Church, when to be a disciple of Christ was to be exposed to every earthly grief and pain, and to violent death, death itself was like a blissful "sleep in Jesus."

But the idea of total insensibility would not quite apply to some of those passages of the New Testament where the dead are said to be asleep." John xi. 11-14: "These things said he; and after that he saith unto them, our friend Lazarus sleepeth, but I go that I may awake him out of sleep. Then said his disciples, Lord, if he sleep, he shall do well. Howbeit, Jesus spake of his death; but they thought that he had spoken of taking rest in sleep. Then said Jesus unto them plainly, Lazarus is dead." That is, he is not asleep in the mere sense of rest or unconsciousness, but the soul has left the body. Lazarus is dead. I will recall that soul to its body. I will awaken that bodily Lazarus. I will bring him again to earthly life. 1 Thess. v. 9, 10: "For God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, that whether we wake or sleep, we should live together with him." This language obviously refers simply to life and death. Whether the Christian be living or dead, he shall, at the sudden and unknown coming of the day of the Lord, be together with Christ; and it is presumed that after death he will have a more vivid consciousness of this union with Christ, than when in this lower bodily state. The use of the verb KATHEUDO in Matt. ix. 24, "She is not dead, but sleepeth," is, according to De Wette, a singular and unique use of the figure, which it is difficult to explain, since according to v. 18 the maid was dead.

*

The seeming difficulty of harmonizing the idea of a conscious intermediate state with the truth of the judgment, is noticed by Whately. What necessity is there of a judgment, he reasons, if men are to go into a state of conscious happiness or misery immediately after death? They are in fact then judged. But is there any discrepancy between the consciousness of one's doom and the actual sentence being pronounced afterward?

A Christian in this life may feel assured of his pardon by God, and may have the foretastes of heaven, but the sentence of justification will not be passed upon him until the great day of the Lord Jesus. And so, "some men's sins are open beforehand, going before to judgment;" and there is an anticipation of judgment which is as sure as the fact itself. Besides, the judgment day is for a broad and public manifestation of the character of God; it is, that the world may see that God is just. It is the official winding up of God's moral government of this race, and the completion of the work of redemption, when all the consequences of all actions shall have been consummated, and the whole case of

Exegetisches Handbuch, vol. 2. p. 118.

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every soul shall have been finished, and the entire influences of the atonement shall have wrought themselves out.

But the passages which speak of the immediate entrance of the soul after death into a conscious state of happiness or misery, present an objection to this theory. 2 Cor. v. 8: "We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord." Literally, "we are of good courage and well pleased rather to have travelled away from the body and to be at home with the Lord." There is a strong expression of hope and desire here. How could this ardent wish of Paul to be at home with Christ, when on a journey away from the body, be at all satisfied, if after death he should remain insensible for uncomputed ages, and only be consciously with Christ when again joined to the body? Is it said that his desire leaped over the chasm of the intermediate state of unconsciousness? But his desire evidently only leaped over the remaining period of his earthly existence and his death, and over nothing else. Tertullian explains it by calling this desire the apostle's noble contempt for the body, and "prastantiam martyorum,"* or the superior strength of the martyr's spirit, that yearned for and was allowed the immediate felicity of heaven. He does not doubt the instantaneous introduction of Paul's spirit into the presence of Christ, but treats it as exceptional. Luke xxiii. 43: "To-day thou shalt be with me in Paradise." Our author regards this account of the robber on the cross as a peculiar case,"† which we cannot reason upon. But is it not just one of those cases that we can and ought to reason upon, because it throws light on a point where there is not so much light as upon other truths? Was it the manner of our Lord to make exceptional cases in the kingdom of faith? Did he not reprove that spirit? One such instance covering over this obscure ground, in the words and acts of Christ himself, ought to be sufficient. "And he said unto Jesus, Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom." This was a request betokening true faith, the condition of entering into Christ's kingdom. Jesus said unto him, verily I say unto thee, to-day thou shalt be Iwith me in Paradise." 'AMEN LEGO SOI, this language always prefaces something of great moment. SEMERON, "to-day," is emphatic. It is granting more than the man asked, who wished a future remembering of him in mercy. MET' EMON ESE, “shalt thou be with me; "this in itself is the summit of the believer's reward and felicity after death, than which Paul himself desired nothing higher. Phil. i. 23: "I have a desire to depart and to be with Christ." It was carrying out the great purpose of the Saviour himself concerning his true believers. John xvii. 24:

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*Tertulliani op. de Resurrectione.

