The following is a copy of the book "Future Human Kingdom of Christ" written by Dunbar Isidore Heath and published in 1852, retyped in 2004.  If you would like a version of this in Word please email me jj@jjhc.info 

THE FUTURE HUMAN KINGDOM OF CHRIST;

OR MAN'S HEAVEN TO BE THIS EARTH.

A SOLUTION OF THE CALVINISTIC AND OTHER CHIEF DIFFICULTIES IN THEOLOGY, BY DISTINGUISHING THE SAVED NATIONS FROM THE GLORIFIED SAINTS.

BY THE REV. DUNBAR ISIDORE HEATH, M.A.,

VICAR OF BEADING, ISLE OF WIGHT, AND LATE FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE.

LONDON: J. W. PARKER, WEST STRAND.
1852.
T. E. METCALF, PRINTER, 63, SNOW HILL.

THE FUTURE HUMAN KINGDOM OF CHRIST

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTORY.

The two chief points to which I hope in this book to direct the earnest attention of my fellow Christians are, in the strictest sense, such as have been revealed to us -- if at all -- in a written revelation. Relating as they do to a subject upon which there exists no a priori knowledge among mankind, they concern too a still future state of things, which no present or past experience enables us to judge of. Man's heaven, it is asserted in the title page, is to be on this earth. He who "alone spreadeth out the heavens, and treadeth upon the waves of the sea, which maketh Arcturus, Orion, and the Pleiades, and the chambers of the south," hath made them so that, to us, these constellations are clearly as much earth as heaven, being globular masses of the one suspended in the space of the other: nor can any one say that either of these, or any other material heavenly locality, is, a priori, a more likely future habitation for the sons of men than this their own earth. Revelation alone can settle the question whether we are to ascend into one of them after

We are risen from the dead, if anything, at all is meant to do so before that time shall have come, when practical experience shall have resolved all. Whether Salvation again is what I deem it, is a question, which has reference to God's predestined plan for the filling of this earth eternally with a high social untempted community of intelligent beings. Nothing here may be proved by an appeal to the moral feelings, however much certain views may afterwards, as I hope to show, approve themselves to our hearts: nor can aught be decided by the unassisted understanding, however much such views may appear to be in accordance with the laws which our intellects have observed in nature. Historical investigations indeed might show that our modern notions used once to be held by heathens, and that the early Christians openly ignored them in favor of what I am upholding. This, if established, would be of high value; but in thus setting one age of the Church against another, we should only be still more clearly driven to decide between them by an appeal to the permanent supreme authority, the written Book.

If there were not many and vast difficulties in answering the question, -- What after all is, and what after all is not, authoritatively revealed to us in that book as religious truth? I suppose men would by this time have made up their minds as to the specific and correct answer to be made to this inquiry. For the last 300 years at least, philosophical and theological discussion has been both necessary and possible; and, from the unprecedented strides which knowledge of almost every kind has made during that period, we should have expected that such a power as that of finding the real meaning of any book, in a known language, would have by this time existed in the world. And yet the fact is, that men differ now more than they ever did before upon what is really revealed to us in the Holy Scriptures; and as it is also possible now for those who differ on this point to form separately organized bodies for the worship of God, the tendency to practical disunion and hatred has unfortunately gone hand in hand with the divergences, in many cases, of mere intellectual opinion.

The difficulty, of course, in learning truth from a book, is to know the real intended meaning of the sentences. Most words have several meanings; most sentences may express several meanings; and translation into a new language almost always gives to each several more. But the combined meaning of all the sentences, independently of all languages, it is which men are most diligently to search for. Men have not found this pearl of great price yet. When they do so they will be United.

The Holy Scriptures were revealed to us in languages known to but few comparatively among us. The books themselves, as originally written, have long been lost; we possess only copies. Some considerable difficulties affecting the authenticity of parts of them have hitherto existed, many of which are, however, now daily vanishing by the daily advance of science. The English translation of at least the New Testament Epistles, however excellent in many respects, is most painfully and injuriously faulty in the most important particular of all. No one can say it renders the same Greek word, whenever possible, by the same English one. I might go on in an enumeration of many disturbing causes which prevent every man now living from fully communing with the written Word. I name them to show that I am conscious of them, and to remind others of the real position in which we all stand as to our nearness to our written Savior, and also because the minds of men are often harassed by the contemplation of many veils between us and Truth.

