitations."
The word for " habitation " is identical in
meaning, and nearly so in form, with the
word by which Paul denotes the earthly
body QjKrjvyf (TKrjvos, tabernacle or tent). And
the welcoming into the heavenly " tents "
Christ puts at the time when the earthly
ones cease to be.
All these testimonies of Holy Scripture,
with others that might be put beside them,
did not these seem abundantly adequate,
converge upon the point of truth which our
Lord's great saying illuminates. We can-
not reasonably doubt that his resurrection-
power, like all his other powers, is claimed
as a present activity, though behind the
veil, by his decisive " I AM." It operates,
like all his other powers, to-day and perpet-
ually, though beyond our sight. To as
many as have by Christian endeavor pre-
pared the Christly conditions of being " ac-
counted worthy to obtain the resurrection,"
he is to-day the author of the resurrection
of life in the spiritual body, as really as he
is to-day the author of the preparatory work
of divine grace within our souls.
III. This conclusive testimony of Holy
Scripture to the present and continuous ac-
AN OBJECT OF CHRISTIAN ENDEAVOR. 93
complishment of the resurrection, " every
man in his own order," is reenforced by-
other considerations.
(1.) Reflecting minds must draw an infer-
ence upon this subject from what they see
of the principle of continuity that is appar-
ent in all the works of God. We see no
general arrest of progress anywhere. The
testimony of the past ages is uniform. The
earth, life, man, civilization, religion, every
thing in which physical, social, spiritual
forces work, exhibits continuous movement
forward, without arrest or halt. God is per-
petually active in all his works (John v.
17), pouring into them life ever more abun-
dantly. Directly opposed, in principle, to
all this, as well as wholly unsupported by
the teaching of our Lord, is the old notion
that has come down from the Jews into our
modern churches, of an " intermediate," and
privative, state of existence, in which the
souls of the dead halt and wait, in a long in-
terruption of embodied conditions, until a
day arrives that clothes them again with the
bodies they have waited for, and finally sets
them forward completely equipped for the
heavenly existence.
(2.) Since we must regard the principle
94 GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION.
of continuity, elsewhere observable, as opera-
tive likewise in the invisible world, we can-
not accept the notion that death, introduces
in any respect a subsidence into lower, or
negative, privative or less perfect conditions,
like what Paul terms " nakedness " or dis-
embodiment.1 Here we must cut wholly
loose from Old Testament doctrine, and turn
our backs on all those quotations from the
Hebrew writers, which may be adduced in
plenty to sustain the notion we must dis-
card. " The dead praise not the Lord,
neither any that go down into silence."
1 The "Larger Catechism" of the Presbyterian Church
(U. S.) strives hard to look in the other direction. It affirms
that the souls of the righteous, " immediate^ after death,"
" are made perfect in holiness, and received into the highest
heavens, where they behold the face of God in light and glo-
ry, -waiting for the full redemption of their bodies, which even
in death continue united to Christ, and rest in their graves as
in their beds, till at the last day they be again united to their
souls." (§ 86.)
Nevertheless, these souls are conceived of as disembodied,
or, in Paul's phrase, "naked." And how can this be any-
thing but a, privative condition, destitute of the necessary or-
gan for the manifestation of life in its normal completeness, in
the union of body and spirit. Such an intermediate life is, so
far, a mutilated one, in which death is not " swallowed up,"
but rather maintains a perpetual trophy of victory, in the
" naked " state of the spirit.
Evidently, there is such a thing as "orthodox" transcen-
dentalism. The above is a fair specimen, especially in its
view of the dissolved body as still "united to Christ."
AN OBJECT OF CHRISTIAN ENDEAVOR. 95
(Psalm cxv. 17.) We must meet all such
statements with the fact that " life and im-
mortality have been brought to light by the
gospel" — by the gospel of the resurrec-
tion.1
Death cannot be a descent into a less
complete, less highly developed, state of be-
ing than the present. It must be ascent,
rather, into a state of greater completeness,
higher development, capacitated for more
exalted joys, capable, therefore, of keener
pains also ; or God's principle of continuous
advance is contradicted.
Death merely disconnects the spirit from
a perishable body, which is dropped and
left behind forever. For the decay and re-
constitution of that body there is no such
waiting as the creeds fancy, nor for a far
remote and miraculous assumption of a
body in the supposed simultaneous and gen-
1 To construct a correct doctrine of the future state by any
use of such statements as the one above quoted from the
Psalms is like attempting to derive accurate information of
the interior of the United States as it is to-day from a map
fifty years old. To say this is by no means to discredit the
inspiration of the Old Testament (that is, in any right and
clear thinking on that subject), but simply to do justice to the
patent fact which Bible study evinces, that the Holy Script-
ures are characterized by a progress of doctrine from first
to last. Inspiration is one thing, infallibility another ; but
the two are generally confounded in Christian thought.
96 GOSPEL OF TEE RESURRECTION.
eral reembodiment of all that are in the
graves. The perishable body no sooner
drops away, than the spirit is clothed upon
— perhaps in chapter ix. we nlay see reason
to think clothes itself, through the operation
of fixed and uniform law — with a body
suited to an advanced stage of being. It
rises into such a condition of existence as it
is fitted to rise into. So it was said of Ju-
das, that he went " to his own place." But
whether it be "unto life," or "unto judg-
ment," there is no break, no halt, but on-
ward movement ever. So said the poet, —
"Eternal process moving on,
From state to state the spirit walks."
This is the Anastasis x which we are
taught in the New Testament, the rising
up, or resurrection.
IY. But unless we can see clearly how a,
mistake has originated, we cannot always
admit that the mistake exists. The bar to
a true and Scriptural doctrine of the resur-
rection, as exhibited in the foregoing pages,
is formed principally by mistaken notions
respecting the coming of Christ and the
judgment day. The New Testament con-
stantly associates these three ideas : The
1 See note at the end of this chapter.
AN OBJECT OF CHRISTIAN ENDEAVOR. 97
coming of the Lord, the rising of the
dead, the judgment of the world.
(1.) If the coming of the Lord is still dis-
tant, then, as most Christians reason, the
resurrection day and the judgment day
are likewise distant. So far or so near as
the coming is placed, so far or so near
everything associated with it in the Script-
ure prophecies is deemed to be. With the
exception of a comparatively small number
of Christians, who deem the coming of the
Lord to be now impending, the general
view relegates it to an indefinite future,
and with it the resurrection and the judg-
ment also.
(2.) Again, if the judgment to come is
conceived — as I think is commonly the
case — after the manner of an earthly tribu-
nal, which at an appointed day opens and
goes through its docket, and then adjourns ;
if our thought sets the opening of some
great and general court of God at a far-off
point or end of time, till which the due
sentencing of all the deeds and misdeeds of
the human race is to be waited for, then we
shall tend to think of the " resurrection of
judgment " as deferred till that court is
ready to open. It will seem to us a gen-
98 GOSPEL OF TEE RESURRECTION.
eral and simultaneous opening of the court
doors to the waiting multitudes.
To suggest that these ideas may be re-
placed by others more reasonable, and by
way of introducing the subjects of the three
following chapters, let us glance here at
John's vision of resurrection and judg-
ment. (Rev. xx. 12, 13.) This vision was
the last which John had in the series which
he saw concerning the progress of the king-
dom of Christ through conflict up to final
glory. But from this finality in narrative
is it right to infer finality in fact ? — that
no such processes are now going on in the
Unseen? — that they will not begin until
the present struggles of the advancing king-
dom have reached their consummation in
glory ? This is the inference usually drawn.
But let us test it by an illustration.
Suppose that we visit a factoiy, in which
many processes are simultaneously going on.
In the basement we see the raw material
sorted and cut up. In the next story we
see some of the coarser processes. Up and
up we go, finer and finer the processes we
see, and at last in the upper story we find
finishing, inspecting, sorting and boxing.
Now, if we should tell a child what we had
AN OBJECT OF CHRISTIAN ENDEAVOR. 99
seen in that factory, in the order in which
we had seen it, he might imagine that the
work of those upper rooms was not touched
till all the lower work-rooms had stopped
work, and every wheel in the preparatory
processes was still. Yet that childish infer-
ence as to the time when resurrection and
judgment begin is actually drawn from
John's vision of them, simply because he
narrates it last in the order of things which
he saw. Is it not far more reasonable to
regard it as a single glimpse of things
which are perpetually going on in the un-
seen world ? While this world's events
are taking place, the grave,1 the sea, are
perpetually giving up their dead, and judg-
ment is perpetually passing on the spirits
new-born into the future state, as their act-
ual character is revealed to them in con-
science as in the sight of God, and as they
enter into the appropriate consequences of
being what their course here has made them
to be, — worthy or unworthy of the " resur-
rection of life."
The sum of our conclusions thus far is
this : The resurrection is ever going on in
i The grave, not " hell," is the T3*#ir rendering of hades
(<?&?«)) verses 13 and 14.
100 GOSPEL OF TEE RESURRECTION.
the invisible world. The continuity of
embodied conditions suffers no interruption.
All rise at death into a higher stage of be-
ing, with higher capacities for every kind of
spiritual experience, whether joyful or pain-
ful. " The unjust," as well as " the just,"
are destined to resurrection. And yet it
cannot be the same for both. If Paul has
to labor " to attain the resurrection," it is
clear that those who do not labor do not
attain. Their resurrection is simply desti-
tute of whatever they have not labored for.
Though they rise from the dead, they rise
into being, but not well-being, — into a life
that is not life in fullness of power and of
joy. Their resurrection-life cannot be well-
being, for all well-being comes through
struggle, and they have not struggled for
spiritual well-being. They have sowed no
seed of Christly endeavor, but "whatsoever
a man soweth that (that only) shall he also
reap." (Gal. vi. 7.) Their future life can-
not possibly be better than a state of 'priva-
tion, corresponding to whatever neglect pro-
duced the privation. If this is all we can
be sure of, this is enough for any thoughtful
mind. Gross exaggerations and wild fan-
cies have invested the mysterious future
AN OBJECT OF CHRISTIAN ENDEAVOR. 101
with many imaginations, both bright and
dark, that thinking men may leave to the
poets and the painters, and to the ranters
also. But we may be absolutely certain of
so much as this. Where no moral and
spiritual effort has been invested in the fut-
ure, whether that future be in this life or
in any other, there can be no gain, no future
income of moral and spiritual power and
joy and peace in perfectness of life.
How then, O Paul, shall we strive with
you, that we may attain with you unto the
resurrection of the dead ?
Listen to his answer : " But what things
were gain to me those I counted loss for
Christ. Yea, doubtless, and I count all
things but loss for the excellency of the
knowledge of Christ Jesus, my Lord, for
whom I have suffered the loss of all things,
and do count them but dung, that I may
win Christ."
Is there any other way in which we may
obtain a place among those whom Christ
calls " worthy to obtain that world and the
resurrection from the dead," except the
C bristly life of humble endeavor after holi-
ness in fellowship with the Father revealed
through Christ ? This only brings the
102 GOSPEL OF TEE RESURRECTION.
spirit to the ripeness of its bud here. This
only will unfold out of that bud the flower
of the Christian resurrection.
If we see the way, let us walk therein.
NOTE A.
ANASTASIS AND EXANASTASIS.
The word which Paul uses in avowing his effort to
"attain unto the resurrection" is a noteworthy-
word, exanastasis, the solitary instance in which
this word appears in the New Testament for the
usual word, anastasis. It is a pregnant word. It
signifies not merely resurrection, but resurrection
from or out of, implying an emergence from a con-
dition in which others remain. It thus sets forth in
a single emphatic term the idea which, to intensify
the whole expression, is conveyed also by the follow-
ing words, " from the dead."
The New Testament regularly uses the phrase
" resurrection of the dead " as a general expression
of the fact that the dead rise. But it is noteworthy
that Christ, in speaking of those " who shall be ac-
counted worthy to obtain the resurrection," phrases
it as " resurrection (anastasis') from the dead," thus
expressing the same idea which Paul sets forth in
his more intense " exanastasis from the dead," the
same idea which is involved in the word " worthy "
— a precedence of some over others. How this use
of words agrees with the idea of the resurrection as
the prize of Christian endeavor is easily seen.
AUGUSTINE ON FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 103
NOTE B.
Augustine's views of future punishment.
It is worth while to compare with the ideas of fut-
ure punishment which have prevailed alike amono-
Roman Catholics and Protestants, the views enter-
tained on that subject by the church teacher of the
primitive period, whom both Catholics and Protes-
tants agree in honoring, and whom Protestants hold
in special regard as the spiritual ancestor of the Re-
formers.
In Augustine's view, "eternal death is a subsi-
dence into a lower form of life, a lapse into an inferior
mode of existence, a privation of the highest vital in-
flux from God in order to everlasting life, or supreme
beatitude, but not of all vital influx, in order to an
endless existence, which is a partial and incomplete
participation in good There is no trace [in
A.'s writings] of the idea that God hates a portion
of his creatures with an absolute, infinite, and eter-
nal hatred, and is hated with a perfect and eternally
enduring hatred by them in return, to the utmost
extent of their capacity There is no trace of
, the idea that God has withdrawn himself from a
portion of his creatures, except so far as to retain
them in existence, .... that those who die in sin
lose all that is good in their nature, and all good of
existence, become completely evil, and continue to
grow everlastingly in the direction of an infinite
wickedness, which merits a corresponding degree of
pain. On the contrary, St. Augustine teaches that
God preserves in endless existence those creatures
who have forfeited their capacity of attaining to the
104 GOSPEL OF TEE RESURRECTION.
supreme good, because of the good of which they
are still capable However great their suffer-
ing from the pain of loss or the pain of sense may be,
according to the doctrine of St. Augustine it cannot
be such throughout eternity as to destroy the good
of existence, and make it a pure, unmitigated, penal
evil to live forever." (From Brownson's Quarterly
Review, July, 1863.)
CHAPTER V.
THE COMING OF CHRIST IN HIS KINGDOM A RE-
ALITY OF THE PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE.
" Verily, I say unto you, There be some standing here
who shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man
coming in his kingdom." — Matt. xvi. 28.
I. Eighteen hundred years have passed
since the last of a long series of herald
voices died upon the air, and transferred its
burden to the written page. For a thou-
sand years a succession of such heralds had
announced the coming of a kingdom of
righteousness and a king of glory. For a
thousand years previous, and still further
back, further than we can exactly date, a
succession of other heralds, only with vision
less clear, and voices less distinct, had been
heard bidding men look for blessing to One
who was to come in a chosen family line.
Such is the strain of hope which fills the
Bible from beginning to end with an expec-
tation growing more intense as the ages roll
by, till, in the closing portions of the New
106 GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION.
Testament, men's eyes seem straining to
catch the first ray of a rising sun, and the
last sentence of the sacred volume seems to
concentrate in one breath the hope of all
the generations : — " Even so, come, Lord
Jesus."
That last cry of the heralds was voiced
eighteen hundred years ago. Then the era
of prophecy closed its record of thousands of
years. Why f Was it not because the era
of its fulfillment had begun ? The sudden
disappearance of this long stream of proph-
ecy was either because the river had found
the sea toward which it had bent its way, or
else, because, deprived of an outlet by im-
penetrable barriers, it had lost its way in
some Sahara waste, to disappear amid the
sand.
When, however, we say that the era of
fulfillment began when the era of prophecy
ended, we must be content to assign no
larger a meaning to that word " began "
than history shall justify. The kingdom is
represented by the parable of the growing
seed, in which there is a flourishing reality
befo.re there is ripeness. (Mark iv. 26-29.)
II. Beside that long gone ending of the
flow of prophecy that we have noticed, we
TEE COMING OF TEE KING. 107
must now put one other significant fact,
namely: just before the stream disappeared,
the herald voices were most clear and fre-
quent in declaring the fulfillment to be close
at hand.
Christ, who certainly did not in any way
manifest himself as a king before his death
(if we except the procession on Palm Sun-
day, and his conversation with Pilate), ut-
tered this unmistakable prophecy of the
nearness of a decisive manifestation : —
" Verily I say unto you, There be some
standing here which shall not taste of death,
till they see the Son of man coming in his
kingdom." (Matt. xvi. 28.)
With equal explicitness and still greater
particularity of detail, he reiterates it in his
elaborate prophecy of the impending dis-
tresses of Judea and the fall of Jerusalem.
After dwelling upon the miseries of that
period he goes right on to say : —
" Immediately after the tribulation of
those days shall the sun be darkened, and
the moon shall not give her light, and the
stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers
of the heavens shall be shaken :
" And then shall appear the sign of the
Son of man in heaven : and then shall all
108 GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION.
the tribes of the earth mourn, and they
shall see the Son of man coming in the
clouds of heaven with power and great
glory.
" And he shall send his angels with a
great sound of a trumpet, and they shall
gather together his elect from the four
winds, from one end of heaven to the
other." (Matt. xxiv. 29-31.)
Observe here the decisive word, " imme-
diately after the tribulation of these days."
This " immediately " has been strangely
ignored, and merely for the reason that the
wonders in sun, moon, and stars, the signs
of clouds of glory, and hosts of trumpeting
angels, have not yet been seen in the sky.
But what if the sky be not the place to look
for the signs which the Lord gave ? What
if his words were not literally intended to
direct us to search the heavens of astronomy
and meteorology for the signs of a spiritual
epoch ? May it not be wiser to think thus,
than to ignore such a word as this " imme-
diately " f Especially when our Lord goes
right on to add this other note of the near-
ness of the time : —
" Verily I say unto you, This generation
shall not pass, till all these things be ful-
filled."
THE COMING OF THE KING. 109
What Christ meant by this high-wrought
description of the signs of his coming, we
shall see by and by. For the present, let
us notice that he coupled with his coming
such terms as " immediately " and " this
generation."
With such words as these to kindle their
expectations, the Apostles and the whole
church of the first generation lived in a
constant expectation of the speedy coming
of their Lord in his kingdom and glory.
No one has failed to note the fact that in
the Apostolic Epistles the Day of Christ,
the Day of the Lord's Appearing, seems
very near. The great hope of the first dis
ciples was that they might live to see the
day and share its glory.
But the herald Apostles, though, like
Moses, they saw the land of promise from
afar, and described its glory, like Moses
were not suffered to pass over across the
dividing stream. One by one they perished
under the stroke of martyrdom — all save
that one who lived far into the succeeding
period in fulfillment of the word, " If I will
that he tarry till I come" They died, and
left no successors to their hope of the
Lord's speedy coming. The church of the
110 GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION.
next generation, with a lower spiritual tem-
perature, both misconceiving the nature of
the Lord's kingdom, and misinterpreting
the Lord's signs of his coming, with the
spiritual eye shut to much that it might
have seen, and the sensuous eye tired of
gazing into a vacant sky, gradually remit-
ted this glorious Apostolic hope to the limbo
of uncertain expectations. And these things
followed : —
(1.) The church began to look away to
the indefinite future, and to expect now one
and now another catastrophe as the day of
the Lord's appearing to make an " end of
all things," as, for instance, at the fall of
the Roman Empire, or at the completion
of a thousand years of the Christian era.
(2.) Many pious and learned men have
held that the Apostles were mistaken.
Many skeptics have held that Jesus was
mistaken. It would seem almost certain
that there was a mistake somewhere. We
may find reason to judge that the Apostles
were right in their hope of the Lord's com-
ing, as a near fact, but wrong in their opin-
ion of the manner in which the fact was to
be accomplished. We may find reason to
think that the church has been mistaken in
THE COMING OF THE KING. Ill
thinking of the Lord's coming after the
sensuous manner of the Jews, rather than
after the spiritual manner of the kingdom
of God.
(3.) Ignorant and unspiritual people have
taken to predicting a time when the Lord
shall come with outward show, until that
most glorious hope of the New Testament,
the royal advent of our Lord, has fur-
nished, in the name of " Adventist," a term
which to most persons suggests a somewhat
visionary way of thinking.1
III. To the facts already stated, the long
flow of prophecy, the sudden cessation of
its stream, the declarations of our Lord that
his coming and his kingdom were at hand,
let us add now this other fact, namely : —
The chief power in the living world to-
day is visibly exercised by our Lord Jesus
Christ, visibly, that is, if not to our senses,
at least to an open-eyed intelligence. Not
without contradiction and antagonism, in-
deed, but yet gradually overruling contra-
1 The Adventist delusion will live, as error alwaj^s lives,
on the half-truth that is mixed with it, until the truth which
gives currency and vitality to the error has full justice done
to it by more discerning minds. It is the mangling which
some truths have received inside the pale of orthodoxy, to
which is due the sincere, however misguided and one-sided,
protest of many a creed which is called heresy and delusion.
112 GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION.
diction and antagonism. What is called
Fenianism in Ireland is subject to the
throne it hates. Despite of barbarism in
Mississippi and in Africa, Mormonism in
Utah, and Islamism in the Orient, Nihilism
in Russia, and various forms of Atheism
elsewhere, the actual supremacy of the
Lord Jesus Christ in this present world is
attested to one who reflects on the follow-
ing facts, namely : —
(1.) Though the nominally Christian part
of the world's population is far the smallest
part, yet the ruling powers of the world
are the nominally Christian nations. Thus,
a handful of Englishmen rule Hindostan.
(2.) Though the really Christian part
of Christendom is far the smaller part of
nominal Christendom, yet the moral su-
premacy of Christendom is in really Chris-
tian hands. By this is meant, not that
most of the acknowledged rulers of Chris-
tendom are real Christians, but this, rather :
That no law or institution is either unchal-
lenged or permanently tolerated in Chris-
tendom, after those among whom it exists
perceive it to be in conflict with the com-
mandments of Christ. Whenever such a
conflict is perceived, directly the moral sen-
TIIE COMING OF THE KING. 113
timent of Christianity begins to train against
the evil an artillery which at length levels
it to the ground. Thus Christ has long been
giving law to the nations, as the Hebrew
prophets foretold. (Isa. ii. 2, 3 ; Micah iv.
1,2.)
(3.) Whatever abuses remain, whatever
defects appear, the obvious tendency, among
the ruling nations of the world, is to realize
with increasing completeness the supremacy
of Christian ideas, as expressed in the pre-
cepts and example of Christ. How evi-
dently, for instance, the conviction is gain-
ing ground that the supreme moral force is
not fear but love ! And thus the world is
by degrees being made new.1
1 It used to be supposed that when the world was first made,
it was all made at once to assume its present form ; that the
living world came into existence as it now appears, with an
instantaneous completeness, as though the plants and ani-
mals, in their several "days," had been struck out each with
a die. Now we know that the world and everything in it
came into its present appearance by a very gradual process
of formation and change. It has also been supposed that
the world would be made new all at once. But the new-
making, " the regeneration " (Matt. xix. 28, — see Note A,
at the end of this chapter), is, like the first making, a very
gradual process of change under the persistent action of the
forces of spiritual development. When we read, " The Son
of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out
of his kingdom all things that offend" (Matt. xiii. 41), we-
must reckon among these " angels " all powers and in-
8
114 GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION.
(4.) Among the inferior nations, which,
though not Christian, are subordinated to
the Christian powers, there is a constant
diffusion of Christian ideas. Whatever mis-
sionaries have not yet accomplished, they
have certainly planted Christian schools
and colleges in great numbers through the
non-Christian world. What future ascen-
dency of Christian influence in that portion
of the world this points to, one may easily
conjecture.
This is no rose-colored view. The un-
subdued evils press heavily on our hearts.
Many " things that offend " remain to be
cast out. But facts that cannot be ques-
tioned declare Christ to be now King in
the existing world. The most potent per-
sonal name to-day is his name. The as-,
cendant influence to-day is his influence.
No law or institution is unchallenged that
is deemed inconsistent with his law. A
process of judgment and overthrow is seen
working in his interest around the world
for the suppression of evils. The whole
movement of the world tends toward a bet-
fluences that work for his kingdom in the suppression of
antichristian principles and practices. And history shows
that these are going down and out, surely ; but how slowly
our impatience often testifies.
