flict with them? Is not all truth of necessity in harmony with itself?

How the evidence adduced may strike the reader, we know not. To our own minds it is amply sufficient to establish the conclusion, that the resurrection of the body is not a doctrine sanctioned either by reason or revelation, as far as we have hitherto interrogated the testimony of each. It now remains to consider the tenet in certain other Scriptural relations, and to see how far the main conclusion is confirmed or confuted by their genuine purport. It will be seen that the fundamental principle of our interpretation recognizes the prominent influence of the Judaic Christology and Eschatology in moulding the New Testament disclosures of the sublime future. If the soundness of this principle be denied, our inferences will of course so far lose their force; but in that case it will certainly be admitted as a fair requisition, that the denier should show, upon adequate grounds, that the Jewish church was, as a body and in all ages, mistaken in the sense of their own prophecies. That they mistook the person of their expected Messiah, is admitted, but that they equally mistook the fortunes and issues of the kingdom which he was to establish, is not admitted. The great work of the Christian interpreter is to show that the main Messianic anticipations of the Jews are and are to be actually fulfilled in Jesus of Nazareth.

CHAPTER IX.

The Resurrection viewed in Connexion with the Judgment.

It is by no means improbable that the conclusions to which we have come, and which we have so distinctly propounded in the foregoing pages, would meet with a far readier assent on the part of our readers, were it not for their apprehended conflict with the clear teachings of Scrip

ture in respect to what is termed 'the final judgment '— 'the day of judgment '-'the judgment of the great day,' &c., as it is variously denominated. The intimations of this august event are deemed so clear and unequivocal in themselves, and so indissolubly inwrought into the texture of those announcements which predict the resurrection, that it is at once assumed, that whatever process of reasoning or exposition goes to modify our established views of the one, must necessarily bear with equal weight upon those of the other. This is undoubtedly true. The whole system of Scriptural Eschatology, though made up of distinct or distinguishable parts, is yet so framed into a compact and symmetrical whole, that no one portion of it can be in any way dislocated from its fixed junctures and attachments, without affecting the integrity of the entire fabric. If the anticipated judgment really coincides, according to the true tenor of revelation, in point of time with the resurrection, and the real resurrection ensues immediately at death, then all argument is useless either in support or in denial of the fact, that each individual soul must be, in effect, judged as soon as the spirit leaves the body. Our sentence, in truth, is passed before our graves are dug. And that such a fact must have a most decided bearing upon the tenet of a general judgment, to be held at some particular epoch of time or eternity, is obvious at a glance. Still it is very possible. that this altered view may be the true one. If adequate evidence has been adduced that the resurrection, upon accurate inquest, actually expands itself into an unfolding process, covering the lapse of successive generations, it is far from inconceivable that the judgment, when submitted to the same rigid test, may present itself under the same aspect; and that, too, without losing any portion of its power as a great moral sanction under the divine administration. Constituted as men are, the idea of a final adjudication ordained to sit upon the conduct of all mankind in the present life, is, indeed, in every view, an indispensable element in

our conceptions of the rectoral dominion of Jehovah over accountable creatures, nor can any system of interpretation be correct which would go to abolish this conviction from the human mind. At the same time, we are equally firm in maintaining, that the inward demand for such a retributive adjustment, created by our moral instincts and rational deductions, is satisfied in the anticipation of the simple fact, that such an equitable award shall really be made upon our entrance into the world of spirits; and, moreover, that it shall result from necessary law, rather than arbitrary appointment. The moral power of the doctrine of a 'judgment to come,' does not truly rest so much upon the imagined form or concomitants of the process, or upon its being held upon the assembled multitude of its subjects, at a particular time or place, or as marked by certain forensic solemnities, as upon its bearing upon individual character and destiny. We do not doubt, indeed, that the impressiveness of such an anticipated futurity is, to the mass of men, materially enhanced by the array of that awful imagery with which the scene of judgment, from its Scriptural presentation, is usually associated in their minds. But we are still unable to resist the conclusion, that the essence of judgment is adjudication, and that this is independent of time, place, and circum

stance.

