■//. idZ^T 
 
 
 PRINCETON, N. J. 
 
 Division OO CL-Iq t-1 
 
 hel/.. 
 
 Section .. 
 Number 
 
^1/ 
 
THE 
 
 RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD 
 
 STUDIES ON THE FIFTEENTH CHAPTER 
 OF FIRST CORINTHIANS 
 
 AM APPENDIX ON THE SCRIPTURE TEACHING REGARDING 
 THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 
 
 BY THE LATE^ 
 
 KEY. joh:n' paisley 
 
 MINISTER OF GARELOCHHEAD 
 
 For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must 
 put on immortality." 
 
 ILontJon 
 JAMES NISBET & CO. 
 
 21 BERNERS STREET 
 1894 
 
STUDIES ON THE 
 RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD, 
 
 BY OUR FATHER, 
 
 DEDICATED TO THE PARISHIONERS OF 
 GARELOCHHEAD, 
 
 HIS SONS AND DAUGHTERS. 
 
 The memory of the just is blessed.''^ 
 
 Glenald, 1893. 
 
PEEFACE. 
 
 The great importance of the subject, and the feeling 
 he has that the prevalent notions on the subject of 
 the Resurrection of the Dead are neither in themselves 
 credible, nor in accordance with the teaching of the 
 New Testament, lead the author to desire the publica- 
 tion of this book. 
 
 The Appendix, nearly as long as the preceding part 
 of the book, is added, partly in defence of the teach- 
 ing already stated, but chiefly on its own account, 
 for the importance of the things which are involved 
 in what is set forth in it. 
 
 The author is one of those who think that the 
 teachings of our Lord and His Apostles are often in 
 our day very much obscured to us by the preconceived 
 notions which we put into them, and by which we 
 interpret them to ourselves. His object in this whole 
 book will be accomplished if any receive any new light 
 from it on the subjects spoken of. 
 
 The quotations from the New Testament are given 
 from the Revised Version. 
 
CONTENTS 
 I. 
 
 PACK 
 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD MEANS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT 
 NOT THE RESURRECTION OF OUR PRESENT BODIES, BUT THE 
 RESURRECTION OF MEN OUT OP DEATH. THE RESURRECTION 
 OF CHRIST THE REVELATION TO US THAT ALL MEN RISE OUT OF 
 DEATH INTO AN AFTER LIFE (l COR. XV. 12-22) ... I 
 
 II. 
 
 they that are saved by christ rise into an after life at 
 Christ's coming — that is, at death ; and then cometh the 
 final state of things to them (l cor. xv. 23-28) . . 16 
 
 III. 
 
 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD A CHRISTIAN TRUTH, RECOGNISED 
 BY THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH, AND THAT BY WHICH THE APOSTLES 
 IN THEIR WORK, AND CHRISTIANS IN THEIR CHRISTIAN LIFE, 
 WERE SUSTAINED : THE CAUSE OF THE UNBELIEF OF IT OF SOME 
 OP THE PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANS, AND THE REMEDY FOR THEIR 
 UNBELIEF (l COR. XV. 29-34) 33 
 
 IV. 
 
 THE BODY IN WHICH WE ARE MADE ALIVE OUT OF DEATH ( I COR. XV. 
 
 35-49) .44 
 
 vii 
 
viii CONTENTS. 
 
 V. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THEY THAT ARE CHRIST'S RAISED OUT OF DEATH BY A CHANGE 
 PASSING UPON THEM, IN WHICH, WHEN THEY PUT OFF THE BODY 
 WE HAVE HERE, THEY AT THE SAME TIME PUT ON THE BODY OF 
 GLORY — THE NECESSITY OP THE CHANGE, AND THE INSTAN- 
 TANEOUSNESS OF IT (l COR. XV. 5O-53) 58 
 
 VI. 
 
 THE VICTORY OVER DEATH WHICH THE CHRISTIAN HAS IN CHRIST 
 
 (I COR. XV. 54-57) 79 
 
 VII. 
 
 THE INFLUENCE WHICH THE PROSPECT THE CHRISTIAN HAS OF THE 
 VICTORY OVER DEATH SHOULD HAVE ON HIS LIFE HERE (l COR. 
 
 XV. 58) . . . . 90 
 
 APPEXDIX. 
 
 ON THE SCRIPTURE TEACHING REGARDING THE SECOND COMING OF 
 
 CHRIST 97 
 
THE 
 
 EESUEEECTION OF THE DEAD. 
 I. 
 
 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD MEANS IN THE NEW TESTA- 
 MENT NOT THE RESURRECTION OP OUR PRESENT BODIES, 
 BUT THE RESURRECTION OP MEN OUT OF DEATH. THE 
 RESURRECTION OF CHRIST THE REVELATION TO US THAT 
 ALL MEN RISE OUT OF DEATH INTO AN AFTER LIFE. 
 
 " Now if Christ is preached that He hath been raised from the dead, 
 how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead ? 
 But if there is no resurrection of the dead, neither hath Christ been 
 raised : and if Christ hath not been raised, then is our preaching vain, 
 your faith also is vain. Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God ; 
 because we witnessed of God that He raised up Christ : whom He 
 raised not up, if so be that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are 
 not raised, neither hath Christ been raised : and if Christ hath not been 
 raised, your faith is vain ; ye are yet in your sins. Then they also 
 which are fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in this life only we 
 have hoped in Christ, we are of all men most pitiable. But now hath 
 Christ been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of them that are 
 asleep. For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrec- 
 tion of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be 
 made alive." — i COR. xv. 12-22. 
 
 What is meant in the New Testament by the resurrec- 
 tion of the dead ? The question to most people will 
 seem a superfluous one. Of course, they will say, 
 
 A 
 
2 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 
 
 what is meant is the resurrection of the body that is 
 laid in the grave. This is, we believe, the idea of 
 the resurrection of the dead which in every age 
 has most largely prevailed amongst Christians ; and 
 although the resurrection of the body that is laid in 
 the grave is to many incredible and impossible, it is 
 the idea which most largely prevails with us. This 
 idea of the resurrection of the dead is supposed to be 
 taught in the discourse of this chapter, which is the 
 greatest discourse, indeed the only great discourse, on 
 the subject in the New Testament. 
 
 It is commonly supposed by those who try to explain 
 the teaching of the chapter, and in most interpretations 
 of the chapter it is assumed as a matter of course, that 
 what the Apostle is arguing for is the resurrection of 
 the body that is laid in the grave. He is supposed to 
 be arguing with people who did not deny that men 
 rise out of death into an after life, that there is an 
 after life for men beyond the present, but who denied 
 only the resurrection of the body laid in the grave. 
 And it is taken for granted that throughout the 
 chapter by the resurrection of the dead he means the 
 resurrection of the dead body. On this supposition it 
 is, it seems to us, quite impossible to understand the 
 Apostle's argument, or to put any rational meaning on 
 the successive parts of his discourse. His discourse, 
 to an unprejudiced reader, has, we think, no appear- 
 ance at all of being an argument for the resurrection 
 of the body laid in the grave. 
 
 The Apostle does indeed teach a bodily resurrection, 
 and his teaching on this subject is the most wonderful 
 thing in the chapter ; but he teaches this merely as 
 a thing connected with the subject of his discourse, 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 3 
 
 which he speaks of simply in answer to a difficulty 
 which he supposes some one among his readers -would 
 suggest. The subject of his discourse is apparently 
 something quite different. 
 
 To us it seems plain, and quite beyond question, 
 that he is arguing with men in the church at Corinth 
 who said that there is no resurrection of the dead, in 
 the sense simply that there is no resurrection out of 
 death ; who denied, that is, that there is any rising 
 out of death for men, that there is any life beyond the 
 present; who regarded death still, as they had been 
 accustomed to do when they were heathens, as the end 
 of man's existence. 
 
 We apprehend that the discourse, from beginning 
 to end, bears this on the face of it ; and that the 
 resurrection of the dead spoken of, in the under- 
 standing both of the Apostle and of those to whom he 
 is speaking, is simply men rising out of death into an 
 after life. 
 
 What the Apostle is seeking to establish by the 
 argument of his discourse, it appears plain to us, i$ 
 that men rise out of death into an after life, and not 
 at all the resurrection of the body that is laid in the 
 grave. He does not speak at all of the body in which 
 they rise throughout the argumentative part of his 
 discourse, but speaks of this only after his argument 
 is finished, and in answer to the suggested difficulties, 
 " How are the dead raised ? And with what manner 
 of body do they come ? " 
 
 And he clearly implies in his discourse that the 
 thing denied by those who said that there is no resur- 
 rection of the dead was that there is any other life 
 beyond the present. He says, for instance, in the 
 
4 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 
 
 course of his argument, at verse 1 9th, " If in this life 
 only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all men most 
 pitiable." This implies surely that the thing denied 
 by those of whom he speaks was that there was any 
 after life, and that the thing he is arguing for is that 
 there is an after life ; and would have no relevancy at 
 all if what they denied was only the resurrection of the 
 body. If they believed in an after and endless life 
 for men beyond death, and denied only the resurrection 
 of the body, they might still surely hope in Christ in 
 regard to that life beyond death in which they believed, 
 and the blessedness of that life might still be an object 
 of hope to them, although it was not life in a body. 
 He says again, at verse 32nd, "If the dead are not 
 raised, let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." 
 Which surely implies that the dead not being raised, 
 in the understanding both of the Apostle and of his 
 readers, meant that there was no after life beyond 
 death ; and in any other meaning of the expression 
 could not possibly have been said by the Apostle. 
 Their dying to-morrow could be no reason for giving 
 themselves up to sensual indulgence if there was still 
 to be a life after death, and a life the happiness or 
 misery of which must depend on their life here, of 
 which it was the continuation. The resurrection of 
 the dead which the Apostle is seeking to establish, 
 and which those with whom he argued denied, is 
 plainly, we apprehend, the resurrection of men out of 
 death ; and the Apostle's discourse, on the face of it, 
 is with men who denied any future life. The realiza- 
 tion of this is quite needful, we think, to make the 
 discourse intelligible to us. 
 
 And this is the meaning of the resurrection of the 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 5 
 
 dead, we apprehend, not only in the discourse of this 
 chapter but throughout the New Testament. The 
 Sadducees are spoken of, for instance, just as those 
 spoken of here as " they which say that there is no 
 resurrection" (Luke xx. 27). And our Lord's argu- 
 ment with them shows that, both in their apprehension 
 and in His, there being no resurrection meant simply 
 that there was no resurrection out of death, that there 
 was no after life beyond death. His argument is, 
 " that the dead are raised, even Moses showed in (the 
 place concerning) the Bush, when he calleth the Lord 
 the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the 
 God of Jacob. Now He is not the God of the dead, 
 but of the living : for all live unto Him " (Luke xx. 
 37, 38). Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, that is to 
 say, are spoken of by Moses in his day as still living. 
 That Abraham and Isaac and Jacob were spoken of 
 in Moses' day as still living, or that all men who have 
 died are still living, could be no proof of the resurrec- 
 tion of the body that is laid in the grave. But it 
 was a proof that there is an after life for men. There 
 is no passage in the New Testament, we apprehend, 
 in which the expression, the resurrection of the dead, 
 is used in any other meaning. 
 
 But were there Christians at Corinth, it may be 
 asked, who did not believe in a future life ? It may 
 well seem to us strange, and at first hardly credible, 
 that there should be ; but in reality it is neither 
 incredible nor unlikely. Such Christians do not exist 
 anywhere now, can hardly be thought of now, when 
 to a large extent, through the influence of the Christian 
 revelation of it, a future life is believed in by almost 
 all men, by all Christians at least, and by men 
 
6 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 
 
 generally even when they are not Christians. But 
 it is in no way strange that there should have been 
 such Christians in that day at Corinth or elsewhere. 
 The Christians at Corinth were, no doubt, to a large 
 extent, Gentiles, who until recently had been heathens. 
 And in a city where St. Paul had preached Christ 
 for eighteen months, and such a city as Corinth, 
 which was one of the centres of Greek learning, the 
 great centre of Greek commerce, and a place to 
 which the higher class of Greeks resorted from all 
 quarters, there were doubtless some among the Chris- 
 tians, probably not an inconsiderable number, who 
 were men of education, and of the mental culture 
 of the day. Now in the Greek world of that day, 
 we are to realise, amidst all the learning and the 
 various mental culture that were in it, and in the 
 world indeed of the Roman Empire generally amongst 
 the educated class, there was no real belief in any 
 life beyond the present, or rather the belief of a 
 future life was altogether rejected. The Jews, so far 
 as they were not Sadducees, believed in a future life. 
 And the belief in an after existence, in which men 
 were to be rewarded or punished according to their 
 life here, formed a part still of the popular religion 
 of the nations. But the educated classes, who had 
 come to look on the popular religion of the day, that 
 is, on the whole system of the heathen gods, as a mere 
 dream of poetry, had lost all real belief in an after 
 life. It seemed to them a belief for which there was 
 no evidence whatever. 
 
 This appears in the records of the time in a way 
 quite startling to us. About sixty years before Christ 
 a remarkable debate took place in the Roman Senate. 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 7 
 
 A great conspiracy against the State had just been 
 discovered, the chief actors in it had been seized, and 
 the question debated was the punishment which should 
 be inflicted upon them. It was proposed that they 
 should be put to death ; but the proposal was resisted 
 by one who was hardly less eminent as an orator and 
 a statesman than as a great soldier — by Julius Caesar. 
 He dwelt on the deeds of the conspirators as crimes 
 for which no suffering to which they could be put 
 would be an adequate punishment, but represented 
 death as the escape from all suffering, and therefore 
 not a proper punishment for such criminals. His 
 words, as they are reported to us, were these : " In 
 pain and misery death is the release from all suffering, 
 not suffering itself ; death dissolves all the ills of mor- 
 tality ; beyond it is no place either for pain or pleasure. 
 "Wherefore, keep these criminals alive, to suffer a fitting 
 penalty ; after death there is no more punishment for 
 sin, neither is there any reward for virtue." 
 
 The sentiments were not those of the speaker only. 
 The Roman Senate contained in it, on that memorable 
 occasion, the most eminent men of the time, philoso- 
 phers, statesmen, warriors, patriots, and leaders of the 
 people of every kind : it comprehended also the pon- 
 tiffs, and most of the ecclesiastical officers of Rome. 
 And the speeches on the occasion of several of the 
 most eminent men, the speech amongst others of Cicero, 
 the greatest advocate and orator of the day, and that 
 of Cato, the most righteous and most spiritually-minded 
 man among the heathen of that degenerate age, are re- 
 ported to us by Sallust, no mean contemporary authority. 
 
 All the speakers take notice of Caesar's dissertation 
 on life and death, and his view of what death brings 
 
8 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 
 
 to men ; and the remarkable thing is that none of them 
 intimates any dissent from it. It was the sentiment of 
 the age, among all men of any mental culture, with all 
 above the lowest class of the people.^ 
 
 It is not wonderful that amongst those Christians 
 of the first age, who had been brought up amidst this 
 state of feeling, there should be some who, even when 
 they believed in Christ, failed for a time, and while as 
 yet they were imperfectly instructed, to grasp the great 
 truth of an after life for men, who still lived in the 
 feeling which was in all men around them, and which 
 they had had from their childhood ; that there should 
 be amongst the Christians some who still continued to 
 think and say that there is no rising out of death. It 
 is only what was natural that there should be. Except 
 on the one great evidence of it, when that has been 
 realised and apprehended by us, the truth that there 
 is a future life is not one that is learned at once by 
 those who have before disbelieved in it : and that great 
 evidence of it, it is plain from this discourse, had not 
 yet been realised by them. We have ourselves learned 
 it because we have been taught it from our infancy, 
 and because of the feeling of it that in our day is in 
 all men around us, which has awakened within us the 
 instinctive sense of immortality that is latent in us. 
 But with the early Christians of the text the feeling 
 in those around them was all the other way. It is to 
 Christians in the Church of Corinth, we apprehend, 
 who were in this state of unbelief in regard to a future 
 life that the argument, and the whole impressive dis- 
 course, of this chapter are addressed. 
 
 ^ See this story more fully told in Meri vale's Boyle Lectures on the 
 Conversion of the Roman Empire, Lecture First. 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 9 
 
 The Apostle's argument for the resurrection of men 
 out of death into an after life is an argument taken 
 from the resurrection of Christ, the great fact in the 
 gospel of Christ in the power of which the gospel had 
 been received by his readers. He begins his discourse, 
 in the opening passage of this chapter, by declaring to 
 the Corinthian Christians the gospel he had preached 
 to them, which also, he says, they had received, and 
 wherein they stood ; by which also they were saved, 
 if they held it fast, except they had believed without 
 cause. He had delivered to them first of all, he says, 
 that which also he received — that is, that which he 
 was divinely commissioned to preach — how that Christ 
 died for our sins according to the Scriptures ; and that 
 He was buried ; and that He had been raised on the 
 third day according to the Scriptures ; and that He 
 appeared to Cephas ; then to the twelve ; after that, 
 that He appeared to more than five hundred of the 
 brethren at once, of whom the greater part were still 
 living ; then that He appeared to James ; then to all 
 the apostles ; and last of all, as to one born out of due 
 time, that He appeared to him also. This was what 
 he preached to them, and what they believed. 
 
 '' Now if Christ is preached," he says, '*that He 
 hath been raised from the dead, how say some among 
 you that there is no resurrection of the dead ? " This 
 contains in it the Apostle's argument. It is simply 
 absurd in a Christian to say that there is no resurrec- 
 tion of the dead. For the resurrection of Christ is in 
 itself the proof that men rise out of death ; it is the 
 revelation to us of the resurrection of all men. If 
 there were Christians with us who did not believe in 
 an after life for men, we might perhaps reason with 
 
lo THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 
 
 them on quite a different ground, and therefore in a 
 different fashion. We might say that the very purpose 
 of Christ's mission, the object of His great self-sacri- 
 fice, which was to give eternal life — the life which is in 
 God — to men, rests on the truth that there is an im- 
 mortal spirit in man, a principle of life in him that 
 survives death ; and that Christ in many ways ex- 
 pressly teaches that there is for all men a life that 
 comes after death, that His teaching also everywhere 
 implies and supposes an after life for all men. We 
 might rest the doctrine, that is to say, on the autho- 
 rity of Christ. And no doubt the argument is quite 
 unanswerable, and would to every Christian be perfectly 
 valid. But the ground on which the Apostle here rests 
 the doctrine is a higher ground than this. The resur- 
 rection of Christ is something more than the teaching 
 of Christ, or of any one whose teaching is authoritative, 
 that there is an after life for men. It is the revelation to 
 us that there is an after life for men : it shows us that 
 men rise out of death into an after life. And since it 
 was God that raised up Christ from the dead, it is a 
 revelation made to us by God that there is an after life 
 for men. To rest the doctrine on the resurrection of 
 Christ, moreover, is to rest it, not on authority, but on 
 a matter of fact in which every Christian believes ; 
 and to rest it on the great fact in the gospel of Christ 
 in the power of which it is received by us. The 
 resurrection of Christ did not indeed take place for 
 the purpose simply of revealing a future life to us. 
 And this is not even its primary lesson to us. It 
 took place necessarily ; and it has a higher meaning 
 in it than this. Christ was the Son of God, in whom 
 the Father was ; and He was a man in whom was no 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. ii 
 
 sin. His rising out of death, therefore, in the way- 
 He did, His rising out of the grave in which His 
 body was laid, in His human body transfigured simply 
 into the body of His glory, was a thing which took 
 place naturally. God did not give His Holy One to 
 see corruption. His resurrection from the dead was 
 God declaring Him to men to be the Son of God. 
 And the gospel of Christ is preached to us in the 
 power of His resurrection ; as that in which all men 
 may see Him to be the Son of God, and in the realisa- 
 tion of which therefore all men are called to believe in 
 Him. But His resurrection is, at the same time, the 
 revelation to us that all men rise out of death into an 
 after life. And it is on the revelation of a future life 
 for men which has been made to us in His resurrection 
 that the Apostle rests the proof of a future life, of the 
 resurrection of all men out of death. 
 
 The argument of the Apostle, which may be said to 
 be contained in the verses we have read, is taken simply 
 from the fact of the resurrection of Christ, in which, as 
 Christians, his readers believed. The resurrection of 
 Christ is the revelation to us that there is a resurrec- 
 tion out of death for men ; it contains in it, and is 
 the revelation to us, that man rises out of death. 
 What the Apostle says in the first of the verses we 
 have read is equivalent to saying, " How could Christ 
 rise from the dead, if there be not a resurrection out 
 of death for men ? " His resurrection, he holds, con- 
 tains in it the revelation that all men rise out of 
 death into an after life. And, in the verses before us, 
 he sets forth this to his Christian readers in two 
 ways. First, by telling them what is necessarily im- 
 plied in regard to Christ and Christianity, if there be 
 
12 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 
 
 no resurrection of the dead ; and, secondly, by telling 
 them what is implied and contained in the resurrec- 
 tion of Christ. 
 
 I. What is necessarily implied, in regard to Christ 
 and Christianity, if there be no resurrection of the 
 dead. And here, it is to be observed, his language is 
 the language plainly of indignation and of scorn, as 
 well as of wonder, while he draws the picture of what 
 their unbelief in a future life presents to them as 
 Christians. He expresses himself in brief and rapid 
 phrases, as one does who is intensely moved, without 
 staying to enlarge on the things said, or even to ex- 
 plain them, not caring to express them in fuller words. 
 And, in speaking of what was implied in what they 
 supposed, he uses strong language, both in regard to 
 himself and to them ; ending with a cry of sorrow 
 over both himself and them, if what they supposed 
 were true. 
 
 First, in that case Christ is not risen. " But if 
 there is no resurrection of the dead," he says, " neither 
 hath Christ been raised." The argument implied is 
 of the simplest kind. Christ was a man ; and Christ, 
 as you believe, rose from the dead. But if Christ 
 was a man, He could not rise from the dead, if there 
 be not that in man which survives death. If death 
 be the end of man's life, the resurrection of a man out 
 of death is impossible. Unless there be that in man 
 which survives death, Christ cannot have been raised ; 
 it is simply impossible He should. If the dead do not 
 rise out of death into an after life, neither hath Christ 
 been raised. Then, if Christ is not risen, Christianity 
 is a delusion ; and they, the apostles, were false wit- 
 nesses of God. " And if Christ hath not been raised, 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 13 
 
 then is our preaching vain (or void), your faith also is 
 vain (or void). Yea, and we are found false witnesses 
 of 'God ; because we witnessed of God that He raised 
 up Christ : whom He raised not up, if so be that the 
 dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, 
 neither hath Christ been raised : and if Christ hath 
 not been raised, your faith is vain ; ye are yet in your 
 sins." The salvation from their sins which they appre- 
 hended to have come to them through their faith in 
 Christ was, in that case, a mere self-delusion. They 
 were yet in their sins. Then, he says further, they 
 also which are fallen asleep in Christ have, in that case, 
 perished ; that is, they have died in their sins. If in 
 this life only, he concludes by exclaiming, we have 
 hoped in Christ, we are of all men most pitiable. 
 
 This was the picture of what was presented to them, 
 of what was necessarily implied, if what they supposed 
 was true. 
 
 II. But Christ, he says, has been raised from the 
 dead as he preached, and as they believed; and he 
 tells them, secondly, what is implied and contained in 
 the resurrection of Christ. 
 
 Here the other side of the picture, or rather a dif- 
 ferent picture, is presented ; and the language of the- 
 Apostle is that of exultation and of joy. " But now," 
 he says, "hath Christ been raised from the dead, the 
 firstfruits of them that are asleep." The firstfruits 
 was the first sheaf of the harvest, which was presented 
 to God as representing the harvest. It implied and 
 showed the existence of the harvest of which it was 
 the representation. And Christ, in His resurrection 
 from the dead, is become the firstfruits of them that 
 are asleep. He is the firstfruits presented to us of 
 
14 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 
 
 the harvest, which implies the existence of the harvest. 
 His resurrection is the revelation to us that all who, to 
 our view, are asleep in death have already risen out of 
 death into an after life. "For," he explains, "since 
 by man came death, by man came also the resurrection 
 of the dead." As death came by Adam, that is, was 
 first manifested in him, as a thing belonging to our 
 human life, so also the resurrection of the dead came 
 by Christ, was first manifested in Christ, that is, as a 
 thing belonging to our human life. It is a thing, as 
 death is, belonging to our human nature, which only in 
 a man could be manifested. 
 
 The conclusion, the truth which has been revealed, 
 is, " For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all 
 be made alive." As Adam, our first father, died, and, 
 therefore, in their connection with him, all his descen- 
 dants, that is, all men, die, so also, in a higher mani- 
 festation of our human nature, Christ has been raised 
 from the dead, and therefore, in their participation in 
 that human nature in which He died and rose again, 
 all men shall be made alive. 
 
 With this, the argument of the discourse for an 
 after life, strictly speaking, ends. This is the revela- 
 tion of an after life for men which is made to us in 
 the resurrection of Christ. The meaning of the revela- 
 tion is, that out of death all men shall be made alive. 
 
 It is a revelation of our immortality which with 
 every enlightened Christian has become a part of his 
 life. Christ has risen out 6i death, and therefore the 
 Christian believes in an immortal existence as lying 
 before all men. It is that by which, in the life to 
 which we have come in Christ, Christ has to us abol- 
 ished death, and has brought life and immortality to 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 15 
 
 light through the Gospel. We Christians have been 
 begotten again to a living hope by the resurrection of 
 Jesus Christ from the dead, to the hope of the eternal 
 life, to which in the beginning of it we have come, 
 being ours for ever ; to " an inheritance which is in- 
 corruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away." 
 Therefore when death comes to him, the Christian 
 knows that this is not the end, but only the entrance 
 upon a higher life for him which lies beyond. He 
 rejoices in Christ in his life here with a joy unspeak- 
 able and full of glory. He has a great hope sustain- 
 ing him in his death. And even in the thought of 
 the grave, through which Christ has passed into His 
 higher life, there is for him hope. 
 
 " Prisoner of hope thou art — look up and sing 
 
 In hope of promised spring. 
 As in the pit his father's darling lay 
 
 Beside the desert way, 
 And knew not liow, but knew his God would save 
 
 Even from that living grave ; 
 So, buried with our Lord, we'll close our eyes 
 
 To the decaying world, till angels bid us rise." 
 
II. 
 
 THEY THAT ARE SAVED BY CHRIST RISE INTO AN AFTER LIFE 
 AT CHRIST'S COMING — THAT IS, AT DEATH ; AND THEN 
 COMETH THE FINAL STATE OP THINGS TO THEM. 
 
 " But each in his own order : Christ the firstf ruits ; then they that 
 are Christ's, at His coming (Gr. presence). Then cometh the end, when 
 He shall deliver up the kingdom to God, even the Father ; when He 
 shall have abolished all rule and all authority and power. For He 
 must reign, till He hath put all His enemies under His feet. The last 
 enemy that shall be abolished is death. For, He put all things in sub- 
 jection under His feet. But when He saith, All things are put in 
 subjection, it is evident that He is excepted who did subject all things 
 unto Him. And when all things have been svibjected unto Him, then 
 shall the Son also Himself be subjected to Him that did subject all 
 things unto Him, that God may be all in all." — I CoK. xv. 23-28. 
 
 The Apostle has completed his argument for the 
 
 resurrection of the dead. He has shown, frona the 
 
 revelation of an after life which is in the resurrection 
 
 of Christ, that man rises out of death into an after 
 
 life ; that, out of death, all men shall be made alive. 
 
 And he goes on now to apply what has been said to 
 
 those Christians at Corinth, to whom specially he is 
 
 speaking in this discourse, and to Christians in general. 
 
 It is of the resurrection of the dead as it regards 
 
 " them that are Christ's," that is, those who have come 
 
 here to the salvation which is in Christ, that he speaks 
 
 immediately, although not ^Iways exclusively, in all 
 
 that remains of his discourse. 
 
 16 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 17 
 
 He has said, in the last clause of the preceding 
 verse, that out of death all men shall be made alive — 
 that is, shall appear again alive; and to this he adds 
 now, "But each in his own order." The expression 
 is not at first sight easily intelligible, but the meaning 
 is, we think, suggested by what follows ; and, as we 
 understand the expression, the meaning is that each 
 one is made alive, that is, appears again alive, in the 
 order or troop of men to which he belongs spiritually. 
 The Apostle is stating a general principle in regard 
 to the circumstances in which men rise out of death 
 into an after life. Men belong spiritually to different 
 orders, to different " troops " of men, of which " they 
 that are Christ's " form one ; and every man shall be 
 made alive, shall appear again alive, in the spiritual 
 world into which all pass at death, in the circum- 
 stances which belong to the order or troop of men in 
 which he is. The principle is stated simply to apply 
 it to " them that are Christ's," the only order or troop 
 of men of which he speaks to his readers : " Christ," 
 he says, " the firstfruits ; then they that are Christ's 
 at His coming." 
 
 The expression, " But each in his own order," is 
 sometimes explained in our day as if it meant that 
 men are raised from the dead in different orders or 
 troops, each troop being raised together, and each at 
 a different time. Then what follows is supposed to 
 speak of the different troops referred to. Christ Him- 
 self, we are told, forms the first troop. The second 
 troop, " they that are Christ's," are raised together at 
 His coming, which is supposed to be an event that 
 is to take place at the end of this world. And a 
 third troop is made out by asserting that the expres- 
 
 B 
 
i8 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 
 
 sion which follows, " Then cometh the end/' means the 
 resurrection of the rest of the dead, this being held 
 to be involved in the coming of Christ spoken of/ 
 
 This wonderful exposition, which is obviously set 
 forth to sustain a foregone conclusion, is surely, to say 
 the least of it, forced and unnatural, and gives a meaning 
 which no reader could possibly gather from the words. 
 
 The resurrection the Apostle is speaking of in the 
 passage is plainly that of individual men, " each one ; " 
 and what he says is that each one shall be made alive, 
 or appear again alive, " in his own order." This does 
 not at all necessarily imply, and it is not said here, 
 that each order of men rise from the dead together. 
 Then, Christ Himself, to all common sense, is not an 
 order of men, and it is not said here that He is. And 
 only one " order " of men, " they that are Christ's," is 
 here specifically spoken of. The thi7'd " order " of 
 men supposed to be indicated, " the rest of the dead," 
 is a purely imaginary indication. And there are pre- 
 vious objections to the exposition, which make it 
 entirely inadmissible. It is founded on the idea that 
 " the resurrection of the dead" means the resurrec- 
 tion of the dead body, which we have already shown 
 is not what is meant by the expression in this dis- 
 course, or anywhere else in the New Testament. It 
 assumes, again, that there are two resurrections of 
 men, each of them that of an order or troop of men 
 who are raised from the dead together ; which may or 
 may not be the meaning of what is said on the sub- 
 ject in the Book of Revelation, but is certainly not 
 said, or in any way implied, in what is said here. 
 And it takes for granted also that when it is said that 
 ^ See Dej^n Alford's Commentary on the passage. 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 19 
 
 " they that are Christ's " shall be made alive, or appear 
 again alive, '* at Christ's coming," the coming of Christ 
 spoken of is a coming of Christ which is to take place 
 at the end of this world ; which is very far from being 
 evident. 
 
 We understand the expression, " but each in his 
 own order," to mean that every man shall be made 
 alive, or appear again alive, in the circumstances be- 
 longing to the order or troop of men to which he 
 belongs spiritually. And that what is said in what 
 follows this is that ^' they that are Christ's " shall 
 appear again alive " at His coming." 
 
 The question we are to ask is, What is meant here 
 by Christ's coming ? And it is obvious to remark 
 that it is an expression which must have been intelli- 
 gible, and had a definite meaning to the Apostle's 
 readers, and to the early Christians in general, and 
 must refer to an event to which they looked forward ; 
 for otherwise the expression would not have been used 
 by the Apostle as it is here, without any explanation. 
 Most Christians with us put no definite meaning on 
 the expression at all. They have beforehand a vague 
 notion, simply gathered from the teaching of our day, 
 that Christ is to come to the earth at the end of this 
 world, and they are content to suppose that this is 
 what is here referred to. But whether this coming 
 of Christ to the earth at the end of this world be a 
 thing taught us in Scripture or no, is this at all the 
 idea of Christ's coming again to us which the New 
 Testament gives us ? It is natural for us to ask. What 
 was the origin of the expression ? and how does St. 
 Paul come to use it in connection with the rising out 
 of death of " them that are Christ's " ? 
 
20 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 
 
 Christ's coming again personally to His disciples is 
 only once spoken of by Him in the Gospels. It is 
 first spoken of by our Lord to His disciples in His last 
 discourse with them, which is recorded in the 14th 
 and two following chapters of the Gospel of St. John ; 
 in which discourse, just before He left the earth, He 
 speaks to them of His coming again and receiving 
 them to Himself, that where He is, there they may be 
 also ; and this is the only time He spoke to them on 
 the subject. In that last discourse of His to them, we 
 read in the 14th chapter of St. John, that He said 
 to His sorrowing disciples, by way of comforting them 
 regarding His departure from them, "I go to prepare 
 a place for you ; and if I go and prepare a place for 
 you, I come again, and will receive you unto myself, 
 that where I am, there ye may be also. And whither 
 I go ye know the way." To this promise, we appre- 
 hend, every after mention in the New Testament of the 
 coming again of Christ personally to His disciples, of 
 the manifestation of Christ, or of the appearing of 
 Christ, has reference. There is frequent mention in 
 the New Testament of the coming of Christ in His 
 kingdom, and many prophecies in regard to it; but 
 that is not a coming of Christ personally to men, 
 nor is there any personal coming of Christ spoken of 
 anywhere, except that spoken of in the promise here. 
 What is the meaning of this great promise ? 
 