But all these harassing contemplations vanish when we are remember the important and self-evident fact, that the Word after all is only clothed in Greek, English, or French sentences, but He Himself is the sense of the sentences, informing us and informed in us; and He moreover communicates the one sense of each sentence -- and this one right sense may be known when we know the combined sense of all: and we moderns have many most important and now rapidly- increasing advantages peculiar to ourselves, to enable us to recognize His truth. We seek that one definite meaning, which a modern may often comprehend better than his ancestors, notwithstanding loss of manuscripts and ignorance of languages.

And in the subjects I purpose to dwell upon we may especially remark that the truth is far more easy to be found than in any questions which have reference to our own minds. They are simply questions of fact. A "yes" or a " no" is, in the main, all we shall have to answer.

It is to be lamented that the most obviously satisfactory method of settling the sense of any book is but seldom resorted to by modern writers on biblical questions. The system which it certainly seems most natural to adopt is that of going methodically through the sacred writings, culling out all that seems in any way to bear upon the question, on either side; and deliberately examining the whole of the evidence. Thus a man may rise with the certainty that at least all the subject matter on which he is bound to judge has been collected and brought before him. If we are ever to expect the reunion of those great disunited Christian bodies which hold the supremacy of the same Scriptures, it must be, under God, by our adopting more systematically this principle of investigation. Surely no other course can be really satisfactory in any case, than that of following out, in some orderly method, the whole series of texts which refer in any way to any question; and when such course is fairly taken, and the mind of the Church has been fully and fairly directed to any subject of scripture truth, the promise of God to us is, that we shall by His spirit be thereunto sooner or later guided.

Christian theology being nothing more nor less than an examination into the personality, the position, and the principles of the historical personage whom Christians own to be their Lord, it would appear not unreasonable to suppose, that in this age of the world Christians might have come to some definite conclusion as to his position and principles. Some hundreds of years since they did with respect to his personality. But how varied are the fundamental views of our great religious parties on these subjects. As to his personality, it is true that the Romanist, the Anglican, and the Evangelical, whether churchman or dissenter, all maintain the same dogmatic truth; but I here is a large class besides these whom I would identify -- under as inoffensive a name as possible -- as the anti-dogmatists. These seem adverse to stating in a definite dogmatic form, as others do, even what themselves believe concerning supernatural phenomena.

Without dwelling, however, upon the personality of Christ, or even upon the many important differences among these bodies as to his principles, let us now briefly examine the rationale of their respective systems as to his position. In what way, let us ask each of them, do they hold that the man Jesus Christ is their Lord?

All the dogmatists maintain that this Son of Man, hypostatically united to God the Word, is in some sense other their King, now reigning over or through them, and justifying them; and by His authority they profess to act.

The Romanist holds it to be far more advantageous ultimately for society, far more efficacious in advancing individual piety, far more in accordance with the mind of Christ, to assert that the head of Christians is reigning now through a human living visible representative among us; and that all the noble prophecies of honor, power, and glory, in all the earth, with unity, peace, love, and plentifulness in their train, which all the Holy Scriptures are full of, are fulfilled, or are to be fulfilled, under that representative; all whose regular acts, orders, and judgments, are Christ's own, to which all other external earthly powers ought therefore properly to bow. The kingdom is known to be Christ's, therefore, according to this system, because, and only so far as, it is under his vicegerent.

The Anglican maintains that the kingdom is Christ's because his human Spirit is now present in his Church, whether under one visible head or not, sanctifying all the visible and bodily ordinances regularly ordained in that Church, which is his fullness and body, and gradually raising the whole of man's nature, body, soul, and spirit, till the prophecies shall be fulfilled.