THE COMING OF THE KING. 115
ter subjection to the moral supremacy of
Christ. There is no more reason for doubt-
ing that Christ has already begun to reign
in his kingdom, because some things remain
to be cast out and other things to be set in
order, than there is for doubting that God
is the Maker and Sovereign of the world,
because of the abundant evil that still ap-
pears in it.
It would seem, therefore, that a fair sur-
vey of facts must recognize as now in prog-
ress the expansion of that kingdom which
our Lord, in beginning his earthly ministry,
announced as near. (Matt. iv. 17.) The
picture is before our eyes. The outlines
are not yet all filled up. There are gaps
in the foreground, and gaps in the back-
ground, which the pencil of history ; has
yet to fill. But the outlines, at. least, are.
there, corresponding to the shadow which
prophecy cast upon the blank canvas more
than two thousand years ago. Thus wrote
Isaiah (xlii. : 1—4) : .— ' , . j v •
"Behold my servant, whom I uphold ;
mine elect,' in [whom ) my, soul delighteth ; I
have -put my spirit upon ' him : he shall
bring (forth judgment to the Gentiles.
- " He; shall not cry, nor lift up, nor cause
his voice to be heard in the street.
116 GOSPEL OF TEE RESURRECTION.
" A bruised reed shall he not break, and
the smoking flax shall he not quench : he
shall bring forth judgment unto truth.
" He shall not fail nor be discouraged, till
he have set judgment in the earth : and
the isles shall wait for his law."
Thus the facts of the present moral do-
minion of Christ correspond to the proph-
ecies of Isaiah and Micah, that to the na-
tions "the law shall go forth from Zion,
and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem;"
for manifestly that was the point whence
the law of Christ issued forth upon its
great career. (Isaiah ii. 2; Micah iv. 1, 2.)
Evidently the world reveals to our intel-
ligence, as a now existing fact, a spiritual
kingdom and Christ its king. This has
had a progressive growth, according to that
divine law of development, " from the least
to the greatest," which everywhere oper-
ates. It has also, of course, had its begin-
ning. In this beginning we cannot expect
that it will be as plainly recognizable as
in its more advanced stages. We must
not be disappointed if we do not find it
beginning in full strength and complete-
ness. But when, nevertheless, did it begin?
This is not in itself a very important ques-
TIIE COMING OF TIIE KING. 117
tion. It is made important only by the
fact that the beginning is denied. Many
shut their eyes to the fact that the king-
dom is now here, because they find no rec-
ord of any such beginning as they conceive
there should have been, when the Son of
man came in his kingdom to " sit on the
throne of his glory." (Matt. xxv. 31.)
Having searched the past in vain for fall-
ing stars, darkened sun and moon, and an-
gelic hosts, they say, the Son of man has
not come, the Apostles were mistaken, and
even Jesus was in error.
IV. We are therefore compelled to in-
quire about the beginning of the kingdom.
Specially, we must ask what our Lord
meant by the signs of his coming, as de-
scribed in Matt. xxiv. 29-31. Here we
must rigidly apply the principle, that the
signs must be of the same nature as the king-
dom. If the kingdom belongs to the sphere
of the senses, the signs will ; otherwise
not. If the kingdom is spiritual, the signs
will be such as appeal to intelligence rather
than to sense. It is not reasonable to look
for disturbances in the solar system and
the starry universe as signs of a spiritual
epoch. It is not reasonable to think that
V£Lr8 GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION.
Christ meant that eclipses and clouds of
vapor and visible angels, blowing audible
trumpets, were to be signs of his assuming
a spiritual throne. %
(1.) Why, then, did he speak in such
terms ?
To answer, we must remember that the
one book of the Jewish people was the Old
Testament. The disciples knew that book
well. Our Lord borrows his vivid lan-
guage about the signs of his coming from
the familiar imagery of the ancient proph-
ets. In these, the extinction of the civil
and religious luminaries of society, in the
destruction of institutions and the over-
throw of priests and kings, is pictured as
the failing of sun, moon, and stars. Wit-
ness a specimen of such language in Isa-
iah's prophecy of the fall of Babylon : —
I " Behold the day of the Lord cometh to
lay the land desolate. . . . For the stars of
heaven and the constellations thereof shall
not give their light : the sun shall be dark-
ened in his going forth, and the moon shall
not cause her light to shine. " (xiii. 9, 10.)
Now it was perfectly appropriate thus to
speak, as our Lord spoke, to hearers whose
sacred Scriptures had used such a mode of
THE COMING OF THE KING. 119
speaking about any great change in the so-
cial or religious order.1 For an event was
at hand, to which such a mode of speaking
was even more appropriate than to the
quenching of the luminaries of old Baby-
lon and Egypt. Before the " generation "
passed away which heard our Lord speak,
that event took place, as he had explicitly
foretold (Matt. xxiv. 34), which was nec-
essary to the establishment of his king-
dom, and to the manifestation of himself as
the moral king of men.
(2.) What, now, was that event ?
To answer, we must remember that
Christianity first appeared to the world as
a new variety of Judaism, a Jewish sect.
Jesus was a Jew. His Apostles were Jews.
Their first converts were Jews, who con-
tinued to adhere to the laws of Moses,
and endeavored to make all converts from
other nations conform, and expected that
the whole religious world would continue to
look to Jerusalem and the temple as its
1 Whether our Lord's hearers understood his references to
signs in the heavens literally (as I think probable), or not,
the fact remains, that their Holy Scriptures were in their
hands, with these records of fulfilled prophecy that had been
uttered in the same terms, and therefore could no longer be
taken literally by any intelligent hearer or reader.
120 GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION.
centre. The Epistles of Paul resound with
the conflict between the conservative party,
who strove to put the " new wine " of
Christianity into the " old bottles " of Ju-
daism, and the radical party, headed by
Paul, who insisted on " new bottles," and
went so far as to abolish the Mosaic Sab-
bath, and the Abrahamic sacrament of cir-
cumcision. But so long as the Levitical
priesthood offered sacrifice on the spot con-
secrated for a thousand years by the ritual
of Moses, so long was the claim of Paul to
be subject only to the law of Christ, dis-
puted by an appeal to the divine authority
of the institutions which held their vantage-
ground on the temple mountain. From that
vantage-ground they must be dislodged. The
logic of some such event as the demolition
of the visible centre and symbol of the out-
worn dispensation was needed to reinforce
the arguments of Paul, that circumcision
was "nothing," and the seventh day Sab-
bath but " a shadow of things to come."
Only when that ancient altar was over-
thrown, and " Moses' seat" displaced, could
Christianity be fully extricated from the
Jewish matrix in which it had been formed,
and manifest itself to the world unencum-
THE COMING OF THE KING. 121
bered with obsolete claims, and owning
only Christ as supreme. Thus essential to
establish the sole spiritual supremacy of
Christ was the great event,, in which our
Lord foretold that Ms royal coming should
be manifest within the lifetime of some of
his hearers. It took place in the destruc-
tion of Jerusalem (a. d. 70), the demoli-
tion of the temple, the extinction of the
luminaries — sun, moon, and stars — of the
Jewish firmament, the sweeping away of
the nation. Then, as foretold, appeared
" the sign of the Son of man in heaven,"
for the Cross rose as the Temple fell.
Then began " all the tribes of the earth "
to " mourn," for then began to be mani-
fested the Lord's judgment-work that goes
on still, in the sweeping away of obstruc-
tions to his kingdom, with all who cling
to them and insist on maintaining them.
Then men saw — whether or no they rec-
ognized what they saw — " the Son of man
coming in the clouds of heaven with power
and great glory," overshadowingly, irresisti-
bly, triumphantly coming amid the cloudy
troubles of that stormy and tempestuous
time. Then began the " angels " of the
Son of man " with a great trumpet sound "
122 GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION.
to gather " his elect from the four winds of
heaven," for the heralds of " the gospel of
the kingdom " were heard, trumpet-tongued,
with augmenting power, in aH quarters of
the world.
The principle on which we must hold this
to be the only reasonable explanation of the
terms in which oar Lord gave the signs of
his coming in his kingdom is this : That
when an event is taking place in the spirit-
ual realm of ideas, the indications and signs
must be such as appeal to the perception of
thought rather than to the perception of
sense.
One may say, indeed : Was not the fall
of the Jewish temple an event in the phys-
ical world, just as much as the fall of
stars ? Yes, and so also was the appear-
ance of the Man Christ Jesus among men
an event in the physical world. But such
events, though they must be in the physical
world in order to be recognized at all, be-
long rather to the ideal world. Their value
and significance lie not so much in the
things seen as in the things unseen. Their
appeal is more to our thoughts than to our
senses. The Jewish institutions represented
certain religious ideas. Their fall was the
THE COMING OF THE KING. 123
fall of those ideas, betokening a change and
an era in the spiritual realm of thought and
feeling, of which the fall of stars could have
betokened nothing. All of Christ's teach-
ing went in this direction, — to turn men's
minds from the outward to the inward view
of things, from the "flesh" to the "spirit."
" It is the spirit that quicken eth ; the
flesh profiteth nothing ; the words that I
speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are
life." (John yi. 63.)
Unless we think it fit to estimate events
by their outward shoiv and noise more than
by their iveight as causes in the ideal ivorld
of thought and spirit, we cannot fail to rec-
ognize the overthrow of that city and tem-
ple, which stood as the centre and the sym-
bol of an obsolete order of things opposing
the establishment of Christ's supremacy, as
the date, so far as we need a date, of the
manifestation of Christ's enthronement as
the spiritual king of the living world. Thus,
we reckon the years of our nation from the
Declaration of Independence, although that
Declaration had to be made good by years
of war, and the national life had to linger
on through years of suspense till the subse-
quent formation of the Constitution of the
124 GOSPEL OF TEE RESURRECTION.
" more perfect Union." Thus the newly
inaugurated kingdom had its era of struggle
through persecution, and its period of sus-
pense, when it seemed a question whether it
might not come to nought. So the morning
sun often mounts through battling clouds,
which are not burnt away till noon. But
we consider that the day begins with sunrise.
Our Lord then, as I consider, has come,
because he is here. Not here merely in an
invisible spiritual presence, but here in a
plainly recognizable presence, his name the
reigning name, his influence the ascendant
influence, his thought the dominant thought
in the world we live in. The word our
Lord applies to his coming — Paeousia —
signifies in strictness Presence. His com-
ing was a coming in order to be present, a
coming to stay. The Christian period, now
nearly 1900 years in progress, is the period
of our Lord's recognized presence in the
world, with increasing manifestation of his
spiritual power as king and judge of men.
Christ's presence-period in this world is
parallel (as I shall endeavor to explain in
chapter viii.) with the resurrection- period
in the next world. Conformably to this
view we find the New Testament com
THE COMING OF THE KING. 125
stantly associating the two ideas of the
coming of the Lord and the resurrection.
The idea of judgment is also linked closely
with these two. So far or so near as is the
judgment, so far or so near is also the resur-
rection. Here, then, we must inquire next
into this also, whether the judgment, which
the popular mind relegates to the end of
time, and with it the resurrection, is not
rather a thing of the present, like the com-
ing and presence of the Lord as our king.
V. Before entering, however, on this
next chapter of our inquiry, one may ask
at this point, Must we, then, give up the
traditional idea of a Christ to come with
clouds, in dazzling light, begirt with hosts
of angels, amid the attendant terrors of
earth's final catastrophe ? It seems to me
that we must. The sayings of our Lord,
which have been thought to foretell such
an event, being found to carry quite an-
other meaning, there is no further ground
on which to hold to the traditional notion
of the second advent.1 That notion is a
thoroughly Jewish one, and has no place
in a thoroughly Christian way of thinking
upon the kingdom of heaven. More, how-
1 See Note B, at the end of this chapter.
126 GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION.
ever, will require to be said of this subse-
quently, as other passages of the New Tes-
tament shall come up for examination. For
the present, what has now been advanced
clears the doctrine of the resurrection from
the requirement of any delay, as supposed
to be necessary, that it may take place at
the coming of the Lord, as an event that is
still postponed. For the future, we may
rely only on the progressive character of
the kingdom of our Lord.
To think of Christ as coming by and by
in outward displays to the senses to set up
his kingdom upon earth, is not intelligent,
because it ignores the testimony of intelli-
gent observation in the present and the past,
which affirms that kingdom to be a now ex-
isting fact, and a now expanding power.
To expect that Christ will by and by mani-
fest himself as king in this world, in a
bodily form, and in a special locality as the
centre of his kingdom, is not intelligent, be-
cause it ignores the spiritual method of his
rule, and expects the movement of his king-
dom to change from that of an inwardly de-
veloping life to that of an outward mechan-
ism. But as Paul wrote to the Galatians
(iii. 3), "having begun in the spirit" we
"THE REGENERATION." 127
are not to be " perfected in the flesh." The
manner of our Lord's kingdom hitherto will
doubtless be its manner henceforward. Ob-
serve,— its manner, not its measure. Its
measure is no less than the unknown possi-
bilities of an unbounded progress.
Believing this, while believing with the
fullest confidence that the Son of man has
come in his kingly glory, and longing for
larger disclosures of his glory as " Lord of
all," we still join in the prayer of the first
disciples : " Thy kingdom come."
NOTE A.
on "the regeneration.
And Jesus said unto them, Verily I say unto you,
That ye which have followed me, in the regenera-
tion when the Son of man shall sit in the throne of
his glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judg-
ing the twelve tribes of Israel. (Matt. xix. 28.)
This puzzling passage becomes full of light when
set in the view now taken, namely, that the Son of
man has come in his kino-dom, and is ruling the
world as king with a constantly extending sway, and
is making the world new (that is, renovating or " re-
generating" it), not ah at once, but by a constantly
advancing process of change for the better.
Premising here, simply, that the word which our
128 GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION.
version renders "regeneration" (palingenesia) is
generally accepted as denoting a restored and reno-
vated condition of the world, in a moral point of
view, attention needs to be called here mainly to
this point, namely, that, according to our Lord's
prophecy, this renovation, or regeneration, whenever
it is displayed to view, will be signalized by a cer-
tain enthronement of the disciples and their Master.
If now we should find the disciples enthroned in
any such way as to exhibit to us an adequate fulfill-
ment of the portion of this prophecy which relates
to them, such a fact would go far to demonstrate
that the enthronement of their Master had also taken
place. For the two are declared to be coincident.
" When the Son of man shall sit in the throne of his
glory, ye also shall sit on twelve thrones," etc. Now
such an enthronement of the disciples has, beyond a
doubt, actually come to pass, as we shall see. So
far as we recognize this, we must recognize, as a
fact inseparable from it, that the Son of man also
now " sits in the throne of his glory."
How the disciples understood the prophecy is not
of much consequence. In all probability they mis-
understood it. They grasped it mechanically, no
doubt, anticipating that they were to occupy visible
judgment-seats, as being, so to speak, associate jus-
tices with their Master in a grand court presided
over by him in bodily presence, as judge-in-chief.
The same misunderstanding probably dominates the
minds of most who read this passage to-day.
And yet our Lord's words have received a spirit-
ual fulfillment far surpassing in its grandeur all such
mechanical anticipations.
"THE REGENERATION." 129
The twelve tribes of the Christian Israel, the
whole church, all its schisms notwithstanding, has
for ages looked up to the Apostles as occupants of
such judgment-thrones as our Lord's promise as-
signed them. The Apostles have been, through their
writings, the judges of the Christian world, the ex-
pounders of Christ's law. Every heresy has been
cited before them for trial. Every controversy
respecting church order or Christian doctrine has
been carried up to them for decision. The sentences
which they have been regarded as pronouncing have
been reverently claimed to be decisive, and have
been accepted as the judgment of the Lord himself,
delivered through them.
What accomplishment of that prophecy could be.
grander than a historical fact like this — the specta-
cle of those Apostles, despised and rejected by the
world in their day, but for ages enjoying this spir-
itual enthronement with their Lord, century after
century regulating Christian life, reforming Chris-
tian thought, directing spiritual progress as the im-
mortal arbiters of truth ?
If our Lord did not mean just this, one thing is
certain. We cannot conceive of a grander fulfill-
ment of his words. We can think of one with more
show and noise, but not of one possessing essentially
greater majesty.
But, whatever fulfillment we recognize here in the
case of the Apostles we have to recognize also in the
case of Christ. The same glance by which we rec-
ognize their present undoubted spiritual enthrone-
ment includes also, above them, the throne of the
glory of the Son of man, in this " regeneration " or
9
130 GOSPEL OF TEE RESURRECTION.
renovated world. If it cannot be denied that the
Apostles now sit on these spiritual thrones of judg-
ment, no more can it be doubted that he also now
sits with them and above them ; that his voice is
heard giving judgment, as well as theirs. The ful-
fillment of this prophecy has therefore taken place;
that is, it has begun its fulfillment. The event spoken
of in the same words, both in this text and in that
other text which is commonly understood to refer to
a judgment at the end of time (Matt. xxv. 31), has
come to pass. For this last, see chapter vii.
More will be said on this subject of judgment in
the next chapter. Only let it here be noticed, that
when we speak of this prophecy as fulfilled, we
mean that it has begun to be fulfilled. More strictly,
it is fulfilling. " The regeneration," with its paral-
lel processes of judgment, is now going on, not yet
complete. Doubtless there is far more to come.
But it is to come after the same manner. It is not in-
telligent to expect that the manner will change from that
of spiritual power to that of outward form.
NOTE B.
'ON THE ANGELS' PROPHECY OF CHRIST'S COM-
ING.
And while they looked steadfastly toward heaven
as he went up, behold, two men stood by them in
white apparel;
Which also said, Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye
gazing up into heaven? this same Jesus, which is
taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like
THE ANGELS' PROPHECY. 131
manner as ye have seen him go into heaven. (Acts
i. 10, 11.)
The angels' saying has been generally regarded
as a plain prophecy of a coming within the sphere of
the senses. It would very naturally be so under-
stood by those who heard the angels so speak. Es-
pecially would it be so understood by minds imbued
as the minds of the Apostles were, with the ideas,
current among their countrymen, of a coming of the
Messiah in glory outwardly displayed. And as their
eyes had seen him go, naturally they would think
their eyes should see him come. And yet, mark, it
is not said, "Ye shall see him come;" only, "He
shall (or will) come." The seeing, or the recogniz-
ableness, of his coming, is at most only an infer-
ence from what the angels said, however clear and
legitimate the inference be.
It is written, however, " Shall so come in like
manner." There are several other passages in
which the words here translated " in like manner "
occur, but only here are they so rendered. In Matt,
xxiii. 37, they are rendered "even as." In Luke
xiii. 34, Acts vii. 28, 2 Tim. iii. 8, they are rendered
"as." In all these passages every one will see that
the idea presented is that of a real resemblance, but
not a formal resemblance. Jannes and Jambres
opposing Moses with magical enchantments, and
heretical teachers opposing the Apostles with false
doctrines, present a real resemblance under very dis-
similar forms; but the real likeness of the two cases
is expressed by the words which compare Christ's
coming to his going, "in like manner as." This
132 GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION.
idea of a real resemblance is intensified, in the an-
gels' prophecy, by one added word, "so" — " shall
so come," etc. This word, however, does not change
the idea, does not import that the resemblance is
formal as well as real; it only emphasizes the fact
that it is real.
Thus, indeed, it has been generally understood.
Whatever conceptions of the second advent have
been held, nothing is plainer than the fact, that the
words "so, in like manner," have been generally
construed freely, not strictly, to signify a like reality,
not a like manner. The going was secluded, private,
noiseless, without outward sign of change, save in
the ascending: motion, the mere rising and vanishing
of a familiar human form in the air. Nothing could
be more unlike this going, in manner, than such a
coming as is pictured in the traditional expectations
of the second advent, with clouds, angels, fire, judg-
ment terrors, and divine glories.
Evidently the church has consistently regarded
the prophetic " so in like manner " asa declaration,
not of the strict manner of the coming, but of its
reality, and its recognizableness.
The Lord had really gone. He would so come
(as really) as they had seen him go. Thus the an-
gels prophesied, and thus the church has understood,
besides finding here an implication, additionally, that
this real coming would also be a recognizable com-
ing.
The mistake has been in thinking and affirming
that the recognizableness of the coming would be
within the sphere of the senses. In this expectation
the church, as a whole, still cleaves to the old Jew-
"AT" CHRIST'S COATING. 133
ish notion of a Messianic display of glory and power
in the visible sky and in the world of external forms.
Christians still deserve the angels' expostulation,
"Why stand ye gazing up into heaven?" Look
upon the world with a more thoughtful insight into
spiritual facts, and see that the Lord has come.
Here the reader must be content with a simple
reference to fuller discussions than present limits
permit, such as "The Parousia," by Dr. Warren,
or my short " Essay upon the Gospel of Matthew."
The reality of our Lord's coming is recognizable
by a clear-eyed spiritual intelligence, intent upon the
facts and methods of his growing kingdom of the
Spirit in the world. A Christian, as distinct from a
Jewish, method of interpreting prophecy, discerns
that he has come, that he is coming still, in clearer,
stronger, grander manifestations of his spiritual sov-
ereignty over men; and that he is still to come, —
not by catastrophe but by development, — in his
consummate and universally recognized glory as the
Spiritual Head of our race. Thus his presence (pa-
rousia) in a growing influence is a perpetual fact
through all the Christian centuries, an age-long
reign in a continually ascending supremacy, " till he
hath put all things under his feet."
NOTE C.
ON THE RESURRECTION AT CHRIST'S COMING.
For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all
be made alive.
But every man in his own order; Christ the first-
fruits; afterward they that are Christ's at his com-
ing. (1 Cor. xv. 22, 23.)
134 GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION.
This is a specimen passage of a number in which
the resurrection is closely associated with the coming
of Christ. One word in it, however, demands spe-
cial attention before its full scope is examined.
The word here translated "at" '{*p) means either
at or in. It depends wholly on the translator's no-
tion of the word it stands with, whether to say at or
in. If the coming of Christ is a simple event, like
sunrise, we may say " at his coming." But if it be
a coming that advances and matures through a period
until a consummation, we may say in, or during, his
coming. In the same way, as will be shown subse-
quently (chapter viii.), where our translators (as in
John vi. 40) say " at the last day," because of their
notion of that "day" as a day in the, same sense
that Easter day is a day, we, thinking of that day
as a period, like the days of creation, say " in the
last day."
It has been shown in the foregoing chapter that
Christ's coming is more than a simple advent; it is a
coming to be continually present in the world as its
spiritual king, a coming and presence as the original
word " parousia " means. We regard it, therefore,
not as a simple event, at which another event may
occur, but as the period of an age-long development
of the growing power and glory of him who has come
to be "with us always even to the end" (Matt,
xxviii. 20), the period in which his resurrection-
power is made manifest. Instead, therefore, of
thinking of those who are Christ's being raised to
life at a time when an instantaneous advent gives the
signal, we are to think of them as rising into life in
and throughout the whole period, during which the
"AT" CHRIST S COMING. 135
gospel power makes his presence known. More of
this is said in chapters viii. and ix.
The question has been raised, whether this proph-
ecy of the resurrection of life is a limited one, or
unlimited, — whether all who " die in Adam " are to
be " made alive in Christ." The language of verse
22 is absolutely unlimited in terms, — "in Adam
all, in Christ all." The whole argument, it is true,
runs from verse 12 onward, wholly in the line of the
Christian hope, which had been shaken by denials of
the resurrection. This is held to limit the "all."
But the Christian hope is not a selfish one; " not for
us only, but for the whole world," says John (1, ii.
2). " God," says Paul, "is the Saviour of all men,
specially of those that believe " (1 Tim. iv. 10,), and
"will have all men to be saved " (1 Tim. ii. 4). In
.this "all," therefore, the Christian hope, toward
which the whole argument runs, must include the
greatest number possible. It may be said, however,
that the Apostle's subsequent expression, " they that
are Christ's at his coming," shows that he was
thinking only of Christians, when he said, just be-
fore, that " in Christ shall all be made alive." This
is not to the point. For, of course, in his view, no
one could be made alive in Christ without being; also
a Christian.