 Of the promise every one, we suppose, at first sight, 
 takes the meaning to be that He would come again, 
 and receive His disciples to Himself — that is, to the 
 place which, by His presence there. He had prepared 
 for them when their life here ended — that is, when they 
 passed, as He was now about to do, into the life of 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 21 
 
 the future world. The language of the promise itself, 
 taken in connection with the circumstances in which 
 it was given, naturally suggests this meaning to us. 
 The coming again of Christ spoken of is plainly to 
 the disciples only, not to men in general. Then it is 
 spoken of to the disciples here plainly to comfort them 
 regarding His departure from them, which implies 
 surely that it was a promise which was soon to be 
 fulfilled. And it is a coming again to the disciples 
 at which He was to receive them to Himself, that 
 where He was they might be also; which implies 
 that it was to be fulfilled when they entered into the 
 place prepared for them in the future world. The 
 promise is not made in any connection whatever with 
 the end of this world, and it cannot possibly mean 
 His coming again to the earth. 
 
 This natural interpretation of the promise is con- 
 firmed by the references to it in the subsequent part 
 of the same discourse. 
 
 Thus, at the 28th verse of the same chapter, He 
 says to them, "Ye heard how I said to you, I go away, 
 and I come unto you," where the coming unto them is 
 plainly, as before, a coming to the disciples only, not 
 to others. And again, in the i6th chapter, at the 
 1 6th verse, He says to them, "A little while and ye 
 behold me no more ; and again a little while, and ye 
 shall see me ; " where the "beholding Him no more," and 
 the " seeing Him," are plainly spoken in regard to the 
 disciples only. It is implied again here more plainly 
 than before, or rather it is quite distinctly said, that 
 His coming again to them was near at hand. The 
 first " little while " mentioned is obviously the brief 
 time that now intervened before His death ; and another 
 
22 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 
 
 ^' little while " is spoken of as the time which should 
 thereafter intervene till they should again see Him. 
 In the verses, again, immediately following the passage 
 in which this is said, and in express explanation of 
 what He had said, to some of the disciples who did not 
 understand it. He says, at the 20th verse of the 1 6th 
 chapter, " Verily, verily, I say unto you, that ye shall 
 weep and lament, but the world shall rejoice : ye shall 
 be sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned into joy. 
 A woman when she is in travail hath sorrow, because 
 her hour is come ; but when she is delivered of the 
 child, she remembereth no more the anguish, for the 
 joy that a man is born into the world. And ye there- 
 fore now have sorrow ; but I will see you again, and 
 your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no one taketh 
 away from you." Where the joy of their seeing Him 
 again is plainly for the disciples only, not for men in 
 general, and is to come to them, after a brief interval, 
 in immediate connection with and to the taking away 
 of their present sorrow. It is implied throughout the 
 discourse, moreover, very plainly, that the disciples 
 were to follow Him, when they passed hence to the 
 place which He was going before to prepare for them : 
 just as He had said to Peter a little before, " Whither 
 I go, thou canst not follow me now ; but thou shalt 
 follow afterwards" (John xiii. 36). 
 
 This is the ^' coming (literally, ' presence ') of Christ," 
 it seems plain to us, which is spoken of in the passage 
 before us. It is spoken of also in very many other 
 passages in the Epistles of the Apostles, in the New 
 Testament. St. John, for instance, who was one of 
 those to whom the promise was originally spoken, and 
 who was Christ's most intimate companion throughout 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 23 
 
 all His ministry, says in his first Epistle, "And now, 
 my little children, abide in Him ; that, if He shall be 
 manifested, we may have boldness, and not be ashamed 
 before Him at His coming" (literally, presence), (i John 
 ii. 28). He says again in the same Epistle, "We 
 know that, if He shall be manifested, we shall be like 
 Him ; for we shall see Him even as He is " (i John 
 iii. 2). St. Peter, who was also one of those to whom 
 the promise was originally given, says in his first 
 Epistle, " That the proof of your faith, being more 
 precious than gold that perisheth though it is proved 
 by fire, might be found unto praise and glory and 
 honour at the revelation of Jesus Christ" (i Peter i. 
 7). And he exhorts the elders of the Church to a 
 diligent discharge of their duties, by saying to them, 
 " And when the Chief Shepherd shall be manifested, 
 ye shall receive the crown of glory that fadeth not 
 away " (i Peter v. 4). St. Paul, again, makes frequent 
 references to it. In what is supposed to be the very 
 earliest of his Epistles, the first Epistle to the Thessa- 
 lonians, he says of his readers at Thessalonica, that they 
 had " turned unto God from idols, to serve a living and 
 true God, and to wait for His Son from heaven, whom 
 He raised from the dead " (i Thess. i. 9). And in the 
 same Epistle he exhorts them not to sorrow concerning 
 them that fall asleep, " even as the rest who have no 
 hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose 
 again, even so them also that are fallen asleep in Jesus 
 will God bring with Him " (i Thess. iv. 14). 
 
 In this first Epistle to the Corinthians, when speak- 
 ing to them of the Lord's Supper, he says, " For as 
 often as ye eat this bread and drink this cup, ye pro- 
 claim the Lord's death till He come'' (i Cor. xi. 26). 
 
24 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 
 
 In the Epistle to the Colossians he says, " When Christ, 
 who is our life, shall be manifested, then shall ye 
 also with Him be manifested in glory " (Col. iii. 
 4). Again, in his Epistle to Titus, setting forth that 
 ^* the grace of God hath appeared, bringing salvation to 
 all men, instructing us, to the intent that, denying 
 ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly 
 and righteously and godly in this present world," he 
 adds, " Looking for the blessed hope and appearing of 
 the glory of our great God and Saviour (or of the 
 great God and our Saviour) Jesus Christ " (Titus ii. 1 3). 
 In his first Epistle to Timothy he says to him, " I charge 
 thee . . . that thou keep the commandment without 
 spot, without reproach, until the appearing of our Lord 
 Jesus Christ" (i Tim. vi. 13). And in the second 
 Epistle to Timothy, speaking of him self, he says, " Hence- 
 forth there is laid up for me the crown of righteous- 
 ness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give 
 to me at that day ; and not only to me, but also to all 
 them that have loved His appearing" (2 Tim. iv. 8). 
 
 In all these passages, it is plain, we apprehend, that 
 the coming, or manifestation, or appearing of Christ 
 of which the Apostles speak, is His coming again to 
 receive them to Himself, that they might be with Him 
 where He is, of which He had given His first disciples 
 the promise. And in these passages, as in the ori- 
 ginal promise, the coming again of Christ to those who 
 were His is spoken of not only as an event which was 
 soon to take place, but as an event which was to take 
 place to them when their life here ended, which was 
 to be the consummation and issue of their Christian 
 life here. It was an event accordingly which, in this 
 understanding of it, the early Christians, in their Chris- 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 25 
 
 tian life here, looked forward to, and waited for, and 
 sustained themselves by the prospect of. This coming 
 again, or appearing of Christ to His disciples, is in no 
 way connected, in any of these passages, with the end 
 of this world. On the contrary, it is spoken of very 
 plainly, in several of the passages, as an event which 
 lay before them at the end of their life here, and when 
 they should enter into the life of the future world. 
 When Timothy, for instance, is solemnly charged by 
 St. Paul to fight the good fight of faith, which he had 
 been commanded to do, " until the appearing of our 
 Lord Jesus Christ," it is, it would seem, very plainly 
 implied that the appearing of Christ spoken of was a 
 thing that was to take place to Timothy when his life 
 here ended. So, again, when it is said to the Corin- 
 thians regarding the Lord's Supper, " As often as ye 
 eat this bread, and drink the cup, ye proclaim the 
 Lord's death till He come," it would seem distinctly 
 implied and taught that the coming of Christ spoken 
 of was a thing that was to take place to them when 
 their life here ended. The language used would other- 
 wise be without meaning. And it is quite as certain, 
 we apprehend, in regard to the other passages we have 
 quoted, that the coming of Christ, or the manifesta- 
 tion of Christ, spoken of was a thing which was ex- 
 pected by the disciples to take place to them at the 
 end of their life here. It is plainly contained in the 
 passages we have quoted, that it was in this sense 
 that Christ's original promise was understood by the 
 Apostles, and in this sense that His coming again to 
 them is everywhere spoken of by them to the early 
 Church.1 
 
 ^ See Appendix, On the Second Coming of Christ. 
 
26 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 
 
 It is to be carefully observed that Scripture every- 
 where recognig'es and leads us to think, in regard to 
 those who died in the past, that they are living now, 
 and that they have simply passed through death into 
 the after life ; not that they will begin to live again at 
 some future time ; and this in regard to men in every 
 past age. Enoch in very early times, and Elijah later, 
 were translated without seeing death. We must needs 
 believe, therefore, that they simply continued to live, 
 and that they are now living, only in a higher .state 
 of human life than our present one. Their earthly 
 bodies, it would seem, were simply transfigured into 
 that body of glory in which Elijah on the Mount of 
 the Transfiguration appeared visibly to three of the 
 disciples of Christ. Moses, again, who died here as 
 other men do, appeared along with Elijah "in glory" 
 on the same great occasion. They both appeared in 
 glory talking with Jesus, and were seen by the dis- 
 ciples when the eyes of the disciples were super- 
 naturally opened to see them. Our Lord also speaks 
 expressly of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob as still 
 living, and of all men who have died as still living. 
 He quotes a passage of Scripture in which Moses calls 
 God the God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob, 
 and adds in regard to it, that God is not a God of the 
 dead, but of the living ; for all men. He says, are living 
 to Him — that is, as things are seen by Him. And this 
 is the proof, moreover, which He gives the Sadducees, 
 to whom He is speaking, that according to the teach- 
 ing of Moses the dead are raised out of death. 
 
 And St. Paul himself, again, who wrote this dis- 
 course, certainly expected to see Christ and to be with 
 Him immediately after death. He tells the Philippians 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 27 
 
 that he has "the desire to depart and to be with 
 Christ ; for," he says, " it is very far better " (Phil. i. 
 23.) And says to the Corinthians in his second 
 Epistle, expressly in his apprehension of what death 
 would bring to him and to the disciples of Christ, that 
 to be '' absent from the body" is to be " at home with 
 the Lord " (2 Cor. v. 6). " Knowing," he says, " that 
 whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from 
 the Lord (for we walk by faith, not by sight) : we are 
 of good courage, and are willing rather to be absent 
 from the body, and to be at home with the Lord." 
 
 The "coming again," the "manifestation," or the 
 " appearing," of Christ to us means simply that He is 
 now in heaven, in that place in His Father's house to 
 which He went when He left the earth, to prepare it 
 for us, by His presence in it ; and that we, when we 
 pass hence, shall enter into the place in the spiritual 
 world where He is. They that are Christ's, the 
 Apostle tells us here, shall be "made alive," that is, 
 shall appear again alive, " at His coming." 
 
 He goes on to speak of the final state of things 
 to us which then comes to us. " Then," he says, 
 " Cometh the end." Not the end of this world, of 
 which nothing has been said, but simply the end to 
 us which things here are to bring to us, or the final 
 state of things to us. This end or final state of things 
 which things here are to bring to us, is the end in 
 this sense, the Apostle explains, that then all that 
 Christ was to do for men, as the Saviour of the world, 
 shall, in regard to us, have been accomplished. 
 
 It is, to them that are Christ's, the end of things 
 here ; "' when He shall deliver up the kingdom" over 
 them " to God, even the Father ; when He shall have 
 
28 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 
 
 abolished all rule and all authority and power ; " that 
 is, all rule and all authority and power over them, 
 other than that of God. " For He must reign till He 
 hath put all His enemies under His feet. The last 
 enemy that shall be abolished is death." " For," says 
 the Apostle, quoting the 8th Psalm, as the author of 
 the Epistle to the Hebrews also does, as having its 
 fulfilment in Christ, " He," that is, God, " put all 
 things in subjection under His feet. But when he 
 saith. All things are put in subjection, it is evident 
 that He is excepted who did subject all things unto 
 Him. And when all things have been subjected unto 
 Him, then shall the Son also Himself be subjected to 
 Him that did subject all things unto Him, that God 
 may be all in all." 
 
 The last sentence expresses the characteristic of the 
 final state of things with us. When Christ shall have 
 abolished death, in regard to us, by raising us up out 
 of death into that after life in which we are with 
 Christ, His destruction of the works of the devil here 
 will, as regards us, be complete, and His work of sal- 
 vation, as it regards us, will be fully accomplished. 
 His kingdom over us here will therefore now be deli- 
 vered up to God, that is, to the Father, because the 
 purpose of it has been fully accomplished. 
 
 It is not implied, in what the Apostle thus teaches 
 us, that when we have gone to be where He now is, 
 Christ will cease to rule over us. Doubtless Christ 
 continues there, in subordination to the Father, to rule 
 over us. Where God reigns Christ must reign. God 
 reigns there as He reigns everywhere, through Christ, 
 who is the expression of God. Only Christ's work in 
 the kingdom over men given Him here has been 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 29 
 
 accomplished, and therefore God is now all in all. The 
 kingdom of God here has come to us in its glory. 
 
 If we have rightly apprehended the teaching of this 
 part of the Apostle's discourse, there are two things 
 taught us in it : First, that " they that are Christ's," 
 they that are saved by Christ, rise into the after life at 
 His coming, that is, at death ; and secondly, that then 
 cometh the final state of things to us, the perfected 
 state of our life which shall be for ever. The text, 
 therefore, sets before us, if we are living Christians, a 
 prospect of infinite greatness ; and it is to be specially 
 impressed on us as a prospect that is very near to us, a 
 prospect which, in regard to us individually, will very 
 soon be fulfilled. It is the prospect which especially 
 casts a glory over the Christian life in us here, irra- 
 diating it with the rainbow of hope — with the living 
 hope to which we have been begotten again by the 
 resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. This pro- 
 spect which they had before them is, we apprehend 
 what accounts for the extraordinary state of mind of 
 the early Christians, in which, living their daily lives 
 in a continual waiting for Christ's coming again to 
 them, they were raised into an indifference to all 
 earthly possessions, and into an indifierence also to 
 the sufferings which their Christianity brought to them. 
 And there is no reason, although sobriety of mind is 
 always befitting in us, why in a right mind, a right 
 spirit of life in us, the prospect should be less engross- 
 ing or less elevating to us. 
 
 The greatness of the prospect, and especially the 
 nearness of it, should make us sit loose to things here, 
 that are merely of this world ; to earthly possessions, 
 and to the earthly sufferings which a Christian life 
 
30 THE RJESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 
 
 here brings to us. When a brief time has passed, we 
 know not how brief it may be, if we are indeed the 
 children of Christ's kingdom here, we shall be with 
 Christ, and in the kingdom of God in the glory of it. 
 The prospect should especially impress on us the duty 
 of living our life here, day by day, as the children of 
 light and of the day. The lesson it reads to us is 
 that which this same Apostle elsewhere expresses, that 
 we should live in the love to men to which in Christ 
 we are called, as " knowing the season, that now it is 
 high time for us to awake out of sleep : for now is our 
 salvation nearer than when we first believed. The 
 night is far spent, and the day is at hand " (Rom. 
 xiii. 1 1). Ifc is for us therefore to " cast off the works 
 of darkness, and to put on the armour of light." It 
 befitteth us to " walk honestly, as in the day ; " 
 " putting on the Lord Jesus Christ." It is true 
 indeed of every Christian who has the spirit of Christ 
 in him, and is walking in that spirit, that, in the 
 spiritual condition to which by God's grace he has 
 come, God has made him meet for the inheritance of 
 the saints in light. But it is also true that the 
 measure of our fitness for entering into the everlasting 
 kingdom which is so near to us is the measure just in 
 which we are walking in the spirit which we have 
 received, in the trial of our faith to which in our daily 
 life here we are put. And therefore it is good for us, 
 in all our daily life here, to live under the power of 
 the prospect that lies before us. In the language of 
 our Lord's parable, the Lord whom we serve, going 
 into another country, has delivered to us His goods, to 
 each according to his several ability, that we may gain 
 by trading with them. He will return to us at a time 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 31 
 
 when we think not ; and when He comes He will 
 reward us according to our faithfulness in using His 
 goods intrusted to us, according to the profit spiritually 
 which we have thereby made. Our place in the ever- 
 lasting kingdom will depend on our faithfulness to 
 Him in the trial to which in our life here we have 
 been put. It befits us, therefore, to realise the un- 
 certainty of the time of His coming, and to be pre- 
 •pared for His coming by being at all times faithful to 
 Him in the work which He has given us to do. 
 
 Let me observe fiually, that in a right spirit of life 
 in us, the great prospect which is so near to us should 
 be to us a prospect of joy, and that there is no limit 
 to the joy which it may naturally and properly give us. 
 
 It is related by a great preacher of our own day of 
 a clergyman of the Church of England, that when his 
 death approached, he was in such ecstatic joy at the 
 thought of entering into the life of God's kingdom in 
 its glory, that the physician declared that, in the state 
 of mind in which he was, he could not die. 
 
 Such extravagant joy in the great prospect before 
 us, however natural it may be at any time, is as 
 undesirable as it is rare. We should at all times be 
 sober-minded. But joy in that prospect, in the more 
 moderate form in which St. Paul expressed it, is 
 certainly a state of mind which is desirable, as well as 
 natural and befitting in us; the state of mind in 
 which we can say, '^ 1 have the desire to depart and be 
 with Christ; for it is very far better" (Phil. i. 23); 
 " to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain " (ver. 21). 
 
 And our joy m the great prospect before us, along 
 with the sense of duty which belongs to our high 
 calling in Christ, should incite us to " walk worthily 
 
32 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 
 
 of God, who calleth us into His own kingdom and 
 glory" (i Thess. ii. 12). It should incite us to be 
 occupied in Christ's service in our daily life, as they 
 that wait for the coming of their Lord. 
 
 Like the wise virgins in the parable, who had gone 
 forth to meet the Bridegroom, and were waiting for His 
 coming, we should be waiting with our lamps trimmed 
 and our lights burning, that when He comes, come 
 when He may, we may be ready to go in with Him to 
 the marriage. 
 
 " Thy precious time misspent redeem : 
 Each present day thy last esteem : 
 Improve thy talent with due care : 
 For the great day thyself prepare." 
 
III. 
 
 THE RESURRECTION OP THE DEAD A CHRISTIAN TRUTH 
 RECOGNISED BY THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH, AND THAT BY 
 WHICH THE APOSTLES IN THEIR WORK, AND CHRISTIANS 
 IN THEIR CHRISTIAN LIFE, WERE SUSTAINED — THE CAUSE 
 OP THE UNBELIEF OP IT OF SOME OP THE PRIMITIVE 
 CHRISTIANS, AND THE REMEDY FOR THEIR UNBELIEF. 
 
 ' ' Else what shall they do which are baptized for the dead ? If the 
 dead are not raised at all, why then are they baptized for them ? 
 Why do we also stand in jeopardy every hour ? I protest by that 
 glorying in you, brethren, which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord, I 
 die daily. If after the manner of men I fought with beasts at Ephesus, 
 what doth it profit me ? If the dead are not raised, let us eat and 
 drink, for to-morrow we die. Be not deceived : Evil company doth 
 corrupt good manners. Awake up righteously, and sin not ; for some 
 have no knowledge of God : I speak this to move you to shame."— 
 I Cor. XV. 29-34. 
 
 The Apostle has set forth to the Christians at Corinth 
 who did not believe in a future life that the resurrec- 
 tion of all men out of death was revealed to us in the 
 resurrection of Christ, in which, as Christians, they 
 believed ; and has taught them, moreover, that men 
 appear again alive in the spiritual world into which 
 we pass at death, each one in his own order or troop, I 
 and they that are Christ's at His coming the great 
 prospect in the future to which they have been taught 
 to look forward. 
 
34 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 
 
 But the resurrection of the dead was a Christian 
 truth, recognised as such by the Christian Church, 
 and a truth by which specially their Christian life was 
 sustained. It is natural, therefore, now that he has 
 completed his argument on the subject, that he should 
 speak to them of the resurrection of the dead, and of 
 a future life for men, as a fundamental and recognised 
 Christian truth which no rightly instructed Christian 
 could disbelieve ; and that he should warn them of 
 the self-deception to which they were giving them- 
 selves up, and their shortcoming of what in their 
 right mind it befitted them to have attained to, in 
 their unbelief in it. This is what the Apostle here 
 does. 
 
 That the resurrection of the dead was a Christian 
 truth, a truth belonging to the Christian revelation, 
 which 'was recognised as such by the Christian Church, 
 was implied, he asks them to observe, in a practice of 
 a particular kind which existed in the Church. " Else," 
 he says, " what shall they do " — what is the meaning 
 of what they do — " which are baptized for the dead ? 
 If the dead are not raised at all, why then are they 
 baptized for them ? " The practice of which the 
 Apostle speaks seems a strange thing to us. The 
 mention of it is a thing which stumbles us in reading 
 the discourse. For we have no knowledge otherwise 
 of this baptism for the dead, what it was, or how it 
 came to be practised in the Apostolic Church. This 
 is the only mention of it in the New Testament ; and 
 there is no reference, as far as we know, in the early 
 Christian literature to such a practice as having 
 existed in the Apostolic Church. The mention of it 
 here, however, is perfectly distinct ; and in the face 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 35 
 
 of this passage it is, we think, impossible to doubt 
 that such a practice, whatever the purpose of it was 
 and however it originated, did at this time exist in the 
 primitive Church. We cannot explain the existence 
 of it from any positive knowledge of what it was, and 
 can add nothing to the mention of it here made. 
 A practice of the kind, however, is spoken of as 
 having existed in the second and third centuries 
 among certain Christian sects of the time, of which 
 the meaning is explained. When a heathen who was 
 under Christian instruction, and was about to be bap- 
 tized, died suddenly before his baptism could take 
 place, they were in use, it would seem, to admit the 
 dead person formally into the Church by baptism, a 
 living Christian receiving the baptism in name of 
 the dead. And it would seem to be the only possible 
 explanation of the passage before us that a similar 
 practice, or a practice in substance the same as this, 
 existed also in the Apostolic Church. It is, from the 
 nature of the case, a practice that would only be 
 used on rare occasions, but it is in no way incredible, 
 it seems to us, that such a practice should have 
 existed. It is not necessarily implied that the dead 
 person was supposed to be in any way benefited by 
 the baptism. In that case, it would be an abject 
 superstition, which it is impossible to believe could 
 be countenanced by the Apostles. It might be used 
 simply to mark the dead person as one who was 
 really within the Christian Church, and whom they 
 recognised as a Christian. In the wide prevalence of 
 the Christian Church now, such a practice seems 
 strange to us ; and if it were adopted in our day 
 by the teachers of Christianity in a heathen country 
 
36 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 
 
 it would probably be thought by us an absurd thing. 
 But it is not obvious that in that day, to the Christian 
 feeling of the time, there was anything absurd in it, 
 or that in the early Church the practice might not 
 very naturally exist. But whatever may have been 
 the justification of this baptism for the dead in the 
 primitive Church, the only thing here stated is the 
 fact of the existence of the practice. And the Apostle's 
 argument, it would seem, is, that the existence of the 
 practice showed that, among Christians in general, it 
 was recognised as a certain truth that those who 
 had died had also been raised out of death and 
 were still living ; otherwise there was no meaning 
 in their being baptized for the dead. If the dead 
 are not raised at all, why then are they baptized for 
 them ? 
 
 We are not perhaps bound to believe, on that 
 account simply, everything that the Church in general 
 believes. The Apostle does not say that we are ; 
 but if we cleave still, as the disciples here addressed 
 did, to a notion we had in our ignorance of Chris- 
 tianity, which is opposed to all Christian teaching 
 and all recognised Christian belief, we are bound to 
 face the fact that it is in opposition to what the 
 Church in general believes to be contained in the 
 revelation of the Gospel, and bound therefore to con- 
 sider carefully the grounds on which, in the matter, 
 the belief of the Church rests. 
 
 The Apostle addresses this strong remonstrance to 
 them in the name of the Church of Christ, and he 
 adds another for himself. The work in which he was 
 occupied, and the sufferings he endured as an Apostle 
 of Christ, were altogether without object if the dead 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 37 
 
 are not raised. '' Why do we also stand in jeopardy 
 every hour ? I protest by that glorying in you, 
 brethren, which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord, I 
 die daily. If, after the manner of men I fought with 
 beasts at Ephesus, what doth it profit me ? If the 
 dead are not raised, let us eat and drink, for to-morrow 
 we die." 
 
 He, in his preaching of Christ, was every hour in 
 danger of death. He protests to them, by the glory- 
 ing in them which he had in Christ, that he died 
 daily. Why did he do so, if men are not raised out 
 of death ? If, after the manner of the time, he had 
 fought with beasts at Ephesus — referring apparently 
 to the tumult at Ephesus described in the 19th 
 chapter of Acts — what was he profited by this conflict 
 with the men of the time ? If the dead are not 
 raised, it would be better to follow the maxim of their 
 heathen poet', and to live only for present enjoyment 
 in life. " If the dead are not raised, let us eat and 
 drink, for to-morrow we die." 
 
 Having made these remonstrances with them re- 
 garding the fundamental Christian truth which they 
 denied, the Apostle follows up the argument of his 
 discourse by setting forth to those whom he addresses 
 the cause of their unbelief, and teaching them the 
 remedy for it. 
 
 First, he sets forth to them the cause of their un- 
 belief. They were deceived, he tells them, by the 
 influence on them of the heathen world in which they 
 lived, quoting to them, in saying so, a saying of one 
 of their own heathen poets : " Be not deceived ; evil 
 company doth corrupt good manners." 
 
 They were deceived by the influence on them of 
 
38 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 
 
 the heathen world around them. A future life is 
 revealed to us in the resurrection of Christ, and made 
 certain to us thereby, and the fact that there is a 
 future life for men is what gives meaning to the great 
 hope of the Christian, to the promise which Christ 
 left to His disciples that He would come again and 
 receive them to Himself, in the place to which He was 
 going, that they might be where He was. The doc- 
 trine of a future life is of the essence of Christianity, 
 and must needs be believed in by every one who was 
 intelligently a Christian. But the state of feeling in 
 the heathen world of the day was against the belief of 
 the doctrine. It was not easy for an educated and 
 intelligent disciple of Christ to rise at once above the 
 state of feeling in regard to a future life in which 
 he had been brought up, and which was in all men 
 around them; and the Christians at Corinth here 
 addressed, in the spiritual condition in which they 
 were, had not yet done so. Mingling in the Greek 
 world of the day in their daily life, the world whose 
 sentiments were expressed in the literature of the 
 time, and in the habits of feeling of all the educated 
 class, imbued from their childhood with its sentiments 
 and feelings, and not yet enlightened as they should 
 be by their faith in Christ, the evil influence in this 
 respect of the society in which they lived was still 
 upon them. This was the reason of their unbelief. 
 They were deceived by the influence upon them of the 
 heathen world in which they lived. It was not neces- 
 sary that it should be so with Christians in the circum- 
 stances of those here addressed. If they had come, 
 through their faith in Christ, to have the spirit of life 
 in them to which in Christ they were called, and were 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 39 
 
 living their life here in that spirit, then it was natural, 
 and indeed inevitable, with this life in them, that, 
 in the light which the gospel of Christ brought to 
 them, a life beyond death should be realised by them, 
 and that they should be raised into the expectation of 
 it. They might have had " life and immortality " at 
 once ^' brought to light " to them, and might have 
 been raised at once above the evil influence of the 
 world around them. And so it was with many Chris- 
 tians in the circumstances of those here addressed. 
 But it was not easy to rise above the influence in this 
 matter of the world around them ; and in the first 
 steps of their Christian life, while they were as yet not 
 fully enlightened by their faith, there was danger of 
 Christians not rising above the feeling of the cultured 
 society of the time. The Christians at Corinth, to 
 whom this discourse is addressed, in the spiritual 
 condition in which they were, were still in regard to 
 a future life under the influence of the world around 
 them, and had not escaped from the unbelief on the 
 subject of the society in which they mingled. They 
 were deceived by the evil influence on them of the 
 heathen world around them. 
 
 The Apostle sets forth, secondly, the remedy for 
 their unbelief. The remedy which he suggests is a 
 spiritual one — their awaking spiritually, and putting 
 on the life in righteousness to which in Christ they 
 were called : " Awake up righteously, and sin not ; 
 for some have no knowledge of God : I speak this to 
 move you to shame." 
 
 " Awake up righteously, and sin not " — that is, 
 awake to the life in righteousness to which Christ 
 has called you, and put sin away from you. This 
 
40 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 
 
 was the remedy for their unbelief in a future life. 
 " For some," he acids, " have no knowledge of God " — 
 that is, some Christians have not come to the true 
 knowledge of God which is given to us in Christ, the 
 knowledge of God out of which it is that life in 
 righteousness is put within us. He spoke this, he 
 says, to move them to shame. 
 
 The life in them to which they were redeemed in 
 Christ — the life which is in the righteousness of God, 
 and in which we put sin away from us — the life which 
 comes to us out of the knowledge of God which is in 
 Christ — this was the remedy for their unbelief. When 
 they awoke spiritually, and had this, the life to which 
 they were called, in them, then, in the light of the 
 Gospel of Christ, they would realise a life for men 
 beyond death. Then the idea that human life ends 
 in death would be incredible to them. Then, in the 
 eternal life to which they had come, they would have 
 the sense of immortality awakened in them, and would 
 instinctively rise into the apprehension, and into the 
 joyful expectation, of a life for us beyond death which 
 Christ has brought to light to us. This does not 
 invalidate the external evidence for a future life which 
 is in the revelation of it in the resurrection of Christ, 
 or lessen the importance, for us of that revelation. A 
 future life must be revealed to us before the fact of it 
 can, in any distinct way, be realised by us ; and the 
 argument for a future life, which is in the revelation 
 of it in the resurrection of Christ to every one who 
 believes in His resurrection, is quite unanswerable. 
 But we do not therefore realise the fact of it; and 
 the life in the righteousness of God, the eternal life 
 which Christ gives us, when we have come to have 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 41 
 
 it in us, is what enables the Christian to realise a 
 future life. The eternal life in us has its witness in 
 itself, and makes unbelief in a future life impossible 
 to us. 
 
 It is this life in righteousness in us, this eternal 
 life which Christ gives us, and only this still, that 
 raises any of us into the realisation of a future life. 
 Nobody now-a-days in the Christian Church, and 
 hardly anybody in Christian lands beyond it, denies 
 the resurrection of the dead, says that there is no 
 resurrection of men out of death. Nobody, that is, 
 disbelieves in a future life. We believe in it because 
 we are Christians, and because the doctrine of a future 
 life is in our day universally received among Christians 
 forms a part of our ancestral faith. Perhaps many, 
 or most of us, could not very distinctly tell on what 
 grounds our belief in it rests, but we quite believe in 
 it. The fact is, that the resurrection of Christ has 
 impressed this truth on the mind of the Christian 
 Church, and made it with us, as it were, one of the 
 first principles of Christianity. It has transferred it( 
 with us from the region of speculation, in which it I 
 was in the old heathen world, to the region of ascer- , 
 tained truth. And we believe in it easily very much 
 because all men with us believe in it. But we do not 
 most of us for ourselves realise a future life ; and the 
 reason is that we have not, most of us, consciously 
 risen, through our faith in Christ, or that to which we 
 give the name of faith in Christ, into the life in the 
 righteousness of God in which we put sin away from 
 us, into the eternal life to which in Christ we are 
 called, which has in it an inward premonition of the 
 life to come. 
 
42 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 
 
 Live your life as the heathen of old for the most 
 part did, and as very many Christians so called still do, 
 apart from the knowledge of God which has come to 
 you, and therefore in habitual forgetfulness of God, 
 occupied only with the outward things of this life, and 
 intent only on earthly possessions or earthly enjoy- 
 ments ; the merely animal nature in you fully alive, 
 perhaps the mental or intellectual nature in you also 
 alive, but the spiritual nature, in which we are capable 
 of apprehending God, dead or asleep in you, and the 
 future life, even when you believe in it, will be to you 
 nothing more than a dream, as to the heathen of old 
 at best it was. You may not disbelieve in its existence, 
 as the heathen of St. Paul's day did, but it will be to 
 you, in your daily life, very much as if it did not 
 exist. " Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from 
 the dead," that Christ may give you light. Live your 
 life in the light of the knowledge of God, which is in 
 Christ, and therefore in the Spirit which Christ gives 
 us through our faith in Him. Let the life which you 
 now live in the flesh be a life which you live by the 
 faith of the Son of God, and therefore the life in the 
 heavenly righteousness, in which we put sin away from 
 us, to which Christ has called us. Let this life, which 
 is in its very nature the eternal life, be the life to 
 which you have come, and that there is not a life 
 after death will be to you a thing incredible. You 
 will at all times realise the future life which has been 
 revealed to us, and will instinctively rise into the 
 apprehension of it, having in you an inward assurance 
 that this life to which you have come will never die in 
 you. You will have in you, day by day, in the light 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 43 
 
 of Christ's promise to His first disciples, the apprehen- 
 sion, the expectation, the constant assurance of a 
 blessed life beyond death ; and when you die, you 
 will die in the sure and certain hope of a resurrection 
 into that life. 
 
IV. 
 
 THE BODY IN WHICH WE ARE MADE ALIVE OUT OF DEATH. 
 