The Evangelical, whether churchman or dissenter, maintains that nothing bodily, nothing, that is, which we can see, do, or hear, in the Church, is really and essentially sanctified; but that everything bodily is an outward shell which keeps people together, and is a sign of inward things; but is rather opposed than otherwise to spirit; and that the kingdom is Christ's because a number of spiritual individuals, not manifested yet to each other, obey Christ's law. And I think I am not doing injustice to the anti-dogmatists in stating that their principle is that of natural religion; viz., that God has given to men certain powers, not specially at Pentecost, or at Regeneration, or in peculiarly spiritual channels, but generally and at their birth; and that through the action of these, unassisted by any further Divine gifts, they will gradually work out the regeneration of the world. A full and systematic examination into the locality where Christ is to take the lead in that kingdom of glory, which all the dogmatists look for and which the anti-dogmatists also seem to expect, though not perhaps from His immediate agency, will lead us to a result, having an important bearing upon all these systems. If Christ is to reign on earth, the Romanist must re-examine the prophecies he has hitherto applied to another person. If He is to reign over the nations of the redeemed as well as through a select body of the glorified, the anti-dogmatists should recognize Him as the social Regenerator they are seeking; and if He is to reign in the body as a man, then spirit and body, which God hath united, should not be put asunder, nor yet on the other hand should body be unduly exalted.

I cannot but be aware that the result to which I have arrived upon these points, after a full and well-intentioned induction of texts, though it is supported by the earliest uninspired writers of the Church, is contrary to the present traditions of the vast majority of Christians. The kingdom of glory is now generally placed by us in the heavens, in some locality, if any, far removed from that of the present kingdom of grace; and the nations of the saved (Rev. 21:24) are not recognized by us at all. The kingdom of the pope upon earth, or the triumph of self-idolizing mankind upon earth, are not, it is usually supposed, destined to be destroyed by the superior brightness -- in the very seats of their own kingdoms -- of Him who is the True Light. The day which is to declare the works of the different parties who have built gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, or stubble on the Pentecostal foundation, is not generally supposed to be the day when the Lord shall return upon earth, to take account of his servants, after having been long absent to receive for himself a kingdom; and the general feeling seems to suppose that the great Spirit of Evil will be successful in having entailed a curse upon this earth, the inheritance of Adam, which shall not have been removed from it by the end of time, but shall issue in its total annihilation, and the deportation of its inhabitants to some distant localities.

Nor is the general belief less different from my own in reference to the generic meaning of the words, "our future salvation," than it is in reference to the locality in which the saved are to exist. The nations of the saved are not distinguished by us at present from the body of the glorified. The stern but consistent religionist who only recognizes in Scripture the glorified and the lost, is almost compelled to allocate the vast majority of his species to the latter condition, for he cannot see that in plain words the vast majority of men do not "keep the commandments." But the vast majority, of Englishmen at least, on their side, do, as a matter of fact, "die happy," and expect to he forgiven for Christ's sake, and therefore to "go to heaven." I look upon this book as an attempt to arrive at a far more exact scriptural view of this important subject than has hitherto been given; and if it will obviate the tremendous amount of real infidelity which so diametric a difference between Christians has occasioned, the attempt will at least, I hope, be looked upon in a charitable spirit. That the difficulties in the way of the present views are most profound, no one can deny. I should be surprised, for instance, if one man in a hundred could be found who really and substantially  believes that the injured meek on this earth are ever to have redress, as we are assured is to be the case; for how is it possible if injured and injurers are alike to "go to heaven," how is it possible, I say, in heaven to imagine any substantial glorification of the injured, and a shame before all men on the injurers?

But it may be further observed that to differ from a mere tradition, and one too which is not traceable to apostolic times, is not the same thing as of opposing any decision, statement, or assertion, of either the Church at large, or any assembly, council, or synod of Christian people, or rulers, met after due deliberation, to give utterance to, or draw up, any statement upon the subject. There many scriptural truths of considerable interest and importance, which have never yet been mooted as subjects of discussion and disputation among Christians. The two main questions which I purpose to examine, viz., the locality and the nature of our future existence, are of this kind. On such points private judgment is all that private men have to bring to the elucidation of public questions. I feel indeed the responsibility of writing upon them, knowing that with the utmost care it is yet probable that offences may come, but I feel also that there is in reality much of a most practical character connected therewith, and that our comprehension of a great deal of the Holy Scriptures has been marred by our traditions.

I would especially urge upon my brethren the following questions:--

Have not the difficulties raised by the Calvinistic controversy been hitherto insurmountable?

Is universal redemption, which is a clear doctrine of Scripture and of our Church catechism, really to be explained as only a universal salvability, and this too on conditions historically unknown to eight-ninths of our race?

Can judgment according to works be, without inconsistency, now believed in, at the same time with the efficacy, through Christ, of true repentance to obtain salvation?