Limiting the "all" as the scope of the argu-
ment for the Christian hope requires, and granting
that verse 22 means that " as in Adam all who are
Adamic die, so in Christ shall all who are Christ's
be made alive;" the very nature of the Christian
hope, as a hope for mankind, raises this question:
Whether the Christians made alive in Christ are
136 GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION.
only the Christians of tins ivorld, — how many of the
vast multitude who go into the future world utterly
ignorant of Christ and of his gospel may be em-
braced in this ultimate hope of life in Christ.
It would be hard to say what was'in Paul's mind
upon this subject, were this the only passage in
which he has come near this deeply interesting ques-
tion. There are, however, three other passages, in
which he speaks more positively, namely: —
" That at the name of Jesus every knee should
bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and
things under the earth [that is, in the regions of the
dead], and that every tongue should confess that
Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Fa-
ther." (Phil. ii. 10, 11.)
"For it pleased the Father that in him [Christ]
should all fullness dwell. And, having made peace
through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile
all things unto himself; by him, / say, whether they
be things in earth, or things in heaven." (Col. i.
19, 20.)
" That in the dispensation of the fullness of times
he might gather together in one all things in Christ,
both which are in heaven and which are on earth,
even in him." (Eph. i. 10.)
These three great prophecies speak unqualifiedly
of an ultimate reconciliation to God of whatever
shall exist. " All existences" is the close equiva-
lent of the term " all things," for which the Greek
employs no substantive, as " things," but uses only a
plural adjective, signifying being in general. What-
ever additional light the passage before us in 1 Cor-
inthians can receive, must be sought from these
three.
"AT" CHRIST S COMING. 137
To estimate fairly the force of these four separate
prophecies, all unqualified as the Apostle utters
them, I ask, Would an orthodox preacher, discours-
ing now upon the ultimate extent of Christ's salva-
tion, think he had sufficiently guarded the doctrine if
he should simply paraphrase Paul's words in these
four texts, — if he should abstain from adding at
least a cautionary word or two to intimate to his
hearers that the redemption would nevertheless not
ultimately include all then in existence, — if he should
fail at least to hint that even then the dark prison-
house of endless despair would include vast multi-
tudes of impenitent souls ? Judged by certain stand-
ards of the modern, if not of the Biblical, sort,
Paul's omission to " cover " that point is remarkable.
And it is also remarkable that nowhere else, in all
that he has written, does he cover it. Was it then,
in his view, a real point to cover ?
The impression which these three texts naturally
make upon the ordinary reader is fairly reflected in
the remarks made upon the second of the three by
two commentators of orthodox sentiments and of the
highest learning;.
Dr. H. A. W. Meyer : " The only right sense is,
thus, that through Christ the whole universe shall be
reconciled with God."
Bishop Ellicott: "It does say that the eternal
and incarnate Son is the ' causa medians ' by which
the absolute totality of created things shall be re-
stored into its primal harmony with its Creator —
more than this it does not say, and where God is
silent it is not for man to speak."
Nevertheless, the most universal terms, the most
sweeping statements, are always tacitly understood
138 GOSPEL OF TEE RESURRECTION.
to be subject to such necessary limitations as the nat-
ure of the case imposes. Thus, in saying God can
do anything, we do not mean to say that he can do
what is wrong or inconsistent. So in the present
instance, the comprehensive " all " must be taken to
mean all who are capable, through their free choice,
of life through Christ. Such, and only such, will
come into the number of "those who are Christ's "
in the period of his coming and presence.
Such a limitation in the nature of things Christ
seems to hint of in the sin which is forgiven " neither
in this world nor in the world to come." (Matt. xii.
32.) Intimations of impossibilities arising from the
condition of the spirit itself are found in Christ's
strong expressions, " Ye serpents, ye generation of
vipers," etc. (Matt, xxiii. 33.) (Tree will has play
hereafter, but the laws of habit and character have
force also. " All shall be made alive " icho can be,
is the utmost that can be concludedv. That all can
be is the hope held by many, but a hope without
any positive guarantee.
Yet the Apostle Paul has left on record those plain
prophecies that there shall be an ultimate and final
reconciliation to God of all who exist. This, then, in
connection with the present statement, leads to the
inference that all who are incapable of being " made
alive in Christ " will have ceased to exist before the
end.
Here we have touched, but cannot pursue, the
subject of " conditional immortality," a doctrine at
present strongly supported, and a relief, as many
deem it, from the contradiction which the notion of
an endless misery presents, in many minds, to the
Christian conception of God.
CHAPTER VI.
JUDGMENT A PRESENT AND PERPETUAL REAL-
ITY IN BOTH WORLDS.
"It is he which was ordained of God to be the Judge of
quick and dead. " — Acts x. 42.
The connection in which the ideas of
resurrection and judgment stand in the
New Testament requires us to study the
general subject of the divine judgment for
the sake of relieving the subject of the res-
urrection of some misconceptions attached
to it by misconceptions on the subject of
judgment. It is popularly supposed that
there must be a delay of resurrection until
the time has arrived for the yet distant
judgment to take place. But what if the
judgment is not distant ? What if it is
now going on ? What if it is to go on only
as it now goes ?
The thoughtful reader of the Bible can-
not fail to be impressed by the frequent re-
currence of that solemn word of righteous-
ness — Judgment. The New Testament
140 GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION.
unfolds a view oi future judgment which is
not apparent in the Old. But that revela-
tion of the present judgment which is so
prominent in the Old is obscured in the
New through a traditional misunderstand-
ing, which has settled on many passages,
one instance of which was exhibited in
Note A, at the end of the preceding chap-
ter.
The certainty of judgment beyond the
grave is testified by reiterated declarations
of Christ and his Apostles. What the
Master said of the "resurrection of judg-
ment" the disciples repeat in saying,
" after death, judgment.5' " The dead,
small and great," are seen in vision stand-
ing before the judgment throne. There
every man must appear * to " receive the
things done in the body, whether good or
bad."
Such testimonies, coupled with misunder-
standings which we are soon to notice,
have created a way of thinking on this sub-
ject, which relegates judgment to the other
side of the grave, and fails to recognize it
duly as it is proceeding, here, according to
1 " For all of us must needs be made manifest before the
judgment seat of Christ." (2 Cor. v. 10.) (Literally.)
JUDGMENT A PRESENT REALITY. 141
our Lord's emphatic declaration, " now is
the judgment of this world." (John xii.
31.) Judgment goes before death as well
as after. "After death, judgment," not
" the judgment ; our translators slipped in
that little word. (Heb. ix. 27.) No man
by dying gets away from judgment. Nor
does any man have to wait for it till after
death.
I. But what is judgment ? It is : —
(1.) Experience of the good or eyil re-
sults of the course we take, with the di-
vine law or against it.
It is also : —
(2.) A revelation in each man's con-
sciousness of those results as the fruit of
his obedience or disobedience to the divine
law.
It is plain that the first of these may
exist without the second. The results of
action cannot fail to follow, or begin to fol-
low, immediately after action. The man
who perpetrates a crime, however success-
fully, suffers an immediate result in the hard-
ening and depraving of his moral nature,
and this result is, essentially, his judgment,
whether it be immediately revealed to him
as such, or not.
142 GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION.
It is also plain that the second element
in judgment may be delayed long after the
first. The transgressor may successfully
blind himself to his condition, as hardened,
depraved, and worsening. In other words,
he is simply unconscious of the work of
judgment that is actually going on within
him, in the degradation and growing ruin
of his nature. When the time comes for
this to flash upon him, and consume him
with shame and agony, the judgment of
which he then becomes conscious is simply
a revelation^- or discovery, of the judgment
that has been working in him since his evil
course began. The discovery did not make
the judgment. It only brought it to light
in the man's own consciousness.
II. But where is judgment ? Wherever
law is, there is judgment. Judgment, as
distinct from the consciousness of judg-
ment, is simply the experience of the con-
sequences of acting according to or against
the divine law. As soon as a transgressor
begins to break the thorn hedge with which
the law has marked and secured the right
way, so soon the retributive thorns be-
gin to tear. The great catastrophe which
1 See chapter ix. toward the close.
JUDGMENT A PRESENT REALITY. 143
shakes a continent when human slavery
comes to a bloody end is only the conspic-
uous climax of a long series of judgment
evils, which had been slowly blighting a
land and barbarizing a people. The uncon-
sciousness of those who were hugging the
curse to their bosoms, and blindly glorying
in its stupefying illusions, was deemed by
those who watched the growth of the can-
cer as one of the very grimmest in all the
train of judgment-consequences.
Judgment, then, is as eternal and as con-
stantly operative as is law. It is, in fact,
the operation of law, in blessing the obedi-
ent and bringing wrath upon the disobedi-
ent. From the beginning to the end of
action under law, judgment follows every
being through the universe of God wher-
ever law extends.
Thinking in this way upon the subject
of judgment, we shall avoid the mistakes
that ensue upon our likening the divine
judgment to a human court, which opens
at a certain place and time, hears, tries,
sentences, and, having gone through the
docket, adjourns. The divine judgment
never waits to open, and never stands ad-
journed, not even as a " last judgment," so
144 GOSPEL OF TEE RESURRECTION.
long as there lives a created being in obedi-
ence or in disobedience to the law of God.
Its efficiency is as conspicuous in the bless-
ing of the righteous as in the curse of the
wicked ; though this last is chiefly thought
of among sinners. We are to think of it
not as an event, limited to a specific " day,"
but as a process, which runs its course
throughout the whole existence of the re-
sponsible subjects of law.
What, then, must we understand in
Paul's saying, that God " hath appointed
a day in which he will judge the world in
righteousness " ? (Acts xvii. 31.) What
must we understand in John's saying, that
he saw " the dead, small and great, stand
before God ? " (Rev. xx. 12.) We must
understand that " day " to be a period not
the same as that from sunrise to sunset.
We must understand that standing before
God to be something different from what
could be formally delineated in a picture.
John's vision was not representative but
suggestive, not a mechanical copy but a
shadow of a spiritual reality. There is no
such throne, but there is a real judgment,
of which the throne and the standing before
it are purely imaginative symbols and shad-
JUDGMENT A PRESENT REALITY. 145
ows. And John's vision was simply his
momentary glimpse of an eternal process.
He had it at the end of a series of visions
relating to the course of earthly history.
He came to it as a visitor comes to the last
room in a picture gallery. He narrates it
last in the order of the things he saw.
But the room is there with its pictures
before the visitor comes, and after he goes*
And thus the divine judgment is eternally
going on, as unintermitted as is the opera-
tion of the law, that " whatsoever a man
soweth that shall he also reap." It is, in
fact, nothing but the operation of that law
in bringing consequences to pass.
Unless we bring this mode of thinking to
the interpretation of the Scripture doctrine
of judgment, we shall reduce the spiritual
and eternal processes of the moral universe
to the mechanical forms of such a judgment
as has been painted by Michael Angelo.
III. To what has now been said as to
the true mode of thinking on this subject,
we must add careful notice of some special-
points, namely : —
(1.) The Scriptures have absolutely noth-
ing to say of any general judgment of man-
kind, collectively, to occur after the earthly
10
146 GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION.
course of things is run. If this seems to
any reader a startling assertion, he will do
well to look carefully at the evidence, for it
is unquestionably true. \
Matthew xiii. 40-42, 49, 50, will be im-
mediately cited as demonstrating a divine
judgment at "the end of the world." But
this goes for nothing, when we turn to
Heb. ix. 26, and read, that the death of
Christ took place " in the end of the world."
The original phrase and the English trans-
lation agree in both passages. As to the
death of Christ, we can only understand
" the end of the world," in which it took
place, to be the final period of the world, re-
garded as the end, or consummation, of the
preparatory ages. Unless some sufficient
reason can be found for assigning to the
phrase in Matthew an entirely different
sense from the same phrase in Hebrews,
that judgment " at the end of the world "
turns out to be judgment in a period of
earthly history that is still in progress.1
The passage in Matt. xxv. 31-46, sup-
posed to describe "the last judgment," re-
quires more extended discussion, which will
occupy the next chapter.
1 See my Essay on the Gospel according to Matthew. W.
A. Wilde & Co., Boston.
JUDGMENT A PRESENT REALITY. 147
(2.) The Scriptures represent the king-
dom of Christ as a period of judgment.
The ancient idea of sovereignty combined
in one person those functions of governing
and of judging which modern ideas have
separated. The ancient kings sat on judg-
ment seats to administer justice. The Old
Testament prophecies of the kingdom of
Christ describe him as coming to " judge
the nations " (Isa. ii. 4), and to " set judg-
ment in the earth." (Isa. xlii. 4.) As
shown in the preceding chapter, a spiritual
kingdom, with Christ as its king, is an ex-
isting fact in the present world. So far as
he is king, he is also judge of men, in the
Biblical conception, not waiting the coming
of the end of time to ascend a throne of
judgment, but now occupying that throne,
and administering throughout the centuries
a work of judgment. (See Note A, at the
end of the preceding chapter.)
The New Testament exhibits this fact in
great prominence. While it extends Christ's
judgment work beyond the grave, in telling
us that we must appear [literally, " be
manifested " before him to receive the
things done in the body (2 Cor. v. 10), it
extends this judgment work over the pres-
148 GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION.
ent also, over the living, as well as the
dead. (Acts x. 42.) This is Christ's own
testimony to himself : " The Father judge th
no man, but hath committed' all judgment
to the Son,1 that all men should honor the
Son even as they honor the Father. (John
v. 22, 23.) The reference of this judgment
to present time is unquestionable, since it
is a present honor that all are to yield,
as to a present judge. This judgeship of
Christ is closely connected with his coming
in his kingdom.
" For the Son of man shall come in the
glory of his Father with his angels ; and
then he shall reward every man according
to his works.
" Verily I say unto you, There be some
standing here, which shall not taste of
death, till they see the Son of man coming
in his kingdom." (Matt. xvi. 27, 28.)
Whatever cause we have thus far found
to think that the Son of man has come in
his kingdom, will incline us to think that
his judgment seat has already been erected
in the world.
1 A very profound truth is here touched by the Evangelist,
namely, that, in the nature of things, if we are to feel our-
selves judged by God at all, it cannot be by an unknown
God, but only by God as revealed; that is, of course, by
God as revealed in his Son Jesus Christ.
JUDGMENT A PRESENT REALITY. 149
(3.) A survey of the period of Christian-
ity, thus far, reveals a work of judgment
as running on through the centuries. There
was judgment in constant execution be-
fore Christ, in the retributive operation of
the divine law, both with blessing and
in wrath. Of this the Old Testament is
full. Judgment by no means began when
the Son of man came in his kingdom, but
the agency of Christ in judgment began to
be manifested in the casting out of evil, in
the purging of the church and the world
from the obstructions to the progress of his
kingdom. So far as the agency of Christ
is a more perfect agency for the work of
revealing and condemning and casting out
all obstacles to his reigning over men in
truth and righteousness and love, so far the
work of judgment must proceed, during the
Christian period, more thoroughly, mani-
festly, effectively, than ever before. Now
just this, which we must admit to be true,
characterizes the period of Christ's pres-
ence in his kingdom as, in a special sense,
a period of judgment — a judgment " day,"
we may term it, a day of ages, like the
days of creation.
Comparing the Christian period, thus
150 GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION.
far, with a period of equal duration before
Christ, we notice a marvelous difference in
moral progress. Inveterate evils, that had
held their ground from the time of primeval
man, have been gradually disappearing un-
der the ban of Christ, condemned and cast
out by that " spirit of power and of love
and of a sound mind" which is slowly, but
steadily, diffusing itself through the world
from Christ. Infanticide, slavery, cruelty
to criminals, neglect of the helpless, wars
of conquest, religious persecution, tyran-
nical government, barbarous laws, have all
shrunk under the ban of that spirit of moral
purity and intelligence which Christ com-
municates to man. The Son of man has
evidently been sending forth his " angels,"
the varied powers, personal and impersonal,
that follow in his train — the influences not
only of religion, but of commerce, learning,
art, etc., and they have been gathering out
of his kingdom " the things that offend."
(Matt. xiii. 41.) Incomplete as the work
may be, no one can doubt that it is going
on. Christ's own words describe it as a
present fact tending toward a future con-
summation. " Now is the judgment of this
world, now shall the prince of this world
JUDGMENT A PRESENT REALITY. 151
be cast out." (John xii. 31.) It is precisely
such a work that fitly characterizes the
Christian period as a period of judgment on
all that opposes the sway of Christ as king.
It is the relation of Christ to such a work,
as the centre and soul of the agencies that
are effectively discovering and banning and
purging away the evils of the world, which,
justifies us in regarding him as to-day the
occupant of his judgment throne in a grow-
ing sovereignty of moral glory and power.
(4.) Christ's judgment work extends into
the future. The sentences of righteousness
which he has pronounced in his Gospel will
be fully written out, not only in the experi-
ence of the world, but in the experience of
individual souls, " that every man may re-
ceive the things done in the body." Every
conscience will, sooner or later, experience
this revelation, or discovery, of the divine
judgment as accomplished in itself ; will
recognize in its personal experience the ful-
fillment of the righteous sentence which
Christ, both as king and judge, has uttered
in his Gospel. This revelation of judgment
will be in the strictest sense before Christ,
not in external form, but in inward con-
sciousness, contemplating, on one hand, the
152 GOSPEL OF TEE RESURRECTION.
law of Christ, and on the other one's own
personal character, and the consequences of
having that character as the net result of
the deeds done in the body. %
Such a day of judgment awaits every
man in that solemn chamber of conscience,
in which the spirit, facing the realities of
its present condition as the result of its
past action, pronounces on itself, with joy
or grief, the sentence of the divine law,
as in the presence of its judge and of its
future. For such a judgment no public
theatre, no universal concourse, is requisite,
and none has been announced. Unless we
expect God to introduce a radical change
in his methods of executing and revealing
his judgments, it is utterly unreasonable to
expect that he will undertake any grand
scenic representation, and gather together
all men and angels, in order to proclaim
to ears what has been sufficiently demon-
strated to consciences.
It may be granted to any one who urges
it, that the Scriptures undoubtedly convey
the impression that there is to be a grand
and general clearing up of the ways of
God by something that may be called judg-
ment. We must beware, however, of re-
JUDGMENT A PRESENT REALITY. 153
ducing such a fact to the mechanical propor-
tions of a fresco painting. Such a result
might issue as certainly and as clearly from
a process, requiring ages for its accomplish-
ment in the gradual operation of law, as
from a catastrophe, taking place in an hour.
And observation assures us that God's rev-
elations follow the method of development
rather than that of catastrophe. Abra-
ham's assurance, that the Judge of all the
earth does right (Gen. xviii. 25) will be
vindicated sufficiently to all by the grand
result to which the long judgment process
comes, when " all things that offend " shall
have sunk under condemnation, and "the
new heavens and the new earth in which
dwelleth righteousness " shall be revealed
in their final " beauty of holiness."
So far as the present chapter has given
reason to think that there is no grand and
general and catastrophic judgment-day to
be waited for, the associated idea that there
must be a waiting for a grand and general
resurrection-day, in order to such a judg-
ment, has failed to find ground for its sup-
port.
The traditional conceptions of this sub-
ject are, however, closely bound up with a
154 GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION.
traditional misunderstanding of a section of
the Gospel according to Matthew, in, or
rather into, which there has been read the
doctrine of a final judgment-day, universal,
scenic, and catastrophic, according to the
famous picture of Michael Angelo. This
requires study and restatement, and must
next be taken in hand.
NOTE.
JUDGMENT AS REPRESENTED IN THE CREEDS IN
CONNECTION WITH THE RESURRECTION.
The following extract from " The Larger Cate-
chism " of the Presbyterian Church, as adopted and
ratified by the Synod of New York and Philadelphia
in 1788, may stand here in contrast with the views
presented in the preceding chapter, as well as in the
following, as a fair expression of the prevailing mode
of Christian thought upon the subject.
Q. 87. What are we to believe concerning the resur-
rection ?
A. We are to believe that at the last day there
shall be a general resurrection of the dead, both of
the just and unjust. When they that are then
found alive shall in a moment be changed, and the
self-same bodies of the dead which were laid in the
grave, being then again united to their souls forever,
shall be raised up by the power of Christ. The
bodies of the just, by the spirit of Christ, and by
JUDGMENT IN THE CREEDS. 155
virtue of his resurrection as their head, shall be
raised in power, spiritual and incorruptible, and
made like to his glorious body; and the bodies of
the wicked shall be raised up in dishonor by him
as an offended judge.
Q. 88. What shall immediately follow after the res-
urrection? . ,, s ,
A. Immediately after the resurrection shall fol-
low the general and final judgment of angels and
men, the day and hour whereof no man knoweth,
that all may watch and pray, and be ever ready for
the coming of the Lord.
Q. 89. What shall be done to the wicked at the day
of judgment? , v, -^
A. At the day of judgment, the wicked shall be
set on Christ's left hand, and, upon clear evidence
and full conviction of their own consciences, shall
have the fearful but just sentence of condemnation
pronounced against them; and thereupon shall be
cast out from the favorable presence of God and the
glorious fellowship with Christ, his saints, and all
his holy angels, into hell, to be punished with un-
speakable torments both of body and soul, with the
devil and all his angels forever.
Q. 90. What shall be done to the righteous at the
day of judgment ? m
A At the day of judgment, the righteous, being
cau-ht up to Christ in the clouds, shall be set on
his ricrht hand, and there, openly acknowledged and
acquitted, shall join with him in the judging of rep-
robate angels and men, and shall be received into
heaven, where they shall be fully and forever freed
from all sin and misery, filled with inconceivable
156 GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION.
joys, made perfectly holy and happy both in body
and soul in the company of innumerable saints and
angels, but especially in the immediate vision and
fruition of God the Father, of our Lord Jesus
Christ, and of the Holy Spirit, to all' eternity. And
this is the perfect and full communion which the
members of the invisible church shall enjoy with
Christ in glory, at the resurrection and day of judg-
ment.
CHAPTER VII.
"the last judgment" not delayed till
the resurrection.
"Now is the judgment of this world." — John. xii. 31.
"When the Son of man shall come in
his glory, and all the holy angels with him,
then shall he sit upon the throne of his
glory :
"And before him shall be gathered all
nations : and he shall separate them one
from another, as a shepherd diyideth Ms
sheep from the goats:
" And he shall set the sheep on his right
hand, but the goats on the left.
" Then shall the King say unto them on
his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my
Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for
you from the foundation of the world :
" For I was an hungered, and ye gave me
meat : I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink :
T was a stranger, and ye took me in :
" Naked, and ye clothed me : I was sick,
158 GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION.
and ye yisited me : I was in prison, and ye
came unto me.
" Then shall the righteous answer him,
saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hun-
gered, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave
thee drink?
"When saw we thee a stranger, and took
thee in ? or naked, and clothed thee ?
" Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison,
and came unto thee ?
"And the King shall answer and say
unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch
as ye have done it unto one of the least of
these my brethren, ye have done it unto
me.
"Then shall he say also unto them on
the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed,
into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil
and his angels :
" For I was an hungered, and ye gave me
no meat : I was thirsty, and ye gave me no
drink : I was a stranger, and ye took me not
in : naked, and ye clothed me not : sick, and
in prison, and ye visited me not.
" Then shall they also answer him, saying,
Lord, when saw we thee an hungered, or
athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or
in prison, and did not minister unto thee ?
"THE LAST JUDGMENT." 159
" Then shall he answer them, saying,
Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did
it not to one of the least of these, ye did it
not to me.
" And these shall go away into everlast-
ing punishment : but the righteous into life
eternal." (Matt. xxv. 31-46.)
This last third of the twenty-fifth chapter
of Matthew has generally been understood
to be a prophetic picture of the judgment of
the entire race of mankind, to take place at
the end of time. It is commonly taken to
be a description of " The Last Judgment,"
a great and general court of God, in which
all the deeds of earthly time are to be
reviewed and sentenced for all eternity.