 " But some one will say, How are the dead raised ? and with what 
 manner of body do they come ? Thou foolish one, that which thou 
 thyself sowest is not quickened, except it die : and that which thou 
 sowest, thou sowest not the body that shall be, but a bare grain, it 
 may chance of wheat, or of some other kind ; but God giveth it a body 
 even as it pleased Him, and to each seed a body of its own. All flesh 
 is not the same flesh : but there is one flesh of men, and another flesh 
 of beasts, and another flesh of birds, and another of fishes. There are 
 also celestial bodies, and bodies terrestrial : but the glory of the celestial 
 is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is another. There is one glory 
 of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the 
 stars ; for one star differeth from another star in glory. So also is the 
 resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption ; it is raised in 
 incorruption : it is sown in dishonour ; it is raised in glory : it is sown 
 in weakness ; it is raised in power : it is sown a natural body ; it is 
 raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a 
 spiritual (body). So also it is written, The first Adam became a living 
 soul. The last Adam (became) a life-giving spirit. Howbeit that is 
 not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural ; then that which 
 is spiritual. The first man is of the earth, earthy : the second man is 
 of heaven. As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy : and 
 as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly. And as we 
 have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the 
 heavenly." — i Cor. xv. 35-49. 
 
 It is difficult for us to enter into the state of mind of 
 Christians who did not believe in a future life, and 
 difficult therefore to understand the effect which the 
 preceding discourse might be expected to produce on 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 45 
 
 them. But we can perhaps to some extent under- 
 stand the state of mind it would create in them. It 
 is sometimes said that an argument very rarely con- 
 vinces any one to whom it is addressed ; and this is 
 true to this extent at least, that where those to whom 
 the argument is addressed have had before an entirely 
 opposite view on the subject, it rarely convinces any 
 one at once. We are disposed to muster up the diffi- 
 culties which the new view on the subject suggests to 
 us, even when we are convinced that there is much in 
 what has been said before we give in our adherence 
 to the view of it that is j^resented to us. And we are 
 disposed, in all probability, even when the new view 
 on the subject seems the true one, to insist on the 
 difficulties to us in it being first explained to us — a 
 thing which, on some subjects, even to one who has 
 the most profound belief in what he teaches, is not 
 always easy. The Apostle, therefore, doubtless rightly 
 interprets the state of mind of his readers hei*e, and 
 even of those whom his discourse most impressed, when 
 he says, " But some one will say, How are the dead 
 raised ? and with what manner of body do they 
 come ? " 
 
 The two questions which he anticipates .they would 
 desire to ask are questions, both of them, which, after 
 reading the preceding discourse, would naturally 
 suggest themselves to Christians who had not before 
 received the idea of a future life, difficulties to them 
 in conceiving the idea of a future life which they 
 would desire to have explained to them. They are 
 both of them questions which, to the Apostle's readers, 
 or even to men in general, it might well seem impos- 
 sible to answer. The Apostle, however, does not 
 
46 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 
 
 shrink from answering them. He takes up the second 
 question as the more important of the two ; first, 
 " With what manner of body do they come ? " And 
 the answer he gives is contained in the verses we have 
 read. It is a question of great natural interest to us ; 
 and if the question can be answered in regard to the 
 rising out of death of those who are saved by Christ, 
 which is what the Apostle is here speaking of, the 
 answer to it cannot but contain a great revelation to 
 us regarding our after life. The answer which the 
 Apostle gives to the question is in itself in the utmost 
 degree interesting and impressive. It is given with 
 great distinctness; and as the only teaching on the 
 subject in the New Testament, and a very wonderful 
 teaching in itself" it is well worthy of our most 
 thoughtful reflection. 
 
 It is to be observed at the outset, what is plainly 
 contained in the question, that, in the way of thinking 
 of human life of the Christians of the time, both of 
 the Apostle's readers and of himself, if men live after 
 death they must live in a body. His readers have 
 plainly the idea, which the Apostle does not in any 
 way discountenance, that a body is a thing necessarily 
 belonging to human life. They cannot think of 
 human life except as life in a body. We sometimes 
 hear people speak, and we read in books, of disem- 
 bodied spirits, as if men lived after death without 
 bodies ; and what is called the disembodied state is 
 spoken of by many in our day as the state of life 
 for men that comes after death. People fancy they 
 can conceive of such a state of life with men, or at 
 least that it really exists. But this idea of a disem- 
 bodied state, we apprehend, is simply an imagination 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 47 
 
 of theologians ; an idea to which they have been led 
 by the notion that the resurrection of the dead means 
 the resurrection of the body laid in the grave, and the 
 notion added to this that the resurrection of the dead 
 is not to take place till the end of this world. This 
 implies, of course, a lengthened interval betwixt death 
 and the resurrection, during which it is thought, if 
 men live consciously at all, they must needs live in a 
 disembodied state. The New Testament nowhere 
 suggests the possibility, and certainly nowhere speaks 
 of men living in a disembodied state. Whether such 
 a state of life is a possible thing for a man we perhaps 
 cannot tell. But it is not a conception of human life 
 which we naturally have, or a form of life for men 
 of which the New Testament anywhere suggests the 
 possibility. To human life, a body, answering to that 
 which we have now, by which we hold communication 
 with the outward world, and with other men around 
 us, naturally belongs, and is, it would seem, altogether 
 necessary. 
 
 It is to be observed also that the question which the 
 Apostle supposes his readers to ask is not founded on 
 the idea that the resurrection of the dead is the 
 resurrection of the dead body, but on the idea that it 
 is simply a resurrection of men out of death into an 
 after life. It is a question of incredulity, suggested 
 by those who could not conceive with what manner of 
 body we rise out of death, when the body we have here 
 is left to decay in the grave. 
 
 The Apostle, therefore, begins his answer to the 
 question by setting forth to them that our rising out 
 of death in another and a new body, of quite a different 
 character from the present, is in no way incredible. 
 
48 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 
 
 He tells thera that, on the contrary, this is only in 
 accordance with what was exhibited to them year by 
 year in the natural world that is with us here. 
 " Thou foolish one," he says to the objector, " that 
 which thou thyself sowest is not quickened" — does 
 not rise into its new life — " except it die : and that 
 which thou sowest, thou sowest not the body that shall 
 be, but a bare grain, it may chance of wheat, or of some 
 other kind ; but God giveth it a body even as it pleased 
 Him, and to each seed a body of its own." This is an 
 example, taken from the natural world here, of what 
 occurs with us year by year. The seed you sow in the 
 ground does not rise in its new form of life except it 
 die — that is, except its body, the Husk in which, it is 
 invested, die. And in sowing the seed, you do not 
 sow the body that shall be, but a bare grain : but Grod 
 gives it a body, which He has provided for its taking, 
 and gives to each of the individual seeds a body of its 
 own. It is an illustration from the natural world 
 around us that our rising out of death in another and 
 a new body is in no way incredible, but, on the 
 contrary, is according to the analogy of nature in our 
 present life. 
 
 He sets forth further, by another illustration from 
 the natural world with us here, the possibility of the 
 body in which we rise out of death, although it be 
 made of matter, being of quite a different character 
 from that we have here. " All flesh " — the matter of 
 which bodies here are composed — " is," he says, '• not 
 the same flesh : but there is one flesh of men, an^ 
 another flesh of beasts, and another flesh of birds, and 
 another of fishes." That the body of our after life, 
 therefore, although made of matter, as all bodies are, 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 49 
 
 should be of a different character, because made of 
 matter of a different kind from the body we have here, 
 is only according to the analogy of nature here. And 
 to this he adds, " There are also celestial bodies and 
 bodies terrestrial ; but the glory of the celestial is one, 
 and the glory of the terrestrial is another." There may, 
 therefore, be a much wider difference than that of one 
 kind of flesh from another in this world, and a difference 
 of which we cannot form the conception. In illustra- 
 tion of the greatness of the difference, he points us to 
 the celestial glory, different in each individual case, of 
 the objects in the material heavens with us. " There is 
 one glory," he say, " of the sun, and another glory of 
 the moon, and another glory of the stars ; for one star 
 differeth from another star in glory." And then he 
 adds, " So also " — in accordance with the wide differ- 
 ence of the celestial from the terrestrial — '' is the 
 resurrection of the dead." And he proceeds to set 
 forth to them the characteristics of the heavenly body 
 as contrasted with those of the earthly. 
 
 In regard to the passage which follows, it is to be 
 observed first, that the Apostle does not seek to give 
 us a positive conception of the body which belongs 
 to our after life. It can be spoken of to us, it would 
 seem, only in so far as its characteristics, as being 
 a celestial thing, can be contrasted with those of the 
 body which we have here. He speaks of it simply 
 in its contrast with the body we have here. It is 
 the body belonging to the heavenly state of our life, 
 and it is impossible for us to form a positive con- 
 ception of it, because, in our present state of life 
 we are unable to form the conception of the things 
 of heaven. Even those who have been in heaven, as 
 
 D 
 
50 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 
 
 St. Paul had been, and who have had their minds 
 opened spiritually to apprehend the things that are 
 there, cannot convey the apprehension of them which 
 has been given to them to us. It is an apprehension 
 which cannot be uttered in human language. He 
 sets forth simply certain characteristics of the heavenly 
 body by speaking of it in contrast with the body 
 which we have here. But it is to be observed also, 
 that what he sets forth regarding the heavenly body 
 he states in a positive form, wishing us, it would seem, 
 to understand that it is a knowledge regarding the 
 body of glory which belonged to him personally. It 
 is a knowledge, it seems to us, which he could not 
 have reached except by having actually been in the 
 heavenly world, as we know he was on that great 
 occasion when he was '' caught up into Paradise." 
 But however the knowledge was attained by him, 
 the passage, from its extraordinary character, is one 
 which deserves the most careful reflection from us. 
 Every word in it, it is obvious, is carefully selected, 
 and every clause, however little we can fully apprehend 
 its meaning, has plainly a world of meaning in it. 
 It sets forth to us certain characteristics of the body 
 in which we rise out of death, as contrasted with that 
 we have here, which enable us at least to realise with 
 some intelligence how extremely different it is from 
 the body we have here. 
 
 First, it is an incorruptible body. 
 
 Our life is sown here in corruption. The body in 
 which it is expressed is a corruptible body, which is 
 subject to decay and to dissolution, which can subsist 
 only for a limited time, and which after a time must 
 needs be dissolved in death, and resolved into its original 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 51 
 
 elements. It is raised in incorruption. The body in 
 whicli we rise out of death is an incorruptible body, 
 a body belonging to the materialism of the celestial 
 world, which is not subject to decay or to dissolution, 
 which is imperishable, indestructible, immortal. The 
 spirit which it clothes is immortal, and so also is the 
 vesture in which then it is invested. 
 
 Then, secondly, it is the body belonging to the glory 
 of human life. 
 
 Our life is sown here in dishonour. The body in 
 which it is expressed is the body which belongs to the 
 first stage of human life, and which is to be dissolved 
 in death. It is raised in glory. The body in which 
 we rise out of death is the body of glory — the body 
 which belongs to the highest form of human life, to 
 human life as it is hereafter. 
 
 Thirdly, it is a body in which *the capacities which 
 inwardly belong to us are fully developed. 
 
 Our life is sown here in weakness. The body in 
 which it is expressed is a body in which the capacities 
 we inwardly possess are expressed only very imperfectly, 
 in a weak form. It furnishes us with bodily organs 
 through which the capacities of the mind express 
 themselves, but which give only a very inadequate 
 expression to those capacities. The organs with 
 which it furnishes us are quite as really, in some 
 respects, a restraint and restriction upon the capa- 
 cities as they exist within us, and are quite unequal 
 to the full development of them. This is a fact regard- 
 ing the body we presently possess of which we can for 
 ourselves easily realise the truth. To take an obvious 
 instance from the organs of sense, the mind has a 
 power of sight to which the eye gives only a very 
 
52 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 
 
 feeble and imperfect expression ; which is made evident 
 by this, that if you add the aid of a telescope to the 
 eye, or again of a microscope, your power of vision can 
 be increased, or the range of vision extended in- 
 definitely. The power of vision in the mind is, so far 
 as we know, unlimited, and, with an organ of vision 
 entirely corresponding with it, the range of vision 
 might be indefinitely extended. So it is apparently 
 with all the other organs of sense ; the power they give 
 us, each in its several way, depends simply on the 
 structure of our present bodies. Taking the organs of 
 .sense as a whole, so it is with the power generally that 
 we have of apprehending the natural world around us. 
 By the organs of sense which we possess it is confined 
 to certain properties of natural objects, which it is 
 needful for us to know, and is also limited in its range ; 
 but it is only, apparently, by the organs of sense with 
 which, in our present bodies, the mind is furnished 
 that it is thus restricted. Beyond this, our power of 
 movement at will from place to place, in like manner, 
 is restricted only by our bodily structure. It is made 
 what it is by the particular structure of our limbs, but 
 beyond what is in the bodily framework through which 
 it expresses itself it has, it would seem, no other re- 
 striction upon it, and might be quite indefinitely greater 
 than it is. It is so with what may be called the 
 physical powers of the mind ; and rising into a higher 
 region, it is so also, to some extent, with its intellec- 
 tual powers, its powers of reason or of understand- 
 ing. The brain is, it would seem, in some sense, 
 although in what sense we are unable definitely to 
 tell, the organ of the intellect, and the powers of the 
 intellect we can exert are made what they are by the 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 53 
 
 form or structure or by the healthy condition of the 
 brain. 
 
 The power of memory, for instance, as we are at 
 present constituted, is, in some sense, a function of 
 the brain, and on the particular structure of that 
 organ in our present body depends the strength in 
 which we possess it, the vividness with which we retain, 
 or the readiness with which we recall, the impressions 
 which in any way are made on the mind. The power 
 of memory we can exert is made what it is by the 
 structure or the condition of the brain. In a bodily 
 structure more perfectly corresponding with our inward 
 powers, a memory a thousandfold more retentive — re- 
 tentive even of everything in our whole past life — is, it 
 would seem, perfectly possible to us. It is so also, it 
 would seem, with the power of imagination, and, in 
 some sense, with all the powers of reason or of under- 
 standing we possess, except perhaps the power of 
 intuitive spiritual discernment, which would seem to 
 be the highest power that is possessed by a man. In 
 fine, the body in which we live here expresses plainly, 
 only very imperfectly and in a feeble form, the capaci- 
 ties which the mind inwardly possesses. It expresses 
 those capacities in a form simply which is fitted to the 
 purposes of our present life. It does not at all express 
 them as they exist inwardly in us. 
 
 But the life which is sown here in weakness is raised 
 in power. The body in which we rise .out of death is 
 a body in which all the capacities of the mind have 
 perfect expression given to them, and are developed 
 in their fulness. This characteristic of the body of 
 our after life is especially suggestive to us of the en- 
 tirely new and higher character of the life into which 
 
54 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 
 
 at death we are to enter. It is tlie characteristic of 
 the resurrection body which especially helps us to 
 understand the elevation of the life of the future world 
 above the life we have here ; and since the capacities 
 which are afterwards to be developed are already in 
 us, it help^ us at the same time to understand its one- 
 ness in us with our present life. 
 
 Finally, what contains everything else in it, it is a 
 spiritual body. 
 
 Our life is sown here a natural body. The body in 
 which it is expressed is a body which is fitted to the 
 life of this present world. It is raised a spiritual body. 
 The body in which we rise out of death is a spiritual 
 body, a body which the spirit takes to itself when life 
 in the body we have here ceases, and which is fitted 
 tOL.the Jii^her life of the spiritual world, or of that 
 particular place in the spiritual world to which we pass 
 at death. 
 
 " If there is a natural body," the Apostle adds, 
 " there is also a spiritual." That is, if there is forjis 
 a body fitted to the life of this world, there is also for 
 us a body fitted to the life of the spiritual world into 
 which we pass at death. " So also," he goes on to 
 say, "it is written. The first man Adaru became a 
 living soul" (Gen. ii. 7), received the human life of 
 this world. " The last Adam," he subjoins, " became," 
 or rather is, " a life-giving spirit." By His Spirit, 
 which Christ puts within us here, by the Spirit in 
 which He dwells in us. He raises us into the life of 
 that spiritual world into which " they that are Christ's " 
 enter at death. This same Apostle says just the same 
 thing in the Epistle to the Romans, when he says, 
 " But if the Spirit of pirn that raised up Jesus from 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 55 
 
 the dead dwelleth in you, He that raised up Christ 
 Jesus from the dead shall quicken also, shall give life 
 also to your mortal bodies through His Spirit that 
 dwelleth in you" (Rom. viii. 11). And again, in the 
 second Epistle to the Corinthians, to whom he is now- 
 writing, when he says, " He which raised up the Lord 
 Jesus shall raise up us also with Jesus, and shall pre- 
 sent iis with you" (2 Cor. iv. 14). 
 
 "Howbeit," the Apostle adds, going on with his 
 argument, "that is not first which is spiritual, but 
 that which is natural ; then that which is spiritual." 
 In illustration of which he adds, " The first man is of 
 the earth, earthy : the second man is of heaven. As 
 is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy " — they 
 that have the earthly life in them : " and as is the 
 heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly" — they 
 that have the heavenly life in them. " And as we 
 have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear 
 the image of the heavenly." 
 
 The Apostle has thus answered the question which 
 he supposes some one of his readers to put, " With what 
 manner of body do they come ? " He has answered 
 the question in the imperfect form in which such a 
 question can be. answered to us here, but at the same 
 time with great distinctness and fulness, and in lan- 
 guage which is very wonderful. The climax and con- 
 summation of the answer is contained in the last 
 sentence : " As we have borne the image of the earthy, 
 we shall also bear the image of the heavenly." As we ' 
 have had the form, the body, of him who is of 
 the earth, we shall also have the form, the body, of 
 Him who is of heaven. In the language of this same 
 Apostle to the Philippians, "He shall fashion' anew 
 
56 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 
 
 the body of our humiliation, that it may be conformed 
 to the body of His glory" (Phil. iii. 21). 
 
 The prospect which is set before us in this great 
 teaching, that of the bodily change that is to pass on 
 us in our rising out of death, is a very great prospect. 
 It is a prospect so great, and so much beyond our 
 powers of apprehension, that we can only in 'a very 
 faint way realise it. It is hidden from us in the ex- 
 cess of glory which belongs to it. Let it be impressed 
 on us, however, that it is the prospect which lies be- 
 fore us, if we are Christ's, and have our part in Him. 
 It is surely for us, in the utmost degree, an elevating 
 prospect, which is fitted to raise us above things here, 
 and, however little we can realise the life of that world 
 to come, to make the higher state of our life, in which 
 we are to spend eternity, the frequent subject of our 
 thoughts. It should be to us of all subjects of thought 
 the greatest and the most impressive. There are those 
 whom we have known and loved here, who are now, as 
 we believe and are assured, in that perfected estate of 
 human life ; and yet a little while, a few passing years 
 at most, and we also, if we are Christ's, shall be in it. 
 The thought of it should be, as it were, continually 
 present with us. It is for us the greatest subject of 
 thought that can occupy us here. For the Christian 
 in his right mind, for us if we are of them that are 
 Christ's, it is an elevating and impressive prospect, which 
 is fitted, when we consider it, to put everything else 
 out of our thoughts. The marvel is that we think of 
 it so little ; that while thoughts that regard our brief 
 future here are often with us in our life, we think so 
 little of that greater future to which we are hastening, 
 and in comparison with which all earthly things that 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 57 
 
 can come to us are as nothing ; that we live so little 
 under the power of that world to come. To dwell in 
 thought, in anticipation, in hope, of that higher and 
 enduring state of our life which is so near to us, is a 
 thing which should often occupy us ; . and the thought, 
 the anticipation, of what it will bring to us, however 
 little we can here realise it, should give us our deepest 
 joy in our life here. It should give us sobriety of 
 mind, and especially it should give us steadfastness in 
 the Christian life, in which this hope is given us ; we 
 to whom life and immortality have been brought to 
 light by the Gospel. We are all " sons of light, and 
 sons of the day ... so then let us not sleep, as do 
 the rest, but let us watch and be sober. For they 
 that sleep, sleep in the night ; and they that be drunken 
 are drunken in the night. But let us, since we are 
 of the day, be sober, putting on the breastplate of 
 faith and love; and for a helmet, the hope of salvation" 
 (i Thess. V. 5). 
 
y. 
 
 THEY THAT ARE CHRIST'S RAISED OUT OF DEATH BY A CHANGE 
 PASSING UPON THEM, IN WHICH, WHEN THEY PUT OFF THE 
 BODY WE HAVE HERE, THEY AT THE SAME TIME PUT ON 
 THE BODY OP GLORY — THE NECESSITY OP THE CHANGE, 
 AND THE INSTANTANEOUSNESS OF IT. 
 
 *' Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the 
 kingdom of God ; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption. Behold, 
 I tell you a mystery : "We shall not all sleep, but 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. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, 
 and this mortal must put on immortality." — I COR. xv. 50-53. 
 
 The Apostle has now obviated one of the difficulties 
 which he anticipated his readers would find in his 
 teaching, their inability to understand with what 
 manner of body the dead come out of death. He has 
 shown them, from the analogy of what we see in the 
 natural world with us here, that it is in no way in- 
 credible that men should rise out of death in a new 
 body, and a body quite different in character from 
 that they have now. He has taught them, moreover, 
 that there are different kinds of " flesh," even in the 
 material bodies of this world, and that there are also 
 celestial bodies and bodies terrestrial ; the charac- 
 teristics of the celestial being something quite different 
 from those of the terrestrial : and has set forth to 
 
 them certain great characteristics of the body in which 
 
 58 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 59 
 
 we rise out of death, in contrast with the body which 
 we have now. 
 
 In the verses quoted above, the Apostle takes up, 
 it would seem, the first diiB&culty he anticipated they 
 would have, their inability to understand how the dead 
 are raised ; and we may see now how natural it was 
 for him to speak of their second difficulty first. For 
 if the dead come out of death in a new and quite 
 different body from that we have now, the question 
 how the dead are raised is already answered, or at 
 least the answer to it is distinctly suggested. It must 
 needs be by a change passing upon them, in which, 
 when they put off the body we have now, they at the 
 same time put on the body belonging to their after 
 state of life. 
 
 It is of this change which passes upon men in death 
 that the Apostle now speaks ; and what he tells us 
 of it is not less wonderful than the answer he has 
 given to the second difficulty of his readers, and is 
 certainly one of the remarkable things taught us in 
 this great discourse. 
 
 He begins here by saying, " Now this I say, brethren, 
 that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of 
 God ; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption." 
 By " the kingdom of God " he means plainly the 
 kingdom of God which is to be hereafter, when death 
 is past, of which he had spoken in the 24th and 
 following verses of the chapter, the state of things 
 which is to come .to " them that are Christ's " at 
 Christ's coming, when they enter into their final 
 state of life. And what he says is, that our present 
 body cannot enter into that state of life. Flesh and 
 blood — that is, the natural body which we have here — 
 
6o THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD, 
 
 cannot enter into a condition of life in which we are 
 in the spiritual world ; neither doth a corruptible body- 
 enter into a condition of life in which our bodies are 
 incorruptible. This is the necessity there is for the 
 change in regard to the body which passes on " them 
 that are Christ's " in death. 
 
 What is said in this verse may seem to conflict 
 with what our Lord says (in Luke xxiv. 39) of His 
 resurrection body, when He speaks of Himself as 
 having " flesh and bones," since the body with which 
 hereafter we are to be clothed is to be like the body 
 of His glory. But what is here said does not really 
 conflict with what Christ thus said of His resurrection 
 body. Our Lord's resurrection body, to those whose 
 senses were supernaturally opened to discern it, had 
 " flesh and bones." The meaning is simply that it 
 was a body which could be touched and handled, a 
 material body. This is all, we apprehend, that Christ 
 conveys to His disciples in using the expression. He 
 told them to handle Him and see that it was He 
 Himself, for a spirit, which they at first took Him to 
 be, had not " flesh and bones," as they saw Him have. 
 He could be touched and handled, that is. He had a 
 material body, and was therefore not a spirit. He 
 presented indeed after His resurrection, to those 
 whose eyes were opened to see Him at all, the same 
 outward form, it would seem, which He had before ; 
 and could not only be known by them not to be a 
 spirit by touching Him and handling Him, but could 
 be recognised by them by looking at His hands and 
 feet, which still bore on them the print of the nails. 
 He could also eat and drink. But, in the language 
 of St. Paul in this discourse, "all flesh is not the 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 6i 
 
 same flesh," and " there are celestial bodies and bodies 
 terrestrial." Though, to the opened senses of the 
 disciples, He had " flesh and bones," and was there- 
 fore not a spirit as they supposed, it was not the 
 same flesh and bones which He had before, but was 
 the body in which He had lived here with them trans- 
 figured into a materialism of an altogether different 
 kind. The change which had passed on His body is 
 made as plain in the narrative as the fact that He 
 had still a material body, and that He was the same 
 person. He could now appear suddenly in a room 
 when the doors were shut, and again, while men were 
 looking on Him, He could vanish out of their sight. 
 He had still a rnaterial body, but it was not the h ^ 
 natural body, the " flesh and blood " of which it is r A 
 said in this verse 
 of God. It was a\ 
 
 In Christ's case, the natural body had been simply 
 transfigured into the spiritual, and what was pre- 
 sented to the opened eyes of the disciples was the body 
 He had had before transfigured into a materialism of 
 an entirely different kind. We see the possibility, in 
 Christ's case, of such a transfiguration in the great 
 Transfiguration on the Mount, which toolv place in the 
 presence of the three disciples. He " was transfigured 
 before them," we are told, and appeared to them in 
 the body of His glory, the body in which as the Son 
 of God, He is seen in heaven, while all the while 
 they recognised Him to be the same person, and then 
 again He resumed the body He had had before. The 
 important thing to be observed by us in regard to 
 Christ's resurrection body is, that though it was a 
 material body, and therefore could be touched and 
 
 that it cannot inherit the kingdom^i/'^ 
 ^Vpiritu_al. body. ._A4- -v-'^ /"tAT^ 
 
62 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 
 
 haDdledj it was a material body of an entirely different 
 kind from that in which He lived here. The impos- 
 sibility of the natural body, the " flesh and blood " 
 which we have here, entering into the higher state of 
 life for us, in the spiritual world which lies beyond 
 death, is the necessity for the change which passes on 
 '' them that are Christ's " in death. 
 
 He goes on to say, " Behold, I tell you a mystery : 
 we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, 
 in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last 
 trump." 
 
 When the Apostle calls what he here tells them a 
 " mystery," he uses the word in the sense in which it 
 is always used in the New Testament to signify a 
 secret or forbidden thing. And nothing can be more 
 truly a secret thing to men, a thing hidden from them, 
 than that which the Apostle here reveals to us, what 
 takes place to the dying in death. It is not only a 
 thing which no man has seen, but a tbiug which, since 
 it takes place in the unseen world, no man here ever 
 can see, and which no one to whom it has taken place 
 has ever returned to tell us of. You have all perhaps 
 seen people die. You have seen the life, as regards its 
 manifestation in the flesh, become gradually weaker 
 and feebler, until it sinks so low that the dying person 
 has manifestly become unconscious to all that is around 
 him here ; you have seen it perhaps flickering on, in 
 unconsciousness to the outward world here, until sud- 
 denly it passes and is gone. All is still, and there is 
 nothing before you but the dead body, from which the 
 breath of life, from which the living soul, has departed. 
 But what takes place to the dying in that supreme 
 moment of their life here, we do not and never can 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 63 
 
 see. Over that there is to us an impenetrable veil. 
 This is what the Apostle here undertakes to tell us. 
 
 The idea of the heathen, or of those who did not 
 believe in a future life, was that death was a kind of 
 sleep, a sleep which came at last to all men, a sleep 
 from which there was no awaking. The Apostle's 
 revelation of what takes place to the Christian in death 
 is, " We shall not all sleep, but 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. 
 For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this 
 _ mortal must put on immortality." 
 
 The thing which strikes us in this description, as 
 being that on which the stress is laid, is the instan- 
 taneousness of the change. " In a moment," " in the 
 twinkling of an eye," " at the last trump." " The 
 trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised in- 
 corruptible, and we shall be changed." Where " the 
 dead " — they who have died — and the " we " are plainly 
 the same parties. The change described, again, is 
 " this corruptible " putting on " incorruption," and 
 '' this mortal " putting on " immortality." In all this 
 it is, we think, plain that the change is described as 
 taking place in death. 
 
 In the popular view on the subject, the resurrection 
 of the dead, which is taken to mean the resurrection 
 of the dead body, is supposed to take place at an in- 
 definitely distant time in the future — at the end of 
 this world, which is conceived of as occurring at a 
 particular instant of time, supposed to be here indi- 
 cated by " the last trump." And the " change " here 
 spoken of is, it is supposed, to take place then. In 
 
64 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 
 
 that case, it is not easy to see how the " change " could 
 be contrasted with the sleep of death, since it is in no 
 way inconsistent with death being a kind of sleep. 
 Death might be really a kind of sleep, and yet con- 
 ceivably this resurrection of the dead body, or this 
 instantaneous change, might take place at the time 
 supposed. 
 
 This popular view on the subject, again, involves 
 the idea that the judgment of men, the putting on of 
 the body of the after life, and the entering into the 
 final state of life, are all things which do not take 
 place till the end of this world. Those who hold 
 the popular view on the subject quote passages of 
 Scripture, moreover, in support of this theory. And 
 there are certainly passages of Scripture which, when 
 we interpret figurative language literally, naturally 
 suggest the idea that the judgment of all men takes 
 place at one time, and therefore will not take place 
 till some far distant era, when men can be all judged 
 together ; and that till then, therefore, as naturally 
 follows, their final condition is not entered upon. 
 There is the remarkable passage, for instance, in the 
 Book of Revelation, in which, by way of impressing 
 on us the greatness, the supremely righteous character, 
 and the method of the final judgment, it is repre- 
 sented to us under the figure, as it were, of a great 
 earthly assize. The Evangelist sees in vision a great 
 white throne — a throne of light — on which the Judge 
 is seated. The dead, small and great, stand before 
 God. The books, in which the actions of men's lives 
 are recorded, are opened. Another book is opened, 
 which is the book of life, contains, that is, the names 
 of those who have come to have the true life in them. 
 
. THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 65 
 
 And the dead are judged out of the things written in 
 the books, according to their works. This figurative 
 representation is by many understood as if it were a 
 literal representation of a scene which at a certain 
 period in the earth's history is actually to take place; 
 and when it is thus interpreted, in opposition to its 
 self-evident character as an allegorical vision, it natur- 
 ally suggests the idea that all men are to be judged 
 at one time, and therefore that the judgment of men 
 does not take place till a time when all men can 
 appear together. But this is an obvious misinter- 
 pretation. There is, again, the passage in the 25th 
 chapter of St. Matthew, in which the Son of Man is 
 spoken of as coming in His glory, and sitting upon 
 the throne of His glory ; and then we are told of all 
 nations being gathered before Him, and of His sepa- 
 rating men one from another, as a shepherd divides 
 his sheep from the goats, and setting the sheep on His 
 right hand and the goats on the left. The coming of 
 the Son of Man in His glory, and His sitting on the 
 throne of His glory, here spoken of, is by many taken 
 to mean, not His coming in His kingdom here, and 
 His sitting as a Judge in His kingdom here — which 
 in our Lord's discourse it plainly is — but His coming 
 personally as a Judge to the earth at some future 
 time — as is supposed, at the end of this world. And 
 in this interpretation it naturally suggests, not a 
 judgment and separation spiritually of men which 
 Christ, through the manifestation of His kingdom, is 
 now making, and which is to be revealed in them 
 individually when their life here ends — as in Christ's 
 discourse it plainly is — but a judgment and separa- 
 tion of men, such as is by many supposed to be 
 
66 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 
 
 spoken of in the passage just quoted, which takes 
 place, as it were, at a great assize, and in which all 
 men are judged at once. 
 
 But beyond such passages as these, in which the 
 judgment of men is spoken of in a figurative repre- 
 sentation of it, and in which the time of the judgment 
 is popularly supposed to be the end of this world, 
 simply because the figurative representation is taken 
 literally — that is, in a sense quite different from what 
 is plainly intended — there are other passages in which 
 the judgment of men, as regards the time of it, is 
 spoken of in plain words ; and these latter are quite 
 inconsistent with the meaning put into the former 
 class of passages. There are passages also in which 
 the time at which we put on the body of the after life 
 is plainly spoken of ; and passages, again, in which the 
 time at which men enter into the final state of life, or 
 into heaven, is plainly told us ; all of which are equally 
 inconsistent with the popular interpretation of the pas- 
 sages already quoted. 
 
 And we apprehend that we are to interpret the 
 figurative representations of the New Testament by its 
 literal statements, and to take our idea of the time at 
 which these great things take place from the passages 
 in which the time of their taking place is plainly and 
 expressly spoken of. The question is, whether in the 
 direct and express teaching on the subject of the New 
 Testament, the final judgment of men, the putting on 
 of the body belonging to the after life, and the entrance 
 of men into the final state of life, are spoken of as 
 taking place at death, or, on the other hand, are spoken 
 of as taking place at some distant era in the future, as 
 is supposed at the end of this world. 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 67 
 
 First, as to the judgment of men. It is, we appre- 
 hend, constantly spoken of, as it regards Christians, 
 as taking place at the " coming," or " revelation," or 
 " appearing " of Christ. Thus St. Paul says in this 
 very Epistle, " Wherefore judge nothing before the 
 time, until the Lord come, who will both bring to light 
 the hidden things of darkness, and make manifest the 
 counsels of the hearts ; and then shall each man have 
 his praise from God" (i Cor. iv. 5). St. Peter says, 
 again, to the same effect, " That the proof of your 
 faith, being more precious than gold that perisheth, 
 though it is proved by fire, might be found unto praise 
 and glory and honour at the revelation of Jesus Christ " 
 (i Peter i. 7). 
 