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And

*

"Father, I will that they also whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am." 'EN TO PARADEISO, "in paradise;" not simply, as some have said, 'in the world of spirits,' which would not have been any new or great announcement to the anguished penitent, but, in that kingdom itself,' in conscious blessedness and glory with the Lord. Christ spoke to the man as he, a Jew would comprehend him. "Paradise" expressed to the Jewish mind the highest conception of heaven. It was that part of the world of spirits which was directly set over against 'Gehenna' or 'hell.' It was, in the language of Josephus, CHORON OURANON T' AGIOTATON, "the place in the heavens where the souls of the blest were gathered together," where were Abraham and Moses and all the faithful. It corresponds with the expression "Abraham's bosom" in the Lord's parable. Lightfoot also considers them synonymous phrases in the estimation of the old Jews. In the Talmud, quoted by him, it is related that "holy Rabbi Judah" went, at his death, "to Abraham's bosom, to the exquisite delights and perfect felicities of Paradise." † Now where Abraham was, was the very highest heaven of the just to the ancient Jew. Paradise, according to Lightfoot, was in the Rabbinical books, "the highest heavens." He quotes one passage from them in these words: "Those that dwell in Paradise, they shine like the stars of the firmament, like the sun, like the moon, like the lightning, like lilies, like burning lamps."§ It was God's abode, the garden where his infinite love blossomed, and where the human spirit in his sunlight flowered, as in Rev. ii. 7. The heavenly Paradise took its imagery from the earthly Paradise, the garden of Eden, with its trees, its fruits, its river. In brief, if there were any word that could express to the Jewish mind and to the mind of the dying robber, the perfect state of the blest, the highest abode of the righteous, of Abraham the father and type of all believers, it was "Paradise." Lightfoot scouts the idea of the Jews entertaining any lower or divided conception of Paradise, as if it were a mere state of waiting for felicity, a prison, a limbo, a detention.

Matt. xvii. 3, 4. The appearance of Moses and Elias on the mount of transfiguration was either the appearance of real, conscious, glorified saints, or else it was their illusory presence. But can we imagine this? Would it satisfy the faith or reason of the church of Christ? Would this scenic effect have been worthy of our Lord? Did not these heavenly spirits really talk with Jesus of those things happening on earth in which they had been all along intensely conscious and interested? Were they at that moment awakened out of sleep to know and hear, for the first time, of Christ and of his great work? The difficulty of overcoming

* Quoted by Grotius, vol. ii. p. 425. † Lightfoot's Works, London 1684, vol. ii. p. 457. Lightfoot, vol. ii. p. 478. § Ibid.

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such passages as these is greater than the difficulty of accounting for a forestalled judgment. And what an idea in itself, that all who have died are now in one vast sleeping chamber! that since death they have never thought, nor stirred, nor dreamed! that the ceaselessly active spirits, who found this world too small, who explored its secrets, who swept over it like storms, who rose above it in their spiritual ambition and took hold of the very mystery and nature of God, should now be held bound in some demi-earthly cavern of silence, to slumber till the universe grows old and all things be ready to perish! How this lessens the victory of death, and sinks the rushing river of life into a stagnant marsh! Can we conceive of pure spirit under any circumstances becoming unconscious? Spirit may be numbed and deadened by the body, though even in the body it bursts the bars of weary sleep and of oppressive disease, and claims its freedom in wild dreams and in delirious thoughts; but when disembodied, how can it be inanimate or suspended? As well conceive of a pure flame ceasing to burn,-as well think of life ceasing to be living. Consciousness is the soul's essence. Has the learned author therefore really benefited his readers by reviving a theory that wars with the obvious and universal interpretation of Scripture, that conflicts with our intuitions, and that subserves no high moral end? If the dead thus sleep, we would pray, let many of them sleep on; let them never wake to their own evil consciousness and everlasting pain. We would be inclined to adopt the Romish doctrine of praying for the souls of the dead. The belief in purgatorial fires were more in accordance with Scripture.