And have the following texts for instance ever yet been explained?

The laborers in the vineyard;

Our Lord's refusal to teach the crowds, lest they should be converted and healed;

Whether we wake or sleep, we shall live together with him;

God shall justify the circumcision by faith and uncircumcision through faith?

If I imagine myself to see that almost the whole of the tremendous difficulties here alluded to have arisen out of our radically false notion of the meaning of the word salvation, and if, believing this, I have been betrayed into an apparent tone of over-positiveness in stating my convictions, let it not, brethren, be attributed to the heart and spirit so much as to the pen and the mind of a not ready writer. Judge ye what I say, but judge not me lest ye be judged. If any of you should be disposed at first to be scandalized at what you may consider a needless interference with established phraseology, give me at any rate credit for good intentions, where to have had faith to myself, and to have remained uncared for, would have been far more pleasant, in such an age.

The following quotation, however, will show the reader that the subject is at any rate occupying the minds of different writers. It is taken from a sermon by Mr. Dallas, in one of a series of lectures preached during Lent, 1843, by twelve different clergymen, and afterwards published under the title: "The Second Coming, the Judgment, and Kingdom of Christ."

"Before Adam was, there was an eternity during which the world was not, and after the period to which we are brought at the end of the book of the Revelation, there will be an eternity during which the world will be; for God has distinctly declared that He has made the world to be inhabited; in the forty-fifth chapter of Isaiah and the eighteenth verse, we read:

'Thus saith the Lord that created the heavens, God Himself that formed the earth and made it, He bath established it, He created it not in vain, He formed it to be inhabited: -- I am the Lord, and there is none else.' Now upon that text a great deal depends. God made Adam; and the earth was the kingdom which He made for him. He said, 'Have dominion over all the works of my hands.' This grant of dominion was repeated to Noah; it was re-stated through David (Psalm 8); it was pleaded by the Apostle to the Hebrews (Hebrews 2.) the absolute sovereignty which God had given to man; his dominion over the earth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

If Satan prevail to make it a matter of absolute necessity that the world should not be inhabited, though Jehovah declares that He made it not in vain, but that He made it to be inhabited, it follows necessarily that Satan is above God; there is a power greater than Jehovah, which forces Him from 'His purpose. But that can never be: Satan is not God, though the world love to make him their god; therefore the world shall be inhabited by the sons of man as God intended.

In order to restore the world exactly to what God made it, to what we find it in the second chapter of Genesis, and to make it what it shall be found millions of years hence, -- inhabited by the children of Adam, good men, very good, as He made their father, and granted to man the sovereignty over His works, it pleased Him to pay an enormous price; He gave His own Son to save the world and to restore all things on the earth. Now this was a sacrifice infinitely greater than the amount of good to be attained by the restoration of the children of Adam, as Adam was made on the earth at the beginning. It was capable of yielding a much larger harvest of glory than would result merely from the restitution of all things! While, therefore, the atonement attained this object, it pleased God to superadd in its results objects of infinitely higher glory. He has determined that there shall be a new being, higher than all angels, next to Himself; and in order to raise that new being out of the family of man, His own Son, equal with the Father as touching His Godhead, inferior to the Father as touching His manhood, gathers up with Him in the manhood a selected number of the sons of Adam, chosen for the purpose of forming in the heavens an eternal memorial of His glory in the atonement; men in the glorified body which Christ himself takes, and all His saints with Him. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual glorified body, such as the man Christ Jesus possesses at this moment, and our vile body must be fashioned like unto His glorious body. But who are these persons? The true Church, the chosen ones out of the family of Adam, a pre-determined, pre-appointed people out of every nation upon earth, -- a number which we know not; God has registered the name of each in the Lamb's book of life. These in God's time shall constitute the eternal memorial and testimony of the great atonement of Christ, and the great victory over Satan which shall be established in the heavens."

We observe here that this author distributes saved men into two distinct classes; and in this distribution I coincide. The description of the saints as "gathered up with Christ in the manhood," "raised out of the family of man," and formed by union with Christ into "a new being higher than all angels," seems equivalent to the striking phrase: "deification of the saints," which was first used, I believe, by Mr. Newman. Our Savior's remarks upon the eighty-second Psalm (Psa. 82) may, perhaps, justify even this strong language. David, he says, called them gods unto whom the word of God came, and the Scriptures cannot be broken. Whether the dwelling place of these saints any more than that of the saved nations is to be in the heavens, in any sense which implies absence from earth, the reader will have to judge. In the main point, however, that they are to be rulers, while the saved nations are to be ruled, I most decidedly agree.