 The proof of their faith was here ; the judgment, of 
 them, or rather the revelation of the judgment regard- 
 ing them, was to be at the coming of Christ. So also 
 St. John says, " And now, my little children, abide in 
 Him, that, if He shall be manifested, we may have 
 boldness, and not be ashamed before Him at His 
 coming" (i John ii. 28). We have already shown 
 how clear it is in the New Testament that the 
 " coming " or " manifestation " of Christ takes place 
 to the Christian at death, when he enters into the 
 after life. But if any doubt whether this be so, 
 we are expressly told that after death cometh judg- 
 ment. The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews 
 says, " It is appointed unto men once to die, and after 
 this (cometh) judgment" (Heb. ix. 27). Are we to 
 understand that " after this " does not mean after death 
 in the ordinary sense of that expression, but is spoken 
 with regard to a time which has not yet come to any of 
 the dead, and is not to come till the end of this world ? 
 
68 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD, 
 
 Secondly, in regard to the putting on the body- 
 belonging to the after life. This also is spoken of as 
 taking place at the coming or manifestation of Christ ; 
 and this, it is distinctly implied, is equivalent to 
 saying that it takes place at death. St. Paul says, 
 speaking in the name of all Christians of the time, 
 " Our citizenship is in heaven ; from whence also we 
 wait for a Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ : who shall 
 fashion anew the body of our humiliation, (that it may 
 be) conformed to the body of His glory " (Phil. iii. 20). 
 The fashioning anew the body of our humiliation con- 
 formed to the body of His glory is to take place, we 
 are here taught, at the appearing of Christ, and the 
 expression implies plainly that the change spoken of 
 takes place at death. If we stand in any doubt, again, 
 as to when this appearing of Christ to us from heaven, 
 at which He is to accomplish this bodily change in us, 
 takes place — whether it is to take place at death or at 
 some distant era in the future — we have the same 
 St. Paul saying in another Epistle, " For we know that 
 if the earthly house of our tabernacle be dissolved, we 
 have a building from God, a house not made with 
 hands, eternal in the heavens" (2 Cor. v. i). This 
 surely implies distinctly that the change to the body 
 of glory takes place at death. 
 
 Thirdly, in regard to the time of entering into the 
 final state of life, or into heaven. 
 
 On the Mount of the Transfiguration Moses and 
 Elijah " appeared in glory " — that is, in their body of 
 glory. How could this be if the entrance into this 
 glory for men — that is, if the entrance into heaven — is 
 not to be till some era in the still far distant future ? 
 
 Our Lord, again, said to the penitent thief on the 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 69 
 
 cross, " To-day slialt tliou be with me in Paradise." 
 The Apostles also speak of Judas, after his death, as 
 having gone " to his own place." In the parable of the 
 rich man and Lazarus, Christ speaks of Lazarus as dying 
 and being "carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom;" 
 and says, on the other hand, of the rich man, when he 
 died, that "in Hades" — that is, in the unseen world — "he 
 lifted up his eyes" — lifted them up, that is, out of death 
 — "being in torments" (Luke xvi. 19). To be "in Para- 
 dise," or to be " in Abraham's bosom," is surely in the 
 plainest language, in the language in common use at 
 the time to express this, to be in heaven, in the final 
 state of the blessed. On the other hand, a wicked 
 man having gone " to his own place," or a man "lifting 
 up his eyes " out of death and " being in torments," is 
 surely, in either case, in any rational interpretation of 
 the words, being in the final state of the lost. St. 
 Paul says, again, in the continuation of a passage we 
 have already quoted, regarding the changing of the 
 earthly tabernacle for the body of glory at death, " For 
 indeed we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being 
 burdened ; not for that we would be unclothed, but that 
 we would be clothed upon, that what is mortal may be 
 swallowed up of life " (2 Cor. v. 4). And again, in the 
 same passage he says, '' Being therefore always of good 
 courage, and knowing that, whilst we are at home in 
 the body, we are absent from the Lord, (for we walk 
 by faith, not by sight ;) we are of good courage, I say, 
 and are willing rather to be absent from the body, and 
 to be at home with the Lord" (ver. 6). To be in -a 
 state of life in which " what is mortal " has been " swal- 
 lowed up of life," and to be " at home with the Lord," 
 we apprehend, must needs be to be in heaven. It 
 
70 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 
 
 must be to be in the place which Christ, by His pre- 
 sence in it, has gone to prepare for us, and from 
 which He is, we are told, to come again and receive us 
 to Himself, that where He is we may also be ; and this 
 can be none other than heaven. And to be absent 
 from the body — that is, to pass out of this present 
 life — is with us, the Apostle here says, to be at home 
 with the Lord. 
 
 It is to be observed again, finally, that there is no 
 passage in the New Testament in which the great 
 events in question are spoken of, in which any of them 
 is said to take place at the end of this world. It is 
 only by a purely fanciful interpretation of the words 
 used that this is anywhere supposed to be said. Our 
 Lord speaks frequently, for instance, of His raising up 
 those who are His " at the last day." He speaks also 
 of the word which He had spoken as that which would 
 judge those who heard it "at the last day." St. Peter, 
 again, says of the everlasting inheritance of life that it 
 is " ready to be revealed in the last time " ( I Peter i. 5). 
 And in the popular apprehension with us, "the last 
 day," or " the last time," is made to be the last day of 
 this world, or the time that comes after the end of 
 this world. But in the expressions themselves there 
 is nothing said of the end of this world ; what is spoken 
 of, we apprehend, in the natural meaning of the words, 
 is simply the end of life here to us ; and the popular 
 interpretation of the expressions is suggested simply 
 by the preconceived notions that are in the popular 
 mind. " At the last day " is simply an expression, we 
 apprehend, for " when life here is ended," and " the 
 last time " an expression for " the time that comes after 
 the end of life here." In the passage in St. Peter, 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 71 
 
 " the last time " is, in a verse immediately following, 
 identified with ^' the revelation of Jesus Christ " (ver. 
 7), of the time of which we have already spoken. 
 
 If the plainest language which could naturally be 
 used by the speakers in the passages quoted has its 
 ordinary meaning, the language of these passages, we 
 apprehend, must mean that to die is to have the judg- 
 ment of God revealed on us, to put on the body be- 
 longing to the after life, and to be in the final state 
 of our life, so far as we can speak of anything in the 
 future which is beyond death as final. 
 
 The teaching of these passages is entirely in 
 accordance with, and simply sets forth to us in other 
 form, the teaching contained in the text. They are 
 all of them a confirmation of the teaching contained 
 in the text. Only in the text the instantaneousness 
 of the change in which at death we put on the body 
 belonging to the after life is revealed and set forth 
 to us as it nowhere else is. It is set forth in answer 
 to those who had difficulty in believing in an after life 
 because they could not understand how the dead are 
 raised out of death ; and therefore the change which 
 passes on men in death is set forth as it never had 
 been revealed before, and in language certainly which 
 is infinitely fitted to impress us. The text tells us 
 that not a moment, not the twinkling of an eye, inter- 
 venes betwixt our ceasing to live in the body we have 
 here and our putting on the body of our after life. 
 Beyond the veil of death we rise out of death in the 
 form of our after life. There is in death no break 
 at all in our life : the life we have here and the 
 higher life which we have beyond are continuous. 
 The change takes place instantaneously. Thus it is 
 
72 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 
 
 that the dead are raised out of death into an alter 
 life. We seem, to an onlooker, to have passed out 
 of existence, because the breath of our present life 
 has ceased, because the living soul has passed away, 
 and the tabernacle, as a dwelling-place for us, is 
 dissolved. But the ceasing to exist is only in appear- 
 ance. The tabernacle in which we now live is but 
 our temporary dwelling-place. And if it is dissolved, 
 we have a house which is not made with hands, and 
 which is eternal, in the heavens. Our life passes 
 away here in death, but it is raised beyond death 
 immediately in a higher form of life. And the dead 
 body on which you look, from which the spirit has 
 departed, is not the person you loved, and who 
 perhaps spoke to you a few minutes ago, but only the 
 tabernacle, the temporary dwelling-place in which he 
 was, which is now dissolved. That is true of him 
 now which was once said of a higher, " He is not 
 here ; He is risen." We do not all sleep in death, 
 but we are all changed, ^' in a moment, in the twink- 
 ling of an eye, at the last trump." 
 
 The " last trump " is simply the call of death, the 
 call which summons us to the after life. The figure 
 is taken from the custom, prevalent with the Jews and 
 other nations of the time, of calling solemn assem- 
 blies together, or of calling the host together, by the 
 repeated sound of a trumpet. It is simply the call 
 of death, the call which summons us to the after life. 
 " For the trumpet shall sound " means simply " for 
 the call of death shall come ; " and what is revealed 
 here is, that when this call of God comes to us indi- 
 vidually, we shall be changed — that is, we shall put 
 off the present body of our humiliation, and put on in 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 73 
 
 its place the body of the after life, the body of glory. 
 When we cease to live in the body we have here, we 
 rise out of death in the body which belongs to the 
 higher life to" come. This change, he tells us, will 
 take place instantaneously : "in a moment, in the 
 twinkling of an eye." Then " the dead " — they who 
 have died — are " raised incorruptible," and we are 
 *' changed." 
 
 The Apostle adds, " For this corruptible must put 
 on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immor- 
 tality." 
 
 There is a necessity, as regards them that are 
 Christ's, for the change of which he has been speak- 
 ing, as he has already said, because our present body 
 cannot enter into the kingdom of God, into that 
 higher state of our life that lies, for the Christian, 
 beyond death. And now he tells us, it would seem, 
 as regards men generally, as a thing that belongs 
 naturally to human life, that the corruptible body we 
 have here must put on incorruption, and the mortal 
 body put on immortality. This takes place naturally, 
 we seem to be here taught, according to the order of 
 human life. For the higher, the spiritual state of our 
 being, is a thing which lies before all men. There 
 are naturally two stages in human life. We live here 
 in a corruptible mortal body, which is fitted to the life 
 of this world, and we are to live hereafter in a higher 
 state of our being which is to endure for ever, and in 
 a body belonging to that higher state of our being, 
 which is incorruptible and immortal. It belongs to 
 the natural order of human life that this change from 
 the corruptible and the mortal to incorruption and 
 immortality should come to all men at death. How 
 
74 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 
 
 the change would have taken place if men had not 
 sinned we do not know. Perhaps our natural body- 
 would simply have been transfigured, as in Christ's 
 case, and as in the cases, it would seem, of Enoch and 
 of Elijah, into the spiritual body, the body belonging 
 to the higher state of human life. As it is, the change 
 takes place through death, and must take place with 
 all men. " This corruptible must put on incorruption, 
 and this mortal must put on immortality." 
 
 The passage we have been considering is, for us as 
 Christians, one of the utmost significance. And the 
 teaching in it on which we have particularly dwelt is 
 especially fitted to excite serious thought in us. It 
 should especially impress on us vividly our nearness to 
 the eternal world. 
 
 Our nearness to the after life is not in general at 
 all realised by us as this passage should lead us to 
 realise it. There is a book " On the Scripture Eevela- 
 tions regarding a Future State," written by a late 
 prelate of the Church of England, eminent for his 
 intellectual gifts and his great acuteness of mind, but 
 not perhaps very eminent as a theologian. In his 
 discussion of the subject he recognises the popularly 
 received idea that the resurrection of men is the resur- 
 rection of the dead body, and is not to take place till 
 the end of the world, and that there is therefore a 
 disembodied and intermediate state between death and 
 the resurrection. And he sets forth the passages of 
 Scripture, on the one hand, which seem, he thinks, to 
 imply that this intermediate state is a state of enjoy- 
 ment or of suffering, to the faithful and the disobe- 
 dient respectively, and, on the other hand, those which 
 seem to imply that it is a state of unconscious sleep. 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 75 
 
 He ends by finding himself unable to decide positively 
 between the two views. 
 
 The arguments on the one side and on the other 
 are of the most shadowy character, for there is not the 
 least apparent reference in the one class of passages 
 quoted or in the other to a disembodied or intermediate 
 state, the existence of which is throughout a pure 
 assumption. But you feel in reading the book that 
 whichever of the two views be taken, in either case, 
 and in either case alike, the final state of life for men, 
 in which they have come to the resurrection life, is at 
 so indefinitely great a distance in the remote future, 
 so greatly and indefinitely remote from us, that it is 
 hardly fitted to excite any present interest or inquiry 
 in us. In like manner there are many people with us 
 with quite undefined notions about the after life, who 
 have the feeling simply that men pass at death into* 
 some new state of life, they know not what, but that 
 the final state of things for us, the resurrection and 
 the state of things which follows upon it, are far off 
 from us, at some remote period, which they think of as 
 " the consummation of all things." The prospect of 
 the future life has therefore hardly any meaning to 
 them, and has no real influence on their daily life. 
 
 It is quite another thing, and is fitted to have quite 
 a different influence on our daily life, when we realise 
 that the resurrection, as it regards us, and the final 
 state of things with us, are in the near future, and 
 will come to all of us with the end of our life here, 
 which may, we know, come to us at any time : when 
 we come to realise day by day, in a true apprehension 
 of the revelation of the gospel to us, that, under the 
 New Testament dispensation, just as we have come to 
 
76 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 
 
 " Jesus, the mediator of the New Covenant," and to 
 " the blood of sprinkling which speaketh better things 
 than that of Abel," so also we have come to " God, the 
 Judge of all,'"' and to "the spirits of just men made 
 perfect." We can then understand the state of feeling 
 in regard to '' the coming of Christ " in which the early- 
 Christians and their teachers lived their daily lives 
 here : which some in our day explain by taking upon 
 them to say that it was founded upon a temporary 
 mistake or misapprehension of the Apostles that the 
 end of this world was then at hand ; but which, we 
 are persuaded, was founded simply on what is the 
 stable and uniform teaching of the New Testament : 
 and we can feel the force of the exhortations which 
 the Apostles constantly address to the early Church, 
 which have lost all meaning to most Christians with us. 
 .We can feel the force of the exhortation, for instance, 
 when, amidst trouble come upon them as Christians, an 
 Apostle says to them, " Be patient, therefore, brethren, 
 until the coming (or, presence) of the Lord. Behold, 
 the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the 
 earth, being patient over it, until it (or, he) receive the 
 early and latter rain. Be ye also patient; stablish 
 your hearts : for the coming (presence) of the Lord is 
 at hand" (James v. 7). Or when he adds, "Murmur 
 not, brethren, one against another, that ye be not 
 judged: behold, the judge standeth before the doors" 
 (ver. 9). When another Apostle, again, says, " But 
 the end of all things is at hand : be ye therefore of 
 sound mind, and be sober unto prayer " ( i Peter iv. 7). 
 Or when still another Apostle, the great Apostle of 
 the Gentiles, exhorting the disciples to live their lives 
 in the love to men to which in Christ they were called, 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 77 
 
 adds to the exhortation, " And this, knowing the season, 
 that now it is high time for you to awake out of sleep : 
 for now is salvation nearer to us (or, our salvation 
 nearer) than when we (first) believed. The night is 
 far spent, and the day is at hand : let us therefore 
 cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the 
 armour of light. Let us walk honestly, as in the day " 
 (Rom. xiii. 1 1). For these exhortations have, in truth, 
 quite as much meaning, and have just the same mean- 
 ing, to us as to those to whom they were originally 
 addressed. 
 
 And, along with the nearness of the after life to 
 us, we should realise always the greatness of the 
 change which death brings to us as Christians. The 
 difference betwixt the life we have here and the 
 resurrection life, in many of the things belonging to 
 it, is expressed or suggested in the preceding pas- 
 sage of this great discourse ; things of which we can 
 only have a very shadowy and imperfect apprehension. 
 The coming day will declare them to us. But be- 
 yond these things, the great difference to them that 
 are Christ's, in the change lying before us, is that it 
 is our entering into a sinless life ; into a life which is 
 in perfect righteousness, and in entire separation from 
 all evil : which is a thing we can in some sense appre- 
 hend, as it is doubtless the greatest thing in the life 
 of heaven. The prospect is one which should give 
 us much thought, and which may well have an ele- 
 vating influence on our life here day by day, leading 
 us, in the Spirit which we have received, to work 
 the work which is given us to do here, as knowing 
 that the night cometh when no man can work. The 
 change before us is our entering into the higher state 
 
78 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 
 
 of our life, in which we are with Christ, with all those 
 enlarged capacities which belong with us to our life 
 in the spiritual world, and at the same time our 
 entering into a perfect, in the sense of a sinless, 
 rightness of life towards God and towards men ; into 
 a service of God which is in perfect light, and there- 
 fore in perfect rectitude. When death is past, we 
 shall be in a life in which the mists and self-delusions 
 which cloud our life here shall have passed away in 
 the clear light of heaven, and in a life which, having 
 the form and character belonging to life in the spiri- 
 tual world for men, is at the same time in perfect 
 separation from all evil, and in an ever-growing attain- 
 ment in righteousness. Then, amidst the things to 
 which we have come in that higher life, ^' Death shall 
 be swallowed up in victory." 
 
. VI. 
 
 THE VICTORY OVER DEATH WHICH THE CHRISTIAN HAS IN CHRIST. 
 
 " But when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this 
 mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall come to pass the 
 saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. death, 
 where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting? The sting of 
 death is sin ; and the power of sin is the law : but thanks be to God, 
 which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ" (i Cor. 
 XV. 54-57)- 
 
 This song of triumph, for such it is, which comes 
 plainly from the very heart of the Apostle, is surely of 
 all triumphal songs the greatest and the most full of 
 joy. If only, in our life here, we could join in it from 
 the heart, and could with St. Paul repeat for ourselves 
 its concluding thanksgiving, the cloud which to most 
 of us lowers over our human life here would be dis- 
 pelled, and the future to us would be bright and serene. 
 The triumph it celebrates is not the triumph over their 
 human enemies with which the ancient Roman world 
 was so well acquainted, in which their fellow-men over 
 whom they had gotten the victory were led captive in 
 chains, the glory of which was simply the gratification 
 of the brutal lust for dominion and for crushing those 
 we have learned to hate, which is amongst the lowest 
 and worst passions of human nature ; but a triumph 
 over death, the last enemy of man, over which God in 
 Christ has given us the victory, the glory of which is 
 
 79 
 
8o THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 
 
 the greatest and the purest joy we can experience here, 
 and a joy which shall be in us for ever. It is a song 
 of triumph which many of us, it is to be feared, Chris- 
 tians as we are, have not learned to sing, and the joy 
 of which has never come to us. And the first question 
 we are to ask is, who are they that can sing this song ? 
 What is it that gives men the joy of this victory ? 
 
 We are to begin by observing that the victory which 
 this song of triumph celebrates is not a victory in the 
 present, but a victory of which he who can sing this 
 song has the prospect in the future. It is " when 
 this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and 
 this mortal shall have put on immortality," that the 
 saying which is written shall be brought to pass, 
 "Death is swallowed up in victory." Nevertheless 
 Christ gives us this victory now in prospect, and it is 
 over the prospect of this victory that the song is sung, 
 ^' Thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through 
 our Lord Jesus Christ." With this preliminary obser- 
 vation, let me say, in answer to the question I have 
 suggested, that- they who can sing this song of triumph 
 are they who have come to the redemption, the deliver- 
 ance from sin which is in Christ ; and that it is the 
 sense, the apprehension in ourselves of this deliverance 
 from sin, that gives us the joy of this victory. 
 
 What is it that makes men fear death ? or that 
 keeps many in bondage all their lifetime through that 
 fear ? There is a natural shrinking from death with 
 all men, or all men in their right mind, in whatever 
 spiritual condition they are ; which has been by some 
 taken to imply, perhaps without any good reason, 
 that death is an unnatural thing for men, a thing 
 which was not originally intended for us. The feeling 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 8i 
 
 is greatest with those who think most of things, whose 
 intellectual faculties are, so to speak, most vividly 
 alive ; and, in any distressing form, it is perhaps 
 confined to those whose minds are lively and specu- 
 lative. For death is one of the many things here 
 in regard to which thought troubles life. But there 
 have been men of the highest character spiritually, 
 and of the utmost natural courage, who have had this 
 nervous shrinking from death. They have had this 
 nervous shrinking from death because of the unknown 
 life to which death was to bring them, realising 
 acutely how entirely unknown the life that is beyond 
 death is to us. Or they have had it, in some instances, 
 because they could not put away from themselves 
 the thought that death may be a passing into non- 
 existence ; insomuch that the thought has, for the 
 moment, even raised doubts in them as to the exist- 
 ence of a future life, in spite of the higher reason 
 in them, and the light which has been given to us 
 from above, which taught them to look forward to it. 
 But this natural shrinking from death is not the fear 
 of death and, in any form of it, may be in those 
 who do not really /e<xr death. And it may easily be 
 overcome by any higher feeling for the time possessing 
 the mind, as it is in fact overcome in trying circum- 
 stances by men of every kind. All fear of death — 
 that is, really fear of it — is the fear of something 
 which lies beyond death ; and the only thing which 
 makes men fear death is the consciousness in them 
 of life in sin. The only thing that makes death an 
 object of fear to a man, the sting of death, is sin ; not 
 the consciousness of sin, or of imperfection in us, 
 which is common to all men, but the consciousness 
 
 F 
 
82 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 
 
 of life in sin. The consciousness that the life which 
 is in us, the life we allow in ourself and to which we 
 cleave, is not the life to which God has called us, and 
 which should be in us, but a life which is in separa- 
 tion from God and in rebellion against Him. This 
 is what makes death an object of fear to a man. He 
 fears death because, living consciously in sin, he fears 
 that which comes after death. 
 
 " And the power of sin," that which gives us the 
 consciousness of life in sin, and therefore gives to that 
 life its power to produce the fear of death in us, " is 
 the law." To the Jews, the law of God was the Ten 
 Commandments ; to us, it is a higher law — " the law 
 of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus." We have not, 
 indeed, all of us had this inward law, this spirit of 
 life, put within us, in the sense that it is that by 
 which we guide our life ; but we have all, in some 
 sense, the apprehension that, under the New Testa- 
 ment, inward cleansing from evil and inward Tight- 
 ness of mind and spirit are required of us, and not 
 simply obedience to the letter of the Ten Command- 
 ments. And this knowledge of the life to which God 
 has called us, when we live consciously in sin, pro- 
 duces in us naturally the fear of death. It produces 
 in us self-condemnation, and therefore the apprehen- 
 sion which belongs naturally to the evil life which 
 we are living, that in regard to this life in us God 
 will bring us into judgment. This is what is meant 
 by the fear of death. And so long as a man is living 
 in sin, and has the apprehension of the law of God 
 for him, he cannot, in his right mind, be without 
 fear in the prospect of death. But the Christian, the 
 man who lives by the faith of Christ, is redeemed and 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 83 
 
 delivered from life in sin. He has come, through his 
 faith in Christ, to have the spirit of Christ in him, and 
 to be living in that spirit in his life here, and has 
 in him, therefore, a life which is in separation from 
 sin and in fellowship with the heavenly righteous- 
 ness ; and in the newness of life to which he has 
 come, he is redeemed and delivered from life in sin, 
 and has in him the prospect hereafter of a victory 
 over death. In the spirit which he has received 
 he has in him that which gives him the joy of this 
 victory. 
 
 What is the redemption or deliverance from sin 
 which is in Christ ? There is nothing in Christianity 
 of which it is more important for us, as Christians, to 
 have a distinct apprehension. It is, let me say, re- 
 demption or deliverance from sin itself, and not merely 
 from the consequences of sin. It is redemption from 
 sin in the sense of redemption from the bondage to 
 sin in which all men are who live consciously in sin. 
 It is redemption from life in sin. It stands in a new 
 spirit of life, the spirit of Christ, put within us from 
 above through our faith in Christ ; in which, so far 
 as we live in it, there is no sin ; in which, so far as we 
 live in it, we live in fellowship with God's righteous- 
 ness. It does not mean that we are without sin, but 
 that, in the spirit which we have received, we no 
 longer live in sin, but live in fellowship with the 
 righteousness of God. They who live consciously in 
 sin are in bondage to sin, in the sense that, having 
 yielded themselves servants to sin, they have no power 
 to cease to live in sin. And they can be set free 
 from life in sin only by a new spirit of life, the spirit 
 of Christ being put within them from above, in which 
 
84 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 
 
 there is no sin. The redemption stands in the new 
 spirit of life which Christ gives us through our faith 
 in Him ; and when the power of that redemption 
 rests upon us, when we live in the spirit which Christ 
 gives us through our faith in Him, we cease to live in 
 sin, and live, on the contrary, in God's righteousness. ' 
 We live only by putting all sin away from us, and by 
 putting to death the inclinations to evil that are in us, 
 and we live in fellowship with the rectitude of Christ 
 and of God. The redemption spiritually which is in 
 Christ for us, and to which we come through the faith 
 of Christ, stands in this great spiritual change in us. 
 All who are living by the faith of Christ, all who in 
 their daily life are in Christ, have thus become new 
 creatures, and, in the redemption from sin to which 
 they have come, have already in them the life of 
 heaven in the beginning of it. 
 
 It is only they who have come to the redemption 
 from sin which is in Christ, in which thus we have 
 in us the eternal life which Christ came to give to 
 men, who can sing the song of triumph of the text, or 
 who can say, with the Apostle, "Thanks be to God, 
 which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus 
 Christ." For it is they only who have the prospect 
 in the world to come of the after life in righteous- 
 ness to which the victory over death belongs. All 
 men rise out of death into an after life, but the mere 
 rising out of death into an after life is not obtain- 
 ing the victory over death, and all who have passed 
 throuo-h death into the after life have not obtained 
 that victory. A lost soul which has risen out of 
 death has not obtained the victory over it ; rather 
 death has obtained the victory over it. Death has 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 85 
 
 only brought to it the second death — that is, spiritual 
 destruction. It is only in the everlasting life in 
 righteousness, in the higher state of human life, that 
 death is swallowed up in victory, and it is only they 
 who have come here to the redemption from sin 
 which is in Christ that have the prospect in the 
 future of that victory. But they have the pro- 
 spect in the future of obtaining the victory over death, 
 and therefore they are they who can sing this song 
 of triumph; they have that in them, in the spirit 
 they have received, which gives them the joy of this 
 victory. 
 
 If we ask now, secondly, What is the joy of this 
 coming victory in us ? the answer is contained simply 
 in saying. It is that death has no longer any sting to 
 us. Death in itself is simply the passing out of life 
 here into the life that is beyond, and we are raised 
 above the fear of death because beyond death we 
 have the prospect of entering into an everlasting life 
 in righteousness. What is it that naturally takes 
 away the fear of death from a man ? It can only 
 be something which gives us confidence in looking 
 beyond death ; and in the life spiritually to which we 
 have come in Christ we have quietness of mind, a 
 hope which is sure and certain, and a hope which is 
 also full of joy, in regard to that which death will 
 bring to us. We may not be able to realise the after 
 life ; we may not be able even to form any apprehen- 
 sion of it at all, because the outward circumstances of 
 that life are entirely hidden from us, but we have con- 
 fidence in regard to what it will bring to us. Nothing 
 really gives a man that confidence or that joyful hope 
 but the rightness of spirit come to us from above, the 
 
86 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 
 
 newness of life which is put within us by the faith 
 of Christ. A faith in Christ which has not produced 
 in a man this spiritual change and this spiritual 
 restoration, whatever be the form it takes in him, 
 does not and cannot give him this confidence or this 
 joyful hope ; for it is the Tightness of spirit, the new- 
 ness of life in fellowship with that of Christ, to which 
 by God's grace we have come, which itself gives us 
 confidence and a joyful hope in looking forward to the 
 everlasting future. The spiritual life which Christ 
 came to give us, when it has come to be in us, is the 
 element in which confidence in regard to the future 
 that lies beyond death lives in us ; and, apart from 
 this life, there can be no well-grounded hope in regard 
 to that future in any man. Our confidence in regard 
 to the future arises in us naturally and instinctively 
 out of this life, and the joy of the coming victory 
 over death in us is just the hope we have of this life 
 abiding in us hereafter when death is past. In this 
 life in us which Christ came to give us there is an 
 element of confidence in our unseen Judge, and we 
 can hope to have " boldness in the day of judgment, 
 because as Christ is, so are we in this world." " Christ 
 in us" is to us "the hope of glory." We have the 
 joy of the coming victory over death in us because 
 we have in us the hope of the inheritance of life which 
 is set before us in the gospel, and death is no longer 
 an object of fear to us because we have the prospect 
 of the victory over it. 
 
 It is strange that the thought of the blessed life to 
 come, in its purity and its peace and its fulness of joy, 
 is so little present with us in our life here ; that the 
 joy of the coming victory over death is therefore so 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 87 
 
 little in us day by day. I do not know that there is 
 any other way in which a change in this respect can 
 be wrought in us, and the world to come to which we 
 look forward become to us what it should be, except 
 simply our living the life here day by day to which 
 Christ has redeemed us, out of which we naturally rise 
 into the expectation of the life to come. It is our 
 duty and our privilege so to live, and it is that out 
 of which all joy in looking forward to the future must 
 come to us. An Apostle's precept in this respect to 
 us is, " And now, my little children, abide in Him ; 
 that if He shall be manifested, we may have bold- 
 ness, and not be ashamed before Him at His coming" 
 (l John ii. 28). 
 
 Live your daily life here in the spirit which Christ 
 gives us in our faith in Him, crucifying the flesh in 
 you, and fighting the good fight of faith, that you may 
 so live. Live in this spirit in the mind that is in you 
 towards God in your life here, having in you, amidst 
 things here, the rest in God, the trust in Him, the joy 
 in Him which Christ's Spirit gives you. Live in this 
 Spirit in the mind that is in you towards men, having 
 the love of Christ to men in you, in your thoughts and 
 feelings and words and actions towards all men around 
 you. Seek continually, day by day, in every sphere 
 of life in which you move here, to bring forth the 
 fruits of Christ's Spirit in you, which are in all good- 
 ness and righteousness and truth. While this is the 
 life that is in you here, you will naturally and in- 
 stinctively look forward to the blessed life to come, 
 of which in this spirit of life in you God has given 
 you the earnest, and be able to have in you the joy 
 of the coming victory over death. Ever as you rise 
 
88 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 
 
 more fully into this life which is in Christ here, 
 in its affections and aspirations, and in its doings, 
 in its separation from evil and its fellowship with the 
 heavenly righteousness, the hope of the blessed life to 
 come will become clearer and brighter to you, and the 
 victory over death which it is to bring to us will be to 
 you a fuller joy. You will have, day by day, a livelier 
 anticipation of the life to come. For heaven, however 
 little we can realise the outward things belonging to 
 it, is just your taking this life with you, to which by 
 God's grace you have come, when you leave this world, 
 and having it developed in you in the clear light which 
 is to be hereafter. You will be able to realise, in your 
 daily experience here, that a Christian, in all earthly 
 circumstances, can have in him the joy of the coming 
 victory over death ; and, in the anticipation of the 
 triumph over death which the after life is to bring to 
 you, will be able to say day by day what the Apostle 
 says here, " death, where is thy victory ? O death, 
 where is thy sting? The sting of death is sin, and 
 the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, 
 which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus 
 Christ." 
 
 Let me say, in conclusion, that the joy of this 
 coming victory in us should express itself in continual 
 thanksgiving to God. Not in thanksgiving for the 
 future, but in thanksgiving for the present in the 
 prospect which it gives us of the future ; in thanks- 
 giving for the eternal life which is His unspeakable 
 gift to us in Christ. Let us seek to live more fully 
 the life to which Christ has redeemed us, that, in the 
 prospect of the victory over death which the life of the 
 coming future is to bring to us, we may have in us 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 89 
 
 always the anticipation of that victory, and that our 
 life here may be more full of praise. 
 
 " The First-begotten of the dead, 
 For us He rose, our glorious Head, 
 
 Immortal life to bring. 
 What though the Saints like Him shall die ; 
 They share their Leader's victory. 
 
 And triumph with their King." 
 
Vll. 
 
 THE INFLUENCE WHICH THE PROSPECT THE CHRISTIAN HAS OP 
 THE VICTORY OVER DEATH SHOULD HAVE ON HIS LIFE 
 HERE. 
 
 " Wherefore, my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast, unmoveable, 
 always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that 
 your labour is not vain in the Lord." — I CoR. xv. 58. 
 
 Christianity has always a practical meaning. So far 
 as the spirit of it is in us, it shows itself in our life. 
 The revelation of God to us in His infinite love and 
 grace which is in Christ is intended to create a divine 
 life in us, and the prospect of the coming victory- 
 over death into which a Christian life raises us is 
 especially fitted to uphold us in that life. It is a 
 ministration of grace to us, as the text implies, to 
 uphold us in " the work of the Lord." 
 
 What is " the work of the Lord " of which the text 
 speaks? On this subject it is important for every 
 Christian to have a clear and definite apprehension. 
 Plainly, in the Apostle's view, it is a work to which, as 
 Christians, Christ is calling us in our life, a work which 
 belongs to all Christians, and the great work which 
 we have to do in our life. But it is still needful to 
 ask the question what it is. It is, let me say, the work 
 simply of living in the spirit which Christ has given 
 to us, of living this life to which Christ has called us 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 91 
 
 in the circumstances in which, in God's providence, we 
 are placed. This is the work naturally belonging to 
 us as Christians, as those who have been renewed in 
 the spirit of their mind through the faith of Christ, 
 and it is the proper work of life here for us, the work 
 which the Lord has given us severally to do. This 
 work given us to do in our life is as really a work, a 
 thing requiring continual effort and labour on our part, 
 as is the earthly and outward work in which we put 
 forth our mental or bodily energies from day to day ; 
 only it is a work of a spiritual kind. It is different 
 for each of us severally, according to the different 
 circumstances in which we are placed, but in the 
 nature of it, and in the things in us belonging to it, 
 it is the same for every Christian. It is the work of 
 having in us here, day by day, the life to which Christ 
 has redeemed us. It is a work of self-denial, of 
 fortitude, of understanding, of patience, of love to God 
 our Saviour, of love to our fellow-men around us, of 
 these and all the other graces of Christ's Spirit, as 
 they are severally called for from us here. For this 
 work of His for us Christ has given us a divine and 
 all-sufficient strength in the spirit which He has given 
 to us, and which He is willing to give us according to 
 all our need. And the purpose of the work is that, 
 through the trial of our life here in this world, the life 
 to which Christ has redeemed us may be strengthened 
 and established in us, and that we may thus be pre- 
 pared for the life of heaven hereafter. This work of 
 the Lord is the proper work of a Christian in his life 
 here. It is the proper business of life for him. 
 