And here, by way of taking off any thing of a startling air that may pertain to this position, let it be remarked, that whatever systematic theory we may have adopted on the subject, it is, nevertheless, certain that the current sentiments of all Christians do, in fact, involve substantially the same belief. No article of any creed in Christendom is more universally or unhesitatingly held than that each individual enters at death upon an eternal state of retribution. According to the prevailing moral character in which he makes his exit from the body, he either soars an angel, or sinks a fiend. Lazarus died, and was carried by angels to Abraham's bosom. The rich man also died, and in hell lift

ed up his eyes being in torment. This is a virtual judgment. No force of reasoning can rebut, no gloss of rhetoric can sophisticate, the self-evident position, that an act of the divine adjudication which seals to the joys of heaven or the woes of hell a departing spirit, is as truly a sentence of life or death- —as real an award of eternal judgment—as would be that which should be pronounced in the thunder-tones of Sinai, from the great white throne visibly set and surrounded by circling myriads of the hosts of heaven. Consequently, no subsequent judicial sentence can be conceived as reversing that which is in effect passed at the instant the soul leaves the body; nor can the object of such a general assize as is usually understood to be announced under the title of the general judgment,' be to enact de novo a process which has really been accomplished upon each individual of the race as he entered, in his turn, the world of retribution.

We believe there are very few minds to which the inquiry has not suggested itself, For what purpose are the souls of the righteous and the wicked, after subsisting for ages in heaven and hell, to be reclaimed from their mansions of bliss or wo, and summoned together before the dread tribunal of Jehovah, there to receive a sentence which assigns them, respectively, to the same lot in effect with that upon which they had entered in the day when "God took away their breath?" And who, that has proposed the question, has ever received to it a perfectly satisfactory answer? We know, indeed, that the inward interrogations that arise on this score are usually silenced, rather than solved, by reference to certain vague analogies which it is supposed may obtain in this matter, drawn from the forms of judicial procedure among men, by which the culprit is often imprisoned before he is formally tried, and, after being tried, before he is executed. But on the ground of this species of analogy-the application of which to the case of the righteous is not very obvious-we are forced to the admission of an interval of imperfect retribution for which it is difficult to find any warrant in the

Scriptures, and which appears to lead by very natural, if not inevitable, steps, to some kind of intermediate state very nearly akin to that of purgatory, and upon which, in fact, there can be little doubt that the doctrine of purgatory has been actually built.

At the same time it is impossible to blind our eyes to the fact, that the word of inspiration is so constructed as to give the anticipation of a judgment to come all the moral force pertaining to an august solemnity to be held in the presence of the assembled universe. Whatever esoteric interpretation may be embraced, we are still safe in adopting the Scriptural mode of presentation in all our pulpit references to this event. Nor is it by any means clear that the essential truth of the doctrine may not, in one sense, involve all the substantial elements which ordinarily enter into our ideas of the general judgment.'

We do not question that ends worthy of infinite wisdom. may dictate the ordainment of some grand crisis in the moral history of the universe, for the purpose of revealing—of making manifest-in some illustrions way, the righteous grounds of a judgment already passed. Nor, as we have before intimated, do we see any thing incongruous in the idea, that the word of inspiration may be so framed as to create the impression, that both the resurrection and the final award may concentrate themselves to this great epoch, simply from the fact that their realized results shall then be more signally divulged to all orders of intelligences. At the same time we are equally firm in the confidence, that as the doctrine of the resurrection gradually discloses itself under a phasis different from that of the strict import of the letter, so also will that of the judgment. A multitude of particular passages in which the mass of the Christian world have for ages read the announcement of a simultaneous judgment, will inevitably, when brought to the test of the general tenor of revelation, yield another sense, and one which shall imperatively command assent, as soon