Whether it is really that, and what it is if
not really that, is the present object of in-
quiry.
If our study should lead us to conclusions
widely different from the traditional opin-
ion, it will not be the first time that Bib-
lical study has given a changed view of an
important subject. All that part of the
Bible which refers to the beginnings of
things upon the globe is differently under-
stood since we have studied it by the light
160 GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION.
which we have gained from modern science.
Likewise, that part which refers to the last
things, such as resurrection, judgment, and
retribution, may be deemed capable of more
correct interpretation, as study continues,
and the helps of study are improved.
I.
Now, the traditional opinion that Mat-
thew xxv. 31-46 is a prophetic picture of
" the Last Judgment," in the sense above
described, is challenged by the discovery,
and that not a very recent one, that the
words rendered in our Bibles, " all nations,"
will not fairly bear the sense of " all man-
kind."
The word rendered " nations " (ZOvrj,
ethne) occurs in the New Testament a lit-
tle less than one hundred and fifty times.
In about eighty instances it is rendered
" Gentiles," in five, " heathen," and else-
where " nations." Joined, as it is in this
passage, with the article " the " (r<i Wvy, ta
ethne), carelessly omitted here by our trans-
lators, it makes the term regularly used to
distinguish the G entile from the Jewish
part of the world as " the nations." Our
translators would only have adhered to the
"THE LAST JUDGMENT." 161
regular use of the term, if they had rendered
it thus: " Before him shall be gathered all
the Gentiles." Why did they not? Be-
cause they thought that the subject before
them was the general judgment of all man-
kind at the end of time. So they said " na-
tions," because " nations " suits that idea,
and " Gentiles " does not. So, then, when,
we read " all nations," we get not only a
translation, but our translators' doctrine of
the last judgment, disguised under a trans-
lation that is open to question.
The ground on which this translation
must be questioned, and the doctrine dis-
guised under it must be doubted, may be
more fully stated as follows : —
The Gospel according to Matthew is ad-
mitted to have been written expressly for
readers of Jewish birth. It was written
originally in Hebrew, and this, done over
into Greek with some variations, is what
we call " Matthew." Now, in the mind of
a Jew, or in the pages of a book written for
Jews, the term, ta ethne (" the nations "),
which our English Bibles here give as " na-
tions," never meant anything but " the Grerir
tile nations " outside of the Jewish world*
If a Jew wanted to say " all mankind," he
11
162 GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION.
said " Jews and nations " (or the nations),
as in Romans iii. 29, which reads : " Is God
the God of Jews only, and not also God of
nations? Yes, of nations also." If he wanted
to say "all mankind except the Jews," he
said "all the nations," as in Romans xv. 11 ;
xvi. 26. Now this is precisely what Jesus,
speaking to Jews, and himself a Jew, says
here.
The words panta ta ethne" (7ravra rb. Wvrf),
taken simply as Greek words, undoubtedly
signify in English all the nations. By that
we understand " all mankind." But the
Jew did not so understand it. When a Jew
used that phrase to Jews, as Christ did to
the Apostles in this passage, he meant the
non-Jewish nations, just as regularly as we,
when we speak of " the heathen," mean, in
general, the non-Christian nations.
The different sense which two different
languages may put into the same combina-
tion of words, which, separately, word by
word, have the same sense in both lan-
guages, is illustrated by the experience of
the American, who, in addressing a Sunday-
school in France, was unaware that eau de
vie (literally " water of life ") is the French
phrase for brandy, and electrified his hear-
» THE LAST JUDGMENT." 163
ers by gravely assuring them that in heaven
there was " a pure river of eau de vie." 2
In this judgment of " all the nations,"
therefore, unless we think fit to ignore the
idiomatic sense which these words always
carried from Jewish lips to Jewish ears, we
cannot recognize anything but a descrip-
tion of the judgment of the Grentile part
of mankind, all except the Jews. It is as
certain as anything which depends on the
intelligent interpretation of language can
ever be, that this is not the final and uni-
versal judgment of the human race that it
has been supposed to be.
(1.) This immediately starts the ques-
tion : What then of the Jewish portion of
mankind? What of their judgment ? This
is apparent from a glance at the preceding
chapters of Matthew, from the twenty-first
onward, recording discourses which were all
delivered by Christ on the same day as this
— the last day of his public teaching. These
contain no less than six Parables of Judg-
ment, three of them addressed to the unbe-
lieving part of the nation, and three to the
few believers, namely : —
First triplet, addressed to the unbelievers,
1 He should have said eau vive, " living water."
164 GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION.
that is, either to the nation generally or to
their representatives, as the Pharisees.
a. The Two Sons, xxi. 28-32.
b. The Wicked Husbandmen, xxi. 33-
41.
c. The Marriage of the King's Son, xxii.
2-14.
This last, connected as it is with the sub-
ject of the Gospel invitation to the Gentile
world, sounds a prelude to that subject of
the judgment of the Gentiles which con-
cludes the whole series of these parables.
For, obviously, the man without "the wed-
ding garment " was one of the outside mul-
titude, to whom the invitation rejected by
those that scorned the king was given.
Second triplet, addressed to the believers,
the Jewish-Christian Church.
a. The Faithful and the Evil Servant,
xxiv. 45-51.
b. The Wise and the Foolish Virgins,
xxv. 1-13.
c. The Talents : or the Diligent Servants
and the Slothful, xxv. 14-30.
The topic of each of these parables is
judgment in varied aspects. The twenty-
third chapter and most of the twenty-fourth,
intervening between the two triplets, is a
"THE LAST JUDGMENT." 165
continuous thunder-roll of the judgment
impending over the people and the city to
whom the first triplet was addressed. These
six now described, and the one in the pas-
sage now before us, which is a prophetie
picture rather than a parable, must be taken
together to make up in combination a judg-
ment discourse that shall be applicable to
Jews and Grentiles both, that is, to all man-
kind. Each of these seven will be found
to refract one or more of those prismatic
rays of truth which are combined in a per-
fect idea of the judgment of God.
(2.) A second question touches next the
time of the fulfillment of these judgment
warnings. Some of them, at any rate
(such as Matt. xxi. 43; xxii. 7), were ful-
filled in the lifetime of some who heard
them. Judgment fell upon the Jewish peo-
ple as predicted, their city was destroyed,
and a million of them perished in the ruin.
This immediate beginning of the fulfillment,
so far as the Jews were concerned, leads us
to anticipate the like so far as the Gentiles
were concerned. If there was no putting
off on one side, why should we expect put-
ting off on the other side? We presume
that the cases will probably be parallel, no
166 GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION.
more delay of judgment in the one than in
the other. We must so regard it, unless
we find plain evidence to the contrary.
Now, is there any such ? 'Here we shall
touch the only difficulty of any account, a
difficulty mainly for this reason, that it is
harder to get a wrong notion out of our
minds than to get a right notion in. The
wrong notion, in this case, is due to a wrong
way of thinking, to a mechanical, unspirit-
ual way of looking at our Lord's prophecies
of great spiritual facts in the unfolding of
his kingdom.
The time when the judgment of the Gen-
tile part of the world begins is said to be
" when the Son of man shall come in his
glory, and all his [holy] angels with him."
This has been generally taken to mean a
visible appearance of the Lord Jesus Chiist,
in the radiance of a glorified body, accom-
panied with hosts of celestial spirits. This
seemed sufficiently consistent with the the-
ory of an assemblage before him of the
whole human race in all its countless mill-
ions — a grand and final court, to review
and adjudicate upon every life that has been
lived. No one, indeed, has been able to
give a satisfying answer to some questions
"THE LAST JUDGMENT." 167
which such a theory starts, namely : Why
should all these be brought together, some
from bliss and some from woe, to hear what
they knew already, and to go back into the
bliss or woe they came from? Or, why
should judgment upon the career of each
individual be put off thus to an indefinite
future, and then be delivered in a lump, as
it were ? The usual reply to this, that it is
for God's sake, not man's, that this is to be,
to the end that his righteousness as a judge
may be fully manifested and acknowledged,
does not satisfy. For if men do not need
this concourse before God, if the sinner in
utter solitariness may be as thoroughly con-
vinced of God's righteousness and his own
sin as in a crowd that includes all mankind,
then we may be sure that God needs no
such judgment-throng any more than we
need it. But the moment it is seen that,
according to the very terms of the record,
the Jewish portion of mankind are not
counted in this judgment-concourse before
the king, the theory, that here we have a
prophecy of the visible appearance of Christ
to pass judgment on the collective race,
leaks very badly. On the face of the dis-
course, this is a coming of Christ to only a
168 GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION.
part of mankind ; the larger part, no doubt,
but still a part only.
Minds that are not committed to defend
any dogma in the teeth of plain facts will
make due account of this. This cannot pos-
sibly be what it has been supposed to be, a
visible coming of Christ to judge all man-
kind at the end of this world's history. The
difficulty presented by such a theory visibly
melts. So far as that is concerned, there is
nothing adverse to our presumption before
stated, that the judgment of the Gentile
part of the world will ran parallel with the
judgment of the Jewish part; in fact, that
it began to be fulfilled immediately, just as
that began.
A striking confirmation of this view comes
from the picture here drawn of the " breth-
ren of Christ," that is, Christians, as hun-
gry, athirst, naked, sick, and in prison. We
cannot misunderstand this allusion to the
now well-known circumstances of the church
of Christ during her period of conflict, then
about to begin. We see, indeed, in " these,
my brethren," the representatives of needy
humanity in all times, in all its piteous ap-
peals for benevolent regard, including the
appeals even of those deemed ill-deserving
"THE LAST JUDGMENT" 169
and justly punished, as the brethren of
Christ were, in early days, so generally
deemed by most men. Christians are fa-
miliar with the wide application, in many
a sermon to-day, of this designation, "my
brethren," to all who need Christian char-
ity. Only let it be remembered, both to
quicken Christian charity, and to sharpen
Christian insight into the spiritual under-
standing of this whole prophecy, that Chris-
tians themselves were the " destitute, af-
flicted, tormented " ones, according to their
treatment of whom the Gentiles are here
described as judged.
We are now able to answer the question :
When did the judgment of the Gentiles be-
gin?
Premising what many forget, that noth-
ing in God's kingdom comes all at once, but
rather by stages of continuous advance —
the Son of man came in his glory, that is,
began to come, when he began to be preached
and believed on among the Gentiles as " the
Lord of glory," the spiritual king of men ;
when his name began to be recognized as
" above every other name," " the only name
under heaven whereby we must be saved."
(Acts iv. 12.) With him were " all his an-
170 GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION.
gels " (the word " holy " does not belong to
the text), — all the miraculous powers and
spiritual influences1 which so marvelously
aided the introduction of faitn in the Lord
of glory among the Gentiles. The Apos-
tles and all missionaries of the gospel are
doubtless included among these " angels,"
or messengers, as the word originally
meant.2 Then did he indeed begin to " sit
upon the throne of his glory," a throne im-
mediately erected in every believing heart,
and destined to be recognized as established
in the world, in proportion as the Christian
element grew strong enough to make social
usages and civil laws conform more and
more to the rule of Christ.
Thus we are bound to understand our
Lord's prophecy of his coming by the spir-
itual aim of all his teachings, which con-
stantly point to things above the region of
outward show and mechanical forms. We
must here bear in mind the cautionary re-
mark of a spiritual mind like that of Paul,
about the " veil on the heart," that veil of
1 The word "angel," in the Old Testament, is applied both
to personal and impersonal agents of God.
2 The "angels" of the seven churches in John's Revela-
tion are generally supposed to have been men, not celestial
spirits.
' « TEE LAST J UD GHENT. » 171
obstinate, sensuous prepossessions, which
blinded Jewish readers to the spiritual im-
port of the prophecies of the kingdom of
heaven. Those who insist on a coming of
Christ with such accessories of light and
sound and form as lie upon the low level of
sensuous perception, are simply furnishing
powder and shot to skeptics, who say that
Jesus promised to come in that way before
that generation had passed, and has not
come, so that he must be accounted a false
prophet.
The idea of a coming of Christ in such
form and glory as are apparent to the senses
is borrowed from the Jews, who anticipated
the coming of the Messiah in that manner.
The genuinely Christian idea of his coming
views him as coming to the hearts and con-
sciences of men with spiritual power, con-
verting individuals, purifying society, shap-
ing institutions and laws, communicating
ideas that expand with power, principles
that grow toward sovereignty, a spirit that
by degrees leavens the world, and at length
controls the world, recognizably, that is, vis-
ibly to our minds. Such spiritual ascend-
ency is true glory, the highest glory. In
such glory the Son of man began to come,
172 GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION.
as he said, within the lifetime of some of
his hearers. (Matt. xvi. 28.)
II.
To exhibit the harmony of the remainder
of the chapter with the view that has now
been presented, a running commentary will
suffice.
" Before him shall be gathered all na-
tions." (Verse 32.) This began to be ful-
filled as all nations began to be brought be-
fore him in the world-wide preaching of his
Gospel.
" And he shall separate them," etc.
This also began to take place as they began
to separate themselves to right and left as
believers or opposers, " sheep " or " goats."
Wherever Christ is preached men take sides.
This division took place, notably, among
those who heard Jesus speak. (John vii.
43.) That this, as stated in our Lord's
prophecy, is the first result wherever he
comes among men, our Lord's explicit words
testify : " Not peace but division." (Luke
xii. 51.)
" Then shall the king say unto them,"
etc. (Verses 34-45.) In this twofold ad-
dress of the king, I find foreshadowed that
" THE LAST JUDGMENT." 173
authoritative preaching of the Gospel of the
kingdom, ivhich sets forth the law of the
kingdom, and pronounces who have part
and who have no part therein. Let us not
forget that the Gospel of Christ is essen-
tially a law of life, announcing the condi-
tions of life. Such a Gospel applies a test
to its hearers, enabling each to judge on
which side of the law of life he stands. The
preaching of this Gospel is, primarily, a
declaration of judgment upon the position
which its hearers take ; a judgment which
each hearer, whose conscience is awake,
must needs apply to himself. The two dif-
ferent courses here described as ministering
or not ministering to the neediness of the
afflicted Christians may be simply general-
ized as obedience or disobedience to the Gos-
pel law of love. (1 John iv. 21.)
The general view here taken may be
stated thus : This judgment-prophecy is de-
signed to include the whole period of the
kingdom of Christ, from the beginning of
the spread of " the Gospel of the kingdom."
It announces principles of judgment which
apply to all duration, in all worlds, as tak-
ing effect now, in a Divine judgment begin-
ning though not ending in this world.
174 GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION.
Conformably to what has been said, in
the " Come, ye blessed," and "Depart, ye
cursed," we shall miss the sense, if we think
we hear an irreversible allotment to those
who have made an unalterable choice, and
taken a final and fixed position forever. I
am aware how almost invincible is the pre-
possession which will deny this, but I am
content in stating a fact which, candid in-
quiry, freeing itself from the shackles of
ignorance and of blind dogmatism, will ere
long freely admit. The language is intense
and the description is picturesque, but this
well befits the fact that our Lord, as the
nations are brought before him, in the
preaching of his Gospel, declares the ulti-
matum of human destiny as settled by the
laiv of love. The " Come " and " Depart,"
instead of expressing the unalterable con-
ditions of the hearers, express rather the
unalterable issues of the courses which
the hearers choose : unalterable in nature,
but conditioned upon the hearers' choice,
" Come " or " Depart," according as you
fulfill or resist the bidding of the law of
love. /It is fixed in the nature of things, as
an eternal law, that the loving, the merci-
ful, the unselfish, and only they, can come
"THE LAST JUDGMENT." 175
into fellowship with the Lord of glory,
while the hard, the unpitying, the selfish,
can only be parted from him into fellow-
ship with the enemies of mankind, " the
devil and his angels." This is in substance
equivalent to " He that believeth shall be
saved, and he that believeth not shall be
damned." (Mark xvi. 16.) As a state-
ment of " the terms of salvation," the pas-
sage before us runs in the same line of
thought as earlier sayings that Matthew
has recorded, such as these : " Blessed are
the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy "
(v. 7) ; " Whosoever shall give to drink
unto one of these little ones a cup of cold
water only, in the name of a disciple, verily,
I say unto you, he shall in no wise lose his
reward." (X. 42.)
Let us reflect on this, that wherever this
Gospel of the Lord is faithfully preached
to-day, he is continually sitting in judg-
ment upon the choices that the hearers
make, and continually repeating these judg-
ment words, " Come," " Depart," in the
varied forms in which the Gospel pro-
nounces the Divine ultimatum, in all the
varied phrases by which it declares that
spiritual life or death is the issue of the
176 GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION.
opposite choices which men make. These
words express a finality, because they ex-
press what is in the nature of things un-
changeable. But it is a finality which is
offered to the election of the hearer still.
Here we must observe two things. It
is, indeed, to those who are ranged on op-
posites sides that the king says " Come,"
" Depart." But this is the very aspect
which the world, so far as evangelized, pre-
sents to-day, a world in two divisions, on
opposite sides of " the law of Christ." And
all preaching of the Gospel presupposes
the power of voluntary transition from side
to side. The " Come " and " Depart," there-
fore, however expressive of the solemn final-
ity of that law of consequences, which de-
mands that " whatsoever a man soweth,
that shall he also reap," are very far from
fixing " a great gulf " between the saved
and the lost. He who in the depths of con-
science to-day hears the word " Depart," in
a feeling of his utter unfitness for the Fa-
ther's blessing, may yield to the conviction,
may honor the law of Christ by a conse-
cration of his life, may cross from the left
to the right, among those that are coming
to the Lord.
"THE LAST JUDGMENT." 177
Or, on the other hand, he may persistently
refuse to come. What then, but a going
on in the evil way to the uttermost of evil
consequence? " These shall go away into
the eternal punishment." They have been
going away, departing from the Lord and
his kingdom, ever since they cast off his
law of love. They simply go on in their
chosen way of departure. It is a way of
punishment in the nature of things, that
is, eternally, as long as they go on, the more
departure the more sin and punishment,
though they should go on sinning without
end.
Now this is matter of experience in the
present world. Men who have been brought
before Christ either in the preaching of the
Gospel, or as they have seen " the Word
made flesh " in some saintly life, hear the
" Come " or the " Depart " in their inmost
souls to-day, as judgment is pronounced in
conscience upon the issues of their life in
coming to or departing from the Lord. Not
only this, but the experience of these is-
sues, in the peace and blessedness which
the loving and self-denying life " inherits,"
or in the unrest and cankered spirit of the
selfish worldling, begins to be realized here.
12
178 GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION.
When we read, therefore, "these shall
go away into the eternal punishment, but
the righteous into eternal life," we are not
to see in picture any final opening and shut-
ting of heaven gates or of hell gates at the
adjournment of a universal judgment of
mankind. Nor are we to think that this
verse marks probation as closed and having
given place to retribution. We are to see,
rather, the Gospel ultimatum taking effect
in the present experience of every hearer,
according as his choice in the present mo-
ment places him on the right or the wrong
side of " the law of the King." (James
ii. 8.)
I am aware that it will take time and
thought, aye, and a more spiritual ivay of
thinking, to efface the inveterate impression
of the Christian world on this subject, so
as to dispel the traditional illusion that
Christ terms punishment and life " eternal,"
because measured by a sort of infinite al-
manac or clock, i Rather is it the nature
of things, independently of any measure of
time or quantity, which makes the punish-
ment and the life " eternal." Just as hard-
ness of heart eternally, that is, in the time-
less and unchangeable nature of things,
"THE LAST JUDGMENT." 179
results from acts of selfishness, without re-
gard to clock or almanac, with equal inevi-
tableness after one year or a million years,
so is " the eternal punishment " that which
the spiritual nature, not duration, brings
upon the violators of the eternal law in
this world and in all the worlds of God. It
may begin in any time or any place ; it may
end in any time or place ; but it is noth-
ing connected with beginning or ending,
nor any relation to time or place, that con-
stitutes it " eternal," but simply its nature,
as the invariable r&mlt of law^ Repentance
and conversion may cat it short in a day;
but it is " eternal " all the same. It may
cease to exist, but it ceases only when the
cause ceases to exist from whose existence
it must eternally follow.
So, also, " the eternal life " is not a cer-
tain measure of existence, but a certain
hind of existence ; that kind which results
in the timeless and unchangeable nature of
things, that is, eternally, from the specific
causes mentioned by our Lord in John xvii.
3. This also begins, as Christ and his Apos-
tles explicitly declare, in the present world.
(John iii. 36 ; 1 John v. 11, etc.)
180 GOSPEL OF TEE RESURRECTION.
III.
The grand lesson of this judgment proph-
ecy is now before us. Judgment begins
here, though it does not end here. Nay,
"after death judgment" (not "the judg-
ment " — Heb. ix. 27), as well as before
death, but so much more comi^letely devel-
oped, that we may speak with a deep spirit-
ual significance of " the world of judgment,"
not forgetting, however, that this world, and
any world, is a world of judgment so far as
it is a world of law. Judgment is simply
the experience and manifestation of the con-
sequences of keeping or breaking law. It
takes time to manifest all the consequences,
time that outreaches the present world. But
the manifestation of these consequences ex-
ists in one stage of development or another,
wherever law exists. This world is a world
where judgment goes on to-day according
to the law of Christ the King. The system
of things is not double, all probation here
and all judgment there, but single, proba-
tion and judgment combined in one system
of things, from the time that man begins
to be capable until he ceases to be capable
(if he ever ceases) of choosing whether he
will obey or disobey the law of God.
"THE LAST JUDGMENT." 181
What then becomes of the doctrine of
" the last judgment " in the light of this
exposition ? It is not abolished. It is
transformed. A lot of useless stage ma-
chinery is put away. A spiritual reality
is made manifest. Like other Christian
doctrines, the doctrine of the last judg-
ment must lose its grosser form, to live in
purer and truer form. In a very true and
solemn sense we see in this passage the last
judgment. It is recorded at the close of
the narrative of our Lord's public teaching,
as Ms ultimatum to the world, his final and
conclusive judgment upon the two courses
that the hearers of his Gospel elect — his
last and great word of destiny. But it is
not pronounced after probation has ended;
while probation is in progress, rather, while
the Gospel invitation is open, while a Saul
may change to a Paul. In its presentation
/of the two unchangeable alternatives for
our choice, it falls upon our ears with solem-
nity as the final word, the last judgment
that can ever express our relation to the eter-
I nal law.
To me, and I hope to others, thinking
in this way, an increased solemnity is im-
parted to the present life, the present hour,
182 GOSPEL OF TEE RESURRECTION.
as the beginning of that spiritual judgment
before the Lord, through whose uttermost
processes each one must pass, until all that
is sown in the present shall be reaped in
the present and the future. (2 Cor. v. 10.)
That welcome " Come," that dread " De-
part," are not to be heard from a vast re-
moteness, but as if spoken in our ears : the
present decision must be made in mindful-
ness of the immeasurable potency of the
good or the evil germ to develop itself bliss-
fully or wofully. The mediaeval notion of
a fiery hell-dungeon, peopled with devilish
tormentors, and the twin chimera of a heav-
enly colosseum, peopled with the singers of
an endless concert of praise, have both given
place to conceptions of the future more ra-
tional and true. But though the imagina-
tive forms, in which the truth was rudely
clothed for a while, have been discarded, the
substance of the truth is with us still. Judg-
ment, reward, and punishment, both through
the present and in the future, abide as liv-
ing truths, which experience and reflection
imbed ever more deeply in the convictions
of thoughtful minds.