 There is a notion with many Christians in our day, 
 belonging specially to the religion of the day, that the 
 
92 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 
 
 work of the Lord for every Christian is to occupy him- 
 self in teaching or enlightening others. The work of 
 the Lord for us is supposed to have others, not our- 
 selves, for the object of it. The idea is that every 
 Christian is called to be a teacher of religion ; but 
 this is entirely a mistake, and is a thing which is 
 nowhere taught us in the New Testament. The work 
 of teaching and enlightening others in the things of 
 religion belongs specially, in the New Testament, to 
 the ministers of the Church, who have been set apart 
 to the work, although doubtless every Christian, in 
 his own place, may take part in it. But both to you 
 and to me the work of the Lord has nothing to do 
 with the teaching of others, but is a work that regards 
 ourselves. It is the work of living the right life for 
 us here, the greatest of all works for any man, and 
 the work by which we are to be individually prepared 
 for the life of heaven hereafter. It is this great work 
 for every Christian to which the Apostle refers when 
 he says, "Work out your own salvation." 
 
 We are to realise, as the concluding lesson of this 
 great discourse, that the prospect we have of the 
 coming victory over death should uphold us in this 
 work of the Lord, should make us " steadfast, and 
 unmoveable, always abounding " in it. 
 
 Let me observe, first, that in the Apostle's view 
 here, as in the teaching of the New Testament every- 
 where, the work of the Lord, for each of us, is of the 
 nature of a spiritual conflict. It is a conflict, a good 
 fight of faith, in which we engage in the power of the 
 spirit of Christ in us — a conflict not merely with the 
 evil influences that come to us from the world around 
 ua here, and the evil inclinations that are in ourselves, 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 93 
 
 but with the spiritual powers of evil, the rulers of the 
 darkness of this world, who through these influences 
 around us, and these evil inclinations within us, are 
 seeking to turn us aside from the life to which we are 
 called, and to regain their dominion over us. The 
 work requires, therefore, some of the qualities of the 
 soldier in us. An indispensable quality of a good 
 soldier in any earthly warfare is that he have the self- 
 possession, the courage, the self-sacrifice, the resolute 
 spirit, which in all circumstances will give him stead- 
 fastness in the hour of conflict, a steadfastness from 
 which he cannot be turned by any opposition whatever 
 with which he has to contend — an immoveable stead- 
 fastness, which is sustained in him by the hope of 
 victory, or else by his calmly choosing death rather 
 than dishonour to his standard. And such steadfast- 
 ness and immoveability are indispensable in the good 
 soldier of Jesus Christ in contending with our spiritual 
 adversaries — a steadfastness in which he maintains the 
 conflict in all circumstances, and in which no opposition 
 of evil can turn him aside from the life which has 
 been given to him. We can live the life here to 
 which we are called only by obtaining a continual 
 victory in this great conflict over our spiritual adver- 
 saries, and for this ample power is given us in the 
 spirit which we have received. Against the utmost 
 power of our spiritual adversaries we can always 
 obtain the victory if we are steadfast. In the spirit 
 which we have received we are able to stand against 
 all their power, and can " in all things be more than 
 conquerors through Him that loved us." The prospect 
 of the coming victory over death should make us thus 
 steadfast and immoveable. 
 
94 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 
 
 Then it is to be considered that the work of the 
 Lord for us, if it be done by us aright, is a work in 
 which we engage willingly, with our heart and mind ; 
 and it is a work, therefore, in which we should always 
 abound. It has place in everything belonging to our 
 life here, in all our thoughts, and feelings, and words, 
 and actions. 
 
 It is a work, moreover, which should appear in an 
 ever higher form in our life, since of the life to which 
 we are called the only pattern is the perfect life, the 
 life of heaven, as it has, in the spirit of it, been mani- 
 fested to us in Christ. Of the miud towards God, for 
 instance, which is in us amidst things here, there 
 should be a manifestation in everything belonging to 
 our life. 
 
 And there is no limit to the extent in which a right 
 mind towards God may take a higher form in us, in 
 which we may rise more fully into trust in Him, into 
 rest in Him, into joy in Him, and into childlike 
 obedience to Him in the things belonging to the life 
 we live day by day. And so also of the mind towards 
 our fellow- men which should be in us as disciples of 
 Christ. It should be manifested in all our thoughts 
 of others, in all our feelings towards them, in oar words 
 and in our actions. And there is no limit to the 
 extent in which a right mind towards men may be in 
 us. 'For the mind towards men which should be in us 
 is the mind of Christ towards them to which we may 
 make nearer and ever nearer approach, although we 
 shall never rise in this world into an entire fellowship 
 with it. The reward to iis is in the life itself, and is 
 the greater the more we abound in the things belong- 
 ing to it. 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 95 
 
 Let me observe, secondly, beyond all this, that our 
 maintaining this life, our having this life in us day 
 by day, is the natural and proper preparation of us for 
 the life of heaven to which we look forward. We are 
 to be steadfast and immoveable in maintaining the 
 conflict through which we reach it, as knowing that 
 our labour is not in vain in the Lord. 
 
 This life in us is our natural preparation for heaven, 
 the preparation for it which God is giving us. It is 
 our natural preparation for heaven because it is the 
 life of heaven in us in the beginning of it. God is 
 creating us anew in Christ Jesus unto the good works 
 which He has before ordained that we should walk in 
 them, and we are building up in ourselves the life 
 which we shall take with us hence, and which shall be 
 -in us for ever. We are laying up treasures in heaven, 
 in this work of the Lord for us, which cannot be taken 
 away from us, of which we can never be deprived. 
 We are building a house spiritually which shall stand 
 for ever. 
 
 It may be that the life of Christ is attainable by us 
 here in only a very imperfect measure, even by those 
 Christians who make the highest attainment in it. 
 Our understanding of the life of Christ is imper- 
 fect, and will ever be imperfect here. Our Tightness 
 of spirit is imperfect. Everything with us is imper- 
 fect. Doubtless there will be a purity from evil and 
 a perfection of rectitude in the life of hereafter of 
 which we cannot now even form the conception. But 
 our attainment in this life is the beginning in us here 
 of the life of hereafter, in that resurrection and more 
 glorious form of our life to which we look forward. 
 
96 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 
 
 God has called us to His kingdom in the glory of it ; 
 and the measure to which we have attained in the 
 life of Christ here, amidst the darkness of this world, 
 is that by which God has made us meet for the inheri- 
 tance of the saints in light. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 ON THE SCRIPTURE TEACHING REGARDING 
 THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST. 
 
\ 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 ON THE SCRIPTURE TEACHING REGARDING 
 THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST. 
 
 The second coming of Christ has from time to time 
 occupied a large space in speculative theology. The 
 common apprehension in our day is that Christ is to 
 come again personally to the earth at the end of this 
 world ; and that then, at the end of this world, when 
 Christ has thus come again personally to the earth, 
 the judgment and separation of men is to take place, 
 and the final state of things with them is to begin. 
 This is supposed to be taught in the New Testament, 
 and this is supposed to be the coming of Christ, or 
 the appearing of Christ, which is so frequently spoken 
 of in the Epistles of the New Testament. To me, this 
 supposed personal coming of Christ to the earth at the 
 end of this world seems to be founded simply on a 
 misunderstanding and misinterpretation of the lan- 
 guage of the New Testament. 
 
 There are plainly, it would seem, two comings of 
 Christ spoken of in the New Testament as then future. 
 There is His coming in His kingdom, which is certainly 
 frequently spoken of in the Gospels, and frequently 
 also, it would seem, in the Epistles, and which, when 
 the Gospels and the Epistles were written, was then 
 
loo THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD, 
 
 near at hand ; and there is His personal coming 
 again, or appearing, to His disciples, of which He 
 spoke to them when He was about to leave the earth, 
 that He might receive them to Himself, that where 
 He was they might be also ; which is always near to 
 His disciples here, and at which, it would seem plain, 
 the judgment, as it regards them individually, is to 
 take place, and they are to enter into the final state 
 of things with them. His coming again personally to 
 His disciples, or to " them that are spiritually His," is 
 spoken of in the Gospels only in the discourse in 
 which the promise of it is given, but is, it would seem, 
 constantly spoken of or referred to in the Epistles ; 
 and is, we apprehend, the only " second coming" of 
 Christ for us, and the only personal coming again 
 of Christ which is anywhere spoken of in the New 
 Testament. 
 
 The two classes of passages in which these two 
 comings of Christ respectively are spoken of in the 
 New Testament are, it seems to me, quite distinguish- 
 able from one another ; but in modern interpretations 
 of the New Testament they are constantly confounded 
 with one another, and by far the greater number of 
 both classes of passages are, by the mere fancy of the 
 interpreter, taken to refer to a coming of Christ which, 
 it is supposed, is to take place at the end of this 
 world. It is needful, I apprehend, to speak of the 
 two comings of Christ separately from one another, to 
 distinguish the two classes of passages which refer to 
 each of them respectively, and to consider what is said 
 in each of the classes of passages of the coming of 
 Christ to which they refer ; and needful, moreover, to 
 realise that no such thing is spoken of as a personal 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. loi 
 
 coming again of Christ to the earth at the end of this 
 world, but that the expressions in which this is sup- 
 posed to be contained have been entirely misappre- 
 hended. 
 
 I shall speak first of the coming again of Christ, 
 promised in His last discourse to His disciples, because 
 it is the coming again or appearing of Christ to His 
 disciples which is spoken of in this discourse in the 
 I 5th chapter of first Corinthians, and is, as it seems to 
 me, the only second coming of Christ for us ; and shall 
 speak afterwards of His coming in His kingdom, which 
 has long ago taken place. His kingdom having now 
 come, and being present with us. 
 
 The coming again or appearing of Christ personally 
 to His disciples, as I have remarked in the foregoing 
 book, is spoken of by Christ Himself in the Gospels in 
 only one discourse. The promise of it is given, for 
 the first time, in His last discourse to His disciples, 
 immediately before His death. What He said was 
 spoken to them to comfort them regarding His de- 
 parture from them. He said to them, as we have 
 His words recorded in the 1 4th chapter of St. John, 
 " Let not your heart be troubled : ye believe in God " 
 (or believe in God), " believe also in me. In my 
 Father's house are many mansions " (that is, many 
 dwelling-places) : " if it were not so, I would have told 
 you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go, 
 and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and 
 receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye 
 may be also." 
 
 The promise is given in the last sentence here. 
 And the meaning we naturally put upon the promise, 
 which the language in which it is expressed and the 
 
102 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 
 
 circumstances naturally lead us to put upon it, is that 
 He was to come again and receive His disciples to 
 Himself — that is, to the place to which He was going — 
 when they passed out of this world at death. The 
 promise, in the language in which it is expressed, is 
 made to the disciples only, and made specially to them. 
 It is implied that the promise was soon to be fulfilled, 
 since the very purpose of it was to comfort them re- 
 garding His departure from them ; and it was plainly 
 to be fulfilled in the future world, since it is a promise 
 that He would come again, and receive them to Him- 
 self — that is, to the place, the particular dwelling- 
 place of His Father, to which He was going, " that 
 where He was, there they might be also." The disciples 
 did not at the time see the meaning of the promise, 
 because they did not realise the circumstances as we 
 now apprehend them. They did not as yet realise or 
 think that He was about to die ; and although He 
 had distinctly intimated, in the promise itself, that He 
 was going to the Father, they did not know, as Thomas 
 said, whither He was going. 
 
 In the continuation of the discourse He refers again 
 to the promise He has made to them, repeating what 
 He had before told them, that He was going to the 
 Father. " Ye heard how I said to you, I go away, 
 and I come again unto you. If ye loved me, ye would 
 have rejoiced because I go unto the Father : for the 
 Father is greater than I. And now I have told you 
 before it come to pass, that when it is come to pass 
 ye may believe " (John xiv. 28). Where, again, in 
 this reference to the promise made to them, the coming 
 again promised is expressly to the disciples only, and 
 not to men in general : " I go away, and I come again 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 103 
 
 unto you." And He repeats the promise that, when 
 He has gone away, they may realise that He has gone 
 to the Father. 
 
 In an after part of the same discourse He said to 
 them again, " A little while and ye behold me no more ; 
 and again a little while, and ye shall see me " (John 
 xvi. 1 6). Where, as we have already remarked, it is 
 plainly intimated to them that His coming again to 
 them would be only a little while after He had lett the 
 earth, and it is also implied that it would be when 
 they went "to the Father," as He was now about to 
 do. It is just what He had previously intimated to 
 Peter. " Whither I go, thou canst not follow me 
 now, but thou shalt follow me afterwards " (chap. xiii. 
 36). He adds here, in explanation of what He had 
 just said, " Do ye inquire among yourselves concerning 
 this, that I said, A little while, and ye behold me not, 
 and again a little while, and ye shall see me ? Verily, 
 verily, I say unto you, that ye shall weep and lament, 
 but the world shall rejoice : ye shall be sorrowful, but 
 your sorrow shall be turned into joy. A woman when 
 she is in travail hath sorrow, because her hour is come : 
 but when she is delivered of the child, she remem- 
 bereth no more the anguish, for the joy that a man 
 is born into the world. And ye therefore now have 
 sorrow ; but I will see you again, and your heart shall 
 rejoice, and your joy no one taketh from you" (John 
 xvi. 19—22). Where, again, their seeing Him again is 
 plainly to be at the end of their present sorrow, since it 
 is to be the taking of it away, and the joy of seeing 
 Him again is a joy that is to be with them for ever. 
 
 Along with what is said by Christ to His disciples 
 in this discourse we are to take with us what He says 
 
I04 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 
 
 in the last passage of the intercessory prayer of the 
 1 7th chapter, which immediately follows : " Father, 
 that which (or those whom) Thou hast given me, I 
 will that, where I am, tbey also may be with me ; 
 that they may behold my glory, which Thou hast 
 given me : for Thou lovedst me before the foundation 
 of the world." 
 
 The supposition that the promise given in the 
 passage we have been considering is of something 
 that was to take place at the end of this world, which 
 is the prevalent idea in our day, is entirely gratuitous, 
 there being nothing whatever said of the end of this 
 world ; and it is in the face of the language used in 
 the discourse, the words He uses, as we have seen, 
 plainly suggesting and conveying a nearer and more 
 rational ground of comfort. 
 
 This is what is to be said of the first announcement 
 of Christ's coming again to His disciples, the only 
 announcement of it which is made in the Gospels ; 
 and the announcement was very soon after repeated, 
 or rather another divine intimation of it made to 
 them, throwing further light to them on the subject. 
 
 The Crucifixion took place immediately after the 
 promise of Christ's coming to them again was given 
 to the disciples, and was followed by the Resurrection, 
 and, after a few weeks, by His open Ascension into 
 heaven ; and what took place at the Ascension is 
 thus described to us : " And while they were looking 
 steadfastly into heaven as He went, behold, two men 
 stood by them in white apparel ; which also said, Ye 
 men of Galilee, why stand ye looking into heaven ? 
 This Jesus, which was received up from you into 
 heaven, shall so come in like manner as (or, more 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 105 
 
 simply, even as) ye beheld Him going into heaven " 
 (Acts i. 10, 11). The language in which this divine 
 intimation is made to the disciples plainly implies, 
 we are to observe, that His coming again to them 
 had been already told them ; and what is added here 
 "to the first announcement of it is simply^ that He 
 should so come, even as they beheld Him going into 
 heaven — that is, that He should come in the same 
 glorified body in which they had seen Him go into 
 heaven. The supposition that any other coming of 
 Christ is referred to is altogether out of place, since 
 no other personal coming again of Christ, except that 
 which He had foretold to His disciples in the 14th 
 chapter of St. John, is anywhere spoken of in the 
 New Testament. The announcement here, like that 
 He had Himself made in the 14th chapter of St. 
 John, is plainly made to them to comfort them re- 
 garding His departure from them. He had intimated 
 to them before (John xiv. 29) that He told them 
 beforehand of His going to the Father, that when it 
 had taken place they might believe ; and now, when 
 they actually saw Him going away into heaven, it was 
 fitting that the promise of His coming again to them 
 which He had before made should be impressed on 
 them in the more distinct form in which it is here 
 given. The promise, as it is here given, points plainly 
 to what was contained in the former promise, that it 
 is a coming again to them when they passed at death 
 into the spiritual world — a coming again to receive 
 them to Himself, that where He was there they might 
 be also. 
 
 This is the origiual promise of Christ's corning again 
 to His disciples which He gave to them. What then 
 
io6 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 
 
 was the effect of this great promise upon the disciples, 
 and upon the teaching which was addressed to the 
 early Christian Church? We find that, after the 
 Ascension, it produced a great effect upon them, and 
 that, from the first, the coming again of Christ occu- 
 pied a prominent place in the teaching of the Apostles. 
 After the day of Pentecost, in the first teaching of the 
 Apostles which is recorded to us afterwards, the dis- 
 course of Peter to the people after the healing of the 
 lame man at the Beautiful Gate of the Temple, we 
 read of Peter addressing the people as follows towards 
 the end of his discourse to them. We translate the 
 passage more distinctly, and with, at least we think, 
 a more correct expression of what is meant than in 
 either our Authorised or Revised Version : " Repent 
 ye, therefore, and be changed, that your sins may be 
 blotted out, that the times of deliverance from trouble 
 may come from the presence of the Lord, and He 
 shall send Him who was before preached unto you, 
 Jesus Christ : whom the heaven must receive until 
 the times of restoration of all things, which God hath 
 spoken of by the mouth of His holy prophets from 
 the beginning" (Acts iii. 19-21). Here we find St. 
 Peter already filled with the idea of Christ's coming 
 again to them who believed in Him, to bring to them 
 the foretold times of deliverance from trouble. Christ, 
 to his apprehension, was now in heaven, and the 
 heaven must receive Him until the times of restora- 
 tion of all things, the final state of things with them, 
 which God had spoken of by His prophets from the 
 beginning. The passages in the Old Testament re- 
 ferred to are, we appreheild, such as those at the 
 end of the 60th, and again of the 66th chapter of 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 107 
 
 Isaiah, which are evidently a description of the final 
 state of things with the spiritual Israel, when the 
 foretold kingdom of God should have come in its 
 final glory. 
 
 When we turn again to the epistolary writings of 
 the New Testament, we find that the coming or ap- 
 pearing of Christ to them from heaven is the great 
 expectation in the future to which the Apostles taught 
 the early disciples to look forward, and that it filled 
 up to them all that they hoped for or looked forward 
 to beyond their life here ; it being at the same time 
 implied that it was to come to them at death — that is, 
 when their life here ended. It was to be to them the 
 time of judgment ; the time at which they were to put 
 on the body of glory, and the time at which they 
 were to enter into heaven — that is, into the final con- 
 dition of their life, the final blessedness, the inherit- 
 ance of life to which they looked forward. The 
 prospect of it is constantly kept before the minds 
 of the disciples as an all-important Christian teaching. 
 And the references to it, in the different aspects of it 
 which we have specified, are, it would seem, perfectly 
 plain. 
 
 The passages in which it is spoken of are so 
 numerous, and at the same time so diff'erent in the 
 aspects of it in which it is spoken of in them, that it 
 is difficult to present them severally in any natural 
 order. But it is desirable that the different aspects 
 of it in which it is presented to us in the New Testa- 
 ment should be separately stated, that the teaching 
 of the New Testament on the subject may be made 
 clear to us. 
 
 In the first place, generally, it was the great expec- 
 
io8 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 
 
 tation in the future to which the early Christians were 
 taught to look forward. 
 
 St. Peter, for instance, whose teaching we have 
 already quoted, says in the first chapter of his first 
 Epistle, speaking of the trial of their faith, which 
 their life here brought to the Christians whom he 
 addresses, that the " proof of your faith, being more 
 precious than gold that perisheth, though it is proved 
 by fire, might be found unto praise, and glory, and 
 honour at the revelation of Jesus Christ" (i Peter i. 7). 
 And again, a little farther on in the same Epistle, he 
 says, " Wherefore, girding up the loins of your mind, 
 be sober and set your hope perfectly on the grace 
 that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of 
 Jesus Christ" (i Peter i. 13). And in the same 
 Epistle, in his address to the elders of the Church, he 
 says, " And when the Chief Shepherd shall be mani- 
 fested, ye shall receive the crown of glory that fadeth 
 not away" (i Peter v. 4). 
 
 So also St. John says in his first Epistle, " And 
 now, my little children, abide in Him ; that, if He 
 shall be manifested, we may have boldness, and not 
 be ashamed before Him at His coming " (i John ii. 
 28). And again in the same Epistle he says, "Be- 
 loved, now are we children of God ; and it is not yet 
 made manifest what we shall be. We know that, if 
 He si 1 all be manifested, we shall be like Him ; for 
 we shall see Him even as He is " (i John iii. 2). 
 
 In the Epistles of St. Paul, again, we find the 
 coming again, or the appearing of Christ to His dis- 
 ciples, presented constantly to the early Christians in 
 the same aspect, as the great all-containing expecta- 
 tion for them in the future. Thus, in the earliest of 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 109 
 
 his Epistles, the first Epistle to the Thessalonians, 
 written probably about the year 52 — that is, not 
 more than twenty years after the Crucifixion — he 
 describes the conversion of the Thessalonians to 
 Christianity by saying that " they had turned unto 
 God from idols, to serve a living and true God, and 
 to wait for His Son from heaven, whom He raised 
 from the dead " ( i Thess. i. 9). In the same Epistle 
 he says again, " For what is onr hope, or joy, or 
 crown of glorying ? Are not even ye before our 
 Lord Jesus at His coming ? " [Gr. presence] ( i Thess. 
 ii. 19). At another place in the Epistle he says, 
 " To the end He may establish your hearts unblame- 
 able in holiness before our God and Father, at the 
 coming of our Lord Jesus with all His saints" (i 
 Thess. iii. 13). And again, "And the God of peace 
 Himself sanctify you wholly ; and may your spirit, 
 and soul, and body be preserved entire, without blame 
 at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ" (i Thess. v. 
 23). In all these passages, the coming again, or 
 appearing, of Christ to them from heaven is the great 
 expectation in the future to which the Thessalonian 
 Christians are taught to look forward. In the second 
 Epistle to the Thessalonians St. Paul says, to the 
 same purpose as in our first quotation from the first 
 Epistle, " And the Lord direct your hearts into the 
 love of God, and into the patience of Christ " (2 
 Thess. iii. 5). In the Authorised Version the last 
 clause is rendered, more intelligibly, and we think 
 more correctly, " And into the patient waiting for 
 Christ." 
 
 In the first Epistle to the Corinthians he says of 
 the disciples at Corinth, that they " come behind in 
 
no THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 
 
 no gift, waiting for the revelation of our Lord Jesus 
 Christ, who shall also confirm you unto the end, that 
 ye be unreproveable in the day of our Lord Jesus 
 Christ" (i Cor. i. 7). Where "the day of our Lord 
 Jesus Christ" is plainly the day of the revelation of 
 Him. So also in the second Epistle to the Corin- 
 thians he says, " As also ye did acknowledge us in 
 part, that we are your glorying, even as ye also are 
 ours, in the day of our Lord Jesus." 
 
 It has often been said (by those who refer the 
 coming of Christ to His disciples to the end of the 
 world, and suppose therefore the end of the world to be 
 implied in it) that the later Epistles of St. Paul speak 
 on this subject in quite different language from that 
 of the earlier Epistles, and that the teaching of the 
 earlier Epistles is quite departed from by him. For 
 our own part, we do not see, in his later Epistles, the 
 least appearance of any change in his view of the 
 subject. His teaching in the later Epistles seems to us 
 to be entirely the same as in the earlier ones. The 
 teaching, however, will speak for itself. In the Epistle 
 to the Philippians, written during his imprisonment at 
 Rome, and therefore among his last written Epistles, 
 he says, " Being confident of this very thing, that He 
 which began a good work in you will perfect it until 
 the day of Jesus Christ " (Phil. i. 6). In the Epistle 
 to the Colossians, which is of the same date, he says, to 
 just the same purpose, "And you, being in time past 
 alienated and enemies in your mind in your evil works, 
 yet now hath He reconciled in the body of His flesh 
 through death, to present you holy, and without blemisb, 
 and unreproveable, before Him " (Col. i. 2 i ). And again 
 in the same passage, " Whom we proclaim, admonish- 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. in 
 
 ing every man and teaching every man in all wisdom, 
 that we may present every man perfect in Christ " 
 (Col. i. 28). In the Epistle to Titus, which is pro- 
 bably of a still later date — written, that is, after the im- 
 prisonment at Rome — he teaches the gospel of Christ in 
 a general form by saying, " For the grace of God hath 
 appeared, bringing salvation to all men, instructing us 
 to the intent that, denying ungodliness and worldly 
 lusts, we should live soberly and righteously and godly 
 in this present world ; looking for the blessed hope 
 and appearing of the glory of our great God and 
 Saviour Jesus Christ" (Titus ii. 1 1-13). 
 
 St. James has the same teaching, very distinctly 
 and prominently, in his Epistle. To the Jewish Chris- 
 tians of the dispersion, to whom his Epistle is written, 
 he says, " Be patient, therefore, brethren, until the 
 coming (Gr. presence) of the Lord. Behold the hus- 
 bandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, 
 being patient over it, until it receive the early and 
 latter rain. Be ye also patient ; stablish your hearts : 
 for the coming (Gr. presence) of the Lord is at hand " 
 (James v. 7, 8). And again, in what immediately follows 
 this, " Murmur not, brethren, one against another, that 
 ye be not judged : behold, the judge standeth before 
 the doors." 
 
 Then it is at the same time indicated that the 
 coming again, or appearing, of Christ to them, which 
 was thus the great expectation in the future to which 
 they were taught to look forward, was to come to them 
 at death : the expression which is used in some of these 
 passages, the " revelation " or " manifestation " of Christ 
 itself implies this. What is meant is plainly the revela- 
 tion or manifestation of Him to them from heaven, where 
 
112 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 
 
 He now is, when at death they go to the Father. It 
 contains in it always a reference to the promise made 
 to the disciples ere He left the earth, that He would 
 come again to them, and receive them to Himself, 
 that where He was, there they might be also : and the 
 emphasis of the expression lies in this, that the coming 
 again that was promised is a coming again specially 
 to His disciples. 
 
 In some of the passages we have quoted it is clearly 
 indicated, it would seem, that the time of His revela- 
 tion or manifestation is when the life of the disciples 
 here comes to an end. When, for instance, the Thes- 
 salonian and the Corinthian Christians are described as 
 in their life " waiting for " the coming or the revelation 
 of Christ ; or when it is expressly said by St. James, by 
 way of helping the Christians he addresses to be patient 
 amidst the troubles of their life here, that the coming 
 of the Lord is at hand. In the face of such language 
 we cannot rationally doubt, it would seem, that the 
 coming of Christ for which they waited, and which was 
 at hand, was to come to them at death. 
 
 But there are other passages in St. Paul's writings 
 in which it is still more expressly set forth that the 
 coming again to them of Christ, to which the early 
 Christians looked forward, was to take place at death. 
 In a remarkable passage in the first Epistle to the 
 Thessalonians, this is, we apprehend, very distinctly 
 and expressly taught ; although another meaning, 
 quite different from this, is often put into the passage. 
 We translate one clause in the passage (the 1 6th verse) 
 more literally and more intelligibly than it is given in 
 the Revised Version, for the passage has evidently 
 been rendered by the translators in that version, as in 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 113 
 
 the former one, with a foregone conclusion regarding 
 its meaning. 
 
 '' But we would not have you ignorant, brethren, 
 concerning them that fall asleep ; that ye sorrow not, 
 even as the rest, which have no hope. For if we 
 believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them 
 also that are fallen asleep in Jesus will God bring 
 with Him. For this we say unto you by the word 
 of the Lord, that we that are alive, that are left unto 
 the coming of the Lord, shall in no wise precede them 
 that are fallen asleep. For the Lord Himself shall 
 descend from heaven in the call, in the voice of the 
 archangel, and in the trump of God : and the dead in 
 Christ shall rise first : then we that are alive, that are 
 left, shall together with them be caught up in the 
 clouds, to meet the Lord in the air : and so shall we 
 ever be with the Lord. Wherefore comfort one another 
 with these words." ' 
 
 What is said in this passage is said to comfort the 
 Thessalonian Christians regarding their Christian friends 
 that fell asleep, that died, that they might not sorrow 
 like the heathen, who had no hope ; and what is said 
 is that those who are fallen asleep in Jesus, God will 
 bring with Him — that is, when He is manifested. 
 This is the ho^De regarding their Christian friends that 
 are fallen asleep which they should have; and the 
 reason he gives for this hope is simply that they that 
 have fallen asleep are now with Christ : His appearing 
 to us will be their appearing along with Him. He 
 says to them, by the word of the Lord, that they who 
 were alive, who were left unto the appearing of the 
 Lord, should not precede (that is, should not come to 
 the appearing of the Lord before) them that are fallen 
 
 H 
 
114 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 
 
 asleep. For the Lord Himself should descend from 
 heaven — that is, should appear — in the call hence 
 itself, in the voice of the archangel, and in the trurap 
 of God ; and the dead in Christ should rise out of 
 death first — that is, before them that were now living. 
 Then they that were alive, that were left, should 
 together with them be caught up in the clouds, to 
 meet the Lord in the air : and so should they ever be 
 with the Lord. It is plainly contained in this teach- 
 ing that the dead in Christ have already risen out of 
 death, and come to the appearing of the Lord ; that 
 they are now with Christ, and that Christ, with those 
 who have gone before to Him, will appear to us when- 
 ever the call hence comes to us. 
 
 There is no real difficulty, it seems to us, in the 
 teaching of this passage, except what is created by our 
 own preconceived notions. The peculiarities in the 
 language are found, many of them, in the language of 
 St. Paul in the only other passage — the 15 th chapter 
 of first Corinthians — in which he speaks particularly of 
 the resurrection of the dead. And although some of 
 the expressions used are very obscure to us, the words 
 are quite intelligible in themselves, although the mean- 
 ing is not obvious to the reader. In reference to the 
 expression, " God will bring with Him," we may com- 
 pare what is said in chap. iii. 13 of this Epistle, 
 already quoted : " At the coming (Gr. presence) of our 
 Lord Jesus with all His saints." 
 
 When the call of a Christian into the after life is 
 spoken of as " the voice of the archangel " and as " the 
 trump of God," the first of these expressions has its 
 meaning, it would seem, in the fact that the ministry 
 of angels is used in carrying the righteous to heaven ; 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 115 
 
 as seems to be expressly taught by our Lord in the 
 parable of the rich man and Lazarus, when it is said 
 of the latter, when he died, that he " was carried 
 by the angels into Abraham's bosom." The second 
 expression means simply, it would seem, that the call 
 hence is a call of God. The expression is of course a 
 figurative one. It seems to be taken from the method 
 used in gathering the Jews to their solemn assemblies, 
 which was by the sound of a trumpet. We may read 
 this in Numb. x. 1—3, and the custom then estab- 
 lished had its origin probably in what took place in 
 the great scene at Mount Sinai (Exod. xix. 1 6), where 
 the people were summoned " to meet with God " in 
 a supernatural way, with " the voice of the trumpet 
 exceeding loud." In a similar form of figurative 
 language, the call of the gospel, summoning men to 
 the kingdom of God here, which was addressed to them 
 by human messengers, is spoken of by Christ (Matt, 
 xxiv. 31) as His sending "His angels with a loud- 
 sounding trumpet " to gather His new " chosen people." 
 What is said of them " that are alive, that are left," in 
 the 17th verse, is very obscure to us, but the obscurity 
 is in the nature of the subject. When it is said that 
 they " shall, together with the dead, be caught up in 
 the clouds to meet the Lord in the air," we may 
 suppose the meaning to be that they are carried up, 
 as the dead have already been, simply in a way that is 
 hidden from men liere, and that the meeting with the 
 Lord takes place outside of this world, in the spiritual 
 world which is around the earth. With the Jewish 
 language of this passage, in regard to the call of 
 Christians into the after life, we may compare that of 
 Christ Himself (in John v. 28), "The hour cometh in 
 
ii6 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 
 
 which all that are in the tombs shall hear His voice " — 
 the voice of the Son of man — " and shall come forth ; 
 they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life ; 
 and they that have done ill, unto the resurrection of 
 judgment." 
 
 The supposition that this remarkable passage in 
 first Thessalonians, of which we have been speaking, 
 refers to something that is to take place at the end of 
 this world is entirely gratuitous, and makes what is 
 said without meaning to the Apostle's readers. 
 