In examining one distinct portion of my subject, viz., whether or not it is revealed in Holy Scripture that good Christians are to go to what is usually called heaven, after the resurrection of the body, I imagine that the first point which the intelligent reader will desire to have answered is, What do we in fact usually mean by "going to heaven?" Now to introduce here at the outset a difficult and abstruse question of metaphysics may perhaps require an apology; but, as it is obviously necessary to the completeness of the work not to pass over any one aspect of the subject in silence, I trust that the following preparatory remarks will not be considered to be beside the subject.

It is well known then that some metaphysical writers deny the reality of space altogether. The part of the human mind, say they, which works through our phrenological organ of locality, necessarily considers all things to exist in space, because it is human nature so to do. But our having this organization does not prove, they say, that there is any real reason for this in the nature of things; so that our future ascending into heaven in a supposed new state of existence, is not to be looked for as a future bodily change of locality, but as a mental change of state or existence, which will probably annihilate in us the very sense of locality altogether. If I have any reader with these views, who holds that space in what is called subjective, and not objective; that the spatial relation is a form under which the created human mind must, as yet, of necessity view all things, without the power of proving that all things exist in space, such an one would be disposed to deny that heaven is a locality at all, and would therefore reject as idle the question whether we are to ascend there.

Be it so then. Space may certainly, for ought we can prove to the contrary, be only subjective in the minds which God gave us when He created us in his own image. But it is to be observed that men we are now, and men we are always to remain for ever and ever. We are not to be angels, but to rise as men. How does any one know, then, but that in the future world he shall have his faculties and perceptions, strengthened indeed and invigorated, and freed from corruption and disease, but not altered in their essential nature? We may grant that some men shall rise in a spiritual body, and we may grant as extremely probable, that such shall have faculties, from their union with Christ, which shall transcend those spatial limitations of perception under which alone we can now think of space and matter; such men for instance will doubtless be able to look upon the bodies of the wicked, in their own future place, with the feelings, whatever they are, with which God and angels look upon the unhappily wicked in this life; and yet such a sight would be inconsistent with our own happiness now in this our state of mind and body. If there is any proof existing that all men shall so rise, in such spiritual bodies, the whole aspect of the question would doubtless be thereby altered, but such proof could only be derived from revelation, which, on the contrary, seems to me rather to imply that the mass of men will rise in the natural body.

Until then, this can be shown to be not the case, space is to be considered, in our contemplations of the future, in essentially the same way in which we consider it now. In other words, heaven is the name we give to a vast locality.

There are, however, two distinct notions in the popular mind concerning this heaven thus granted to be a locality. Heaven is either supposed to mean the vast expanse of all space, without recognizing any matter at all in it, which shall be allowed to take the mind off from the contemplation of the immaterial emptiness; or secondly, it is more usually supposed to be one definite vastly distant portion of space, more hallowed than the rest by the manifestation thereat of the Deity, and the bodily presence of Christ.

First then, heaven is considered as the vast expanse of the whole of space; full of angels, and untainted, as it is called, by the defilement of matter. This is considered to be a particularly spiritual notion of heaven; I own I cannot see how or why. We ourselves know that there positively and actually are, millions of stupendously large material systems scattered about in every direction through these heavens. Men are, in a literal sense, already in heaven while on this very material globe. The fact that our Blessed Savior has, and always will have, a bodily nature, and that we are always to be men, men with bodies, makes it a matter of considerable importance that we should dismiss these Manichean notions of the essential evil of matter. Spirit is opposed indeed to flesh in the Holy Scriptures, but nowhere, I believe, to body. I am utterly at a loss to conceive anything unspiritual, evil, or defiling, in the existence of gold, silver, silex, electricity, odyle, or magnetism. Cannot the sensation of Light, the symbol almost of Glory and God, be produced in the human mind by the union of oxygen and carbon, both of which are material substances? The Christian doctrine of the resurrection of the body runs great risk of sinking into the heathen doctrine of the mere immortality of the soul, and indeed cannot, that I see, be very well distinguished from it, if we banish from the world to come those bodily elements commonly called matter.

