ever accept the view that this period is one of blank suspense of life to those who are said to now possess eternal life (1 John v. 13), and of whom Jesus says they shall “never die ” (John xi. 26) nor "see death" (viii. 51). Even the Old Testament saint had hope in his death that God would deliver his soul from that destruction which awaits the wicked. And if the view we have taken of the "soul" be correct, we may infer that this is the peculiar blessing of the righteous, as distinct from the wicked who lose their souls, that they never lose this more subtle embodiment, and hence are never completely unclothed. And although the Holy Spirit uses the term "sleep" to define this interval, it pushes analogy too far to say that this sleep, in order to be perfect, must be dreamless. Paul, in a trance which partly separated him from bodily conditions, saw things unutterable. And so the "sleep" of the Christian in death, may be for him a period of blessed vision. Stephen "fell asleep." but can we believe that his martyr spirit, which he committed into his Lord's hands, has been left unconscious or naked through these centuries, or that Paul would, with this prospect, have been willing rather to be "absent from the body"? (2 Cor. v. 8; Phil. i. 23).

2.

With respect to our brother's peculiar views about the " 'spirits in prison" to whom Christ preached, we have only to say that such commerce as he supposes is referred to in Gen. vi. 2 is without analogy in nature or in scripture, and that "the long suffering of God in the days of Noah" waited not upon supermundane spirits, but upon disobedient men.

A correspondent inquires:

I. 'Does the resurrection you teach bring back those who die without believing in Christ to the same life of innocence that Adam had before he fell, or do they arise with a nature such as they had when they died?"

ANS.-This question wrongly assumes that the nature of Adam was changed by his sin. He was created an earthy and a natural man (1 Cor. xv. 45-47). The common impression in respect to his natural purity and nobleness is an exaggerated one, beyond what Scripture warrants. He was innocent and infantile, but liable to sin, and did sin upon the first occasion of temptation. 'The resurrection of the unjust is to this Adamic life (Rom. v. 18;

I Cor. xv. 22). But no life that is merely "earthy" and "natural" has in it an intrinsic power of holiness or of immortality. Hence, those so raised must still be under the yoke of subjugation to the

creature,―liable to temptation and to sin. And the pressure of

this yoke upon them will be proportionate to their previous good or evil character. This seems to be required by such passages as John v. 29; Mark iii. 28, 29, R.V.; Gal. vi. 7, 8, and by the general law given in the true reading of 2 Cor. v. 10, that every one must receive in the body according to the things he did. We would say, therefore, that the unjust are raised in innocence, but without the intrinsic power to preserve themselves in innocence, and that the yoke of bondage to earthy conditions will weigh upon them according to previous character.

2. "If sin be viewed as a debt, does the shutting up in Sheol, the prison-house of death, satisfy Divine justice for the sins of this life? In other words, does resurrection bring them out free men?"

ANS.-As "the wages of sin is death" it follows that the death of the sinner in body and soul (Matt. x. 28), with the consequent outcast state of the "spirit," is the ordained penalty of sin and satisfies divine justice. His redemption from death does not introduce him to eternal life. It merely buys back his right to live and reestablishes him in that order of life and manhood from which he was cast out by death. This does not make him a freeman in the Lord. Adam had not the free and eternal life. God did not bestow it at first upon him, nor is he bound to bestow it upon the prisoners whom He sets free. Man is not free from bondage to the creature until he is newly created in Christ Jesus.

3. "If sin be viewed as a crime against the moral government of God, is the imprisonment to be viewed as judicial infliction, or is it chastening, with a view to the improvement of the imprisoned?”

-ANS. It is both. God's penalties are viewed in Scripture as judicially inflicted upon transgressors and also as corrective discipline. For example, in Leviticus xxvi, the Jews are represented as driven away under the curse of God into a land of captivity. And yet (vs. 40-44), if in the land of their enemies "their uncircumcised hearts be humbled, and they then accept of the punishment of their iniquity," He declares that He will not cast them away, but will remember His covenant with their fathers and restore them.

VOL. II.]

APRIL, 1886.

[No. 4.

STUDIES IN THE BIBLE.

THE JUDGMENT-SCENE OF MATT. XXV. 31–46.

"But 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 before Him shall be gathered all the nations and He shall separate them one from another, as the shepherd separateth the sheep from the goats: and He shall set the sheep on the 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 hungred 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 hungred, 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 hungred 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 hungred, 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 did it not unto me. And these shall go away into eternal punishment : but the righteous into eternal life."

This passage, which we have transcribed in full from the New Version, is the crucial passage in eschatology. It is the one passage in the New Testament which, above all others, has determined and fixed the prevalent doctrine of endless punishment.

By all our previous studies in the Bible, especially ot the Old Testament, we have been irresistibly led to this conclusion, namely, that no consistent view of its great plan of redemption, and no adequate fulfilment of its promises, is possible which makes death the limit of all God's gracious dealings toward the masses of mankind who have not known Him, and which takes away from their promised resurrection every element of hope. We have already found that all our Lord's previous teaching about the "unquenchable," the "eternal," fire is perfectly consistent with the thought that He is speaking of a present Hell, into which man's present embodied being must be cast for destruction; and that the interpretation which projects this punishment beyond the resurrection, and puts the stress of it there, is wholly arbitrary and unnatural. It is this present body and soul of man which is in danger of being destroyed in hell.

We purpose now to examine this passage in Matt. xxv to ascertain whether its teaching harmonizes with this current thought of all Scripture. Does it shut out all the nations of unregenerate mankind from any hope in and beyond their resurrection from the dead,

and shut them up to a final doom in an everlasting hell?

Before we proceed, however, to this main inquiry we remark briefly upon this passage.

1. It forms part of an address by our Lord upon "the last things," spoken, not to the multitude, nor even to all His disciples, but, as we learn from Mark xiii. 3 to Peter and James and John and Andrew, "who asked Him privately, Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of thy coming and of the end of the age?"

2. The immediate occasion of their question was the Master's recent prediction of the destruction of the temple.

3. This impending event is made the occasion of directing their minds to other and wider judgments, of which it was to be the forerunner, and reaching beyond the Jews to all nations.

4. As judgment was to begin with the Jewish nation, so the twenty-fifth chapter declares to us specially, in the parables of the ten virgins and of the talents, how it must begin at the house of God. The closing parable, the sorting between sheep and goats, shows that it must extend to "all the nations," and what the end shall be of them that obey not the gospel of God.

5. The standard of judgment resolves itself simply into this,―similarity of nature with the Judge. All of those in whom the Christ-nature has been begotten, and who therefore have done His works, are adjudged to eternal life. All who cannot stand this test are banished from His presence to "the eternal fire."