 Beyond this remarkable passage, in which we are, 
 it would seem, expressly taught that the dead in Christ 
 have already, at the moment of their call hence, come 
 to "the appearing" of Christ, and are now with Him, 
 and that they will be brought again to us along with 
 Christ, when we at our call hence come to His appear- 
 ing, there are other passages in St. Paul's Epistles 
 which plainly contain in them the teaching that the 
 " coming again" of Christ to us takes place at death. 
 Thus, in his first Epistle to Timothy, having before 
 exhorted Timothy to " fight the good fight of faith," 
 and so to "lay hold on eternal life," he adds, " I charge 
 thee in the sight of God, who quickeneth all things, 
 and of Christ Jesus, who before Pontius Pilate witnessed 
 the good confession, that thou keep the commandment, 
 without spot, without reproach, until the appearing of 
 our Lord Jesus Christ : which in its own times He shall 
 show, who is the blessed and only Potentate, the King 
 of kings, and Lord of lords; who only hath immortality, 
 dwelling in light unapproachable ; whom no man hath 
 seen, nor can see: to whom be honour and power eternal. 
 Amen" ( i Tim. vi. i 3-1 6). This very solemn charge to 
 Timothy to keep the commandment which goes before — 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 117 
 
 that is, to fight the good fight of faith, and lay hold of 
 eternal life, " until the appearing of our Lord Jesus 
 Christ " — contains in it surely, if it has any meaning at 
 all, that the appearing of Christ was to take place to 
 Timothy at the end of his life here — that is, to follow 
 immediately when his life here ended. The words 
 that follow, " which in its own times He — God — shall 
 show," must needs, again, contain in them, it would 
 seem, that the appearing of Christ is " shown," not at 
 one time to all Christians, but to Christians individually 
 at the proper times which God has chosen — that is, at 
 the times which He has appointed to them respectively 
 for their passing hence by death. 
 
 In the first Epistle to the Corinthians, again, in like 
 manner, speaking of the observance of the Lord's 
 Supper, he says to the Corinthian Christians, " For as 
 often as ye eat this bread, and drink the cup, ye pro- 
 claim the Lord's death till He come" (i Cor. xi. 26). 
 Where, in the observance of the Lord's Supper, we are 
 said to " proclaim the Lord's death " — that is, to set it 
 forth as an event to be realised, and spiritually fed on 
 by us — '•' till He come : " implying surely that the 
 coming or appearing of Christ to us is to take place at 
 the end of our life here. 
 
 We observe now, secondly, that the appearing of 
 Christ, which was thus to the early Christians the 
 great prospect they had in the future, and which was 
 to take place to them at death, was also the time at 
 which they were to put on the body of glory. 
 
 This great change in the condition of our existence 
 is one of the many things in our future which, in our 
 modern conception, are not expected to take place till 
 "the end of the world." The early Church expected 
 
ii8 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 
 
 it, it seems perfectly plain, as one expects a thing near 
 to them, at the appearing of Christ to them individually 
 at death. Thus, in the Epistle to the Philippians, St. 
 Paul says, " For our citizenship is in heaven ; from 
 whence also we wait for a Saviour, the Lord Jesus 
 Christ : who shall fashion anew the body of our 
 humiliation, that it may be conformed to the body of 
 His glory, according to the working whereby He is 
 able even to subject all things unto Himself" (Phil, 
 iii. 20). Where it is plainly said that the appearing 
 of the Saviour to them from heaven was a thing they 
 were presently waiting for ; and it is clearly taught, 
 surely, that the appearing of the Saviour to them from 
 heaven was to bring to them the change of their pre- 
 sent body for the body of glory. 
 
 In the second Epistle to the Corinthians, again, he 
 says, " For we know that' if the earthly house of our 
 tabernacle be dissolved, we have a building from God, 
 a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. 
 For verily in this we groan, longing to be clothed upon 
 with our habitation which is from heaven : if so be 
 that being clothed we shall not be found naked. For, 
 indeed, we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being 
 burdened ; not for that we would be unclothed, but 
 that we would be clothed upon, that what is mortal 
 may be swallowed up of life. Now He that wrought 
 us for this very thing is God, who gave unto us the 
 earnest of the Spirit. Being therefore always of good 
 courage, and knowing that, whilst we are at home in 
 the body, we are aV)sent from the Lord ; (for we walk 
 by faith, not by sight ;) we are of good courage, I say, 
 and are willing rather to be absent from the body, and 
 to be at home with the Lord" (2 Cor. v. 1—8). 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 119 
 
 Here again, in the first part of the passage, as in 
 I Cor. XV. 51, 52, it is plainly taught that to put off 
 this present body is for the Christian at the same 
 time to put on the body of glory, and it is clearly 
 implied, therefore, that the putting on of the body of 
 glory takes place at death. And in tbe latter part 
 of the passage it is distinctly taught again, that when 
 we put on this body of glory we are at the same time 
 with Christ. The building from God, a " house " not 
 made with hands, eternal in the heavens, which we 
 are said to have if our present body were dissolved, 
 is set forth in this latter expression as the body 
 naturally belonging to our spiritual condition when we 
 have Christ's Spirit dwelling in us here. It is con- 
 trasted, in respect to its immortal character, with the 
 ^' tabernacle " or tent, the temporary body, the " earthly 
 house," in which we are at present. 
 
 To the same purpose we read in the Epistle to the 
 Romans, " But if the Spirit of Him that raised up 
 Jesus from the dead dwelleth in you, He that raised 
 up Christ Jesus from the dead shall quicken also your 
 mortal bodies through His Spirit that dwelleth in 
 you" (Rom. viii. 1 1) — that is, shall give life to, shall 
 make immortal your mortal bodies through His Spirit 
 that dwelleth in you. And so it is said in the same 
 chapter, the 23rd verse, "Ourselves also, which have 
 the first-fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan 
 within ourselves, waiting for our adoption, to wit, the 
 redemption of our body." Here it would seem, as in 
 the last quoted passage, it is implied that there is a body 
 belonging naturally to our spii'itual condition when 
 the Spirit of God or of Christ dwells in us here which 
 is put on at death ; and for this redemption of our 
 
I20 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 
 
 body we here wait, looking forward for it to the time 
 which comes after death. 
 
 To the same effect we read also in the Epistle to 
 the Colossians, " When Christ who is our life shall be 
 manifested, then shall ye also with Him be manifested 
 in glory " (Col. iii. 4). 
 
 Then we are to observe, thirdly, that the appearing 
 of Christ to which they looked forward was, to the 
 early Christians, the time of judgment, or rather of 
 the revelation on them of the judgment of God. 
 
 Thus St. Paul says in his first Epistle to the 
 Corinthians, " Judge nothing before the time, until the 
 Lord come, who will both bring to light the hidden 
 things of darkness, and make manifest the counsels 
 of the hearts ; and then shall each man have his 
 praise from God" (2 Cor. i. 4, 5). A similar passage, 
 quoted with others, is found in the first Epistle 
 of St, Peter, " That the proof of your faith being 
 more precious than gold that perisheth though it is 
 proved by fire, might be found unto praise and glory 
 and honour at the revelation of Jesus Christ." It 
 is plain from these and such like passages, that the 
 revelation of the judgment of God on us takes place 
 at death, at ^' the appearing *' of Christ to us. The 
 judgment itself, as we shall see set forth in the 24th 
 chapter of St. Matthew, when we come to consider 
 the discourse there, really takes place here : the 
 revelation of it comes on our entrance into the life 
 of hereafter. In the words of the writer of the 
 Epistle to the Hebrews, "It is appointed unto men 
 once to die, and after this cometh judgment" (Heb. 
 ix. 27). 
 
 Finally, the appearing of Christ was, to the early 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 121 
 
 Christians, the time at which they were to enter into 
 heaven. 
 
 To be with Christ was, in the conception of the 
 early Christians, to be in heaven, where Christ now is, 
 and to be in the final state of their life. And St. 
 Paul, speaking for himself individually, in the Epistle 
 to the Philippians plainly expects to be with Christ 
 immediately upon his death : " But I am in a strait 
 betwixt the two, having the desire to depart and to 
 be with Christ ; for it is very far better " (Phil. i. 23) ; 
 as he had said just before, in the 21st verse, "For 
 to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain." 
 
 In the second Epistle to Timothy, again, he says, 
 " Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of 
 righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, 
 shall give to me at that day : and not only to me, 
 but also to all them that have loved His appearing." 
 Here the first word, " henceforth," plainly means, it 
 would seem, " after this life," or when the time of his 
 departure, spoken of just before as at hand, had come. 
 The day spoken of with emphasis as "that day" is plainly, 
 moreover, the day of Christ's appearing to him ; and the 
 day of Christ's appearing to him is to St. Paul the time 
 of his passing hence into the higher state of his life. 
 
 The teaching of St. Peter on the subject is, it 
 would seem, distinct and express. In his first Epistle 
 he says of Christians, " Who by the power of God are 
 guarded through faith unto a salvation ready to be 
 revealed in the last time. Wherein ye greatly rejoice, 
 though now for a little while, if need be, ye have 
 been put to grief in manifold temptations (or trials), 
 that the proof of your faith being more precious than 
 gold that perisheth though it is proved by fire, might 
 
122 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 
 
 be found unto praise, and glory, and honour at the 
 revelation of Jesus Christ" (i Peter i. 5). And again 
 in the same Epistle he says to his readers, "But 
 insomuch as ye are partakers of Christ's sufferings, 
 rejoice, that at the revelation of His glory also ye 
 may rejoice with exceeding joy " (l Peter iv. 13). 
 
 The teaching of St. John on the subject is expressed 
 in his first Epistle in the impressive saying, " Beloved, 
 now are we the children of God, and it is not yet 
 made manifest what we shall be. We know that, if 
 •He shall be manifested, we shall be like Him; for we 
 shall see Him even as He is" (i John iii. 2). 
 
 In the Epistle to the Hebrews, again, we have this 
 very distinct teaching on the subject, ^'Christ also, 
 having been once offered to bear the sins of many, 
 shall appear a second time, apart from sin, to them 
 that wait for Him, unto salvation" (Heb. ix. 28). 
 
 The idea that the " appearing" of Christ spoken of 
 in this 15 th chapter of first Corinthians, and in the 
 numerous other passages in the Epistles which we 
 have quoted, is an event which is to take place at the 
 end of the world, is an idea which has existed in the 
 Church, it would seem, from a very early time. It 
 has had its origin, it would seem, in a misunderstand- 
 ing or misinterpretation of certain expressions in the 
 New Testament. Mainly, perhaps, it has originated in 
 a misinterpretation of an expression which occurs twice 
 in the 13th chapter of St. Matthew, and of a similar 
 expression in the 24th chapter of St. Matthew. At 
 least these are the only passages in which anything 
 taking place at the end of this world seems, in express 
 words, to be spoken of in the New Testament. 
 
 The first of the two passages in the 13 th chapter, 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 123 
 
 in which the expression referred to occurs, is in the 
 interpretation of the parable of the tares in the field, 
 where we read, as the words are rendered in our Eng- 
 lish (ver. 39), " The harvest is the end of the world;" 
 and again (in the next verse) " So shall it be at the 
 end of the world." Here we are to notice, first, that 
 the thing spoken of in the passage is not the appear- 
 ing of Christ, but the judgment which is to be in 
 Christ's kingdom, or the revelation of that judgment. 
 This is supposed by many to imply a personal coming 
 of Christ to the earth. But in the parable here itself, 
 as it is interpreted by Christ, the judgment, or rather 
 the revelation of the judgment spoken of, is represented 
 as taking place by the Son of man sending His angels, 
 and their gathering out of His kingdom things that 
 cause stumbling, and them that do iniquity. And 
 then it is to be observed, secondly, that in the original 
 the expression used, translated literally, is not " the 
 end of the world," but " the end of the age." The 
 word used is aioiv, which means properly an age, or a 
 period of time, not the material world or the system 
 of outward things here. And the natural meaning of 
 the expression, " the end of the age," here is certainly 
 not the end of the material world, of which nothing is 
 here spoken, but is, it seems to us, the end of the 
 age or period of time that is now with us — that is, 
 simply the end of life here. There are two passages 
 in the Epistle to the Hebrews, indeed (chap. i. 2, 
 and chap. ii. 3), in which mwv^ in the plural, is used, 
 not for ages or periods in the world's subsistence, but, 
 by a Hebraism, for simply " the worlds," because the 
 tiling spoken of is the creating or framing of the 
 worlds ; the reference in these passages being plainly 
 
124 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 
 
 to the material structure of the worlds. Here, how- 
 ever, we have no reason to suppose that the word is 
 used in any other than its proper and natural meaning. 
 There is this special reason, moreover, for taking the 
 word here in its natural meaning, that in a preceding 
 verse of the interpretation of the parable (ver. 38), 
 where it is said " the field is the world," the word 
 which is translated " world" is KocrjuLog, the order of 
 things here. That word, however, is not repeated 
 here, as it naturally would have been if the sense 
 intended here were the visible order of things, but the 
 word used is changed into aiwv. The " harvest" of 
 the parable, it would seem, is plainly interpreted with- 
 out any reference at all to the end of this world, as 
 coming, in regard to us individually, at the end of life 
 here, when our life here is manifested in its fruits. 
 Then, as it is said, " the Son of man sends His angels, 
 and they gather out of His kingdom the things that 
 cause stumbling, and them that do iniquity : and then 
 shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the king- 
 dom of their Father." 
 
 The second of the two passages in the 13th chapter 
 in which the expression occurs is in the interpretation 
 of the parable of the net cast into the sea, where we 
 read (ver. 49), " So shall it be in the end of the world : 
 the angels shall come forth, and sever the wicked from 
 among the righteous." The Revised Version here, and 
 also in the first of the two passages, very properly 
 gives as an alternative reading, " or, the consummation 
 of the age" — that is, as already explained, at the end 
 of life here. " Then the angels shall come forth, and 
 sever the wicked from among the righteous " (ver. 49). 
 
 These expressions, in the interpretation of the two 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 125 
 
 parables in regard to the angels, it is to be remarked, 
 are entirely in accordance with what is said hy our 
 Lord in another parable (Luke xvi. 22), "And it 
 came to pass that the beggar died, and that he was 
 carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom." This is 
 surely spoken of as taking place to Lazarus immedi- 
 ately upon his death. 
 
 In the passage in the 24th chapter of St. Matthew 
 (ver. 3), the question put to our Lord by the disciples, 
 " What shall be the sign of Thy coming, and of the 
 end of the world ? '' (or the consummation of the age), 
 has reference plainly, we apprehend, to Christ's com- 
 ing in His kingdom, and to the end of the existing 
 Jewish age, and cannot possibly have reference to the 
 end of this world, which Christ had not in any way 
 spoken of. 
 
 There is, we apprehend, no passage in the New 
 Testament in which " the appearing of Christ " is in 
 any way connected with the end of this world. 
 
 The idea that the " appearing" of Christ is to take 
 place at the end of this world, originating mainly per- 
 haps in a misinterpretation of the expression of which 
 we have spoken, has been helped also by the expres- 
 sion "the last day " (John vi. 39, 40, 44, 54), which 
 is used by Christ repeatedly to denote the time at 
 which He will raise up those who believe in Him out 
 of death, and also to denote the time at which those 
 to whom His word has been spoken will be judged. 
 The expression, because of the prevalent notions about 
 the end of the world, has been taken to mean " the 
 last day " (John xii. 48) with regard to this world, 
 although in the passages in which it occurs, nothing 
 whatever is said about the world, and understood to 
 
126 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 
 
 refer to the end of the world. But it means " the last 
 day," we apprehend, simply with regard to our life 
 here, and refers simply to the end to us of our life 
 here. It is the beofinninof of the time that comes after 
 death. An expression precisely equivalent, as we ap- 
 prehend, is used by St. Peter in the 1st chapter of his 
 first Epistle, when he speaks of Christians being 
 " guarded, through faith, unto a salvation ready to be 
 revealed in the last time." 
 
 The coming again of Christ to His disciples, of 
 which we have been speaking, is, it seems to us, the 
 only second coming of Christ, and the only personal 
 coming of Christ, of which the New Testament any- 
 where speaks. It is not a coming again to the earth. 
 Nor is it a coming to men in general. It is to take 
 place to them that are Christ's in the future world, 
 when they pass hence at death ; and it forms, as we 
 have seen, the great, all-containing expectation in the 
 future to which the early Christians looked forward, 
 and for which, in their life here, they waited. 
 
 When we turn to consider the coming of Christ in 
 His kingdom, the first of the two comings of Christ 
 which we have said are spoken of in the New Testa- 
 ment, an entirely different subject of contemplation is 
 presented to us. It has no connection at all with the 
 coming of Christ spoken of in the I 5th chapter of first 
 Corinthians, but it is a subject of great importance in 
 itself, and it is important to separate the passages in the 
 New Testament that refer to it from those which refer 
 to that other coming. Christ's coming in His king- 
 dom is largely foretold by Christ Himself in the Gospels. 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 127 
 
 We are to begin here by observing that Christ's 
 preaching, from the beginning of His public ministry, 
 just as that of His forerunner John the Baptist had 
 been, was that the foretold kingdom of heaven was at 
 hand. He went through all the synagogues of Gali- 
 lee proclaiming that the kingdom of heaven, the king- 
 dom of God, which had been foretold of old by the 
 prophets, was now at hand. On this preaching all 
 His subsequent foretelling of the coming of His king- 
 dom rests. 
 
 When He sent forth His twelve apostles, we find 
 Him saying, in accordance with this, in the charge 
 which He delivered to them, " When they persecute 
 you in this city, flee into the next ; for verily I say 
 unto you, ye shall not have gone through the cities of 
 Israel till the Son of man be come" (Matt. x. 2^). 
 This is plainly a reference to a coming of the Son of 
 man which was already "known to the disciples, and it 
 could only mean, and be understood by them to mean, 
 His coming in His kingdom — the kingdom which had 
 been proclaimed to be at hand — this being the only 
 coming of the Son of man of which the disciples at this 
 time had the idea. 
 
 To the same purpose, that His coming in His 
 kingdom was near at hand, we find Him saying, " For 
 the Son of man shall come in the glory of His Father 
 with His angels, and then shall He render unto every 
 man according to his deeds. Verily I say unto you. 
 There be some of them that stand here which shall in 
 no wise taste of death till they see the Son of man 
 coming in His kingdom" (Matt. xvi. 27, 28). It is 
 obvious that the coming of Christ in His kingdom 
 here — that is, the appearing of the foretold kingdom 
 
128 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 
 
 of God — is spoken of in both these verses. In the 
 latter verse, the coming of the Son of man spoken of 
 is expressly His " coming in His kingdom " — that is, 
 it is the appearance of the kingdom of God which He 
 had foretold to be at hand ; in other words, the ap- 
 pearance of Christ as a king reigning over men — the 
 passing away of the Jewish age, to express it other- 
 wise — and the coming in or the first beginnings of the 
 Christian age which is now with us. There were 
 some of them stood there, Christ says, who should live 
 to see this ; in other words, who should survive the 
 destruction of Jerusalem and see the incoming of the 
 Christian age. The parallel passage in St. Luke says 
 simply of those present who are thus spoken of that 
 they should not taste of death ^' till they see the 
 kingdom of God" (Luke ix. 27). In the first of the 
 two verses this coming of the Son of man in His 
 kingdom is spoken of as His coming "in the glory of 
 His Father with His angels," and it is added that 
 then shall He render unto every man according to 
 his deeds. When it is said that the Son of man 
 should come " in the glory of His Father with His 
 angels," the meaning is simply, we apprehend, that 
 He should be seen or spiritually apprehended, reign- 
 ino" over men here in the g-lorv of God and encom- 
 passed with the angels of God. This glory of 
 Christ in His kingdom here is not a thing like 
 the glory of an earthly king, which the eye of sense 
 can see, but a thing which is visible to the eye 
 of faith. Men coming to see Him thus is that in 
 which the coming of His kingdom stood. When it 
 is said again that then He should " render unto every 
 man according to His deeds," the meaning is that 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 129 
 
 this is what He should do in His kingdom, the judg- 
 ment which should be in His kingdom, when it had 
 thus come. 
 
 What is thus said is illustrated and placed in 
 another light by what we read in another place, " Then 
 answered Peter, and said unto Him, Lo, we have left 
 all, and followed Thee ; what, then, shall we have ? 
 And Jesus said unto them, Verily I say unto you, 
 that ye which have followed me in the regeneration, 
 when the Son of man shall sit on the throne of His 
 glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging 
 the twelve tribes of Israel" (Matt. xix. 27). Where 
 " the regeneration," in which the Son of man shall 
 " sit on the throne of His glory," is simply, it is plain, 
 the state of things which should be in His kingdom 
 here when it had come. Then, as He sat on the 
 throne of His glory judging men in His kingdom, the 
 Apostles also should, under Him, sit on thrones judg- 
 ing in His kingdom — that is, they should be looked 
 up to as under Him judging men in His kingdom. 
 This is, it would seem, the natural and obvious mean- 
 ing of the promise which is here made to the dis- 
 ciples ; and it is plainly impossible to suppose, and 
 is in no way contained in the words, that this judg- 
 ment of men which is to be exercised by the Apostles 
 has reference to something that is to be in the future 
 world : it is plainly a thing that is to be in Christ's 
 kingdom here. 
 
 We come now to Christ's great foretelling to His 
 disciples of the coming of His kingdom in the 24th 
 and 25 th chapters of St. Matthew, by far the fullest 
 and the most important passage in His teaching on the 
 subject. The discourse in the 24th chapter is com- 
 
 I 
 
I30 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 
 
 monly interpreted as having reference, in great part, 
 to something that is to take place at the end of the 
 world, but it has no appearance whatever in itself of 
 being a discourse having reference to the end of the 
 world. Except for an expression in the 3rd verse, 
 which we have already spoken of as a mistranslation, 
 it would not be so interpreted by any one who did not 
 read it with a foreg-ne conclusion regarding its mean- 
 ing. The whole discourse of this and the following 
 chapter, it is to be observed, is founded on a fore- 
 telling by Christ to His disciples of the approaching 
 destruction of the Temple. The disciples came to Him 
 as He was leaving the Temple courts, and called His 
 attention to the magnificence of the Temple buildings ; 
 upon which He said to them, " See ye not all these 
 things ? Verily I say unto you, there shall not be left 
 here one stone upon another that shall not be thrown 
 down." This foretelling of the coming utter destruc- 
 tion of the Temple, to the understanding of a Christian 
 Jew of that da}^, and in Christ's intention plainly, was 
 a foretelling of the passing away of the state of things 
 that had hitherto existed in Judea, and of the coming 
 of Christ's kingdom. It was so understood by the 
 disciples who heard it. As He sat afterwards on the 
 Mount of Olives, the disciples, we are told, came to 
 Him privately and said, " Tell us, when shall these 
 things be ? and what shall be the sign of Thy coming, 
 and of the end of the world ? " (or, the consummation of 
 the age). 
 
 The question has reference simply, it is plain, to 
 the foretold destruction of the Temple. In their 
 question, the destruction of the Temple, which He had 
 foretold to the disciples, is identified with His coming, 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 131 
 
 as they express it — that is, with His coming in His 
 kingdom — and with the end of the existing Jewish 
 age. This understanding of their question is in the 
 utmost degree natural and simple. Is it not absurd 
 to suppose that they inquired at Him about " the end 
 of the world," in the ordinary sense of that expression. 
 Christ had said nothing of the end of the world, but 
 had spoken simply of the coming destruction of the 
 Temple. The destruction of the Temple was naturally 
 associated in their minds with the end of the existing 
 Jewish age and the coming of His kingdom. But 
 can any reason be given or imagined why it should 
 be associated in their minds with the end of the world ? 
 Their question is simply, "-When shall this destruc- 
 tion of the Temple be ? and what shall be the sign 
 — the forewarning — of Thy coming, and of the end of 
 the age ? " 
 
 We must keep in view the question asked, that we 
 may understand our Lord's answer. He begins by 
 warning them to take heed not to be deceived about 
 signs of the end, and telling them certain things which 
 must precede it. " And Jesus answered and said unto 
 them, Take heed that no man lead you astray. For 
 many shall come in my name, saying, I am the Christ ; 
 and shall lead many astray. And ye shall hear of 
 wars and rumours of wars : see that ye be not 
 troubled : for these things must needs come to pass, 
 but the end is not yet. For nation shall rise against 
 nation, and kingdom against kingdom : and there 
 shall be famines, and earthquakes, in divers places. 
 But all these things are the beginning of travail. 
 Then shall they deliver you up unto tribulation, and 
 shall kill you: and ye shall be hated of all the nations 
 
132 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 
 
 for my name's sake. And then shall many stumble, 
 and shall deliver up one another, and shall hate one 
 another. And many false prophets shall arise, and 
 shall lead many astray. And because iniquity shall 
 be multiplied, the love of the many shall wax cold. 
 But he that endureth to the end, the same shall be 
 saved. And this gospel (or these glad tidings) of 
 the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world 
 for a testimony unto all the nations ; and then shall 
 the end come " (Matt. xxiv. 4- 1 4). 
 
 When it is said that the gospel of the kingdom 
 should first be preached in the whole world, for a 
 testimony unto all the nations, it is not implied that 
 there should be a literally universal preaching of the 
 gospel of the kingdom before the end spoken of came. 
 What is foretold is simply what was a necessary pre- 
 paration for the coming of Christ's kingdom. The 
 Jews believed, and the disciples of Christ at this time 
 had still the idea, that the foretold kingdom of God 
 was for the Jews only. What is here said is simply 
 that the gospel of the kingdom should first be preached 
 in the whole world of the Roman Empire, for a testi- 
 mony to all the nations. Without this the kingdom 
 of God, in the form it was to take when it appeared, 
 could not come. The glad tidings, rejected by the 
 Jews, must first be preached to the nations — that 
 is, to the Gentiles. When this had taken place the 
 end should come. 
 
 Having thus introduced His answer to the question 
 put to Him, He tells them now what should be the 
 sign of His coming, and of the end of the existing 
 Jewish age. " When therefore ye see the abomina- 
 tion of desolation, which was spoken of by Daniel 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 133 
 
 the prophet, standing in the holy place " (" let him 
 that readeth," the Evangelist here says, " understand "), 
 " then let them that are in Judea flee unto the moun- 
 tains " (Matt. xxiv. 15, 16). 
 
 What " the abomination that maketh desolate " (see 
 Daniel xii. 11), foretold by Daniel, which was to be 
 set up when " the daily sacrifice shall be taken away," 
 precisely was, was perhaps intelligible to the disciples, 
 but is not to us clearly or certainly known. It was 
 plainly, it would seem, some great desecration of the 
 sanctuary of the Temple, since it is spoken of here 
 as a thing that would be seen " standing in the holy 
 place." It would at least be easily recognised when 
 it appeared. The corresponding part of the discourse, 
 as it is given in St. Luke, shows that when this 
 desecration of the Temple was seen, another sign was 
 to be given to them at the same time, " But when ye 
 see Jerusalem compassed with armies, then know that 
 her desolation is at hand " (Luke xxi. 20). When 
 they should see this sign within the city, or that 
 without it, then, in the language of St. Luke, they 
 might know that the " desolation of Jerusalem " was 
 at hand. 
 
 He goes on to tell them what they should do when 
 the "sign" spoken of appeared: "Then let them that 
 are in Judea flee unto the mountains : let him that is 
 on the house-top not go down to take out the things 
 that are in his house : and let him that is in the field 
 not return to take his cloke. But woe unto them 
 that are with child, and to them that give suck in 
 those days ! And pray ye that your flight be not in 
 the winter, neither on a Sabbath : for then shall be 
 great tribulation, such as hath not been from the 
 
134 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 
 
 beginning of the world until now, no, nor ever shall be. 
 And except those days had been shortened, no flesh 
 would have been saved : but for the elect's sake those 
 days shall be shortened" (Matt. xxiv. 16-23). 
 
 Thus far the meaning of the discourse is clear, and 
 He has answered the disciples' question, " What shall 
 be the sign of Thy coming, and of the consummation 
 of the age ?" 
 
 He proceeds to give them a warning, and to tell 
 them in what way His kingdom should make its appear- 
 ance. " Then if any man shall say unto you, Lo, here 
 is the Christ, or There ; believe it not. For there shall 
 arise false Christs and false prophets, and shall show 
 great signs and wonders; so as to lead astray, if possible, 
 even the elect. Behold, I have told you beforehand. 
 If therefore they shall say unto you. Behold, He is in 
 the wilderness ; go not forth : Behold, He is in the 
 inner chambers; believe it not. For as the lightning 
 Cometh forth from the east, and is seen even unto 
 the west, so shall be the coming of the Son of man. 
 Wheresoever the carcase is, there will the eagles (or 
 vultures) be gathered together" (Matt. xxiv. 23—28). 
 
 False Christs and false prophets were to arise, doing 
 great signs and wonders, but they were not to go forth 
 to them, or to believe what was said of them ; for not 
 thus was He to appear. His coming in His kingdom 
 was not to be a personal coming, so as to be visible to 
 the eye of sense and confined to one spot ; nor would 
 they need any one to call their attention to it. The 
 coming of His kingdom was to be like the appearing 
 of the lightning; it would be visible in many different 
 places at once, and it would make itself visible to men. 
 He gives an explanation, under a figure, how it was 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 135 
 
 that His kingdom should appear in many different 
 places at once. " Wheresoever the carcase is, there 
 will the eagles be gathered together." The meaning 
 seems to be simply, " Wheresoevei* the dead, corrupt- 
 ing, body of heathenism is, there that which is to be 
 its destruction will come on it." 
 
 He sets forth to them now, in a positive form, how 
 it was that His kingdom should come. " But imme- 
 diately after the tribulation of those days, the sun 
 shall 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 the tribes of the earth mourn, and they 
 shall see the Son of man coming on the clouds of 
 heaven with power and great glory " (Matt. xxiv. 
 29, 30). 
 
 The first part of this statement is expressed in 
 metaphorical language, in the metaphorical language, 
 it is to be noted, which was used by the Jewish pro- 
 phets in speaking of the religions of the day, which 
 was no doubt intelligible to those to whom it was here 
 spoken. It is metaphorical language in which the 
 objects in the literal heavens which are above us were 
 spoken of in the way of metaphor, for the objects in, 
 so to speak, the spiritual heavens — that is, for the 
 objects which were looked up to and worshipped by the 
 people spoken of. The sun, moon, and stars, here 
 denote the objects which the heathen worshipped in 
 the spiritual heavens ; and when it is said that the 
 sun should be darkened, and the moon not give her 
 light, and the' stars fall from heaven, this expresses 
 simply, in figurative language, the gradual decline and 
 
136 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 
 
 fall of heathenism. That this is the meaning of the 
 language used is expressed, it would seem, by our Lord 
 Himself in the plain words of the last clause here, 
 " And the powers of the heavens shall be shaken." 
 That is, it would seem, the dominion over men of the 
 existing powers of the heavens, the gods whom men 
 worshipped and in whom they believed, should be 
 shaken. This was to be the result of what was before 
 set forth in figurative language. This explanation is 
 given still more expressly in the corresponding passage 
 in St. Luke, where the words we have just quoted are 
 given as containing the cause of the religious changes, 
 as well as of the troubles, of the time spoken of : "And 
 there shall be signs in sun and moon and stars ; and 
 upon the earth distress of nations, in perplexity for 
 the roaring of the sea and the billows ; men fainting 
 for fear, and for expectation of the things which are 
 coming on the world : for the powers of the heavens 
 shall be shaken" (Luke xxi. 25, 26). St. Peter, on 
 the day of Pentecost (Acts ii. 16), quoted a passage 
 from the prophet Joel, in one verse (Acts ii. 20), of 
 which the existing religious state of things among the 
 Jews is spoken of in precisely the same metaphorical 
 language used by our Lord here, and it is said, " The 
 sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into 
 blood, before the day of the Lord come, that great 
 and notable day." And he interprets the prophecy as 
 having now begun to be fulfilled in the events, then 
 present with them, of the day of Pentecost ; evidently 
 recognising that the then existing state of things with 
 the Jews was ere long to come to an end in darkness 
 spiritually and in blood, as it did, in fact, in the 
 destruction of Jerusalem. 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 137 
 
 We understand the passage in our Lord's discourse 
 here to mean, " The heavenly things spiritually that 
 are now with men (expressed here by the sun, moon, 
 and stars) shall be darkened, cease to give light, fall 
 from heaven ; " that is, shall gradually fail to exert an 
 influence upon men till their influence upon them 
 ceases ; the result being that the dominion of the 
 existing powers of the heavens over men shall be 
 shaken. This understanding of the passage is, it 
 seems to us, that which Scripture itself suggests ; and 
 it is certainly in accordance with the historical facts 
 in which, it would seem plain, the fulfilment of the 
 prophecy is contained. It is, it seems to us, the only 
 explanation of our Lord's prophecy here that is either 
 natural or possible. 
 