As men study the actual phenomena of
human life the more convinced are they
"THE LAST JUDGMENT" 383
that retribution is not something that stands
adjourned to eternity. It begins here, if
it ever begins, at least in inward fact, if
not in outward demonstration. And as men
study the phenomena of character, the for-
mation of habits and tempers, of principles
and dispositions, the more convinced are
they that the judgment most to be dreaded
and hardest to escape in any world where
the law holds that " whatsoever a man
soweth, that shall he also reap," is a char-
acter set wrong by skeptical habits and self-
ish principles, settling into wrong by in-
difference to truth, by contempt of duty, in
a reckless and selfish use of the present
hour. Such a character is seen to carry in
itself evidently developing germs of evil,
whose development has all the future to
mature in, and whose very nature is to de-
moralize and destroy. The full unfolding
of these in a spiritual world, where every
screen of flesh and blood is dropped, where
each goes " to his own place " (Acts i. 25)
and to his own sort, according to what he
is, in spirit and tendency, may fully justify
the impression which the general tone of
the New Testament makes upon us, that
this life of ours may be abused to conse-
184 GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION.
quences which are past remedy. It may
prove — there is great reason to think so —
a spreading cancer in our spiritual nature,
whose burning is inextinguishable, ever-
lasting, till the ruin is complete in the ex-
tinction of personal existence itself, fulfil-
ling thus the sternest warning our Saviour
ever uttered, in actually destroying both
soul and body in hell. (Matt. x. 28.)
From the view which has been taken in
this and in the foregoing chapter, the con-
clusion is unavoidable, that the popular
doctrine of the day of judgment has been
read into the Scripture, and not read out of
it. In Scripture we find no warrant for
looking forward to a judgment to be deliv-
ered to mankind in a mass, and to be dis-
played after the manner of the Dies Irce,
" When, shriveling like a parched scroll,
The flaming heavens together roll,
And louder yet, and yet more dread,
Swells the high trump that wakes the dead."
There are days of judgment, days of the
Lord, in the Old Testament sense (Isaiah
xiii. 6), like the day when Babylon was
judged. The fall of the Roman Empire,
the French Revolution of 1792, the Ameri-
"THE LAST JUDGMENT" 185
can Civil War, were such days. Beside
these particular days, there is a general day
of judgment. In such a day, or period, we
now are living. The law delivered by
Christ is being manifestly executed in the
experience both of society and of individ-
uals. Beyond the grave there is further
judgment, when the evil that has escaped
full disclosure and condemnation in a world
of fleshly forms will no more escape, where
we are to see as we are seen and to know
as we are known, where everything that
has been veiled in the body must be mani-
fested in the spirit. So searching, so com-
plete, may such judgment be anticipated to
be, that we may speak of it, in that sense,
as the judgment. But to this we go, each
of us alone, at death. Not in a mass, but
one by one, are we to be confronted with it
in the still court of conscience, ablaze at last
with the unobstructed light of the Most
Holy. For this there is no waiting of long
ages. As soon as we enter the unseen
world, our judgment is immediate, at least
in its beginning.
So far, then, as resurrection be regarded
as antecedent to judgment, there is no
more delay of the former than of the lat-
186 GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION.
ter. The imniediateness of judgment after
death implies the immediateness of what
Christ calls " the resurrection of judgment "
(John v. 29.)
CHAPTER VIII.
PARTICULARS ELUCIDATED BY PRINCIPLES.
"The Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a
shout, with the voice of the archangel and the trump of God,
and the dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we who are
alive and remain shall be caught up together with them m
the clouds to meet the Lord in the air ; and so shall we ever
be with the Lord. " — 1 Thess. iv. 16, 17.
I. So far as we have studied the sub-
ject of the resurrection in the teachings of
Christ and of Paul, we have seen reason to
think : —
(1.) That it is not reserved till the end
of time, but is now taking place in the un-
seen world, through the continuously acting
operation of the spiritual power which was
manifest in him who said, " I AM the Res-
urrection and the Life."
(2.) That there is a wide difference be-
tween such resurrection as mere nature
brings to pass, through neglect of effort for
spiritual culture, and such as results from
the Christian endeavor which Paul de-
scribed, when he said that he made all sac-
188 GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION.
rifices, "if by any means I might attain
unto the resurrection of the dead." (Phil,
iii. 10, 11.) This is what Christ calls the
"resurrection of life," in the full harvest of
spiritual endeavors ; the other is what he
calls the "resurrection of judgment," in life
that is not life, an existence in privation
and loss, destitute of all the spiritual fruits
for which no seed was sown.1
(3.) The resurrection, whether " of life "
or " of judgment," is not a single simulta-
neous event, affecting all the dead at the
same moment, but the continuous process
of the rising of spirits, " every man in his
own order," into that condition of existence
in spiritual bodies which they are fitted to
rise into.
(4.) This condition, whatever it be, in-
volves such a conscious experience of the
spiritual results of the present life as will
perfectly declare the divine judgment upon
"the deeds done in the body."
(5.) There is no middle state of waiting
to be refurnished, at some great distant
day, with a body, all meh at once, and in
those bodies standing all together before
the throne of God to receive judgment in
1 See note B, appended to chapter iv.
PARTICULARS AND PRINCIPLES. 189
a mass, but onward movement ever, with-
out arrest or halt, both in embodied life,
and under law, and in the judgment con-
sequences of uninterrupted law ; as what
we already know of the works and ways of
God requires us to believe.
These ideas appear to be expressed in a
few great sayings of Christ, and to be re-
peated in substance by Paul.
II. But difficulties start up when we
attempt to harmonize with these leading
ideas some particular statements which we
find chiefly in the writings of Paul. Such
a statement occurs in his first letter to the
Corinthians (xv. 51, 52) : 1 "We shall all
be changed in a moment, in the twinkling
of an eye, at the last trump, for the trumpet
shall sound and the dead shall be raised
incorruptible, and we shall be changed."
Another such statement is made in that ex-
1 The true reading in the original is very doubtful. The
best reading is probably not that of our version. The " we "
refers to those who shall be living on the earth at the end.
Of these the Apostle probably said, " none of us (who are
then living on the earth) will die, but all of us will be
changed." So verse 52 says, the trumpet shall sound, and
the dead (all but those then on the earth) shall be raised,
and we (all then on earth) shall be changed. This admits
the possibility of an interval of time between the "trumpet "
and the change.
190 GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION.
tract from Paul's first letter to the Thes-
salonians which is prefixed to this chapter.
On such passages, and on others that
have already been examined, the tradi-
tional conception of the resurrection rests,
which even now is closely patterned after
the belief of the Jews before Christ. The
Jews believed that the Christ was to come
in visible glory, and that the dead, when
he came, were to be raised up in new
bodies. The Apostles undoubtedly inher-
ited this belief, and never parted with it.
It was one of their ruling ideas, shaping
their mode of thought and coloring their
language. There is profound truth in it
underlying the picturesque description we
are familiar with. But an error has over-
laid the truth. What should be regarded
as purely symbolic and suggestive has been
taken as literal and representative. Thor-
oughly Jewish, mechanical and unspiritual
is the current representation, stereotyped in
the creeds and in the hymns, of a momen-
tary event, a supernatural display, a divine
form of glory, a world-awakening reveille,
followed instantly by the simultaneous ris-
ing of the dead out of the dust and out of
the sea ; the reclothing, in the twinkling of
PARTICULARS AND PRINCIPLES. 191
an eye, of every disembodied spirit with a
new body, the transformation of the world
of living men at once into spiritual con-
ditions, the massing of all the risen and all
the changed multitudes about the judgment
throne, while the heavens and the earth
melt in a fiery catastrophe, —
"Dies irae, dies ilia,
Solvens ssecluni in fa villa."
Not only mediaeval and rude, but thor-
oughly Jewish and fictitious as this concep-
tion is, it is time that Christian people dis-
carded it, time that our hymn-books were
purged of it ; time that what is true in it
were separated from what is not true.
One of the most noteworthy phenomena
that have recently occurred in the Chris-
tian world was the convention that assem-
bled in New York city, toward the close
of the year 1878, in the interest of one of
these superannuated and obsolescent Jewish
fictions, — the advent of Christ in visible
form and in display to the senses. Includ-
ing, as it did, some of the ablest preach-
ers in the several Protestant communions,
the result which this convention achieved,
through the wide currency which the met-
ropolitan journals gave to its elaborate dis-
192 GOSPEL OF TEE RESURRECTION.
cussions, was the most noteworthy thing
about it. That result was the incredulity
and apathy with which the Christian pub-
lic generally received the theories of the
convention. This seems to demonstrate
that the church is emerging from the me-
diaeval and Jewish way of thinking about
the coming of the Lord, and about the res-
urrection and judgment associated in the
Scriptures with it. Few care for the mil-
lenarian theories, because few are content
with the materialistic way of thinking that
is common to them all. Christian thought,
however undefined, demands a more spir-
itual presentation of the doctrine of the
Lord's coming. In these misconceived
prophecies the profoundest truths lie, still
waiting their time to be reformulated. To
contribute somewhat toward such a result,
as a labor in which many must cooperate,
is our present endeavor.
III. Now how shall we get at such a re-
sult ? There are two methods.
One may tell people what to think, what
interpretation to attach to the Scripture
texts. Or,
One may show people how to think, what
principles to apply to bring out the truth
PARTICULARS AND PRINCIPLES. 193
winch is wrapped in the imaginative lan-
guage of the Scriptures.
(1.) This latter seems the better method.
It not only gives the true result, but gives
reasonable confidence that the result is the
true one, because one sees that the true
way has been followed.
In following this method, which shows
us how to think upon this subject, we have
to apply these two principles to the inter-
pretation of Scripture teaching.
(a.) The facts which a prophet (like
Paul) reports to us are one thing ; his
views of them, or opinions about them, are
another. We accept the former, we do not
always accept the latter.
Through the glass of revelation the
prophet sees the salient facts of the future,
as one sees far off the summits of a mount-
ain chain. They lie in apparent connec-
tion with each other, projected against the
blank sky like the teeth of a gigantic saw-
But the traveler, on coming to the mount-
ain chain, finds the peaks draw apart.
Between those which from afar appeared
close together he finds wide valleys and
broad plateaus intervening, of which the
distant view gave no suggestion. Thus we?
13
194 GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION.
may find the testimony of prophecy supple-
mented and qualified by that of experience.
Paul describes great facts of the future as
he sees them standing forth\ one next an-
other. Facts which experience will show
separated by a wide interval of progress, as
the coming of the Lord in his kingdom,
and the change of those on earth to meet
the Lord in the air, he states in the same
breath, just as his prophetic vision dis-
cerned them. Very likely he may have
thought them close together in one point
of time. But nothing depends on what he
thought. Paul's personal opinions about
the facts of which he testified bind no
man's judgment. Peter, himself also a
prophet of the future, tells us that the di-
vine realities are larger than any man's
thought about them. " No prophecy of
the Scripture is of any private interpreta-
tion." (2, i. 20.) The contents of proph-
ecy are not measured by the minds of the
prophets. The prophet's private opinion,
however manifest it be, is not to be con-
founded with his official testimony. This
is the New Testament doctrine, as in 1
Peter i. 10-12, where it is said that the
prophets did not always comprehend their
PARTICULARS AND PRINCIPLES. 195
own testimony. Our conclusions, therefore,
while controlled by Paul's prophetic report
of certain facts, will not be controlled by
Paul's opinions respecting those facts. We
shall exercise our liberty to think upon
those facts in the light of our times as well
as in the light of his.
Few persons who study this subject care-
fully will judge that the Apostles correctly
understood the relation and connection of
the facts in the future which they proph-
esied. Certain as those facts were, the opin-
ions of the Apostles concerning them were
not always correct. This is demonstrable
to a certainty. It is a law of the human
mind, that our understanding of any new
fact is regulated and shaped by the ideas
already in our minds. This was illustrated
by the German peasant, who saw for the
first time a locomotive speeding along. Af-
ter an earnest gaze, endeavoring to compre-
hend the secret of its motion, he at last
ejaculated, " Es mussen Pferde darin seyn
(there must be horses inside)." The new
phenomenon he explained by one of his es-
tablished beliefs, namely, that a wheeled
vehicle in motion must be connected with
horses. If not outside they must be in-
side.
196 GOSPEL OF TEE RESURRECTION.
Now it is demonstrable to any one who
traces the history of Jewish thought upon
the doctrine of the Messiah's coming, that
the Apostles' minds were dominated by an
established belief, which unfitted them for
truly interpreting, as distinct from report-
ing, our Lord's prophecies of his coming.
This belief was, that, in the nearness of the
Messiah's advent, the career of human in-
stitutions and governments was near its
end. The world was " growing old." The
empires of the Gentiles had had their
day. " The end of all things," said Peter
(1, iv. 7), "is at hand." A grand catas-
trophe, not a grand development, was im-
pending. No new empires, no new civiliza-
tion, no new continent beyond the sea, no
age-long progress of a spiritual kingdom
" growing from within outward " (as the
philosophic church historian Neander so fre-
quently describes it), — but a " descent " of
the Lord "from heaven in flaming fire,"
wherein " all these things shall be dis-
solved"1— an event to be daily expected.
Such a mode of thought, developed by the
apocalyptic literature 2 which had saturated
the Jewish church for two hundred years,
1 See note D, appended to this chapter.
2 As in the " Book of Enoch," quoted by Jude (14, 15).
PARTICULARS AND PRINCIPLES. 197
does not give way at once. It can be trans-
formed only by experience. Yet such was
the prevailing mode of thought in the minds
through which our Lord's prophecies of the
future have been transmitted to us. We
should naturally expect such a mode of
thought to give its peculiar color, as it has,
to the Apostles' testimony of the things to
come. Those things were, indeed, as the
Apostles testified, " at the doors," only not
in such manner as they expected.
" The end of the world " was at hand, but
it was the end of the Jewish " world," or
"age," — the end, not of the physical but of
the spiritual course of things then current,
the end of the period preparatory to the man-
ifestation of the Christ, the spiritual king
of the world. The Son of man was about
to come in his kingdom (" before this gener-
ation shall pass," said he), but not in any
display of wonders to the senses. The res-
urrection period was near, but no such gen-
eral and simultaneous resurrection as some
of the Apostolic sayings seem to intimate.1
1 Some advance in thought is discernible in the later as
compared with the earlier writings of Paul. We are not to
suppose that he gained at once all the light he ever had.
What he says to the Thessalonians about the resurrection
must be supplemented, perhaps qualified, by what he says
later to the Corinthians.
198 GOSPEL OF TEE RESURRECTION.
A judgment period, too, was near, but no
such general and final judgment as was prob-
ably fancied. Instead of a final catastrophe,
a final stage of progress w&s about to open.
The facts were about to take place, not as
brief convulsive events, but in the gradual
unfolding of a vast and age-long develop-
ment.
(5.) The other principle to be always ap-
plied to the interpretation of the Scripture
teachings is this : —
Spiritual truths must be discriminated
from the material forms and fleshly drap-
ery in which they are pictured. We are fa-
miliar with this principle, but we need to
be more consistent in its application. We
have learned to apply it to the Old Testa-
ment descriptions of God. We read of
God's hands and feet, his eyes and ears,
his arms and wings, his nostrils and mouth,
and even of his fury, jealousy and warlike-
ness. We speak in the same fashion. We
distinguish between the spiritual reality
and the fleshly form of representation. By
God's " hand ' we refer to his power,
by his " eyes " to his cognizance, by his
" mouth " to his revelations. It makes no
difference to us what ideas the Hebrews
PARTICULARS AND PRINCIPLES. 199
may Lave attached to thesf* fleshly words ;
we attach our own ideas to them. We
think it possible that even the inspired
prophet of twent3T-five hundred years ago
may have attached to such words an idea
of the Infinite Sovereign less true than
ours.
Now consistency requires that this dis-
crimination between the spiritual reality
and the material form should be carried
into the New Testament, and into such
subjects as the resurrection and the judg-
ment and the coming of the Lord to judge
and to reign. We make some such discrim-
ination already, as in reading John's Revela-
tion, where few thoughtful people under-
stand that God has a city in cubical form,
with real walls of precious stones and gates
of pearls and a street of gold. But we
must carry this discrimination consistently
through the whole range of thought in
which spiritual conceptions have been trans-
lated, for the help of infantile or immature
thought, into material terms. We must, in
our thinking, translate them bach again, so
far as we have the spiritual discernment
to do it, and power to grasp an idea apart
from its conventional symbol.
200 GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION.
It must certainly be admitted that the
traditional notion of a great catastrophic
day at the end of Time's calendar, on which
the Christ descends in fiery 'clouds, archan-
gels fly to and fro blowing trumpets, and a
police of celestial marshals gathers the mill-
ion million suddenly roused occupants of
graves around a great white throne, to hear
divine lips utter words which doom them to
the prison of the damned, or welcome them
to the city of God, is as unlike the spiritual
reality as is the Hebrew picture of a Deity
with arms and wings enthroned on the ver-
tex of the blue arch of sky, or careering
along in a chariot of clouds.
And yet, let us not forget, while it is
I only a picture, a fleshly and thoroughly ma-
terial symbol of a spiritual reality, yet it
is a grand and awful picture, the grandest
ever drawn by man. The reality behind
the symbol is certainly no less grand and
awful.
The two principles now laid clown show
us how to think toward a true understand-
ing of the Scripture teachings about the
future. We are to discriminate (1.) the
facts of the prophetic testimony from the
opinions of the prophetic witnesses ; and
PARTICULARS AND PRINCIPLES. 201
(2.) the spiritual realities from the mate-
rial symbols and forms in which they are
conveyed.
(2.) When we thus see how to think, the
remainder of our inquiry is what to think ;
what results shall we come to in the appli-
cation of these principles?
Taking the statements of Paul in com-
bination, we find positive testimony to cer-
tain facts. These facts, however, depend
not on Paul's testimony only. Christ is
the principal witness for most of them. By
comparing what Paul says with what Christ
says we are able to distinguish between the
fact which Paul affirms and the opinion
about it which appears in Paul's language.
(a.) The first fact is the coming of the
Lord — "the Lord shall descend." The
Lord did come, as he foretold, before the
generation which heard him speak had
passed away. His prophecy was fulfilled
when Moses' seat, as law-giver and judge
in the religious world, was removed by the
destruction of the temple, and was replaced
by the throne of Christ, as the manifest
head of the kingdom of God upon earth.
This has been explained at length in a
preceding chapter. As to the manner in
202 GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION.
which Paul expected the Lord to come, his
substituting " descend " for " come " looks
as though he thought of a coming down
upon the world, rather than' of a spiritual
development within the world. An exter-
nal coming, a descent within the sphere of
the senses, was certainly what his Jewish
training predisposed him to think of.
(6.) Closely combined with the coming
of the Lord is the attendant ministry of
angels — " with a shout, with the voice of
the archangel, and with the trump of God."
The core of this statement is furnished by
the sayings of Christ (Matt. xxiv. 31 ; xxv.
31), but in Paul's writings this core of fact
is overlaid with Paul's opinions as to who
these " angels of the Son of man " should
be. I think that Christ used the term
" angels " in the comprehensive sense in
which the Old Testament makes it include
impersonal as well as personal agents of
God. Thus we find it in the 104th Psalm :
" He maketh the winds his messengers, the
lightnings his ministers." Used in this
comprehensive way, the term would include
all agents whatsoever in the service of the
kingdom, besides apostles, missionaries, and
the " ministering spirits " (Heb. i. 14) who
PARTICULARS AND PRINCIPLES. 203
are beyond our sight. But Paul seems to
have thought exclusively of celestial be-
ings, for he substitutes "archangel" for the
simple and comprehensive term "angels,"
which Christ had used. Here, then, while
accepting the fact of an attendant ministry
of angels at the coming of the Lord, we
must revise Paul's opinion about it. There
are angels, no doubt, intelligent beings of
higher rank than ours, but these are not
the only angels in the service of the king-
dom. The angelic trumpet-call which our
Lord foretold took place in that apostolic
preaching of the Gospel of the resurrection,
of which an echo still reverberates in Paul's
quotation to the Ephesians : " Awake, thou
that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and
Christ shall give thee light." (V. 14.)
Whatever evidence has been displayed to
show that our Lord's prophecies of his com-
ing have already entered upon their course
of fulfillment, so much reason we have to
bind us to this understanding of the part
that " angels " bear.
(c.) The third fact is the resurrection —
" the trumpet shall sound, and the dead
shall be raised incorruptible: " — "the dead
in Christ shall rise first." This is not all,
204 GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION.
but this is first. The sounding of the
Gospel trumpet through this world, as ex-
plained in the preceding paragraph, is fol-
lowed by resurrection in the next world,
that is, the resurrection, the resurrection of
life, as explained in chapter iv. In other
words, the period of the Gospel here has
corresponding to it the period of resurrec-
tion there. Manifestly; since the Gospel
brings men under the spiritual power of
him who is the Resurrection and the Life, so
that they strive, as Paul strove, to " attain
unto the resurrection," this will be followed
by the appropriate spiritual results in their
rising from the dead. Corresponding to this
period of Gospel influence and Christian
endeavor, there must be a period of attain-
ment and realization of the fruits thereof.
This is the resurrection " at " the coming
of the Lord,1 not a single, explosive, si-
multaneous event, but a continuous process
throughout the whole period of his coming
and presence (" parousia" see p. 124) —
the rising of those who are prepared into
that for which they are prepared.
(<#.) The last fact mentioned by Paul is
a final change to pass upon all such as are
1 See note C, appended to chapter v.
PARTICULARS AND PRINCIPLES. 205
living, at the last, upon the earth. "All
of us shall be changed." (See note on p.
189.) "We who are alive and remain
shall be caught up in the clouds." Paul's
earlier idea of the resurrection (see p. 197,
note) was apparently that of a single and
simultaneous event, with a change of the
living immediately after. Revising his opin-
ion, and regarding the resurrection as con-
tinuing through a period, the question rises :
After this period, what ? Paul says, a " last
trump," a final summons of some sort, not
the same as the previous resurrection call,
as this epithet "last" seems to imply, and
then a change of those still living on the
earth.
As to this, 'whether we regard the opin-
ions of some of the Greek philosophers,1
which Paul may not have been ignorant of,
or the opinion of modern scientists, or
whether we regard Paul as speaking by
revelation, as he says he does ("by the
word of the Lord "), the conclusion is the
same. The Gospel period on earth, the
1 Heraclitus in the 6th century B. c, and Zeno in the 3d
(the latter the founder of the Stoics whom Paul encountered
at Athens), taught a doctrine of the periodic formation and
annihilation of the material universe. All things, as Heracli-
tus held, originate out of "fire," and ultimately return to it.
206 GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION.
resurrection period in the unseen world,
will sometime terminate. The existing
course and order of things are not perma-
nent. Though we may stiir'be far distant
from the end of human development on
earth, yet the end will come. Some of the
prophets of science tell us that the globe
will sometime become what the moon is, a
planet without water, without an atmos-
phere, incapable of sustaining the life it
now sustains. This condition, indeed, they
set at an immense distance from the pres-
ent. Whether the change of the living
that Paul speaks of be long anterior to
this ; whether it is to be both instantaneous
and simultaneous, or in some gradual and
progressive manner; whether the sudden-
ness and brevity expressed by the phrase,
" in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye,"
be true only of its beginning, as a process,
or of its beginning and ending, as a momen-
tary event, are questions which onty the
future can answer. The naked fact, how-
ever, stands.
A change of some sort, in some manner,
awaits the present condition, both of the
earth, and of the life that has been adapted
to it as at present. At this " end," we are
PARTICULARS AND PRINCIPLES. 207
told that the Gospel period is to reach its
earthly end.
Of this end of the Gospel period on earth
Paul seems to have prophesied in the grand-
est, but in some respects most mysterious,
of all his predictions ; for some remarks on
which see chapter ix. note D.
" Then cometh the end, when he shall
have delivered up the kingdom to God,
even the Father; when he shall have put
down all rule and all authority and power.
" For he must reign, till he hath put all
enemies under his feet.
" The last enemy that shall be destroyed
is death.
" For he hath put all things under his feet.
But when he saith all things are put under
him, it is manifest that he is excepted, which
did put all things under him.
