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STUDIES IN THE BIBLE.

THE RESURRECTION OF JUDGMENT.

"Marvel not at this: for the hour cometh in which all that are in the tombs shall hear His voice, 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" ( John v. 29, R. V.).

This is another of the passages which is generally regarded as teaching that the judgment of wicked men, and their weight of doom, are fixed for a period after their resurrection.

This long-accepted view has been favored by the authorized version which, in this case, is also a commentary. Instead of "the resurrection of damnation," which phrase at once suggests that the wicked are raised. in order to be damned, the New Version more correctly reads, “the resurrection of judgment."

I. That the resurrection does not introduce this class to a formal trial to determine their fitness for eternal life is proved from the fact that they have been “judged already" (John iii. 18, R. V.), and the penalty of sin, which is death, has already been inflicted upon them. This " death" is more than the death of the body. Beyond it there is for the wicked the loss of the "soul," which we have seen to be a constituent of embodied manhood. The soul may be destroyed in hell, although as the more subtle part of the spirit's embodiment, it may long survive and suffer there, as the case of Dives illustrates. This rich man was evidently sentenced and

doomed before his resurrection. We cannot therefore suppose that "the resurrection of judgment" is preparatory to a trial, or to the infliction of a doom which the unhappy subject has been already suffering under for perhaps a thousand years. It is worth noting that the phrase "the day of judgment" occurs uniformly in the Greek without the article, save in one instance (1 John. iv. 17), where the ordeal through which the Christian is to pass is in view. And nothing is further from the teaching of Scripture than the idea that the punishment of the wicked is reserved against some such special day. " After death cometh judgment" (Heb. ix. 27). The confirmation which this idea has received from 2 Peter ii. 9, "The Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptation, and to reserve the unjust unto the day of judgment to be punished," is dispelled by the truer rendering of the New Version, "The Lord knoweth how . . . to keep the unrighteous under punishment unto the day of judgment." This accords with what we have found to be the uniform Scriptural conception of the punishment of the wicked. The Old Testament always views them as turned into hell, or sheol, at death. There they must abide as captives and prisoners. Our Lord's teaching we have seen to be in perfect harmony with this. Only He brings out into greater prominence the fact that the soul of man, as well as his body, may be destroyed in this pit, and that this process of destruction is a process of suffering. The loss of both body and soul leaves the "spirit" naked and outcast. The "soul" of the righteous man is preserved from de struction. Hence he is never compeletely disembodied.

Disembodiment, for man, is essentially punitive. It casts him out of his inheritance. The "evil spirits" of Scripture are always disembodied beings. All this goes to show that the ungodly, through the whole period before resurrection, are “kept under punishment," as the passage quoted from St. Peter states, and not reserved for punishment. And with this view we found the leading passage which sets forth their punishment, Matt. xxv. 31-46, to be consistent. Indeed, we believe this notion, that the sinner's punishment is not immediate, and that the bulk of it is reserved for infliction after his resurrection, to be wholly false and unscriptural. It is this which lies at the bottom of all that is defective and monstrous in our modern eschatology. And, therefore, we are required to look for some other meaning for "the resurrection of judgment" than that which makes. it preliminary to a doom which has already been pronounced, and to a sentence already executed. We may be sure that God will not bring His doomed creatures out of hell merely for the purposes of a scenic display before a judgment seat, and in order to hurl them back again into the pit from which they were brought out.

Nor is there any weight in the consideration often advanced that, as man sins in the body, his punishment cannot be completed until his entire personality is restored through a resurrection of the body, and that as the body was the instrument of his sin, so it must be made the avenue of his suffering. Those who so urge forget that this is precisely the form in which punishment reaches the sinner before resurrection. Even before physical death, sin corrupts and debases the body.

Men sometimes suffer the torments of the damned through the channel of its organs and nerves this side of the grave. And the dissolution of the body,-what is this but the direct judgment of God upon this human fabric through which He gives us title and heritage in this created system? In death it is wrenched asunder and taken to pieces. We have already spoken of the protracted torment which the "soul" may experience in this dissolution, before the "spirit" is wrenched from it and driven into the outer darkness. Why then is it necessary to raise up the body in order that it may experience sin's penalty when, under the weight of that penalty, it has already been debased and crushed and dissevered and destroyed? We ask again, of what other body than this present structure in manhood is Jesus speaking, when He exhorts us to pluck out an eye or lop off a limb, if these cause us to offend, rather than lose the whole body in hell? Which one of His hearers would imagine that He was speaking of the sinner's future resurrection body? The Jews, if we may believe the testimony of Josephus and of their Rabbis, did not look for the resurrection of the wicked at all. "Only the souls of good men are removed into other bodies." * It is only through gross failure to recognize what the threatened punishment for sin is, that such perversion of our Saviour's words is possible as this transfer of the destruction which overhangs the embodied life with which men are now endowed, to a resurrected body of the remote future.

*Jewish War, Book II. Chap. 8. Alger, pg. 170.

II. What then is "the resurrection of judgment?"

I. It is something which is in sharp contrast to the "resurrection of life" which is the portion of the righteous. Their resurrection must be a complete investiture in that glorified manhood in which Jesus was raised. The righteous have now eternal life. We have seen also that death does not deprive them of this gift, nor cast them out naked and desolate. The soul of the righteous is delivered from going down to hell. Hence he is not found naked. A building of God awaits him upon the dissolution of his earthy tabernacle (2 Cor. v.). And in it he awaits the time of the complete redemption of his body, when it shall be fashioned like unto His glorious body. For his destiny as a joint heir with Christ to all the Father's vast estate requires that he have a body which shall put him into complete possession of these works of God, and be a worthy vehicle for His eternal life. Such is the resurrection of life.

The resurrection of judgment must be such as shall at once condemn its subjects as unworthy of this life and inheritance. There is but one order of manhood capable of this dignity,—that which is conformed to the Son of Man, to whom the Father hath committed all judgment. He is the standard of admission. All who fall below that standard cannot be raised in eternal life. They fall into a lower rank. Their resurrection is their condemnation. It is to be borne in mind that what we are considering is the resurrection of judgment, and not unto judgment. The genitive here is of character. It expresses a characteristic quality by which this resurrection is distinguished from the resurrection of life. And this leads