 Dean Alford, who is at present perhaps the most 
 widely read of the recent commentators on the Greek 
 text of the New Testament, in support of his reference 
 of this passage to the end of the world, tells us (vol. 
 i. p. 224) that such prophecies in Scripture as that 
 in the 29th verse (''The sun shall be darkened, 
 and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars 
 shall fall from heaven ") are to be understood literally, 
 that the physical signs really happen ; and seems to 
 expect that the things here foretold, in the literal mean- 
 ing of the words used, will take place at the end of the 
 world. In proof or illustration that such prophecies 
 are to be literally understood, and the physical things 
 spoken of really happen, he refers specifically to Joel ii. 
 31, "The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the 
 moon into blood, before the great and terrible day of 
 the Lord come;" and to Hag. ii. 6, "Yet once, it 
 is a little while, and I will shake the heavens, and the 
 
138 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 
 
 earth, and the sea, and the dry land," compared with 
 Heb. xii. 26, " But now He hath promised, saying, Yet 
 once I shake not the earth only, but also heaven." 
 But is this explanation consistent with fact in regard 
 to the passages referred to ? Was '' the sun turned 
 into darkness, and the moon into blood, or did the 
 stars fall from heaven," in the literal meaning of the 
 words, as prophesied in Joel ii. 31, when that prophecy 
 was fulfilled, as it is quoted as being, Acts ii. 16, in 
 the events of the first age ? Or was not the fulfilment 
 of the prophecy, on the other hand, contained in this, 
 that the heavenly things spiritually that were with the 
 Jews came to an end in darkness spiritually and in 
 blood ; the reference being to the overthrow of the 
 Jewish state, and of their worship and ordinances in 
 the destruction of Jerusalem ? Did God, again, literally 
 " shake the heavens," when the promise of Hag. ii. 6, 
 as it is quoted and interpreted in Heb. xii. 26—28, 
 was fulfilled ? Haggai himself speaks of it (ii. 6, y) 
 as a promise which was to be fulfilled at the coming 
 of Christ: "I will shake the heavens, &c., and the 
 Desire of all nations shall come." Did the " physical 
 sign " take place at that time ? Or was not the fulfil- 
 ment of the prophecy contained in this, as the Epistle 
 to the Hebrews seems plainly to tell us, that the 
 heavenly things spiritually that were with the Jews 
 were shaken, in the sense of being removed, as ex- 
 plained in Heb. xii. 27, "that those things which are 
 not shaken " — the " kingdom that cannot be shaken " 
 — " may remain ? " 
 
 Along with the decline and fall of heathenism which 
 our Lord has thus set forth. He tells the disciples, in 
 the second part of His statement, there should be at 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 139 
 
 the same time the appearing in its place of His king- 
 dom. This is expressed in the same figurative language. 
 " And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man 
 in heaven : and then shall all the tribes of the earth 
 mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming on 
 the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. The 
 Son of man, that is, should then appear in the spiritual 
 heaven in the place of the powers in that heaven that 
 were passing away. This should be the coming of 
 His kingdom. The kingdom of Christ, in other words, 
 should make itself visible to men. The mourning of all 
 the tribes of the earth is the mourning of the heathen at 
 the visible coming of Christ's kingdom, in the place of 
 the heathenism that was passing away. Their mourn- 
 ing is when "they shall see the Son of man coming 
 upon the clouds of heaven " — that is, upon the clouds, 
 or darkness, that had come to be in the spiritual 
 heaven — " with great power and glory ; " in the great 
 power and glory, that is, of His kingdom. The expres- 
 sion, " upon (eTTi) the clouds of heaven," is found also 
 in Dan. vii. 13, 14, which contains an Old Testament 
 prophecy of Christ's kingdom. " I saw in the night 
 visions, and, behold, one like the Son of man came 
 with — literally, ' upon ' — the clouds of heaven, and 
 came to the Ancient of Days, and they brought him 
 near before Him. And there was given Him dominion, 
 and glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations, and 
 languages should serve Him : His dominion is an 
 everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and 
 His kingdom that which shall not be destroyed." 
 
 He sets forth, further, the after extension of His 
 kingdom to all nations and peoples. " And He shall 
 send forth His angels with a great sound of a trumpet 
 
140 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 
 
 (or, with a trumpet of great sound), and they shall 
 gather together His elect from the four winds, from 
 one end of heaven to the other " (Matt. xxiv. 3 i ). 
 
 This is commonly interpreted with us to be a thing 
 which Christ is to do '' at the end of the world ; " a 
 gathering together of the saved in all nations which is 
 then to take place ; but there is nothing in the passage 
 about the end of the world, and those who are gathered 
 together are not said to be the saved. It has the ap- 
 pearance, in the language used, of being a gathering 
 together of the saved at the end of the world. It is 
 plainly a thing He was to do when, or after, He came 
 in His kingdom ; and the thing is that by His angels 
 — that is, by His messengers, and with the call of the 
 Gospel — He should then gather together His chosen 
 people, those whom He called to His kingdom out of 
 all nations. Under the old covenant the Jews were 
 God's chosen people, and the point of what is said here 
 is that now Christ should call His chosen people out 
 of all nations, " from the four winds, from one end of 
 heaven to the other." 
 
 Our Lord, finally, speaks a parable to the disciples, 
 with the view plainly of teaching them how near His 
 coming in His kingdom was. " Now from the fig-tree 
 learn her parable : when her branch is now become 
 tender, and putteth forth its leaves, ye know that 
 summer is nigh ; even so ye also, when ye see all 
 these things, know ye that He is nigh, even at the 
 doors. Verily I say unto you, This generation shall 
 not pass away till all these things be accomplished. 
 Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall 
 not pass away" (Matt. xxiv. 32-35). 
 
 This, it would seem, is telling the disciples, in the 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 141 
 
 first place, that there was a natural connection, in the 
 order of providence, between the events He had fore- 
 told to them, the passing away of tlie existing Jewish 
 age and His coming in His kingdom, that the latter 
 event would immediately succeed the former; and, 
 secondly, to all common-sense it is saying in plain 
 words that the existing generation — those who now 
 lived — should not pass away till all these things were 
 fulfilled — that is, till the Jewish age should pass away 
 in the way He had foretold, and His kiugdoui should 
 come. 
 
 To turn the words " this generation " — rj jeved avrrj 
 — into the meaning of " this race," in the sense of the 
 Jews, as Alford does, by way of transferring the time 
 spoken of to " the end of the world," is surely the 
 wildest interpretation of a simple expression, to bring 
 it into unison with a preconceived theory, and the 
 most reckless tampering, for this purpose, with our 
 Lord's very solemn words here. In every one of the 
 examples which Alford adduces from the Septuagint 
 and the New Testament, it seems plain to us the 
 word refers to the existing generation, and not, as he 
 asserts, to the race of the Jews. His rendering of 
 the words used here is, we apprehend, an impossible 
 one, and it takes away all m.eaning from them ; for 
 what note of time would there be in saying that the 
 Jews should not pass away till all these things should 
 be fulfilled ? It is, moreover, in the plainest contra- 
 diction to the preceding sentence, as well as all the 
 preceding context ; for He had just said that they, the 
 disciples to whom He spoke (ver. 33), should see all 
 these things. It was natural surely to add to this 
 solemnly, " Verily I say unto you, This generation 
 
142 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 
 
 shall not pass away till all these things be accom- 
 plished." 
 
 He goes on to say, " But of that day and hour 
 knoweth no one, not even the angels of heaven, neither 
 the Son, but the Father only" (Matt. xxiv. 36). 
 
 The " day and hour " spoken of are, it would seem 
 plain, the precise time of the destruction of the Temple 
 and city of Jerusalem — that is, of the end of the 
 Jewish age, that great catastrophe being identified 
 with the coming of Christ's kingdom, which imme- 
 diately thereafter, amidst the decline and fall of heathen- 
 ism, was to begin to appear. The precise time at 
 which that great event would take place was, He says, 
 known to no one, not to the angels of heaven, nor 
 even to Himself, but only to His Father. But, He 
 proceeds to tell them, when it came it would come on 
 them unexpectedly, as the flood came on men in the 
 days of Noah. 
 
 "But as were the days of Noah, so shall be the 
 coming of the Son of man. For as in those days 
 which were before the flood they were eating and 
 drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the 
 day that Noah entered into the ark, and they knew 
 not until the flood came, and took them all away ; so 
 shall be the coming of the Son of man. Then shall 
 two men be in the field ; one is taken, and one is left : 
 two women shall be grinding at the mill ; one is taken, 
 and one is left" (Matt. xxiv. 37—41). The sudden- 
 ness and unexpectedness of the catastrophe which was 
 to usher in the coming of His kingdom are thus 
 graphically depicted to them. 
 
 He goes on to give them the exhortation which 
 follows. " Watch therefore j for ye know not on what 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 143 
 
 day your Lord cometh. But know this, that if the 
 master of the house had known in what watch the 
 thief was coming, he would have watched, and would 
 not have suffered his house to be broken tlirough. 
 Therefore be ye also ready : for in an hour that ye 
 think not the Son of man cometh " (Matt. xxiv. 42—44). 
 They were to " watch " for the great event of which 
 He had foretold them — that is, to expect it, and to be 
 at all times prepared for its coming. And this first, 
 because they did not know the time of its coming; 
 and secondly, because He had told them within what 
 period it would come — that is, before some of those 
 who were now living had passed away. It is not at 
 first sight very obvious to us perhaps why their being 
 prepared for the great catastrophe which was to usher 
 in the kingdom of Christ should be a thing of such 
 great importance for the disciples. But to Jewish 
 disciples the catastrophe which was foretold them when 
 it came would naturally be a great trial of their faith 
 in God — greater than we, who look back on it as a 
 thing of the past, can easily realise. It was important 
 that the event should not come on them unexpectedly, 
 that their faith in Christ should be sustained through 
 the intervening troubles, and in that trial of them 
 when it came. And everything, moreover, we are to 
 realise in regard to the expected future of the kingdom 
 of God here depended on their being steadfast through 
 that trial of them when it came. It was on account, 
 it would seem, of the greatness of the event to them 
 that this whole discourse to them upon it was spoken. 
 He proceeds to teach in a parable what preparedness 
 for this great event in the future meant for them whom 
 He had appointed to be rulers in His kingdom. " Who 
 
144 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 
 
 then is the faithful and wise servant, whom his lord 
 hath set over his household, to give them their food 
 in due season ? Blessed is that servant whom his 
 lord when he cometh shall find so doing. But if that 
 evil servant shall say in his heart. My lord tarrieth ; 
 and shall begin to beat his fellow-servants, and shall 
 eat and drink with the drunken ; the lord of that ser- 
 vant shall come in a day when he expecteth not, and 
 in an hour when he knoweth not, and shall cut him 
 asunder " (or, severely scourge him), " and appoint his 
 portion with the hypocrites ; there shall be the weep- 
 ing and gnashing of teeth" (Matt. xxiv. 45—51). 
 
 Their preparedness for the great event foretold them 
 meant their being occupied in the work He had assigned 
 them — that of feeding His people spiritually — and 
 their being found occupied in that work when He 
 came. 
 
 We pass on now to the continuance of the discourse in 
 the 25th chapter, in which, speaking another parable 
 to them, in which He likens the Church at that time 
 to ten virgins, who, at a marriage, had gone forth to 
 meet the bridegroom, He sets forth, as it were, in a 
 prophetical picture of it, the state of preparedness for 
 His coming in which the Church should be when the 
 great event took place which was to usher it in. 
 " Then shall the kingdom of heaven be likened unto 
 ten virgins, which took their lamps, and went forth to 
 meet the bridegroom. And five of them were foolish, 
 and five were wise. For the foolish, when they took 
 their lamps, took no oil with them : but the wise took 
 oil in their vessels with their lamps. Now while the 
 bridegroom tarried, they all slumbered and slept. But 
 at midnight there is a cry, Behold, the bridegroom ! 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 145 
 
 Come ye forth to meet him. Then all those virgins 
 arose, and trimmed their lamps. And the foolish said 
 unto the wise, Give us of your oil ; for our lamps are 
 going out. But the wise answered, saying, Peradven- 
 ture there will not be enough for us and you : go ye 
 rather to them that sell, and buy for yourselves. And 
 while they went to buy, the bridegroom came ; and 
 they that were ready went in with him to the marriage 
 feast : and the door was shut. Afterward come also 
 the other virgins, saying. Lord, Lord, open to us. 
 But he answered and said, Verily I say unto you, I 
 know you not. Watch, therefore, for ye know not the 
 day nor the hour" (Matt. xxv. I — 13). 
 
 The state of things in the Church in regard to 
 Christ's coming in His kingdom, at the time of the 
 appearing of His kingdom, is here very graphically 
 depicted. All should professedly be looking forward 
 to His coming ; the ten virgins took their lamps and 
 all went forth to meet the bridegroom. Some of them 
 should be ready for it, and some unprepared ; five of 
 the virgins were foolish, and five were wise. But 
 none should be really expecting it when it took place ; 
 while the bridegroom tarried — that is, simply did not 
 come — the virgins all slumbered and slept. When 
 the event which was to usher in His coming took 
 place, those who were ready for it should enter into 
 His kingdom ; those who were unprepared for it should 
 be unable to enter into it. 
 
 He concludes the impressive picture of the parable 
 with the same lesson as before, " Watch, therefore, for 
 ye know not the day nor the hour." 
 
 In the next passage of the discourse our Lord teaches 
 the disciples that He had given them gifts and oppor- 
 
 K 
 
146 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD, 
 
 tunities suitable to each of them severally for living 
 the life to which He had called them, and that, when 
 He came in His kingdom. He would call them to an 
 account of the use they had made of these, and would 
 deal with them accordingly. 
 
 *' For it is as when a man, going into another 
 country, called his own servants (or, bond-servants) and 
 delivered unto them his goods. And unto one he gave 
 five talents, to another two, to another one ; to each 
 according to his several ability; and he went on his 
 journey. Straightway he that received the five talents 
 went and traded with them, and made other five 
 talents. In like manner he also that received the two 
 gained other two. But he that received the one went 
 away and digged in the earth, and hid his lord's money. 
 Now after a long time the lord of those servants cometh, 
 and maketh a reckoning with them. And he that 
 received the five talents came and brought other five 
 talents, saying, Lord, thou deliveredst unto me five 
 talents : lo, I have gained other five talents. His lord 
 said unto him. Well done, good and faithful servant : 
 thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will set 
 thee over many things : enter thou into the joy of thy 
 lord. And he also that received the two talents came 
 and said, Lord, thou deliveredst unto me two talents : 
 lo, I have gained other two talents. His lord said 
 unto him. Well done, good and faithful servant : thou 
 hast been faithful over a few things, I will set thee 
 over many things : enter thou into the joy of thy lord. 
 And he also that had received the one talent came 
 and said, Lord, I knew thee, that thou art a hard 
 man, reaping where thou didst not sow, and gathering 
 where thoa didst not scatter : and I was afraid, and 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 147 
 
 went away and hid thy talent in the earth : lo : thou 
 hast thine own. But his lord answered and said unto 
 him, Thou wicked and slothful servant, thou knewest 
 that I reap where I sowed not, and gather where I did 
 not scatter : thou oughtest therefore to have put my 
 money to the bankers, and at my coming I should 
 have received back mine own with interest. Take ye 
 away therefore the talent from him, and give it unto 
 him that hath the ten talents. For unto every one 
 that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance : 
 but from him that hath not, even that which he hath 
 shall be taken away. And cast ye out the unprofitable 
 servant into the outer darkness : there shall be the 
 weeping and gnashing of teeth " (Matt. xxv. 14—30). 
 
 What is taught in the parable is, it would seem, 
 that His disciples, during His absence from them, had 
 gifts and opportunities given them suitable for each of 
 them severally for living the life to which He had 
 called them ; and that they would use or not use the 
 " talents " thus intrusted to them. And that when He 
 came in His kingdom, those who had used the talents 
 intrusted to them in His service would have attained 
 thereby to a fitness for serving Him in His kingdom ; 
 while those who had proved unfaithful in His service 
 would lose the opportunity of preparation given to 
 them, and would be unable to enter into His kingdom. 
 The unprofitable servant would be cast into the outer 
 darkness. There, there should be only sorrow and 
 despair. 
 
 Our Lord concludes the discourse by setting forth 
 to them what He should do in His kingdom when it 
 came, and during its continuance. " But when the 
 Son of man shall come in His glory, and all the angels 
 
148 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD, 
 
 with Him, then shall He sit on the throne of His glory : 
 and before Him shall be gathered all the nations ; and 
 He shall separate them one from another, as the shep- 
 herd separateth the 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 : I was a 
 stranger, and ye took me in : naked, and ye clothed 
 me : I was sick, and ye visited me : I was in prison, 
 and ye came unto me. Then shall the righteous 
 answer Him, saying. Lord, when saw we Thee an 
 hungered, and fed Thee ? or athirst, and gave Thee 
 drink ? And when saw we Thee a stranger, and 
 took Thee in? or naked, and clothed Thee? And 
 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 did it 
 unto one of these my brethren, even these least, ye did 
 it unto me. Then shall He say also unto them on the 
 left hand. Depart from me, ye cursed, into the eternal 
 fire which is 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, 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 ? Then 
 shall He answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you. 
 Inasmuch as ye did it not unto one of these least, ye 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 149 
 
 did it not unto me. And these shall go away into 
 eternal punishment : but the righteous into eternal 
 life." 
 
 The Son of man " coming in His glory, with all the 
 angels with Him," is simply the Son of man coming 
 in His kingdom. We may compare with the language 
 here the similar language, already quoted, which Christ 
 uses in Matt. xvi. 27, " For the Son of man shall come 
 in the glory of His Father, with His angels ; and then 
 shall He render unto every man according to his deeds;" 
 and His saying, in the following verse there, that some 
 of those standing there should see the Son of man 
 coming thus in His kingdom. His " sitting on the 
 throne of His glory " again is simply, as appears from 
 what follows, His sitting as a Judge in His kingdom, 
 when it should have come. When He thus came in 
 His kingdom, before Him should be gathered " all the 
 nations ; " and what He should do in His kingdom, 
 His proper business in His kingdom, was to separate 
 men, one from another. Those whom He approved, 
 whom He set " on His right hand," should inherit the 
 kingdom " prepared for them from the foundation of 
 the world." The reason of this judgment, set forth in 
 the figurative language of the parable, is that they 
 lived in rightness of spirit towards their fellow-men 
 around them, and therefore lived to Him. Those 
 whom He did not approve, whom He set " on His 
 left hand," should depart from Him into a state of 
 suffering, " into everlastiuG; fire, prepared for the devil 
 and his angels." The reason of this judgment, given 
 in the same figurative language, is that they had not 
 lived in rightness of spirit towards their fellow-men, 
 and therefore had not lived to Him. The picture of 
 
I50 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 
 
 His kingdom is concluded in the words, " And these 
 shall go away into eternal punishment, but the right- 
 eous into eternal life." 
 
 The separation of men as righteous and unrighteous 
 is spoken of, in this concluding passage of our Lord's 
 discourse, as that which Christ does in His kingdom, 
 the proper business of His kingdom, when it came ; 
 and in any natural interpretation of the passage it 
 is spoken of as a judgment, or separation from one 
 another, of men which takes place in this life. It is 
 the business of Christ, as King, in His kingdom, thus 
 to judge men, or separate them one from another. 
 The revelation, or carrying out of the judgment — when 
 the King speaks as the Judge to those whom He had 
 set on His right hand and on His left respectively — 
 takes place in the end or issue of His kingdom here to 
 each of us — that is, takes place to each of us at death, 
 when He admits the righteous into the glory of the 
 kingdom, and casts the unrighteous away from Him 
 into spiritual destruction. This seems to us not only 
 the natural interpretation of the passage, but the only 
 possible interpretation of it, in the connection in which 
 it stands with the preceding discourse. 
 
 This interpretation is in accordance, it may be 
 observed here, with the Old Testament prophecies of 
 Christ's kingdom, in which His acting as the Judge 
 of men is spoken of as the thing which He should do 
 in His kingdom ; this being in ancient times, in a 
 special sense, the proper office of a king. Thus, in 
 Isaiah xi. 2, we read, " And the Spirit of the Lord 
 shall rest upon Him . . . and shall make Him of 
 quick understanding in the fear of the Lord : and He 
 shall not jtidge after the sight of His eyes, neither 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 151 
 
 reprove after the hearing of His ears : but with 
 righteousness shall He judge the poor, and reprove 
 with equity for the meek of the earth." And again, 
 in Psalm Ixxii. i, 2, "Give the king Thy judgments, 
 God, and Thy righteousness unto the king's son. 
 He shall judge Thy people with righteousness, and Thy 
 poor with judgment." 
 
 And it is in accordance, it may be added, with 
 what we should naturally expect. For there must 
 needs be this spiritual separation of men going on 
 now, through their life of faith or of unbelief in Christ 
 here, under the kingdom of God which is over us, and 
 therefore in the King's judgment of us, that there may 
 be an actual separation of them on account of spiritual 
 character hereafter. 
 
 This concludes our Lord's great discourse to His dis- 
 ciples on the subject of His coming in His kingdom. 
 
 Subsequent to this great discourse on the subject, 
 our Lord speaks on two occasions in the Gospels of 
 His coming in His kingdom. 
 
 In the high priest's palace, in answer to the ques- 
 tion of the high priest whether He were the Christ or 
 no, He said to the high priest, " Thou hast said : 
 nevertheless I say unto you, henceforth ye shall see 
 the Son of man sitting at the right hand of power, 
 and coming on the clouds of heaven " (Matt. xxvi. 64). 
 This is the same language, it is to be observed, which 
 He had used in one passage of the great discourse to 
 the disciples on the subject of His coming in His 
 kingdom : " Then shall all the tribes of the earth 
 mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming on 
 the clouds of heaven with power and great glory" 
 (Matt. xxiv. 30). 
 
152 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 
 
 And again, after His resurrection, He said to Peter, 
 speaking in regard to John, " If I will that he tarry 
 till I come, what is that to thee ? Follow thou me." 
 This, in any natural meaning of the words, plainly 
 implies, we apprehend, that the coming of Christ 
 spoken of was a thing known to Peter, and was a thing 
 so near that John might live till it took place, if it 
 does not intimate that he would do so. As a matter 
 of fact, we know that St. John did live until after the 
 destruction of Jerusalem and the coming in of the 
 Christian age. The words here used are to be read 
 along with those, already quoted, in Matt. x. 23, 
 " When they persecute you in this city, flee into the 
 next : for verily I say unto you, ye shall not have gone 
 through the cities of Israel till the Son of man be 
 come ; " and those also quoted before in Matt. xvi. 28, 
 where Christ speaks of some standing there " which 
 shall in no wise taste of death, till they see the Son of 
 man coming in His kingdom." 
 
 We shall speak now of the references to Christ's 
 coming in His kingdom which are found in the Epistles 
 of the New Testament. 
 
 Our Lord had clearly indicated to His disciples in 
 His great discourse to them on the subject that the 
 end of the existing Jewish age and His coming in 
 His kingdom were approaching. He had told them 
 what should be the sicrn of His comino^ and of the end 
 of the age, and had told them that all these things, 
 as they are set forth in His discourse, should be fulfilled 
 before tliat generation passed away. The destruction 
 of Jerusalem, however, did not take place until nearly 
 forty years after the Crucifixion. And all the Epistles 
 of the New Testament, it would seem, were written 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 153 
 
 during the intervening period. It is natural therefore 
 to expect that there should be references in these 
 Epistles to this great revolution of things which had 
 been foretold to the disciples, and also to the language 
 of the great discourse in which specially it had been 
 foretold to them. The coming of Christ's kingdom 
 was the great earthly hope set before the Church. 
 
 It is not indeed to be expected that the Apostles 
 should say much beforehand to their disciples of the 
 destruction of Jerusalem and the overthrow of the 
 Jewish worship and ordinances. Nor tiiat they should 
 speak explicitly of the coming overthrow of heathenism. 
 These were events in the future, as they had been fore- 
 told to the Apostles, too great to be openly spoken of to 
 men beforehand, or to be much spoken of even in the 
 figurative language in which the promise had been 
 given to the Apostles. Yet some allusions to the great 
 coming revolution of things spiritually which had been 
 foretold are naturally to be expected. It is naturally 
 to be expected also that the events spoken of in 
 Christ's great discourse, which were to intervene before 
 the end of the Jewish age and the coming of Christ's 
 kingdom, should be in some way referred to ; and 
 these expectations are abundantly fulfilled by the 
 Epistles, in which the references to the great coming 
 revolution spiritually, and to the events connected with 
 it, are sufficiently numerous and explicit to show that 
 the expectation of what had been foretold was con- 
 fidently entertained, that our Lord's great discourse 
 had made a deep impression on the Church, and that 
 the Church was sustained by the things spoken ot 
 in it. 
 
 The references to the great prospects before the 
 
154 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 
 
 Clmrcli occur in perhaps the most distinct form, as 
 well as most fully, in the Epistles of St. Paul. We 
 shall speak, therefore, first of what St. Paul says on 
 the subject. In the earliest of his Epistles, the two 
 Epistles to the Thessalonians, the references to it are 
 especially distinct. There is, in the first place, an 
 allusion to it, it would seem, in what he says of the 
 Jews in the 2nd chapter of the first Epistle : " For 
 ye, brethren, became imitators of the churches of God 
 which are in Judea in Christ Jesus ; for ye also suffered 
 the same things of your own countrymen, even as they 
 did of the Jews ; who both killed the Lord Jesus and 
 the prophets, and drave out us, and please not God, 
 and are contrary to all men ; forbidding us to speak to 
 the Gentiles that they might be saved ; to fill up their 
 sin alway: but the wrath is come upon them to the 
 uttermost" (i Thess. ii. 14—16). The last words here 
 (€19 TeXo^) are, literally, it would seem, "unto the end." 
 The translation given in both our versions takes away, 
 it seems to us, its special meaning. In the original, 
 we apprehend, the meaning is plainly, " but the wrath 
 is come upon them unto the end " — that is, in prepara- 
 tion for the end. In this there would seem to be a 
 reference plainly to the approaching foretold destruc- 
 tion of Jerusalem and overthrow of the Jewish state. 
 
 In the 5 th chapter of the first Epistle there is 
 a more distinct and a fuller reference to the same 
 cominof event : " But concerninor the times and the 
 seasons, brethren, ye have no need that aught be 
 written unto you. For yourselves know perfectly that 
 the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night. 
 When they are saying, Peace and safety, then sudden 
 destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD, 155 
 
 with child ; and they shall in no wise escape. But ye, 
 brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should 
 overtake you as a thief : for ye are all sons of light, 
 and sons of the day : we are not of the night, nor of 
 darkness ; so then let us not sleep, as do the rest, but 
 watch and be sober" (i Thess. v. 1—6). 
 
 " The day of the Lord " here spoken of is plainly, 
 we apprehend, the day of the destruction of Jerusalem 
 and of His coming in His kingdom. The disciples at 
 Thessalonica are told that they '' knew perfectly " that 
 that day was coming, and would " come as a thief in 
 the night." How did the disciples know this ? The 
 only possible answer, we apprehend, is that they knew 
 it from our Lord's great discourse to His disciples, 
 which we have in the 24th and following chap- 
 ter of St. Matthew, in which the suddenness and un- 
 expectedness of His coming and of the end of the 
 Jewish age are in many ways expressed, and in which 
 this very figure of the coming of a thief in the night 
 is used to illustrate His meaning. "Watch, therefore," 
 He had there said; " for ye know nob on what day your 
 Lord Cometh. But know this, that if the master of 
 the house had known in what watch " (that is, within 
 what period of time) " the thief was coming, he would 
 have watched, and would not have suffered his house 
 to be broken through. Therefore be ye also ready : for 
 in an hour that ye think not the Son of man cometh " 
 (Matt. xxiv. 42-44). The exhortation given here, 
 " So then let us not sleep, as do the rest, but let 
 us watch and be sober," is just the exhortation which 
 our Lord had given there (Matt. xxiv. 42), "Watch, 
 therefore ; for ye know not on what day your Lord 
 cometh." 
 
156 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 
 
 At the beginning of the second Epistle we have a 
 distinct setting forth of the prospect of Christ's king- 
 dom which the Church at this time had. The time 
 at which the second Epistle was written was, it would 
 seem, about the year 53, that is, nearly twenty years 
 before the destruction of Jerusalem. 
 
 " We ourselves glory in you," the Apostle says, " in 
 the churches of God for your patience and faith in all 
 your persecutions and in the afflictions which ye endure: 
 which is a manifest token of the righteous judgment 
 of God ; to the end ye may be counted worthy of the 
 kingdom of God, for whicli ye also suffer : if so be 
 that it is a righteous thing with God to recompense 
 affliction to them that afflict you, and to you that are 
 afflicted, rest with us, at the revelation of the Lord 
 Jesus from heaven with the angels of His power in 
 ^flaming fire, rendering vengeance to them that know 
 not God, and to them that obey not the gospel of our 
 Lord Jesus : who shall suffer punishment, even eternal 
 destruction from the face of the Lord and from the 
 glory of His might, when He shall come to be glorified 
 in His saints, and to be marvelled at in all them that 
 believed (because our testimony unto you was believed) 
 in that day. To which end we also pray always for 
 you, that our God may count you worthy of your 
 calling" (2 Thess. i. 4-I i). 
 
 In the first part of this passage, in which we read, 
 ''To the end ye may be counted worthy of the king- 
 dom of God, for which ye also suffer," the disciples at 
 Thessalonica are plainly spoken of as looking forward 
 to the coming or appearing of the kingdom of God, 
 and suffering now, in their Christian life here, that 
 they might enter into it. The language used here, 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 157 
 
 " at the revelation of the Lord Jesus from heaven with 
 the angels of His power in flaming fire," as denoting 
 the appearing of the kingdom of God, is plainly taken, 
 again, from our Lord's language in His great discourse 
 to the disciples (Matt. xxv. 31), "When the Son of 
 man shall come in His glory, and all the angels with 
 Him, then shall He sit on the throne of His glory ; " 
 and from similar language of our Lord in Matt. xvi. 
 27, "The Son of man shall come in the glory of His 
 Father with His angels ; and then shall He render 
 unto every man according to his deeds ; " and in 
 Matt. xxiv. 30, " 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 the tribes of the 
 earth mourn." And the prospect of destruction coming 
 on their persecutors, and of rest for them, which the 
 Apostle here set? before the Thessaloni-ans, is plainly 
 the prospect of " the day of the Lord " spoken of in 
 the first Epistle, in which Jerusalem and its temple 
 would be destroyed, which was to bring in, or rather, 
 as is here implied, which was to be, Christ's coming 
 in His kingdom. In that day of the Lord God would 
 " take vengeance " on the people of Israel, who did 
 not know Him, and did not obey the Gospel of His 
 Son ; and they should be punished by suffering eternal 
 destruction from God's kingdom here. In that day 
 also Christ should come to be glorified in His saints, 
 and to be marvelled at in all them that believed in 
 that day. The Apostle adds naturally, " To which 
 end we also pray always for you, that our God may 
 count you worthy of your calling." 
 
 In the passage which follows, in the 2nd chapter, 
 the Apostle enters more fully into the subject of what 
 
158 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 
 
 lay before them, and tells of certain things that were 
 to precede Christ's coming in His kingdom ; the passage 
 being occasioned by a misconception on the subject 
 into which the Thessalonians had fallen. 
 
 What had been said in the first Epistle of the day 
 of the Lord coming on them as a thief in the night, 
 and the destruction it was to bring with it, coming 
 suddenly, as travail upon a woman with child, had led 
 the Thessalonians to think, it would seem, that Christ's 
 coming was to be looked for day by day, and that 
 therefore greatly discomposed their minds and un- 
 settled them. With regard to this misconception of 
 theirs, he says, " Now we beseech you, brethren, touch- 
 ing the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and our 
 gathering together unto Him ; to the end tbat ye be 
 not quickly shaken from your mind, nor yet be troubled, 
 either by spirit, or by word, or by epistle as from us, 
 as that the day of the Lord is now present ; let no 
 man beguile you in any wise : for it will not be, ex- 
 cept the falling away come first, and the man of sin 
 be revealed, the son of perdition, he that opposeth and 
 exalteth himself against all that is called God or that 
 is worshipped ; so that he sitteth in the temple of God, 
 setting himself forth as God. Kemember ye not that, 
 wlien I was yet with you, I told you these things ? 
 And now ye know that which restraineth, to the end 
 that he may be revealed in his own season. For the 
 mystery of lawlessness doth already work : only there 
 is one that restraineth now, until he be taken out of 
 the way. And then shall be revealed the lawless 
 one, whom the Lord Jesus shall slay with the breath 
 of His mouth, and bring to naught by the manifesta- 
 tion of His coming (Gr. presence) ; even he, whose 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 159 
 
 coming is according to the working of Satan with all 
 power and signs and lying wonders, and with all deceit 
 of unrighteousness for them that are perishing ; because 
 they received not the love of the truth, that they might 
 be saved. And for this cause God sendeth them a 
 working of error, that they should believe a lie : that 
 they all might be judged who believed not the truth, 
 but had pleasure in unrighteousness " (2 Thess. ii. 
 1-12). 
 
 In the first part of this passage, two things are 
 spoken of which must take place before Christ's coming 
 and the end of the age. The first is spoken of as 
 "the falling away." "It will not be," the Apostle 
 says, " except the falling away come first." The ex- 
 pression refers plainly, we apprehend, to the falling 
 away among the disciples on account of the afilictions 
 and persecutions they should be called to endure, which 
 our Lord had foretold in His great discourse to the 
 disciples on the subject of His coming in His king- 
 dom, when He said, " And then shall many stumble, 
 and shall deliver up one another, and shall hate one 
 another : and many false prophets shall arise, and 
 shall lead many astray. And because iniquity shall 
 be multiplied, the love of the many shall wax cold. 
 But he that endureth to the end, the same shall be 
 saved" (Matt. xxiv. 10-13). The falling away thus 
 distinctly pictured and foretold to them had not yet 
 come, and therefore the end was not yet. 
 
 A second thing, which was to come after the falling 
 away, and to precede Christ's coming, is spuken of 
 here, when it is added, " And the man of sin be re- 
 vealed, the son of perdition, he that opposeth and 
 exalteth himself against all that is called God or is 
 
i6o THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 
 
 worshipped ; so that he sitteth in the temple of God, 
 setting himself forth as God." 
 
 On this remarkable passage the most fantastic 
 interpretations have in recent times been put. We 
 think it plain that it is a reference, although to us 
 obscurely expressed, to " the abomination of desolation," 
 spoken of in our Lord's discourse (Matt. xxiv. 15), 
 which was to be seen standing in the holy place, and 
 to be the sign of the approaching destruction of Jeru- 
 salem. It is to be observed, in support of this inter- 
 pretation, that it must needs be something that was to 
 take place before the destruction of Jerusalem and the 
 end of the Jewish age. And again, that it is implied 
 in the chapter of this Epistle which we are considering, 
 that although these two things, the falling away among 
 the disciples and the revelation, as it is here expressed, 
 of the man of sin, must take place before the day of 
 the Lord, yet the Thessalonian disciples might live to 
 see the day of the Lord which lay beyond them. The 
 revelation of " the man of sin " was still in the future. 
 The expression is, in our day, understood to indicate 
 a person. But it is rather, we think, to be taken 
 figuratively, and to be understood as an impersonation 
 simply of what is called " the abomination of desola- 
 tion." What '' the abomination of desolation " was 
 we do not know, there is no historical record of it. It 
 was, it would seem, an idol of some sort, which the 
 desolater of Jerusalem set up in the holy place — that 
 is, in the temple. It is here personified, it seems to 
 us, as being the outcome and the most wicked mani- 
 festation of the idol-worship of the heathen, and spoken 
 of as " the man of sin, the son of perdition, he that 
 opposeth and exalteth himself against all that is called 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. i6i 
 
 God, or that is worshipped ; so that he sitteth in the 
 temple of God, setting himself forth as God." The 
 Apostle bids them remember that when he was yet 
 with them he told them these things. 
 