" And when all things shall be subdued
unto him, then shall the Son also himself
be subject unto him that put all things
under him, that God may be all in all."
(1 Cor. xv. 24-28.)
Our endeavor in the present chapter has
been to discover, if we may, under an ap-
208 GOSPEL OF TEE RESURRECTION.
parent dissonance, a real harmony between
the previous results of our study, as stated
at the beginning of this chapter, and cer-
tain prophecies of Paul upon the resurrec-
tion at the coming of the Lord. Our recog-
nition of any such harmony depends upon
the influence upon our way of thinking,
which we allow to the two cardinal princi-
ples already laid down, namely, the discrim-
ination of the prophet's testimony to facts
from the prophet's personal opinions about
them, which we discover blending with his
testimony ; — then, the discrimination of the
spiritual fact itself from the fleshly drapery
under which it is represented.
IV. It now remains to ask, What is the
substantial truth conveyed to us by those
specific prophecies of the resurrection which
we have been examining? It seems to be
this : —
The coming of our Lord in his kingdom
on earth, when Judaism was supplanted by
Christianity, ushered in the resurrection pe-
riod in the world to come. I do not sav,
began the resurrection, as if there had been
no resurrection before. Of this more will
be said presently. I say rather, began the
period whose distinguishing characteristic
PARTICULARS AND PRINCIPLES. 209
is the manifested power of the resurrection,,
"the Resurrection of life." In a broader
statement, the Christian period is character-
istically the period of spiritual life, exalted
and diffused, and this in both worlds.
Our Lord seems to have intimated this
when he said : " I am come that they
might have life, and that they might have
it more abundantly " (John x. 10.)
(1.) To comprehend this, let us reflect
that as the Gospel spreads, and Christian
principles acquire ascendency, the glory of
our Lord is manifested more and more as-
Spiritual King on earth, and as the power
inwardly working here toward the resur-
rection hereafter. As faith and love and
righteousness and fidelity to Christ here
inspire greater numbers with the spirit of
the life eternal, so must greater numbers
pass into the unseen world fitted to rise in
Christ into the fullness of life, into what
Paul calls " the manifestation of the sons
of God," " after the measure of the stature
of the fullness of Christ." ^That is to say,
the greater the spiritual development be-
fore death, the greater the spiritual devel-
opment after death. The period of the one:
must coincide with the period of the others
14
210 GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION.
for continuity of progress marks all the
working of God that we can see. This is
what is meant by saying, that the begin-
ning of the Gospel period, when the Son of
man came in his kingdom, marked the be-
ginning of the resurrection period corre-
sponding thereto.
(2.) We may rest confidently in this con-
clusion, not on the score of any skill in in-
terpreting the original language in which
the facts were uttered, but through con-
fidence in the principles which guide our
thinking. The critical question is not,
What does this or that Greek word mean ?
but this rather : How shall we think upon
the great facts of the kingdom of the
Spirit ? Shall we cling to the Jewish no-
tion of an advent, within the sphere of the
senses, which the Apostles inherited and
never outgrew? Shall we limit ourselves
by all the opinions of the Apostles, as if
Christian experience had given us no new
light in new developments of the kingdom
of Christ ? Shall we materialize the New
Testament prophecies of resurrection and
judgment, as the Jews materialized the
Old Testament prophecies of the kingdom
of God upon earth ? Shall we ignore all
PARTICULARS AND PRINCIPLES. 211
that men have discovered of the univer-
sality of law and the continuity of progress
in the works of God ? If so, let us be con-
sistent. Let us continue to believe, with
all the ancient creeds, in " the resurrection
of the flesh," and the reanimation of the
buried and scattered dust into " the self-
same bodies." But if this is beyond our
present power of belief, let us be consistent,
and make thorough work, till all the rub-
bish of Jewish and materialistic and me-
chanical notions has been cleared away, and
this grand doctrine, after waiting nineteen
centuries for intelligent elaboration, is un-
folded in the lucid order of Christian and
spiritual conceptions.
Whoever endeavors to strike a just bal-
ance between the traditional view of the
resurrection, and that which has been pre-
sented in these pages as a substitute for it,
has one crucial question to settle. Is the
resurrection represented in Scripture as a
single and simultaneous event, affecting all
mankind at once, such as a universal earth-
quake would be ? It cannot be, if we ad-
mit the testimony of John to " the first res-
urrection " (of which more will be said in
the next chapter), or if we admit the testi-
212 GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION.
roony of Paul, " every man in his own or-
der." Is it then a process, running through
a period, and operated by a continuously
acting spiritual power ? It must be, if
Christ's resurrection power be not excep-
tionally different from all the other powers
which he claimed as present activities by
his significant "I AM." Now as soon as one
substitutes for the idea of an event the idea
of a continuous process operated by a con-
tinuous power, it will be found that various
perplexing passages of Scripture are readily
harmonized with this idea by applying the
principles of thought that have been fol-
lowed in the foregoing pages.
V. Brief answers may now be given to a
few remaining questions.
(1.) Did not our Lord repeatedly say
that he would raise up the believer " at the
last day ? " (John vi. 39, 40, 44, 54) and
does not " at " refer to an events rather than
to the period of a process ?
The word our Lord used, en (ev), may
mean either at or in. The idea we have of
" the last day " decides which of these two
meanings we will adopt. If we think of
" the last day " as an event, like the day of
Pentecost, we shall say " at." If we think
PARTICULARS AND PRINCIPLES. 213
of it as a period, through which a process is
continuing, we shall say "in." The orig-
inal word allows an even choice, which de-
pends wholly on our idea of the " day."
Our translators had the idea of an event,
and preferred to say " at." I have the idea
of a period, and prefer to say " in." By
" the last day "it is altogether probable
that our Lord meant no end of the earth's
calendar, like a 31st of December, but a day
of centuries or ages, like one of the six clays
of creation. It denotes the last period of
human progress under divine revelation,
the day or period of our Lord's manifested
kingly power on earth, and of the coinci-
dent manifestation of his resurrection power
in the unseen world. If this be so, as I see
no reason to doubt, we may believe that his
promise is now receiving its fulfillment in
the present experience of those who " de-
part to be with Christ." l
(2.) But is not the resurrection still a
thing of the future rather than of the pres-
ent ? Is it not written that " the dead shall
be raised " ? It certainly is future to all to
whom death is future. " The living " (as
we call ourselves in a merely phenomenal
1 See Note C, appended to chapter v.
214 GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION.
distinction from " the dead ") must ever
speak of it as a thing that shall be. But
what a thing is to us does not define what
it is to those who have gone before us, and
are no more among us. Speaking of them,
we find that Christ in talking with the Sad-
ducees does not say uthe dead shall be
raised," but "are raised," or "rise." (See
page 49.) In the world of those whom we
call " the dead " the resurrection is no more
future, as to us, but a present reality.
(3.) Must we think of all the dead dur-
ing the ages before Christ as waiting for the
resurrection, until Christ came among the
living to say, " I AM the Resurrection ? "
Not so. The Gospel period has been shown
to have in the nature of things a resurrec-
tion period coincident with it; but this does
not imply that there was no resurrection be-
fore the Gospel. When Christ affirms that
" the dead are raised" he instances Abra-
ham, Isaac, and Jacob.1
A parallel case may serve for illustra-
tion. John, speaking of Jesus' lifetime,
says that " the Holy Ghost was not yet
given." (VII. 39.) He does not mean to
deny that the Holy Ghost had been given
1 See Note A, appended to this chapter.
PARTICULARS AND PRINCIPLES. 215
to the ancient prophets ; he means not
given, as afterward at Pentecost, in general
diffusion among the " people prepared for
the Lord." The Old Testament reveals the
Spirit of God as operating with increasing
power from first to last. But in the earlier
times the Spirit appeared limited to here
and there "a man of God," an Enoch, an
Abraham, a Moses. The period of the Spir-
it's diffusion began with the diffusion of the
Gospel of the resurrection.
Thus we must think of the resurrection,
not as beginning when the Gospel of the res-
urrection began, but as manifested and dif-
fused when the Gospel was diffused. An
experience of the earliest ages for as many
as were spiritually fitted for it, it must have
become more frequent as spiritual men be-
came more frequent. And when at length
the Gospel of the resurrection began to be
proclaimed and obeyed, the period of its
manifestation and prevalence must have set
in. Moses and Elijah, whose glorified forms
appeared in society with Jesus on the Trans-
figuration Mount, attest that it is not time,
before Christ or after him, which determines
men's experience of " the power of his res-
urrection," but spiritual fitness to rise into
216 GOSPEL OF TEE RESURRECTION.
the inheritance of the children of God, per-
sonal capacity for the power and blessed-
ness and glory of the life eternal.
Here we may utter to one another a word
of comfort and hope. The life that follows
Christ on earth, the life that rises from the
dead in "the power of his resurrection,"
is one continuous and unbroken life. The
sleep of the grave is but a figure of speech.
The crowded waiting-room of an intermedi-
ate state, anticipating a grand and general
opening of heavenly gates, is a mere illu-
sion. The dreaded " shadow of death " is
attenuated to a thread of shade, where only
a gated archway spans the road, to mark
the boundary between two worlds. That
road is light, on this side the archway and
on that. The passage of the shadow is only
the passage of the gate from light to light.
No pause, no break is there in the spirit's
experience of the power of Christ to guide,
to nourish, to deliver, to raise through grace
to glory. On earth and in heaven the
Christly life is one, indissoluble, eternal.
If our feet are on the king's highway, if the
Spirit of the Lord is "the soul of the soul,"
then, though a cloud may rest on the hori-
RESURRECTION PRIOR TO CHRIST. 217
zon of our mortal prospect, it is a cloud
in whose bosom glory dwells, for we may
say with Paul, " He hath abolished death,
and brought life and immortality to light
through the gospel." (2 Tim. i. 10.)
NOTE A.
ON RESURRECTION PRIOR TO CHRIST.
But now is Christ risen from the dead, and be-
come the first-fruits of them that slept. (1 Cor. xv.
20.)
The statement above made that there must have
been resurrection prior to Christ for as many as were
capacitated for it (Abraham and Moses for instance),
may seem to some to need reconciliation with the
statement, so frequently made in the New Testa-
ment, that Christ is "the first-fruits of them that
slept" (1 Cor. xv. 20, 23), "the first born," or
"first begotten from the dead." (Col. i. 18; Rev. i.
5.) To see how this is perfectly consistent with the
fact of resurrection prior to Christ, we have only to
apply the distinction already pointed out (page 61)
between the language of appearance and the lan-
guage of reality. Christ first manifested the resur-
rection, first walked among men in the spiritual body
(which distinguishes the resurrection of Christ from
the reanimation1 of Lazarus and others). He thus
made himself, relatively to our knowledge, the begin-
ning, or "first-fruits" of the resurrection, that is,
1 See chapter iii. Note B.
218 GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION.
of the rising after death into blessed life in the spir-
itual body.
This does not conflict with the fact that it was in
the spiritual body of the resurrection state that
Moses and Elijah, previous to Christ's resurrection,
were seen with Jesus upon the Transfiguration
Mountain. From such a manifestation nothing cer-
tain could have been known; questions whether they
were phantoms, or something more substantial, could
never have been answered; the mystery of the future
life remained as inscrutable as ever, until Christ
should clear it up. This he did by the experiences
which he granted to the "witnesses chosen of God,
who did eat and drink with him after he rose from
the dead." (Acts x. 41.) The beginning of our pos-
itive knowledge of the resurrection life in the spirit-
ual body is therefore found in Christ. So far as we
lenow anything of it, Christ is "the first-fruits."
This, however, by no means makes it improbable
that the reality existed, before it was demonstrated.
NOTE B.
ON THE DOCTRINE OF A PAST RESURRECTION.
Who concerning the truth have erred, saying that
the resurrection is past1 already; and overthrow the
faith of some. (2 Tim. ii. 18.)
As distinct from the heresy here condemned, the
view presented in these pages is, that the resurrec-
tion is as to its beginning past, as to its continuance
present, and as to its consummation future.
1 More literally, " is already come to pass."
DOCTRINE OF A PAST RESURRECTION. 219
The doctrine which Paul here censures was prob-
ably one of the earlier developments of the Gnostic
heresy, which in the next century became so widely
spread. Paul had described the state of believers in
Christ as a new and higher life, and had compared
it to Christ's resurrection life (Rom. vi. 4), nay, had
spoken of it as a kind of resurrection (Eph. ii. 6 ;
especially, v. 14). Probably this gave the starting-
point for the conception of Hymenaeus and Philetus,1
that this was the only resurrection to be thought of.
Despite of Paul's doctrine of the spiritual body — a
doctrine even now but very poorly appreciated in
the church — the Jewish notion of a resuscitation of
the buried body from the grave very thoroughly pen-
etrated the primitive church, as the writings of the
Fathers abundantly show, embracing in its anticipa-
tions even the teeth, the nails and the hair. This
doctrine, always the scandal of philosophy, as well
as a perversion of Scripture, drove men into that
one-sided view which Paul here condemns, which
gives no place to the Christian conception of the
spiritual body of the future, and fixes attention ex-
clusively on a present rising (already accomplished)
to higher views of truth, and higher ideals of life.
This Paul regards as an " overthrow of faith," be-
cause by refusing to look at the crown in the future
it enfeebles the energy of the race to be run in the
present.
1 We must locate these two at or near Ephesus, which tra-
dition makes the place of Timothy's ministry.
220 GOSPEL OF TEE RESURRECTION.
NOTE C.
on david's resurrection.
For David is not ascended into the heavens : but
he saith himself, The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit
thou on my right hand. (Acts ii. 34.)
In what Peter here says, a contradiction may ap-
pear to the statements advanced above respecting
the resurrection of pious men before Christ, as well
as since. I think it is unquestionable that Peter
supposed David to be still in Sheol, or the grave
(mistranslated " hell ").
He draws a sharp distinction here, in applying the
words of Psalm xvi. 10, between Christ who is risen,
and David who is not. Christ, in his view, was not
left in the grave, but David was. This being evi-
dently Peter's opinion, the only question is, What
account must be made of it ?
It may help us to answer, if we ask, What ac-
count must we make of the statement in Psalm cxv.
17, " The dead praise not the Lord, neither any
that go down into silence " ? No Christian is will-
ing to adopt that as a statement of the truth, or of
his own belief. There has been a progress of doc-
trine since that time. Later utterances of the Bible
correct the earlier.
There is reason to class Peter's assertion about
David with the assertion of the 115th Psalm about
the dead. Peter's case may be described in Pas-
tor John Robinson's remark about the Protestant
churches in his times : " It is not possible the Chris-
DAVID'S RESURRECTION. 221
tian world should come so lately out of such thick
anti-Christian darkness, and that full perfection of
knowledge should break forth at once." Peter stood
at Pentecost on the threshold of his apostolic career.
He did not then know all that he was ever to know.
He had not gotten clear of all his Jewish notions in
a flash. He was inspired, but not omniscient, not
infallible, any more than the writer of the 115th
Psalm. We must apply to his statement about David
the same principle that we apply to the statement of
that Psalm about the dead, namely, The Bible is a
self-correcting book. This remark of Peter is not our
only source of knowledge about David's resurrec-
tion.
In view of the abundant superseding testimony
which we have found in the Gospels and Epistles, it
cannot stand, any more than the statement in Ec-
clesiastes (ix. 5) that " the dead know not any-
thing," or any more than Dr. Watts 's hymn based
on that passage can stand, though it used to be sung
in the churches not long ago, as I well remember.
" The living know that they must die,
But all the dead forgotten lie ;
Their memory and their sense is gone,
Alike unknowing and unknown."
There is a deal of false doctrine still sung out of
our popular hymn-books about the advent, the res-
urrection, and the judgment, which is destined to
be put quietly away, some time, to keep company on
the shelf with the above stanza.
222 GOSPEL OF TEE RESURRECTION.
NOTE D.
ON THE END OF THE WOELD AT THE DAY OF THE
LORD.
But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in
the night ; in the which the heavens shall pass away
with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with
fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are
therein shall be burned up.
Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved,
what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy
conversation and godliness,
Looking for and hasting unto the coming of the
day of God, wherein the heavens being on fire shall
be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fer-
vent heat ?
Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look
for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth
righteousness. (2 Pet. iii. 10-13.)
It is noteworthy that Christ never referred to an
end of the physical world. The Greek has two
words of different signification, each of them ren-
dered in English as "world."- One of these is ozon
(atwv), signifying a period, or a connected system of
causes and effects with peculiar characteristics, con-
tinuing through such a period. We use "world"
in the same sense, when we speak of the Gentile
world, the Jewish world, the heathen world, the
literary, or religious, or political world, the world
of our forefathers, etc. This word ozon is the one
which Christ employs in all his references to " the
end of the world," signifying thereby, nothing more
THE END OF TIIE WORLD. 223
than the end of the period preparatory to his en-
thronement through the spread of the Gospel.
The other Greek word for world is kosmos (/coa^of),
which denotes sometimes the heavens and earth
collectively, sometimes the earth only, then the in-
habitants of earth, as in our phrase, " all the world,"
i. e. everybody. It is the end of the kosmos which
Peter is prophesying, an idea which is utterly want-
ino- in the teachings of Christ. This idea of the de-
cs o
struction of the kosmos by fire appears in the specu-
lations of the Greek philosophers, as well as in the
apocalyptic literature of the Jews prior to Christ.
It is very plain from the course of thought in this
chapter, that Peter — if we may assume the dis-
puted point of Peter's authorship of the Second
Epistle — regards the grand catastrophe of the phys-
ical universe at the coming of the Lord as close at
hand, since he addresses his argument to those who
might be troubled by its delay.
No clearer proof than this can be looked for, that
the Apostles occasionally misinterpreted their Mas-
ter. It is clear that in such a passage as this the
Apostle does not speak infallibly. That he speaks
as an inspired man, is also clear from the elevated
spiritual tone of his exhortation to Christian earnest-
ness, faith and diligence. It is in the moral char-
acteristics of the Apostles' writings that the evi-
dences of their inspiration are found.
CHAPTER IX.
THE RESURECTION A DEVELOPMENT, NOT A
MIRACLE.
" Whoso eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath eternal
life, and I will raise him up in1 the last day." —John vi. 54.
In bringing to a close our present study
of the resurrection, the main conclusions
thus far reached must be carried in mind.
The resurrection is not a far off event of
the future, but a continuous process now
going on in the invisible world. But resur-
rection, the same as life, is a word which
has a higher meaning and a lower, a full
sense and a bare sense. In any case, it
denotes entrance into embodied existence in
a future state. But that entrance may be
either into what is bare existence, described
in terms expressing its poverty and destitu-
tion, or into what is full existence, described
in terms expressing its richness and com-
pleteness, and emphatically termed "Life."
Which of these is the future portion of the
i For the substitution here of "in" for "at," see page 212.
DEVELOPMENT, NOT MIRACLE. 225
spirit, depends on Christian endeavor, in a
normal and necessary relation to Christ, as
the resurrection power, the source, morally
speaking, of spiritual well-being, or " life."
The New Testament urges us to such en-
deavor for the resurrection, by living as
Christ lived, so as to rise as Christ rose.
For this depends on fitness to rise, on a
personal possessing of the Christly capacity
and power for what Paul calls " life in-
deed."1
The chief remaining question on the gen-
eral subject concerns the manner in which
Christ's resurrection power works its effect.
" How are the dead raised ? " This is even
a more central question than that which we
have already considered at such length,
When are the dead raised? We are now
better prepared to appreciate the answer
which our Lord's words, quoted at the be-
ginning of this chapter, unfold to thought.
This answer will not only give us confidence
in the conclusions already reached. What
is of still further importance, it will mani-
fest the resurrection as a consistent part of
the orderly system of Grod's works. And
1 This is the true reading in 1 Tim. vi. 19, where the com-
mon version reads " eternal life."
15
226 GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION.
from the nature of Christ's agency as the
resurrection power it will show Christ's in-
dispensableness to us for the conditions of
the resurrection hope.
Premising now that resurrection means,
in any view of it, entrance into a newly
embodied existence of some kind, let the
sharp discrimination already drawn be well
kept in mind, between resurrection in the
full Christian sense, as entrance into well
conditioned and blessed life, the fruit of
spiritual endeavor, and resurrection in the
bare and privative sense, as entrance into
existence which is devoid of the fruit of
such endeavor. All exist hereafter, not all
live ; all are in being, not all in ivell-heing,
save so far as endeavor has prepared the
conditions of well-being, as in the present
world. The New Testament rarely speaks
of resurrection except in the Christian
sense, because it is to Christians that the
New Testament speaks. We are now pre-
pared to see that the resurrection which is
the object of Christian hope is not a mirac-
ulous new creation, but the normal devel-
opment of that life in the spiritual body,
which is endued with power and glory by
the power of Christ.
DEVELOPMENT, NOT MIRACLE. 227
The manner in which his power produces
that effect will appear as soon as his words
already quoted are put under the lens of
discriminating thought : " Whoso eateth my
flesh and drinketh my blood hath eternal
life, and I will raise him up in the last
day."
I. Look first at the main outlines of this
statement. Food is mentioned first, to
which the flesh and blood of Christ are
compared in a sense that will be hereafter
considered. From food comes life, and we
are told that from that peculiar food comes
a peculiar life; whoso eats it "hath eternal
life." Life tends to advancement of some
kind, and this peculiar life tends to a pe-
culiar advancement, or exaltation : " I will
raise him up." Thus, in the main outlines
of this great saying, these three ideas —
food, life, advancement — appear in the
same orderly succession in which we find
them in the world. They follow each other
in a connection of natural development, like
the parts of a plant — root, stem and leaves,
flower. The resurrection is stated as result-
ing from what has gone before, as the out-
come and flower of vital processes. It is
the consequent, which, under the laws of
spiritual life, grows from such antecedents.
228 GOSPEL OF TEE RESURRECTION.
With the idea thus outlined of a resur-
rection which comes through an orderly
development of a spiritual effect from a
spiritual cause, compare the traditional no-
tion as reflected in the hymn-books. There
is to be a penetrating, world - resounding
call, a summons irresistible, compelling the
assembling of all spirits in a mass, angelic
trumpeters marshaling mankind in ranks
before a throne, Paradise for the time emp-
tied of its holy population, and Gehenna
of its wretched multitudes, to stand for a
brief time in a judgment concourse, and all
these newly and simultaneously provided
with bodies, which since the moment of
death they had lacked till then, bodies in-
numerable, all built "in a moment, in the
twinkling an eye ; " out of that mortal dust,
or some fraction of it, that had once be-
longed to the form of flesh and blood. This
is the traditional idea, but we may be abso-
lutely certain it was not our Lord's idea.
His idea, as outlined in his own words, is
that of a growth from within; the traditional
idea is that of an operation from without.
Our Lord's thought is of a development ;
the thought of the creeds is of a miracle.
Amid the contradictions with which mod-
DEVELOPMENT, NOT MIRACLE. 229
ern thought assails the creeds it has be-
come of great importance to form, if we
can, a true idea of our relation to Christ
as .the resurrection power, and to under-
stand what sort of agency he asserts when
he declares, " I AM the Resurrection and
the Life." Unless we can have a rational
idea of this, how can we have any but an
irrational faith, — a saving faith, indeed,
but extremely puerile ?
It is a fact beyond question, that the com-
mon notion of Christ's agency in the resur-
rection directly tends to create skepticism,
and rejection of the Gospel of life through
Christ. That notion is patterned after the
scene at the grave of Lazarus, where Jesus
stood and " cried with a loud voice, ' Laz-
arus, come forth.' And he that was dead
came forth." This instance of simple re-
suscitation is taken as a type of resurrec-
tion.1 This act of supernatural power in
recalling the spirit into a body four clays
dead is " enlarged," as the photographers
sa}T, into a vast picture of Omnipotence
suddenly reconstructing bodies, and reunit-
ing them to spirits, in a simultaneous oper-
ation upon every individual of the million
1 See Note B, chapter iii.
230 GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION.
millions whom death has unclothed of flesh
and blood. This notion is patterned after
ideas of God's mode of working which
modern thought has forever discarded, jand
which, whenever Christian men present
them, only furnish fuel to skepticism. Those
who still persist in presenting such notions
as the teaching of Christ are simply hinder-
ing the Gospel which they would gladly pro-
mote. It is a duty, which we owe our Lord,
to show that his Gospel is not responsible
for fictions that are absurdly ascribed to it.