The next lecture, upon "The Resurrection," is in the author's clearest style, dispelling at once a philosophic incredulousness and a superstitious confusion. Contending for the essentialness of this great doctrine, and scattering that thin and ghostly spiritualism which really unclothes the soul, instead of clothing it upon with a perfect body for its highest manifestation, he at the same time routs those crude and fleshy ideas, which are thick with the clods of the valley of death. "Flesh and blood cannot inherit eternal life." The continuity of individual life in a renewed bodily organism evolved from the seminal principle of the old body, yet entirely different, as different as a magnificent plant that shoots from the little rotted seed in the ground,-a new God-given and incorrupti ble body, is a thoroughly Pauline truth. The individuality of the man is in his whole nature, as soul and body. Here the bodily nature predominates and moulds the soul; hereafter the soul predominates and moulds the body. The new body is a "spiritual body;" and in the instance of the believer, the body which is developed from the sound renewed soul, takes on the form of all that is beautiful and glorious, even of Christ's own glorious body.

Another judicious and powerful chapter follows, upon the "the Judgment." The writer justly makes much, in this solemn. theme, of the idea, that not only will God then be perfectly manifested, but that man will be perfectly manifested, as 2 Cor. 4. 10, literally rendered, would indicate. The real love and faith which there are in a soul, will be revealed, as well as the real unbelief and hostility which there are in another soul. Conscience flashing with perfect faithfulness and simultaneousness upon all actions, like a veil drawn from a mirror, will be the revealing instrumentality. The Judgment has a bright as well as an awful side to it. There will be surprisals of joy as well as of woe. There is a simple explanation given by Whately, of the terms of the Judgment, which is characteristic of his clear mind. That class of texts which declares that the judgment will be according to the deeds, words, and thoughts of the man while in the body, must be harmonised with those numerous and definite passages which pronounce repentance and faith to be the only terms of salvation. "He that believeth and is baptised shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned." These deeds done in the body, these benevolences to the poor, these good words and thoughts, will therefore be judged of in the quality of the fruits of that faith which is really in the soul. If these deeds, words, and thoughts do not spring from this faith, from this subjective principle of righteousness, but from some earthly root or motive, they are spurious, they are imperfect, they have no divine life in them, and they cannot stand the judgment of God. A man will on that day (and how blessed that it is so) be justified by faith alone. How can he indeed be justified by anything else? How can he have any good deeds to bring to that bar, that have not come from this faith? "Without him [Christ] we can do nothing."

In the succeeding chapter, on "The expected Restoration of the Jews, and the Millennium," the author refutes the opinion that the saints are literally to judge the world hereafter; but he considers the passage to mean, that true Christians, by their just lives in this world, are really judging and condemning the evil world around them. He also discards the idea of two resurrections, giving the passage a simpler interpretation. He is opposed to the ideas of a literal restoration of the Jews, and of a bodily millennial reign of Christ on earth. He considers such ideas to be at variance with the general scope of the New Testament, and with the spirituality of the Christian faith. He thinks that the true way to interpret the unfulfilled prophecies of the New Testament, and especially of the book of Revelation, is to use the key of the actual fulfilment of the prophecies of the Old Testament. These have been thus far fulfilled spiritually, as in the case of the coming of Elias, and of the establishment of the moral kingdom and power of the Messiah.