 " And now," he says, " ye know that which restrain- 
 eth, to the end that he may be revealed in his own 
 season." " For," he adds, " the mystery of lawlessness 
 doth already work : only there is one that restraineth 
 now, until he be taken out of the way. And then 
 shall be revealed the lawless one, whom the Lord Jesus 
 shall slay with the breath of His moutb, and bring to 
 nought by the manifestation of His coming" (Gr. 
 presence). This wicked outcome of the idol-worship 
 of the heathen, the Lord should " slay with the breath 
 of His mouth," that is, with the Word of God, which 
 He spake to men, and should " bring to nought by the 
 manifestation of His coming," that is, by the presence 
 of His kingdom among men. 
 
 Our understanding of the passage is confirmed by 
 the account of the origin of the appearing of the 
 " man of sin," to which is immediately added, " Whose 
 coming (or rather, whose appearing) is according to 
 the working of Satan with all power and signs and 
 lying wonders, and with all deceit of unrighteousness 
 for them that are perishing ; because tliey received not 
 the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And 
 for this cause God sendeth them a working of error, 
 that they should believe a lie ; that they all might 
 be judged who believed not the truth, but had pleasure 
 in unrighteousness." This is precisely the account of 
 the origin of the idol-worship of the heathen which 
 this same Apostle gives in the first chapter of his 
 Epistle to the Eomans. They held down the truth, 
 
i62 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 
 
 he says, in unrighteousness. There had been a reve- 
 lation of God made to them ever since the creation 
 of the world ; but, knowing God, they did not glorify 
 Him as God, but became vain in their reasonings. 
 God therefore, as it is here said, " sent them a working 
 of error, that they should believe a lie." " Professing 
 themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed 
 the glory of the incorruptible God for the likeuess of 
 an image of corruptible man, and of birds, and four- 
 footed beasts, and creeping tilings" (Rom. i. 23). 
 
 We hold it to be plain, in these Epistles to the Thes- 
 salonians, that St. Paul had read the Gospel of St. 
 Matthew, and was familiar with Christ's great dis- 
 course to His disciples in the 24th and 25th chapters 
 regarding His coming in His kingdom. 
 
 We pass now to a much later stage in St. Paul's 
 ministry. St. Paul lived till the time of the foretold 
 falling away had come, till at least that great declen- 
 sion had begun to appear ; and in his two pastoral 
 Epistles to Timothy, written probably at the very end 
 of his course, about the year 67 or 68, he speaks of 
 it very expressly as a thing which had been foretold, 
 and also of Christ's approaching coming to judge men 
 in His kingdom. 
 
 In his first Epistle he says, " But the Spirit saith 
 expressly, that in later times some shall fall away from 
 the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines 
 of devils, through the hypocrisy of men that speak 
 lies, branded (or, seared) in their own conscience as 
 with a hot iron; forbidding to marry, and command- 
 ing to abstain from meats, which God created to be 
 received with thanksgiving by them that believe and 
 know the truth" (i Tim. iv. 1-4). 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 163 
 
 This is plainly written during the foretold falling 
 away, or after it had commenced, when it could, 
 therefore, be described from experience. 
 
 And again, in his second Epistle he says, " But 
 know this, that in the last days grievous times shall 
 come. For men shall be lovers of self, lovers of money, 
 boastful, haughty, railers, disobedient to parents, un- 
 thankful, unholy, without natural affection, implacable, 
 slanderers, without self-control, fierce, no lovers of 
 good, traitors, headstrong, puffed up, lovers of pleasure 
 rather than lovers of God, holding a form of godliness, 
 but having denied the power thereof : from these also 
 turn away. For of these are they that creep into 
 houses, and take captive silly women laden with sins, 
 led away by divers lusts, ever learning, and never 
 able to come to the knowledge of the truth. And like 
 as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these 
 also withstand the truth ; men corrupted in mind, re- 
 probate concerning the faith" (2 Tim. iii. 1-8). 
 
 This also is plainly written at the time of " the 
 falling away," and described from experience. 
 
 In the same Epistle, a little farther on, he says, 
 " I charge thee in the sight of God, and of Christ 
 Jesus, who shall judge the quick and the dead, and 
 by His appearing and His kingdom, preach the word ; 
 be instant in season, out of season, reprove, rebuke, 
 exhort, with all long-suffering and teaching. For the 
 time will come when they will not endure the sound 
 doctrine (or, the healthful teaching); but, having 
 itching ears, will heap to themselves teachers after their 
 own lusts, and will turn away their ears from the 
 truth, and turn aside unto fables. But be thou sober 
 in all things, suffer hardship, do the work of an 
 
i64 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 
 
 evangelist, fulfil thy ministry. For I am already being 
 offered, and the time of my departure is come. I 
 have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, 
 I have kept the faith ; henceforth there is laid up for 
 me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the 
 righteous judge, shall give to me at that day, and not 
 only to me, but also to all them that have loved His 
 appearing" (2 Tim. iv. 1-8). 
 
 Here the two comings of Christ, of which we have 
 been speaking in this Appendix, are conjoined as the 
 ground of the charge which St. Paul addresses to 
 Timothy. He charges him " by His appearing and 
 His kingdom ; " the appearing referred to, it would 
 seem from what comes after, being His appearing to 
 His disciples at death, and the idea being added of 
 His kingdom as a thing that was now near at hand. 
 In the latter part of the passage, His appearing to 
 His disciples at death is the only coming spoken of; 
 that appearing, here as everywhere in the New Testa- 
 ment, being the great motive held forth to diligence 
 in all Christian duty. " Henceforth there is laid up 
 for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, 
 the righteous judge, shall give to me at that day ; 
 and not only to me, but also to all them that have 
 loved His appearing." 
 
 We turn now to what Sfc. Peter says on the subject. 
 St. Peter was one of the four disciples to whom our 
 Lord's great discourse, in Matthew 24th and 25 th, re- 
 garding His coming in His kingdom, was spoken. 
 It is only in his second Epistle that St. Peter speaks 
 on the subject. That Epistle would seem to have 
 been written in the year 6y or 68, about the same 
 time as St. Paul's two Epistles to Timothy, and, as 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 165 
 
 we shall afterwards see, as the Epistle of St. Jude. 
 There are two passages in the Epistle which it especi- 
 ally concerns us to quote. The first is in the 2nd 
 chapter. " But there arose false prophets also among 
 the people, as among you also there shall be false 
 teachers, who shall privily bring in destructive heresies 
 (or, sects of destruction), denying even the Master 
 that bought them, bringing upon themselves swift 
 destruction. And many shall follow their lascivious 
 doings, by reason of whom the way of the truth shall 
 be evil spoken of. And in covetousness shall they, 
 with feigned words, make merchandise of you . . . 
 but chiefly them that walk after the flesh in the lust 
 of defilement, and despise dominion . . . men that 
 count it pleasure to revel in the daytime, spots and 
 blemishes, revelling in their love-feasts while they feast 
 with you, having eyes full of adultery, and that cannot 
 cease from sin, enticing unsteadfast souls, having a 
 heart exercised in covetousness, children of cursing, 
 forsaking the right way, they went astray, having 
 followed the way of Balaam, the son of Beor, who 
 loved the hire of wrong-doing. . . . These are springs 
 without water, and mists driven by a storm, for whom 
 the blackness of darkness hath been reserved. For, 
 uttering great swelling words of vanity, they entice 
 in the lusts of the flesh, by lasciviousness, those who 
 are just escaping from them that live in error; pro- 
 mising them liberty, while they themselves are bond- 
 servants of corruption ; for of whom a man is over- 
 come, of the same is he also brought into bondage. 
 For if, after they have escaped the defilements of 
 the world through the knowledge of the Lord and 
 
i66 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 
 
 Saviour Jesus Christ, they are again entangled therein 
 and overcome, the last state is become worse with 
 them than the first. For it were better for them not 
 to have known the way of righteousness than, after 
 knowing it, to turn back from the holy commandment 
 delivered unto them" (2 Peter ii. 1-2 i). 
 
 In the parts of this passage which we have quoted, 
 taken by themselves, there is the description of a great 
 falling away among the disciples, a falling away of 
 the most portentous character, which, beginning in the 
 denial of Christ's divine character, exhibited itself in 
 the indulgence of the lusts of the flesh, while they 
 retained a religious name, and in the most unbridled 
 licentiousness. At the time the Epistle was written 
 this falling away was beginning to appear, and was 
 to be more fully developed afterwards. 
 
 In the parts of the passage which we have omitted, 
 and which we now proceed to quote, it is plain that 
 the writer was looking forward to a great judgment of 
 destruction which this falling away and the gross licen- 
 tiousness in which it expressed itself was about to 
 bring upon men, and which was very near at hand ; 
 to a judgment of destruction like that which came 
 on the angels that sinned, like that which came on 
 the world before the flood, like that which came on 
 Sodom and Gomorrah. 
 
 The parts of the passage omitted are as follows : — 
 " Whose sentence now from of old lingereth not, and 
 their destruction slumbereth not. For if God spared 
 not angels when they sinned, but cast them down to 
 hell, and committed them to pits of darkness, to be 
 reserved unto judgment; and spared not the ancient 
 world, but preserved Noah with seven others, a preacher 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 167 
 
 of righteousness, when He brought a flood upon the 
 world of the ungodly ; and turning the cities of Sodom 
 and of Gomorrah into ashes, condemned them with an 
 overthrow, having made them an example unto those 
 that should live ungodly ; and delivered righteous Lot, 
 sore distressed by the lascivious life of the wicked (for 
 that righteous man dwelling among them, in seeing 
 and hearing, vexed his righteous soul from day to day 
 with their lawless deeds) : the Lord knoweth how to 
 deliver the godly out of temptation, and to keep the 
 unrighteous under punishment unto the day of judg- 
 ment. . . . Daring, self-willed, they tremble not to 
 rail at dignities : whereas angels, though greater in 
 might and power, bring not a railing judgment against 
 them before the Lord. But these, as creatures without 
 reason, born mere animals to be taken and destroyed, 
 railing in matters whereof they are ignorant, shall in 
 their destroying (or, corruption) surely be destroyed, 
 suffering wrong as the hire of wrong-doing. . . . But 
 he was rebuked for his own transgression : a dumb 
 ass spake with man's voice and stayed the madness of 
 the prophet." 
 
 It is plain that these last-quoted parts of the pas- 
 sage are spoken not only to forewarn the unrighteous 
 of the judgment that was coming on them, but also to 
 sustain the faithful in the great trial of their steadfast- 
 ness that lay before them. 
 
 The second passage in the Epistle which we are to 
 consider immediately follows that with which we have 
 been occupied, and is, it seems plain to us, on the 
 same subject, the great catastrophe which was then 
 impending. Only another aspect of the subject is here 
 presented to the readers of the Epistle, and the coming 
 
168 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 
 
 catastrophe is exhibited as the passing away of the 
 Jewish age, and the coming, in its place, of the kingdom 
 of God. The passage is addressed to those who did not 
 believe in the great change which was at hand. "This 
 is now, beloved, the second Epistle that I write unto 
 you ; in both which I stir up your sincere mind by 
 putting you in remembrance, that ye should remember 
 the words which were spoken before by the holy 
 prophets, and the commandment of the Lord and 
 Saviour through your Apostles : knowing this first, 
 that in the last days mockers shall come with mockery, 
 walking after their own lusts, and saying, Where is the 
 promise of His coming ? for, from the day that the 
 fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were 
 from the beginning of the creation. For this they wil- 
 fully forget, that there were heavens from of old, and 
 an earth compacted out of water and amidst water, by 
 the word of God ; by which means the world that then 
 was, being overflowed with water, perished : but the 
 heavens that now are, and the earth, by the same 
 word have been stored up for fire, being reserved 
 against the day of judgment and destruction of un- 
 godly men. But forget not this one thing, beloved, 
 that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and 
 a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slack 
 concerning His promise, as some count slackness ; but 
 is long-suffering to you-ward, not wishing that any 
 should perish, but that all should come to repentance. 
 But the day of the Lord will come as a thief; in the 
 which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, 
 and the elements (or, heavenly bodies) shall be dissolved 
 with fervent heat, and the earth and the works that 
 are therein shall be burnt up (or, as in the most ancient 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 169 
 
 MSS. discovered). Seeing that these things are thus 
 all to be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to 
 be in all holy living and godliness, looking for and 
 earnestly desiring the coming of the day of God, by 
 reason of which the heavens being on fire shall be dis- 
 solved, and the elements (or, heavenly bodies) shall 
 melt with fervent heat ? But, according to His 
 promise, we look for new heavens and a new earth, 
 wherein dwelleth righteousness. Wherefore, beloved, 
 seeing that ye look for these things, give diligence 
 that ye may be found in peace, without spot and 
 blameless in His sight" (2 Peter iii. 1-14). 
 
 In the first part of this passage St. Peter tells his 
 readers that, in both his Epistles to them, he sought 
 to stir up their minds to remember the words spoken 
 of old by the prophets regarding the kingdom of God 
 that was to come in the end, and the commandment of 
 the Lord and Saviour to them through their Apostles. 
 The former of these expressions refers, we apprehend, 
 to the words of the prophets, in which they foretold 
 the kingdom of God that was to appear in the future ; 
 to such words, for instance, as those of Isaiah, " For, 
 behold, I create new heavens, and a new earth : and 
 the former shall not be remembered, nor come into 
 mind" (Isa. Ixv. 17). And again, "The new heavens 
 and the new earth, which I will make, shall remain 
 before me" (Isa. Ixvi. 22). The latter expression 
 again refers plainly to the repeated exhortations of 
 our Lord to his disciples in His great discourse to the 
 four Apostles in the 24th and 25 th chapters of St. 
 Matthew, to watch and to be in a state of preparedness 
 for His appearing in His kingdom ; as not knowing 
 when the great judgment by which His appearing was 
 
I70 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 
 
 to be ushered in would be, but knowing that it would 
 come suddenly and unexpectedly, when men looked 
 not for it. The reason why St. Peter called these 
 things to their remembrance was that there were cer- 
 tain persons among them, as it had been foretold there 
 would be, who, walking after their own lusts, mocked 
 at what had been thus foretold them. They said, 
 " Where is the promise of His coming ? for, from the 
 day that the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as 
 they were from the beginning of the creation " — that is 
 to say, the state of things spiritually with men continued 
 to be what it had been, and there was no appearance 
 of that entirely new state of things spiritually with men 
 which the appearing of Christ in His kingdom was to 
 bring in. The answer of the Apostle is, that those 
 who thus spoke wilfully forgot the past history of the 
 world. There were heavens (that is, heavens spiritually) 
 from of old, and an earth compacted out of water, by 
 the word, by the will, of God. By that word or will 
 the world that then was, being overflowed with water, 
 perished. By the same word the heavens (spiritually) 
 that now were, and the earth, were "stored up for 
 fire," "being reserved against the day of judgment and 
 destruction of ungodly men." But this one thing they 
 were not to forget, " that one day is with the Lord as 
 a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day" — 
 that is, the Lord could as easily accomplish His pur- 
 pose, in the passing away of the Jewish age, in one 
 day as in a thousand years. The Lord was not slack 
 concerning His promise, as some reckoned slackness, 
 but was long-suffering towards them, as not wishing 
 that any should perish, but that all should come to 
 repentance. But the day of the Lord would come as a 
 
. THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 171 
 
 thief, unexpectedly, in which the heavens (spiritually) 
 should pass away with a great noise — with a crash — 
 and the heavenly bodies be " dissolved with fervent 
 heat," and the earth (that now was) and the works 
 that were therein should be " burnt up." Seeing that 
 these things were thus all to be dissolved, what manner 
 of persons ought they to be in all holy living and 
 godliness, " looking for and earnestly desiring the 
 coming of the day of God," in which the heavens, 
 spiritually that now were, and the elements of which 
 they were composed, should be dissolved ? " But," lie 
 adds, " according to His promise, we look for new 
 heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteous- 
 ness " — that is, they looked for the new state of 
 things that was to be under the promised kingdom 
 of God. " Wherefore," he says finally, seeing that 
 they looked for these things, " give diligence that ye 
 may be found in peace, without spot, and blameless in 
 His sight." 
 
 The idea that all this refers to what is to take place 
 at the end of this world, and is a prophecy of the de- 
 struction of the outward world here, is, it seems to us, 
 altogether absurd, there not being a single clause in 
 the passage that, rationally interpreted, has any appear- 
 ance of having such a reference. The last sentence 
 of itself clearly implies that the great catastrophe 
 spoken of was to take place in their own day ; and 
 the exhortation it contains is simply a repetition of 
 our Lord's often-given exhortation to His disciples to 
 watch for, and be prepared for. His coming in His 
 kingdom. 
 
 The brief Epistle of St. Jude is wholly occupied 
 with the falling away that was to precede the coming 
 
172 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 
 
 of Christ in His kingdom, and, like the second Epistle 
 of St. Peter, would seem to have been written amidst 
 that falling away. It does not speak expressly of the 
 coming of Christ in His kingdom, but there is, it would 
 seem, a tacit reference throughout the Epistle to the 
 judgment which was to open the way to that, as a 
 thing near at hand. St. Jude says, " Beloved, while 
 I was giving all diligence to write unto you of our 
 common salvation, I was constrained to write unto 
 you exhorting you to contend earnestly for the faith 
 which was once for all delivered unto the saints. For 
 there are certain men crept in privily, even they who 
 were of old set forth unto this condemnation, ungodly 
 men, turning the grace of our God into lasciviousuess, 
 and denying our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ. 
 Now I desire to put you in remembrance, though ye 
 know all things once for all, how that the Lord, having 
 saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterwards 
 destroyed them that believed not. And angels which 
 kept not their own principality, but left their proper 
 habitation. He hath kept in everlasting bonds under 
 darkness unto the judgment of the great day. Even 
 as Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities about them, 
 having in like manner with these given themselves 
 over to fornication, and gone after strange flesh, are 
 set forth as an example, suffering the punishment of 
 eternal fire. Yet in like manner these also in their 
 dreamings defile the flesh, and set at nought dominion, 
 and rail at dignities. But Michael the archangel, 
 when, contending with the devil, he disputed about the 
 body of Moses, durst not bring against him a railing 
 judgment, but said. The Lord rebuke thee. But these 
 rail at whatsoever things they know not: and what 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 173 
 
 they understand naturally, like the creatures without 
 reason, in these things are they destroyed (or, cor- 
 rupted). Woe unto them ! for they went in the way 
 of Cain, and ran riotously in the error of Balaam 
 for hire, and perished in the gainsaying of Korah. 
 These are they who are hidden rocks (or, spots) 
 in your love - feasts, when they feast with you, 
 shepherds that without fear feed themselves; clouds 
 without water, carried along by winds ; autumn 
 trees without fruit, twice dead, plucked up by the 
 roots; wild waves of the sea, foaming out their own 
 shame ; wandering stars, for whom the blackness of 
 darkness hath been reserved for ever. And to these 
 also Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied, saying. 
 Behold, the Lord came with ten thousands of His holy 
 ones, to execute judgment upon all, and to convict all 
 the ungodly of all their works of ungodliness which 
 they have ungodly wrought, and of all the hard things 
 which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him. 
 These are murmurers, complainers, walking after their 
 lusts (and their mouth speaketh great swelling words), 
 showing respect of persons for the sake of advantage. 
 But ye, beloved, remember ye the words which have 
 been spoken before by the Apostles of our Lord Jesus 
 Christ; how that they said to you, In the last time 
 there shall be mockers, walking after their own un- 
 godly lusts. These are they who make separations 
 sensual, having not the Spirit. But ye, beloved, 
 building up yourselves on your most holy faith, 
 praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the 
 love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus 
 Christ unto eternal life. And on some have mercy 
 who are in doubt ; and some save, snatching them out 
 
174 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 
 
 of the fire ; and on some have mercy with fear ; hating 
 even the garment spotted with the flesh. 
 
 " Now unto Him that is able to guard you from 
 stumbling, and to set you before the presence of His 
 glory without blemish in exceeding joy, to the only 
 God our Saviour, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be 
 glory, majesty, dominion, and power, before all time, 
 and now, and for ever more. Amen." 
 
 There is in all this passage a resemblance which 
 strikes every reader to the first passage we have 
 quoted from the second Epistle of St. Peter. They are 
 both evidently a description of the falling away that 
 was to precede Christ's coming in His kingdom, and 
 a description of it by writers who had witnessed it, 
 and wrote in the midst of it. St. Jude describes 
 himself as " the brother of James," that is, it would 
 seem, of James the brother of our Lord, and the 
 well-known Bishop of Jerusalem. Which of the two 
 descriptions, that of St. Peter or this of St. Jude, was 
 the first written, it is perhaps impossible to determine. 
 On the whole, it seems to us probable that this of St. 
 Jude w^as written first. But there can, we think, be 
 no doubt that they are descriptions of the same thing, 
 and that they were both written during the great 
 falling away which they describe. 
 
 We find references, again, to the falling away of 
 these last days in the first Epistle of St. John, who, 
 like Peter, was one of the four disciples to whom 
 the great discourse of the 24tli of St. Matthew was 
 addressed. 
 
 It is supposed by some that the first Epistle of St. 
 John was written after the destruction of Jerusalem. 
 There is nothing in the Epistle itself to suggest this, 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 175 
 
 or to make it probable. But Ireneeus says tbat the 
 Gospel of John was written at Ephesus. The Epistle, 
 they very properly think, must have been written after 
 the Gospel ; and St. John, they argue, could not 
 have gone to reside at Ephesus until after the death 
 of St. Paul, which cannot be put later than the year 
 6S. If he had, St. Paul would have made some men- 
 tion of him in his second Epistle to Timothy, which 
 was written to Timothy at Ephesus about the year 6y. 
 
 On this very slender and doubtful foundation it is 
 concluded that both the Gospel and the Epistle must 
 have been written after the destruction of Jerusalem. 
 But admitting that St. John could hardly have taken 
 up his residence at Ephesus at the time the second 
 Epistle to Timothy was written, for the reason given, 
 we do not see any impossibility in supposing that he 
 may have done .so before the death of St. Paul, and 
 specially before the destruction of Jerusalem. Both 
 the Gospel and the Epistle, we think, bear internal 
 evidence of having been written before that event ; 
 and we hold that there is iuternal evidence in the 
 Epistle, in the passage which we are about to 
 quote, that it was written before the destruction of 
 Jerusalem. 
 
 The passage we quote, as referring to the falling 
 away foretold by our Lord, is as follows : — " Little 
 children, it is the last hour : and as ye heard that 
 antichrist cometh, even now have there arisen many 
 antichrists ; whereby we know that it is the last hour. 
 They went out from us, but they were not of us, for if 
 they had been of us, they would have contiuued with 
 us : but they went out, that they might be made 
 manifest how that they all are not of us. And ye 
 
176 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 
 
 have an anointing from the Holy One, and ye know all 
 things. I have not written unto you because ye know 
 not the truth, but because ye know it. And because 
 no lie is of the truth, who is the liar but he that 
 denieth that Jesus is the Christ ? This is the anti- 
 christ, even he tbat denieth the Father and the Son. 
 Whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the 
 Father ; he that confesseth the Son hath the Father 
 also" (i John ii. 18-23). 
 
 When the Apostle says, regarding the time at 
 which he is writing, " It is the last hour," he must 
 needs be speaking of it as the time spoken of in 
 St. Paul's second Epistle to Timothy (iii. i), as "the 
 last days " — that is, as the last hour, so to speak, of the 
 Jewish age, the period spoken of in our Lord's dis- 
 course in the 24th chapter of St. Matthew. The other 
 interpretations which have been given to the expres- 
 sion, "the last period of the world," and "the last 
 dispensation," meaning the Christian dispensation, are 
 manifestly inapplicable. Christ was not speaking, we 
 must hold, of the last period or the end of the world 
 in the discourse in the 24th of St. Matthew; and the 
 end of the world, to all common-sense, had not come, 
 and was not approaching at the time this Epistle was 
 written. It has not yet come. The " Christian dis- 
 pensation," again, in the sense of Christ's kingdom, 
 was not yet come, but was only near at hand. The 
 expression itself, used by St. John, who was one of 
 the four disciples to whom the discourse of 24th 
 Matthew was spoken, can only mean the last period of 
 the Jewish age, spoken of in that discourse. What is 
 said in the passage, we hold, is simply that the falling 
 away foretold in that great discourse had now come. 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 177 
 
 When St. John says further, " Ye have heard that 
 Antichrist cometh," he means simply, we apprehend, 
 " that an opponent of Christ cometh." He does not 
 refer, that is, to some great individual opponent of 
 Christ who had been foretold, as the expression is with 
 us commonly interpreted. No such individual opponent 
 of Christ was foretold in Christ's discourse, or anywhere 
 else ; and the disciples here addressed, it seems plain 
 to us, could have no knowledge of the last period of 
 the Jewish dispensation beyond what was contained 
 in that discourse. He refers simply to what Christ 
 had said in that discourse, " And then shall many 
 stumble, and shall deliver up one another, and shall 
 hate one another ; and many false prophets shall 
 arise, and shall lead many astray" (Matt. xxiv. lo). 
 Opposition to Christ was to be manifested in certain 
 false teachers who were to arise among them, and to 
 lead many astray. What the Apostle says here, we 
 apprehend, is simply that this prophecy was now ful- 
 filled in that there were now many opponents of Christ 
 risen up among them who denied the fundamental 
 Christian teaching that Jesus was the Christ, the pro- 
 mised Son of God. The false prophets who had been 
 foretold were now with them, and by this, he says, 
 they knew that it was the last hour. They had gone 
 out from them, he adds — that is, they had arisen in 
 the Church — but they were not of them. They were 
 not of the faith on which the Church was founded. 
 For if they had been of them, they would have con- 
 tinued with them ; but they went out from them, that 
 they might be made manifest how that they all were 
 not of them. He that denieth that Jesus is the 
 Christ, he adds, this is the Antichrist — the opponent of 
 
 u 
 
178 THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 
 
 Christ — even he that denieth the Father and the Son. 
 " Whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the 
 Father: he that confesseth the Son hath the Father 
 also." 
 
 We speak now of what is contained on the subject 
 in the Epistle to the Hebrews. 
 
 The Epistle to the Hebrews is of uncertain author- 
 ship, and, as in the case of all the other Epistles, the 
 exact date of the writing of it is not certainly known. 
 It seems plainly to have been written, however, just 
 before the destruction of Jerusalem ; certainly also at 
 a time when the Jewish Christians, to whom it is 
 addressed, were in great danger of falling away from 
 the faith, and probably during the great falling away 
 among the early Christians of which we have repeatedly 
 spoken. There are repeated references in the Epistle, 
 as it is natural there should be, to the great prospect 
 of the coming of Christ's kingdom which was imme- 
 diately before the Church ; and that prospect is put 
 in the prominent place which in the circumstances 
 naturally belonged to it. 
 
 We shall make only two quotations from this great 
 Epistle. In the lOth chapter the writer says, " Cast 
 not away, therefore, your boldness, which hath great 
 recompense of reward. For ye have need of patience, 
 that, having done the will of God, ye may receive the 
 promise. For yet a very little while. He that cometh 
 shall come, and shall not tarry. But my righteous 
 one (or, the righteous one) shall live by faith : and if 
 he shrink back, my soul hath no pleasure in him " 
 (Heb. X. 35—38). And in the 12th chapter, in the 
 carrying out of the same practical address, the writer 
 says, bringing in an Old Testament promise of the 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 179 
 
 coming of Christ's kingdom, " See that ye refuse not 
 Him that speaketh. For if they escaped not, when 
 they refused him that warned them on earth, much 
 more shall not we escape, who turn away from Him 
 that warneth from heaven (or, that is from heaven) : 
 but now He hath promised, saying, Yet once more 
 will I make to tremble not the earth only, but also 
 the heaven. And this word, yet once more, signifieth 
 the removing of those things that are shaken, as of 
 things that have been made, that those things which 
 are not shaken may remain. Wherefore, receiving a 
 kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us have grace, 
 whereby we may offer service well pleasing to God 
 with reverence (or, godly fear) and awe : for our God 
 is a consuming fire" (Heb. xii. 25—29). 
 
 In both these passages the near approach of the 
 kingdom of Christ is very clearly indicated. 
 
 We have now considered the references to the fore- 
 told coming of Christ in His kingdom in the Epistles 
 of the New Testament, which were all written, it would 
 seem, within the forty years that elapsed betwixt the 
 Crucifixion and the destruction of Jerusalem. We may 
 conclude our review of these references to the great 
 coming event by saying that some little light on the 
 subject is, we think, to be gathered from the Book of 
 the Revelation. The book of " The Revelation of St. 
 John the Divine " was written by St. John, according 
 to the uniform testimony of antiquity, after the per- 
 secution under Diocletian — that is, about the year 98, 
 or towards the close of the first century. If this be so, 
 it was written after the foretold kingdom of God had 
 begun to appear in different countries and in various 
 places, but while there was still room, in regard to it, 
 
i8o THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 
 
 for the prayer, " Thy kingdom come." It was written, 
 as appears in the first chapter of the book itself, during 
 a season of persecution, or at least when the Church 
 was everywhere exposed to great trials ; and the 
 revelation it contains of " the things which must shortly 
 come to pass " was given, it seems plain, to sustain 
 the Church under the trials it was at the time called 
 to endure. The realisation of this seems to us to 
 be the only proper key to the interpretation of the 
 book. 
 
 We do not attempt, or even suggest, any particular 
 interpretation of the symbols employed in the book, or 
 of the visions vouchsafed to the Evangelist, in which, 
 under these symbols, Christ shows His servants the 
 things which were to come to pass. It seems to us 
 that no satisfactory detailed interpretation of the book 
 has ever yet been set forth to modern readers, what- 
 ever understanding of it there may have been in the 
 minds of those for whom immediately it was written ; 
 and there is at least very much in it that is quite 
 unintelligible to the Church of our day. But this 
 much, we think, may be said, that it is written with a 
 continual reference to the coming of Christ's kingdom 
 in a fuller form than that in which it as yet appeared, 
 and that the approaching triumph of this kingdom is 
 the great consolation which, in the book, is held forth 
 to the Church. 
 
 We do not attempt to show this from the book 
 itself, as that would take us entirely beyond our pre- 
 sent object, and perhaps, if we did make this attempt, 
 we should not be able to show it clearly, or even satis- 
 factorily, from our very imperfect understanding of the 
 book. But we think it sufficiently appears from the 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. i8i 
 
 references to this coming of Christ's kingdom at the 
 beginning, and again at the end of the book. 
 
 In the first chapter, in the salutation with which 
 St. John begins the book, we find him saying, " Behold, 
 He cometh with the clouds; and every eye shall see 
 Him, and they which pierced Him ; and all the tribes 
 of the earth shall mourn over Him. Even so, Amen " 
 (ver. 7). Which is just a repetition plainly of what 
 St. John, who here speaks, had heard Christ say in 
 His great discourse to His disciples : " And then shall 
 appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven : and 
 then shall the tribes of the earth mourn, and they 
 shall see the Son of man coming on the clouds of 
 heaven with power and great glory" (Matt. xxiv. 30). 
 
 And again in the last chapter, the 22nd, we have 
 the statement, three or four times repeated, that He 
 was coming quickly. At the 7th verse we read, " And 
 behold, I come quickly. Blessed is he that keepeth 
 the words of the prophecy of this book." At the loth 
 verse we read, " And He saith unto me, Seal not up 
 the words of the prophecy of this book ; for the time 
 is at hand." And again, at the 12th verse, " Behold, 
 I come quickly; and my reward is with me, to render 
 to each man according as his work is." And in the 
 very last sentence of the book we read, " He which 
 testifieth these things saith. Yea : I come quickly. 
 Amen : Come, Lord Jesus " (ver. 20). The object of 
 His coming, as it is stated in the 12th verse here, 
 " And my reward is with me, to render to each man 
 according as his work is," is precisely what Christ had 
 said in a foretelling of His kingdom already quoted, 
 that in Matthew xvi. 27, 28. " For the Son of man 
 shall come in the glory of His Father with His angels ; 
 
i82 . THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 
 
 and then shall He render unto every man according 
 to his deeds. Verily I say unto you, There be some 
 of them that stand here which shall in no wise taste of 
 death, till they see the Son of man coming in His 
 kingdom." 
 
 The coming of Christ in His kingdom is a thing 
 which now belongs to the past. The passages regard- 
 ing it in the New Testament, which we have considered 
 at length, it is important for us to consider. But it 
 is simply that we may understand them aright, and 
 therefore may not look on them, as is often done, 
 either as things without meaning, or as things the 
 fulfilment of which is still in a far distant future. 
 They have all lonsj afro been fulfilled, and they have 
 now no importance to us at all, except for the interest 
 which naturally attaches to the subject on which they 
 are spoken. The coming of Christ to those who are 
 His at death, of which we first spoke, is the only 
 coming of Christ which concerns us. It is the only 
 second coming of Christ for us, and it is the only 
 personal coming again of Christ of which the New 
 Testament anywhere speaks. 
 
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