With the general idea now in mind, which
our Lord's words have enabled us to out-
line, that the resurrection is a development
from within us, we have to observe, next,
that : —
II. This agrees with facts which our
present form of existence discloses. It is
said, very truly, that a body is given to
every spirit in the resurrection. But the
same is true of our life in this world. Of
every kind of organized life in this world it
is true, as Paul says of the seed which ger-
minates, " God giveth it a body as it hath
pleased him." (1 Cor. xv. 38.) But how
does God give that body ? Simply through
the methods, or laws, of organic growth,
DEVELOPMENT, NOT MIRACLE. 231
which he has ordained, and through which
he works. A vital power, derived origi-
nally from the divine source of all life, is
in the germ, and this builds up its own
body by assimilating the matter which it
finds appropriate. We need not here affirm
whether the vital power which builds the
present body is in one or another element
of our being. Whether it be in "matter,"
or in "soul," or in "spirit," it is enough
that it is present, for the energy of life is
the body-building power. Simply because
the tiny germ is alive, it involves "the
promise and the potency " of the fully de-
veloped organism. The body thus formed
is none the less " given " by God, none the
less a work of God, for being given through
the mediation of a body-building power op-
erating according to natural laws of growth.
Its constitution is as divinely effected as if
it had sprung into mature completeness at
a fiat of Omnipotence.
Now our conviction of the invariableness
with which God works through law impels
us to regard God's ivay of giving us bodies
through the operation of organic laws in this
world, as indicating the ivay in which he
will give us bodies in the next world. We
232 GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION.
see that God gives bodies by giving to exist-
ing life the power to form bodies. Within
the mother's body life forms a new body in
the babe, whose body is, during the forma-
tive processes, a part of the mother's body,
while unfolding toward a distinct and sep-
arable individual existence. Is it a gra-
tuitous fancy that here may be somewhat
analogous to the formation of the spiritual
body, beginning possibly even here under
the physical ? We need hazard nothing be-
yond the question. The general fact that
life, wherever it appears, appears to be a
body-builder, determines us toward some
general conclusion. We cannot entertain
any such notion as that living spirits will
remain for ages disembodied, and then all
at once will be clothed with bodies by an
almighty fiat. The only reasonable and
consistent view is this : The spirit which
goes through the death gate into the future
is a living tiling. Whatever the origin of
its life, the essential fact is that it has life.
Now we must assign to life everywhere the
power which we see it manifesting here.
If life existing in a human germ here is
found building its own bod}7, life existing
in a human spirit here or there will be
DEVELOPMENT, NOT MIRACLE. 233
found no less able to build itself a body.
Very probably, for aught we know, it be-
gins to build the spiritual body here behind
the screen of flesh and blood, just as plant
life, while forming the seed under the husk,
begins to form within the seed the leaflets
that are to unfold into the future plant.
Of what substance the spiritual body is
we know not. In what manner formed we
know not. But that the body-building
power is an inalienable prerogative of life
cannot be doubted. What sort of a body the
living spirit shall build, or is building, is a
question we may well be content to postpone
for the far more important question which
each of us is required to settle by his own
action, namely : What sort of a spirit is it
that builds that mysterious house of the fut-
ure ? In this question it begins at length
to dawn on us what is our necessary relation
to Christ as the resurrection power, when
we perceive that he, by his truth and love
and righteousness, develops and perfects the
spirit that is to form and adapt to itself the
spiritual body.
III. What this relation to Christ is, is viv-
idly set forth in his saying already quoted :
" He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my
234 GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION.
blood bath eternal life, and I will raise bim
up in tbe last day." Tbe figure is intense,
because an intense thought has to be carried.
Christ must be in us, inwrought into us, the
very " soul of the soul," How else could
this have been so luminously expressed as
by the striking figure of eating his flesh and
drinking his blood ? As the food we eat
and drink carries nourishment into every
part of the body, so that there is not one
tiny cell where it is not built into the very
substance of our frame, so must Christ, that
is to say, Christ's Divine Spirit of truth
and love and righteousness, mingle with the
current of our own spiritual life, carrying
the power of his Divine life into all our af-
fections and thoughts and determinations.
This is, of course, a process, a growth. He
symbolized it as such, and reiterated the
very idea now before us, when he said, "I
am the vine, ye are the branches." (John
xv. 5.) To have this growth constantly
advancing, never arrested, complete, not
partial, is the object of that endeavor, al-
ready insisted on, which distinguishes a real
Christian from a nominal one.
(1.) What now is the development which
this growth unfolds from the beginning on-
DEVELOPMENT, NOT MIRACLE. 235
ward? "Such a man," says our Lord,
" bath eternal life." This does not mean,
has a prospect of existing forever,1 but has,
has now, that kind of life which is, in the
nature of things, capacitated for well condi-
tioned existence in any and all worlds and
times. Evidently he has it, for he has the
Christly spirit, whose truth and love and
righteousness are the eternal powers, which
involve the highest development of life both
in the present and the future. And what
follows from the fact that he who has the
Christly spirit has the eternal life ? This :
" I will raise him up in the last day." This
must follow, for he has that in him which
must rise, even the Christ. While he lives
in flesh and blood, such a man may say with
Paul: " I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in
me." (Gal. ii. 20.) And when the earthly
tabernacle dissolves, he may still speak in
the same spirit of fellowship with the Lord
of his life : " I rise, yet not I, but Christ
riseth in me." How manifest that our
Lord's idea of his resurrection power is that
1 In the popular notion, eternal life is assumed to mean the
same as endless existence. Granting that it extends to endless
existence, its primary meaning is not a certain amount, but
a certain kind of existence, quality, not quantity of existence.
(See John xvii. 3 ; 1 John v. 11, 12. See, also, p. 179.)
236 GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION.
of an agency operating not from without us,
but from within ! The cause of the eternal
life which the man has, the cause of his be-
ing raised up in the last day, is the Christ,
not as descending from heaven in clouds,
with dazzling light and miraculous energies,
but as "eaten" and "drunk " by the man
who keeps the word, and cherishes the love,
and lives in the spirit, of Christ, and thus
builds Christ into his own spirit, as the en-
ergizing and developing principle of his life.
He must rise, therefore, because Christ is
in him. His resurrection is therefore not a
physical but a spiritual fact, the develop-
ment and flower of spiritual growth. The
risen spirit carries, as every spirit carries,
the life whose essential property it is to
build and organize a body to itself. But,
what is of vastly greater consequence, this
life, building the spiritual body, is the Chris-
tian life, capacitated eternally, that is, in
the nature of things, independently of all'
space and time relations, for vigor, health,
blessedness, and moral glory.
This is the spiritual and Christian, as dis-
tinct from the mechanical and Jewish, idea
of the resurrection, as the ENTRANCE INTO
THAT PERFECTED STATE OF EMBODIED BE-
DEVELOPMENT, NOT MIRACLE. 237
ING WHICH IS THE SPIRITUAL RESULT OF
A CHRISTLY LIFE IN THE PRESENT "WORLD.
In a superficial point of view, it is the mani-
festation of the spirit in a new body. In
the central and vital point of view, it is the
manifestation of the well conditioned spirit,
the Christly spirit, that builds itself a body
appropriate to its condition. This is not
only resurrection, it is Resurrection and
Life. And here at length we have reached
the full significance of that great saying of
our Lord, at which we began our study of
this subject: "I am the Resurrection
and the Life."
(2.) What "the first resurrection" prob-
ably is (Rev. xx. 5, 6), begins to appear at
this point. When we conceive of that
resurrection and life, just spoken of, as
realized immediately after death, when we
think of holy men, like Moses and Elijah,
like Paul and John, rising up, through the
Christ-life in them, into the fullness of
spiritual well-being in the spiritual body,
we have found a place for that doctrine of
"the first resurrection" which has dropped
out of Christian thought, through that me-
chanical misinterpretation which attributes
it, as a special privilege, to the martyrs.
238 GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION.
"The first resurrection" is not the getting
of new bodies before others, but rising into
life, or well-being, before others. New
bodies are insured to all, as soon as the
former bodies drop off, but the strong and
glorious Christly life in the new or spiritual
body is assigned only to the holy : " Blessed
and holy is he that hath part in the first
resurrection ; on such the second death hath
no power, but they shall be priests of God
and of Christ [engaged in ministrations of
divine grace to others], and shall reign [as
the loving always reign] with him a thou-
sand years.'' The period of a thousand
years assigned to this " reign " Christian
thought will not measure by a fixed num-
ber of the earth's revolutions about the sun,
but will regard as simply a period of vast
and indefinite duration. It is the resurrec-
tion period that has been already described
(chap, viii) as corresponding to the Gospel
period.1 While "the Gospel of life " is here
1 This will be found stated with more precision in Note C,
appended to this chapter. I deern the thousand years to be,
not the whole of the gospel period, but that part of it which
includes the whole development of Christianity, the period of
the growth of the kingdom of Christ, from its initial to its
final conflict and victory. For a fuller explanation see the
Note referred to.
DEVELOPMENT, NOT MIRACLE. 239
("in the last day," or Christian stage of
history) preparing us for " the resurrection
of life," those who are made fit, through
Christ, to rise in Christ are continually ris-
ing into the Christly life beyond the grave.
But Christian thought cannot regard the
blessedness of this first resurrection as lim-
ited to the martyrs, for whose encourage-
ment John originally prophesied it — " the
souls of them that were beheaded for the
witness of Jesus," etc. Whether or no the
prophet's thought, in his light, were as full
as our thought, in our light, is a question
quite unimportant to raise here. Such a
resurrection as is possible for us to believe
in cannot be dependent on any such exter-
nal and accidental circumstance, as whether
a man were beheaded for being a Chris-
tian. It must be equally the inheritance
of all who have the spirit of him whom the
prophet calls "the faithful witness,"1 the
Christly spirit of self-sacrifice and faith.
IY. Our study has now brought us to a
point where but little, if any, doubt can re-
main, which of two answers we must give
to the question, What is the resurrection f
(1.) The common answer is : It is the
1 Literally, "the faithful martyr, i. e. Christ." (Rev. i. 5.)
240 GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION.
giving of a new body to a spirit which
death stripped of its former body, and left
waiting in a disembodied state.
According to this answer, the essential
thing in the resurrection is the body, for
which the spirit waits, in a state of priva-
tion, and which is finally furnished to it
by a power from without itself through a
divine fiat and miracle. Moreover, this
reembodiment is spoken of as " the general
resurrection," one and the same event to all
at the same moment, simply the simultane-
ous refurnishing of all waiting spirits with
bodies. In this view it is hard to know
what Christ meant, when he spoke of those
" who shall be accounted worthy to obtain
the resurrection," or what Paul meant, in
speaking of his struggle to " attain unto
the resurrection." For worthiness, or strug-
gle to attain, is out of the question in any-
thing that is to be a general event to all.
(2.) The answer toward which our study
tends is this : Resurrection is the entrance
into embodied existence, after death, of the
spirit to which God has given the power of
building for itself the spiritual body. The
resurrection, in the Christian and ideal
sense of the word, is the entrance of the
DEVELOPMENT, NOT MIRACLE. 241
Christly spirit, with that power, into an
embodied existence which is "life indeed."
So far as present endeavor can bring it to
pass that "Christ is formed within" us as
"the hope of glory" (Gal. iv. 19 ; Col. i. 27),
so far the resurrection is a thing of present
determination, and, potentially, of present
attainment. This seems to be the thought
which underlies Paul's expressions in his
letter to the Philippians. (III. 11, 12.)
According to this answer, the essential
thing in the resurrection is the spirit, with
its eharacter and its corresponding capac-
ity and power. The body is not left out,
but is the product of the spirit's life. The
spirit is not left without a body in a middle
state of arrested development, but unfolds
the constructive power of its life, without
arrest, in forming its own body. No uni-
versal miracle is demanded to form new
bodies on the instant by the million million.
Instead of a physical operation from with-
out, a spiritual growth from within builds
the habitation and organ of each spirit, ac-
cording to the endeavor of each in obedience
to the laws of vital development in spiritual
health. Does not the fact that the resurrec-
tion is made so prominent in what the
16
242 GOSPEL OF TEE RESURRECTION.
Fathers called " the spiritual gospel " of
John, speak something for this yiew of the
resurrection ?
In this view of the resurrection, it is, as
Christ and Paul and John have taught, not
the same general event to every individual.
It depends on what the spirit is, and on
what it has become by its life in this world.
And so, as we are expressly instructed, the
resurrection is the grand object of Chris-
tian endeavor. The duty of striving to
" attain unto the resurrection of the dead "
now becomes intelligible. We see that we
must live as Christ lived here, in truth and
love and righteousness, so as to establish the
vital conditions for rising there into a true,
strong, and healthful existence, according to
the Christly pattern of the life eternal.
Let the reader judge which of these is
likely to be the true answer to the question,
What is the resurrection f — the one which
is mainly concerned about the providing of
a new body, or the one which looks rather
to the condition of the spirit that carries
the body-building power. Which best ac-
cords with the positively known and funda-
mental fact, that God works in a method of
development, and with continuity of prog-
DEVELOPMENT, NOT MIRACLE. 243
ress ? Which best accords with the fact,
that Christ's idea of the resurrection seems
to be that of a spiritual development rather
than a physical operation, an inward proc-
ess rather than an outward event, a power
manifested rather in an orderly growth than
in a miraculous explosion ? Which best dis-
closes our necessary relation to Christ as
the resurrection power amid the prepara-
tory processes of the present life ?
V. The subject of the present chapter,
The Christian Resurrection as a Spiritual
Development from within, has thus far been
studied on the positive side. To bring out
the truth with the emphasis due to the sub-
ject, the negative or privative side should
now come up for contrast.
What if this spiritual development be
neglected, interfered with, distorted ? What
of those in whom the Christly power of
well conditioned life is deficient or absent ?
They live hereafter, but how f The spirit
forms its own body, but what spirit ? On
the spirit all depends. We are sufficiently
familiar with the phrases of Holy Script-
ure : " indignation and wrath, tribulation
and anguish," "castaway," "reprobates,"
" the worm that dieth not and the fire that is
244 GOSPEL OF TEE RESURRECTION.
not quenched." What else can we know, or
forecast, that can invest these general terms
with greater definiteness in our thought ?
If one principle is applied in our studies
more frequently than any other, it is this :
to divine God's unknown procedures by ob-
serving the known. Apply it in this present
question as to the influence of antecedent
life upon subsequent life. Death is our
birth into subsequent life. Our life before
that birth has what effect on our life after ?
Must we not reflect here on what we
know of lives in this world that are weak
or distorted, miserable or depraved, because
of what we call " ante-natal conditions " ?
The body-building life power was interfered
with, or was deficient, before birth, and lo !
that interference or defect, brief as it was,
manifests its effects in years of ill condi-
tioned life. One is deaf and dumb, or
blind, or a cripple, or insane, or idiotic.
He lives, but his living is life only in part.
The ill condition is grievous enough, though
he himself is not to blame for it. But what
if he were to blame ? What if self-reproach
were added to the life-long burden under
which he groans ? How little of life would
there be in such living !
DEVELOPMENT, NOT MIRACLE. 245
The suggestion reveals a cluster of con-
jectures that we must deem more than mere
possibilities. What are the precise limits
of the analogy, we cannot affirm. But that
here is an analogy, and a most instructive
one, can hardly be denied. Seeing how our
present life has been permanently condi-
tioned by causes transiently operating under
the laws of preparatory growth, we can
hardly resist the persuasion, that the laws
of spiritual growth now operating in our life
are to develop enduring conditions out of
the transient antecedents that we now have
the power to determine.
No one, therefore, who perceives and in-
telligently reflects on the ante-natal causes
which determined the defective, distorted,
crippled, impotent sort of life, that we see
so much of in this world, can avoid put-
ting to himself such questions as these :
What if I allow a skeptical habit to quench
the faith-faculty, the eye of the soul ?
What if the ear of obedience to the Divine
law be unformed in a will disloyal to right ?
What if conscience, the moral reason, be-
come beclouded or subverted? What if
the understanding be not informed and
regulated by truth? What if selfishness
246 GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION.
spread its scrofula through the vital cur-
rents of feeling and thought? Must not
such sins against the laws of spiritual life
leave their enduring mark in ill conditions
of the future life ? If the interference of
only a few days or hours with the normal
processes of life before our mortal birth can
perpetuate its evil in defects of body and
mind to the full term of old age, what per-
petuation of evil may not the present trans-
mit to the future from violations of the Di-
vine law that we may commit in forming
the spirit which is to be born at death into
the hereafter ? The gross fancy of some of
the Jews, that the buried body itself should
be raised again with all its defects and
blemishes reproduced, may really have a
side of truth to it, as a picture of the en-
trance of spirits into the future life deficient
and distorted, impotent through moral weak-
nesses, blind through unbelief, deaf through
disobedience and wilfulness, insane because
incapable of recognizing truth, leprous with
selfishness. Beside this, remorse for self-in-
flicted mischief. Beside this, shame.
For what must we infer, when we see,
further, that even the form of flesh and
blood is gradually penetrated by the expres-
DEVELOPMENT, NOT MIRACLE. 2±7
sion of the spirit which it screens ? How
even plain faces become transfigured with
the beauty of loving souls ! How even
classic features become overcast with the
gross look of the sensual, or the hard look
of the selfish, spirit ! Much more must the
spiritual body be like a transparent medium
to reveal the character of the indwelling
spirit that has formed it. Then must the
word of the Lord be fulfilled to the utter-
most : " There is nothing covered that shall
not be revealed." (Luke xii. 2.) Screens
of flesh and blood are withdrawn. " The
books" are "opened." The self-registry is
apparent. The work of the spirit is made
manifest. And what is this but misery and
shame to the ill conditioned, whose sin ex-
presses itself in what they are? What is this
but a revelation of judgment1 upon "the
deeds done in the body," which are apparent,
not as past actions, but as a present net re-
sult in an existing spiritual condition ? And
what can we call such ill conditioned births
into the world of resurrection — with the
formative processes of truth and love and
righteousness so ill wrought, or un wrought,
but entrance into an existence that is not
1 See page 142
248 GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION.
life ? — what is it but " the resurrection of
judgment " ?
Our wisdom on this subject is found less
in utterance than in silence, as soon as we
attempt to pass from general principles to
particulars. We see, of course, that either
godliness or ungodliness must be the gen-
eral character of every spirit ; that is to say,
that the prevailing inclination and tend-
ency of every one must be either toward
God, or away from him, that there can be
no such thing as moral indifference toward
God, inclining neither way. But whether,
in these two main divisions of character,
there can be, as most pulpits teach, and
as most Christians believe, only two sorts of
experience, complete blessedness and utter
wretchedness ; whether there can be only
two conditions, complete well-being and ut-
ter ill-being ; whether, even among " saints,"
there will not be imperfect ones ; whether
crooked, stunted, weak, and faulty growths,
transplanted from earth's nursery to Para-
dise, will not find defects of blessedness and
drawbacks of advancement, corresponding
to a merely partial fitness for the " resur-
rection of life;" are questions that are des-
tined to receive more thoughtful considera-
DEVELOPMENT, NOT MIRACLE. 249
tion than the indiscriminate positiveness of
the creeds has thus far encouraged.1 But
amid all such questions, to which the ex-
perience of the future realities will bring,
there is reason to think, some unanticipated
replies, one principle may be held with ab-
solute certainty, as the fundamental law of
consequences under which all life is lived.:
" Whatsoever a man soweth, that
SHALL HE ALSO REAP." Any view of the
future that harmonizes with this may be
true ; any that conflicts with it must be
false.
Enough for the negative aspect. The
contrast adds fresh emphasis to the positive
side of the truth, so conspicuous in Holy
Scripture. There the laws of spiritual life
are revealed, that we may obey them, and
through obedience rise into the fullness of
life. There the divine pattern of human-
ity is set before us in Christ Jesus our Lord.
He himself, in his truth and love and right-
1 The Westminster Assembly's Shorter Catechism teaches
(§ 37) that "the souls of believers are at their death made
perfect in holiness;" that is, all believers, one as much as
another, to whatever greater or less degree sanctification has
spread through their character in this life, find themselves,
so far as the sanctification of character is concerned, equal-
ized by dying. All "are at their death made perfect in holi-
ness."
250 GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION.
eousness, is commended to us as the in-
wardly working resurrection power. His
sympathy with our struggle in our weak-
ness stands before us in the symbol of his
cross, to draw us to the beginning of an
eternal fellowship in life with him. " Glory,
honor, and immortality," in a perfected
spiritual nature, after the pattern of Christ,
are held out to us as the future flower of a
present fellowship and following with him.
The preparation time, how brief ! The
fruition time, how boundless ! how blessed !
Let Faith hear : let Reason judge. O Di-
vine Hope ! O Divine Helper ! Oh, happy
they who hear his voice, and walk with him !
NOTE A.
ON THE THOUSAND YEARS, OR " MILLENNIUM."
And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and
judgment was given unto them : and I saw the souls
of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus,
and for the word of God, and which had not wor-
shiped the beast, neither his image, neither had re-
ceived his mark upon their foreheads, or in their
hands; and they lived and reigned with Christ a
thousand years. (Rev. xx. 4.)
The idea of a millennial period of glory to come on
THE "MILLENNIUM. 251
earth was cherished by the Jews prior to the time
of Christ. " The Jews supposed that the Messiah
at his coming would reign as king upon the earth,
and would reside at Jerusalem, the ancient royal
city. The period of his reign they supposed would
be very long, and therefore put it down at a thou-
sand years, which was at first understood only as a
round number This period was conceived of
by the Jews as the return of the golden age to the
earth, and each one formed to himself such a pic-
ture of it as agreed best with his own disposition,
and that decree of moral and intellectual culture to
which he had attained. Many anticipated nothing
more than merely sensual delights ; others enter-
tained better and purer conceptions."
This millennial hope passed over from the Jews
into the Christian church. It does not carry Christ's
express indorsement in any of his recorded sayings.
Yet, doubtless, some of his expressions might bear
such a construction, and probably seemed to the
Apostles an adequate sanction for holding on to
their traditional millennial views in connection with
the kingdom of which their Master spoke.
And I appoint unto you a kingdom, as my Father
hath appointed unto me ;
That ye may eat and drink at my table in my
kingdom, and sit on thrones judging the twelve
tribes of Israel. (Luke xxii. 29, 30.)
For the study of another such saying of our Lord,
and what we are probably to understand under the
ideas of enthronement, judging and reigning, in the
252 GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION.
millennial prophecies, see chapter v., note A, and
remarks on page 238.
In John's Revelation the utterance of this ancient
hope sounds like the old Jewish anticipations reviv-
ing in a more spiritualized form. " John does not
there speak of Christ reigning visibly and bodily on
the earth, but of his spiritual dominion, resulting
from the influence of Christianity when it shall at
length be universally diffused through the earth —
a kingdom which will last a thousand years, used as
a round number to denote many centuries, or a long
period."
The admitted Jewish origin of the millennial
hope, and the evident Jewish coloring which it car-
ries even in John's mind, may disparage it in the
view of some. But the fact that the Jewish nation
was pervaded through its whole career till Christ ap-
peared with a spirit of prophecy, of which abundant
demonstration is furnished by Christ himself, may
seem to others, as it certainly does to me, good
ground for expecting to find some substantial Divine
truth in the millennial prophecy of John under the
shell of the local and temporary form.
Note. The quotations in the preceding para-
graphs are from Knapp's " Christian Theology,"
page 538, Am. Ed. It will be noticed that Dr.
Knapp regards the thousand years as denoting the
whole period of Christ's kingdom on earth. That it
refers rather to the period of the kingdom's growth
and struggle, up to its final victory, but not to the
whole period of the kingdom's existence, I have
aimed to show in note C below.
"THE FIRST RESURRECTION." 253
NOTE B.
ON " THE FIRST RESURRECTION."
But the rest of the dead lived not again until the
thousand years were finished. This is the first res-
urrection. (Rev. xx. 5.)
Upon this we have to observe : —
(1.) They " lived not." Failure to prepare in the
present life the conditions of this first resurrection
(as described in the foregoing chapter) subjected
them, for the period, to privation of that blessed
condition which is, emphatically, life, or " life in-
deed." x Their existence is, for the period, here
viewed as an experience of retribution for their un-
fitness for the resurrection of life, just as the whole
period of a long earthly life is often burdened with
retribution for violation of the laws of life during; a
few months or days before birth. This period, in-
definite but vast, a much more reasonable as well as
Scriptural conception than that of an endless hell,
presents a motive of sufficient urgency to deter from
present faithlessness all those whom foresight influ-
ences at all.
(2.) They " lived not till the thousand years were
finished." This does not deny that they might live
after, at least some of them. This suggests the pos-
sible recovery, at least of some, to life in Christ.
This tallies with that hint of recovering processes
which is found in the preaching of Christ to the
"spirits in prison."2 (1 Pet. iii. 19.) This com-
1 See p. 225, Note.
2 See chapter iii., Note D.
254 GOSPEL OF TEE RESURRECTION.
ports with that doctrine which Augustine derived
from Matthew xii. 32, namely, "For it would not
be truly said of some, that they are forgiven neither
in this age nor in the future, were there not some
who, though not in this, are forgiven in the future."
Heathen may hear the gospel there, and there may
prepare the conditions of ultimate resurrection to
life. That all will do this is a conclusion that can-
not be drawn with assurance from anything within
the range of our experience, or from any testimony
of the Scriptures.
(3.) Those who "lived not " are spoken of as a
class, " the resV Into this class some are continually
passing out of the present world. Whether others
are emerging out of this class in a way of recovery,
or what possibilities and opportunities there may be
of any individuals of this class rising out of it into
Christly life under the discipline of the future state,
does not come into the view of the seer. His lan-
guage is general. During that whole period there is
such a class, whose description is, " they lived not."
Changes of condition, if such are possible, affecting
individuals who at any time are found in this class,
are matter not of prophecy but of speculation.
(4.) It is not said that all of this class (" the rest
of the dead ' ') attained to life at or after the end of
this resurrection period. Only that they, as a class,
continued till then in a state of privation consequent
upon their previous life. Of individuals nothing is
suggested in any way. Nor is there any clear inti-
mation here of an ultimate resurrection of life for
all. We may believe that the recoverable will be
recovered. But what of the irrecoverables ? Will
there be none such ?
BINDING AND LOOSING OF SATAN. 255
Here we reach the open door of a great question,
presented by the doctrine of "conditional immortal-
ity." The Scriptures do not teach, and philosophy
has, at the best, but uncertain ground on which to
maintain, that all who have at any time existed will
always continue to exist. The Apostle Paul, in four
remarkable passages,1 declares that unity, not dual-
ism, is the ultimate state of the spiritual creation, —
that all who exist will be ultimately in fellowship and
spiritual unity with God. But there are strong rea-
sons for believing that all who exist in that ultimate
unity are not so many as all who have existed ; that
some will ultimately have ceased to exist, who have
made themselves incapable of the eternal life.
NOTE C.
ON THE BINDING AND LOOSING OF SATAN, CON-
NECTED BY PROPHECY WITH THE FIRST RES-
URRECTION.
And I saw an angel come down from heaven, hav-
ing the key of the bottomless pit and a great chain
in his hand.
And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent,
which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a
thousand years,
And cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him
up, and set a seal upon him, that he should deceive
the nations no more, till the thousand years should
be fulfilled : and after that he must be loosed a little
season.
1 See Note C, chapter v.
256 GOSPEL OF TEE RESURRECTION.
And when the thousand years are expired, Satan
shall be loosed out of his prison,
And shall go out to deceive the nations which are
in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog, to
gather them together to battle: the number of whom
is as the sand of the sea.
And they went up on the breadth of the earth,
and compassed the camp of the saints about, and the
beloved city : and fire came down from God out of
heaven, and devoured them. (Rev. xx. 1-3, 7-9.)
This vision, like the Apocalypse in general, is in-
tensely realistic. Its introduction, describing the
restraint of the world- deceiving sjDirit, connects
plainly enough with certain sayings of Christ,
namely, "I beheld Satan as lightning fall from
heaven" (Luke x. 18); " Now shall the prince of
this world be cast out." (John xii. 31.) Paganism
being the grand obstacle which the Gospel of the
kino-dom had to remove, the binding- and casting out
of Satan into "the abyss"1 (common version,
"bottomless pit,") undoubtedly represents the re-
straint and suppression of the deluding spirit of Pa-
ganism during the Gospel period.
The term, "the nations," uniformly denotes, in
the New Testament, heathen nations. If, instead of
"nations," we translate the original word in this
1 The word "abyss" (a/Wo-os) corresponds to the He-
brew tfhom, uniformly applied in the Old Testament to rag-
ing or roaring watery depths, whether of the ocean or of
streams and floods. In the New Testament it is occasionally
translated "the deep." (See Luke viii. 31; Kom. x. 7.) It
here appropriately designates, in a shadowy way, the proper
home of rebellious and turbulent spirits.
BINDING AND LOOSING OF SATAN. 257
place by " heathen," as is done in Gal. i. 16, the
reasonableness of taking the vision to signify the
suppression of Paganism will be more apparent.
The reference of the vision is, of course, at least
primarily, to the nations known to the writer, the
Mediterranean nations, at that time all of them Pa-
gans.
This suppression we must, of course, think of as
having its development from a small beginning up-
ward to its completeness, just as we conceive of the
Gospel and the kingdom of Christ, in its opposition
to Paganism, developing from its germ to its com-
plete supremacy.
If this be the correct view, then the loosing of
Satan can signify nothing but the revival of Pagan-
ism, in some form or other, at the end of " the thou-
sand years " — a period not of that precise number
of the earth's annual revolutions round the sun, but
of vast and indefinite duration, the period of Chris-
tianity in its triumphs over the old Paganism, tri-
umphs that are still in progress. The idea of this
revival of Paganism is here externalized in vision as
a gathering of the hordes of barbarians from the
then unknown north (" Gog and Magog" — as in
Ezekiel xxxviii and xxxix) , for a devastating inva-
sion of the Holy Land.
Of course it is impossible to regard this as strictly
representative of the actual reality that is to be.
An irruption of northern heathen is not to be reck-
oned now, as in the time of John's writing, among,
the possible apprehensions of the civilized and
Christianized world. The revival of Paganism, and
Pagan assaults, must be anticipated in a form that
17
258 GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION.
is modified correspondingly with the changed condi-
tion of the world.
The essence of Paganism is in the deification of
nature and its various powers, including man. To
the Pagan, matter and its manifestations are every-
thing, and spirit nothing but a phantom or a su-
perstition. Is nothing like this beginning to be
apparent in the midst of Christian civilization?
The modern Paganism is what we call Materialism.
The Paganism of the past will not rise again, to re-
build its crumbling temples. The revived Pagan-
ism will redden no altars with the blood of victims.
Its only shrine will be the laboratory ; its supreme
being, matter ; its demigods, the forces in matter ;
but in hostile scorn for what it deems the fables of
Christianity it will rival the ancient worshipers of
Jupiter and of the divinized Caesars.
The gathering of "the nations" (or heathen) in
the four corners (common version, "quarters") of
the earth is wholly symbolical. This mode of pic-
turing; the revival of Paganism is due to the fact
that the old Paganism retired before the expanding
power of Christianity toward those "corners," in
all directions, like an ebbing tide. Hence a revival
of Paganism is represented as a return of the tide
from thence. Making this allowance for the form
in which the vision is cast, we shall deem ourselves
released from the difficult supposition of an irrup-
tion of Pagans from Pagan lands, and shall follow
the indications, already apparent, that the reality
will be a development of a modern Paganism within
the bounds of nominal Christendom itself. The last
and subtlest assault of the enemy of Christ will not
BINDING AND LOOSING OF SATAN. 259
be made from ■without but from within the domain
from which he has been banished in form only to
return in spirit. In the new form of the reviving
Paganism will lie its hopes and its strength. Its
" last card " will be confidently played. Its weap-
ons will no longer be such as mangle the flesh of
martyrs, but all the improved modern artillery of
science will be appropriated by the spirit of Athe-
ism.
Once more, we are not to literalize the vision so
as to think of this as coming on suddenly. Nothing
is sudden in the development, through conflict, of
the kingdom of God. The ebb of the Pao-an tide
was gradual, and gradual will be its return, its phe-
nomena slowly spreading before coming to a head
in ripeness for conclusive judgment.
But, especially, we must not think of this last con-
flict of Christianity as a turning back of the onward
career of the kingdom, as if Christianity had failed
through any waning of its power, or as if a gigantic
apostasy had left only a faithful few exposed to a
host "like the sand of the sea." There can be no
retrograde movement in the development of the
kingdom of God. This last conflict with Paganism
is to be thought of rather as the last stao-e of the
long development of Christianity into its ideal char-
acter, and as the means to its consummate manifes-
tation as the religion of the spirit. Furthermore, we
are not to think of the final victory as wrought by a
Divine interference from without (" fire from God out
of heaven "), but as secured by a Divine development
from within.
To put the issue in plain thought before us, let us
260 GOSPEL OF TEE RESURRECTION.
reflect how, even now, as ever since the beginning,
religion, with comparatively few exceptions, is ex-
ternalized in forms of church organization, and forms
of ritual, and forms of doctrine. No fault is to be
found with this externalization of religion, so long as
it is needed as an education to what is higher, but
only when it contends for perpetuity, after having
served its temporary need as scaffolding. But when
we reflect on the stress that is laid even now on relig-
ious forms, of order, ritual and dogma, as compared
with the stress that is laid on religion as a Divine life,
we are convinced that a long advance has yet to be
made before Christianity manifests its essential life-
power. The intellectual Paganism of to-day is not
convinced by theological argument, or affected by ec-
clesiastical ritual. It is thoroughly impregnable to a
religion that marches in the mediaeval armor of forms.
It easily makes head against a religion that is weak-
ened by the sectarian divisions that insistence on
forms creates. It can be vanquished only by the
spiritual religion, whose unanswerable argument is
its own baptism with the Holy Ghost, its transfor-
mation of character, its reproduction of the life of
Christ among men.
The reviving Paganism must therefore be ex-
pected to spread, as things now are, its false prophets
tracking the missionary among the heathen, and
gathering proselytes from among dogmatists and rit-
ualists at home, its denials becoming more scornful
and more rampant, until, in the crisis, perhaps in
some unprecedented "revival period," Christianity
learns to suppress it forevermore, not with form and
dogma and organization, but with a Divine life, the
" THE END" — " GOD ALL IN ALL." 261
life which is " baptized with the Holy Ghost and
with fire." (Matt. iii. 11.) Then will the vision
be fulfilled which showed that "fire came down
from God out of heaven and devoured them." In
this final victory Christianity will pass into its final
stage, finding its unity, not in form, but in a holy
character inspired with Divine love, and manifesting
both its maturity and its power through spiritual
life.
NOTE D.
"the end." — "god all in all."
Then cometh the end, when he shall have deliv-
ered up the kingdom to God, even the Father; when
he shall have put down all rule, and all authority
and power.
For he must reign, till he hath put all enemies un-
der his feet.
The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.
For he hath put all things under his feet. But
when he saith, All things are put under him, it is
manifest that he is excepted, which did put all
things under him.
And when all things shall be subdued unto him,
then shall the Son also himself be subject unto him
that put all things under him, that God may be all
in all. (1 Cor. xv. 24-28.)
The view developed in this volume presents a res-
urrection that is now proceeding in the unseen world,
and that shall be consummated when the mediatorial
work of Christ is complete in the redemption of the
race.
262 GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION.
Of such a consummation the Apostle speaks in
the passage now before us. Observe, at starting,
that "the end" signifies, not a finality, but a con-
summation, not merely a limit which ends what has
gone before, but a threshold beyond which opens a
new stage of existence.1 Where the work of the
Mediator ends, there the reign of God without a
Mediator begins. That God may reign without a
Mediator, the Mediator, having finished his work of
redemption, is represented as delivering his tempo-
rary sovereignty back to God.
To enlarge upon this somewhat mysterious proph-
ecy, and to develop, so far as may be, all its suggest-
ive hints, is not to the present purpose.
It does not seem to be the Apostle's object here
to make any discrimination between different desti-
nies, or to pronounce concerning the ultimate state
of such as reject the Gospel. For a discussion of this
point see Note C, chapter v.
So far as light is sought from this passage upon
the doctrine of the Trinity, as to which it was a fa-
vorite with the Arians, nothing can be gathered
beyond inferences that are more or less dubious.
But so far as it is interrogated concerning; the ulti-
mate state of the moral universe, it seems to de-
scribe that state as moral unity wholly centred in
God. According to the character of each individ-
ual, God will cause himself to be directly realized by
each as the all-pervading and controlling power.
But, in this connection, the language used of
the subjection of refractory elements, " enemies,
a
1 This is the recognized sense of the Greek word, re'Aos,
"end".
" THE END." — " GOD ALL IN ALL" 263
seems to be less in harmony with the idea of univer-
sal restoration than with that of the ultimate per-
ishing of the incorrigible and irrecoverable out of
existence.
But, — specially, this prophecy of the end not only
points to the ultimate consummation of the resurrec-
tion period, when the last of all who are to die shall
have risen in the Christly life of the future, but it
quite as certainly points to the consummation of
each individual Christian's hope, as each attains
"the end of faith in the salvation of the soul." (1
Peter i. 9.) The end, when God shall be "All in
all " to each of the godly, is not to be waited for by
every age till a definite point in the far-off future,
any more than the resurrection is to be waited for.
It is not chronology but spiritual capacity, not time
but personal fitness, which determines that experi-
ence in the case of each godly spirit.
Paul, for instance, rising from the dead as soon as
" the earthly house is dissolved," finds the moral
conflict of this life (so intensely described in his
sixth chapter to the Ephesians as involving even in-
visible powers) ended in the putting down of " all
rule and authority and power " (verse 24) that hin-
dered his struggle. For him "the last enemy is de-
stroyed " (verse 26) when he has triumphed over
death. And then, the process of redemption being
complete in him, the mediatorial work and reign of
Christ ends for him, as it will ultimately end for all.
Through Christ he has come to God, and needs no
longer a Great High Priest by whom to come. He
has reached the end of seeing "through a glass
darkly," and the beginning of seeing "face to
264 GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION.
face." He lias crossed the threshold of that career
whose eternal course will be in perpetually learning
of God and serving God, — in which the Son gives
the first place, both in our knowledge and our serv-
ice, to the Father, and "in all" of the redeemed
God is " All " that each one needs.
CHAPTER X.
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION.
"Jesus saith unto them, Have ye understood all these
things ? They say unto him, Yea, Lord.
"Then said he unto them, Therefore every scribe which is
instructed unto the kingdom of heaven, is like unto a man
that is a householder, which bringeth forth out of his treasure
things new and old." — Matt. xiii. 51, 52.
The course of thought followed in these
studies upon the resurrection has been such
as seemed to be required, in order to meet
the difficulties existing in the way of any
hoped-for change of mind from the Jewish
to the Christian doctrine. The main points
that have been made, with here and there
some unavoidable diffuseness, as we have
gone on, must now be more compactly put
together in a brief review, and this may as
well be in an order varying somewhat from
that which we have followed.
I. The Jews in Christ's time possessed
a well defined doctrine of a resurrection of
the buried body, a coming of the Messiah,
or Christ, in externalized glory, to raise the
266 GOSPEL OF TEE RESURRECTION.
dead, and a Divine judgment to be executed
by him, at the resurrection, in bestowing
favor and glory on his people, and inflicting
retribution on the heathen and the ungodly.
The Apostles, as Jews, had been imbued
with this doctrine, and were naturally dis-
posed to understand what our Lord said of
the resurrection, his advent, and the judg-
ment, in the externalizing sense in which,
these terms were then generally employed.
II. It cannot be denied by any one who
is familiar with the ideas then entertained
by the Jews upon these closely related doc-
trines of the resurrection, the advent, and
the judgment, that the Apostles' language
in reference to them is occasionally colored,
and their opinions sometimes evidently
biased by their traditional way of think-
ing ; as when Paul speaks of the Lord Jesus
as descending from heaven, and revealed in
flaming fire ; or as when Peter speaks of
an impending conflagration of the heavens
and the earth at the coming of the Lord,
— precisely as the Jews held that a con-
flagration of the world would take place at
the time of the resurrection and the judg-
ment.
*' The Apostles," says Professor A. A.
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION. 267
Hodge,1 " understood these predictions to
relate to a literal advent of Christ in per-
son ... . They teach that his coming will
be visible and glorious, accompanied with
the abrogation of the present Gospel dis-
pensation, the destruction of his enemies,
the glorification of his friends, the confla-
gration of the world, and the appearance of
the ' new heaven and new earth.' ' This
satisfies the majority of Christians, as long
as they do not inquire into the source
whence the Apostles derived these ideas, as
long as it is takeivfor granted that the
Apostles derived them, in that form, from
Christ. But as soon as it is perceived that
this whole way of conceiving the subject
of Christ's kingly advent and judgment
originated before the time of Christ among
Jewish writers, one has to ask whether
Christ really set his seal to that way of
thinking, Avhether he does not, indeed, re-
quire some of it to be corrected.
Nothing can be more plain to a candid
mind, than that the Apostles' inspiration
did not wholly emancipate them from this
bias of inherited opinion, or lift them above
all influence from their early prepossessions
1 "Outlines of Theology," p. 448.
268 GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION.
and ruling ideas, or make their language,
reflecting such opinions, free from error, and
an infallible guide. They believed they
were living " in the end of the world," in
"the last time," and spoke as men who
thought that " the end of all things " was
near. Peter evidently shared the universal
belief of his countrymen that the pious dead
were still, in a disembodied state, awaiting
the advent of the Messiah's miraculous
power to restore them to the normal condi-
tion of life in the union of body and spirit.
Paul alone seems to have come to a more
spiritual conception of the resurrection as
a present reality, while his mode of speak-
ing of the advent and the judgment reflects
the Jewish idea of them, as events displayed
in form and show to the senses.
III. The way of thinking current among
the Apostles' countrymen, and essentially
the same resulting conceptions in terms of
physical rather than spiritual significance,
have been preserved in the creeds down to
the present time, and are now current with
the majority of Christian believers, as any
number of recent publications might be
cited to testify.
So far, therefore, as the doctrine of the
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION. 269
resurrection is concerned, Christ's saying
that the instructed " scribe," or teacher,
brings forth things new as well as old, has
hardly been verified thus far. The same
may be said of the doctrine of the advent,
and the doctrine of the judgment. The
Christian church, as represented in its prin-
cipal creeds and in the prevailing popular
notions, has inherited from the ancient Jew-
ish church, as represented, at least, by its
more spiritual teachers, both its way of
thinking and its conclusions upon these sub-
jects with no essential modification.
IV. The following difficulties in the way
of maintaining the traditional notions ought
to be specially noted.
(1.) It is impossible to hold that our
Lord's prophecies of his coming still wait
for entrance upon a recognizable fulfill-
ment, without provoking skeptical denials
of his credibility that cannot be met, at
least without arbitrary exegetical twists of
language, and cannot be met at all on the
fair ground of his plain assertion, that he
would come as a king during the lifetime
of some who heard him speak.
(2.) It is impossible to hold that resur-
rection — the reentrance of the departing
270 GOSPEL OF TEE RESURRECTION.
spirit into embodied life in the spiritual
world — is deferred to a day which is still
future to all the dead, without suppressing
the plainest testimony of our Lord to its
present reality, through deference to the
supposed infallibility of the Jewish opinions
which color some of the language of the
Apostles.
(3.) It is impossible to hold that the ade-
quate judgment and retribution of the dead
are deferred to some great and general court
of God to be opened at a day still future, ex-
cept (not to mention other grave objections)
by an interpretation of our Lord's judgment
picture in the twenty-fifth chapter of Mat-
thew, that contradicts even the letter of his
words, under the bias of a way of thinking
upon the subject of the judgment, which
likens the Divine method to that of the or-
dinary judge upon the bench.
V. It now remains only to point out the
chief requisites in order to a true concep-
tion, at once Biblical and rational, of the
doctrine of the resurrection in its necessary
connection with the doctrines of the advent
and the judgment.
(1.) To admit the fact that we can un-
derstand the Gospels as well as the Epistles,
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION. 271
our Lord's sayings as well as those of the
Apostles, and to ground our doctrine less on
the comments supplied by Paul and Peter
than on the teachings of Christ himself, as
capable of being adequately understood to-
day without the intervention of any human
mediator to interpret them, even though
that mediator be an inspired Apostle.
(2.) To make allowance, in our study of
the Epistles, for the element of inherited
Jewish opinions occasionally so apparent in
the language which the Apostles used con-
cerning the grand facts of the kingdom of
Christ.
(3.) To apply the discrimination between
symbols and realities, which we have al-
ready learned to make in the Old Testa-
ment language concerning God — his
"eyes," his "hand," his "nostrils" — to
the New Testament language concerning
the spiritual facts of the kingdom of God.
We must carry this discrimination through
the whole range of terms in which, for the
sake of those who were to be taught, we
find spiritual conceptions translated into
material forms. We must learn to translate
them bach again,
(4.) To avail ourselves of whatever in-
272 GOSPEL OF TEE RESURRECTION.
sight the experience and the learning of the
Christian centuries can give us into the
method in which God works, under the uni-
versal reign of law, through processes of de-
velopment, and with continuity of progress,
— according to which Life is God's great
body-builder, all physical, social and spir-
itual agencies are included among God's
judgment " angels " for the elimination of
evil, and Christ, as the earthly representa-
tive of God's moral perfections, presides, as
the moral king, over the world's struggling
development of a purified, saved and glori-
fied humanity.
If we are disposed to harbor these consid-
erations long enough to weigh them fairly,
we shall begin to discover in such a line of
thought what I believe is destined to be-
come a growing conviction among reflecting
men, that adherence to the old Jewish mode
of thought concerning the resurrection, the
Lord's advent, and the judgment has been
the grand mistake which the church has
made in its doctrine of the kingdom of
Christ. In the ideal point of view, it is a
monstrous anachronism in the period which
Christians regard as " the Dispensation of
the Spirit." In the practical point of view,
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION. 273
it provokes, as did the gross resurrection-
fancies of the Pharisees, a development of
Sadduceeism, disbelief in the Gospel of the
resurrection, and skeptical denials of Christ
as the resurrection power. Therefore, there
must sometime come a reform of the church-
doctrine of the resurrection, as taught in the
creeds and the hymn-books. It is only a
question of time.
Confident, therefore, as to the real point
of our Lord's teaching as given in the Gos-
pels, I earnestly commend it to the reconsid-
eration of all those to whom the doctrine,
so fundamental in the New Testament, of
resurrection through Christ, possesses inter-
est. The conception of this which is pre-
sented in these pages, criticised as it will
be at present, is the one that will stand, at
least in its essentials, when the fancies that
are now widely entertained have been gath-
ered into the museum of theological relics.
18
ERRATA.
Page 51, 3d line from bottom, for 4-29, read 24-29.
Page 52, 6th line from bottom, for 25, read 24.
Page 53, line 13, for 24, read 25.
Page 92, line 5, for " aurjvri" read " OKrjv7f."
Page 99, line next to bottom, for " proper/' read " bet-
ter."
Page 171, 3d line from bottom, erase comma after "visi-
bly."
1
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