But secondly, that which we can see with our own eyes of the immense dwelling places for material bodies in heaven is ignored, and heaven is considered to be only some one definite vastly distant portion of this space, to which men are to ascend. To this word " ascend," there are many who give too confined a meaning, not remembering that the direction in which a person goes " up," entirely depends, at any given time, upon his starting-point at the earth's surface. The "up" of one man being literally the "down" of another, it seems an unprofitable task to make and solve difficulties about an avowedly partial word. To express a certain direction of motion by means of the word "ascend," is purely an adaptation to our weakness. The thing itself may or may not be believed in, but the word at any rate may lawfully be explained away. By ascending, we merely mean going from a common center, whatever be our direction after starting.

And, if we learn nothing from the word ascend, I know not on what authority we suppose God permanently manifested at that little portion of heaven to which we are supposed to ascend, rather than in "heaven itself." Whenever we proceed to affirm anything whatever about the peculiar manifestation of the Deity at a locality in some one unknown direction from us, we surely talk of things we know nothing whatever about. Do we know anything whatever of its distance, or of its direction, or of its size, or of its very existence? Is it, or was it, within the limits of St. John's natural gaze at Patmos? Is it at the extremity of our little system, 8000 million miles off? Is it at the nearest known fixed star, nineteen million million of miles distant? We do know that the whole of God's works, however vast, are present to Him, and we do know that He is present to them; and we do know that prophets and apostles have had visions of bright space distinct front this earth vouchsafed to them: so had Elisha of bright fiery charioteers upon this earth. Are we really and truly to suppose that when St. John saw heaven silent for half-an-hour, during which we know that he himself, at Patmos, moved through several hundred miles by the earth's rotation and motion -- are we really, I say, to suppose that this definite and fixed abode of God, to which good men are to ascend, was also whirled along with St. John's eyes in space, so as to be still above them? That our Lord's body is in heaven, is true. That all heaven is present to Him, is true. Whether He is peculiarly present in one portion of heaven alone, depends upon the meaning of the words "present" and "portion." We now see darkly. When He comes, we shall see him as he is.

But lastly, there is a distinct meaning of the word heaven, in which the notion of locality is dropped altogether. Heaven, sometimes men say, is communion with God. Where God is, heaven is. The communion of God is perfect happiness; and perfect happiness is all we mean by heaven. God is everywhere. Heaven therefore would be everywhere, if the veil which covers all flesh were but removed from between us and our God, in whom we live and move. This seems a truly philosophical, scriptural, and spiritual sense; but, having no reference to the material senses, of which alone we have hitherto been speaking, it need not be here discussed. Man's eternal fruition of God may, in this sense at least, be in heaven and yet on earth.

If then we are to reject the metaphysical notion that heaven is no locality at all; and if we are to reject the notion commonly, but improperly, as far as I see, called spiritual, that heaven is a locality without matter; if the word "ascend" is only an adaptation; if of peculiar local glory in some part of heaven, which we allow to be possible, nothing has been told us; and if we need not reject the spiritualized, but common enough, meaning of the word, we are then led to the threshold of what I believe the whole of Holy Scripture does declare, viz., that this earth, in the regeneration, after the restitution of all things, is to be our abode as bodily creatures. We shall at any rate, I hope, be able to examine without prejudice whether Holy Scripture means a distant heaven, or means this earth, by the phrase "the world to come" (or rather the age to come). God is everywhere, and His communion is perfect happiness, but our future home need not necessarily be everywhere. If our future world is all that is described to us in Scripture, viz., an everlasting happy life of communion with God and his creatures, it is surely enough for us; for if the ministration of the law of Moses, written and engraved on a common stone (as we call it), was glorious, so that the Jews could not steadfastly behold the face of Moses for the glory of his countenance -- which glory was to be done away -- how shall not the ministration of the Spirit be rather glorious, when we all with open face, beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, shall be changed into the same image, from glory to glory? The following remarks of Dr. Chalmers are from his 4th Discourse, illustrative of the connection between theology and general science.

"In the text before us (2 Pet. 3:13) there are two leading points of information which we should like successively to remark upon. The first is that in the new economy which is to be reared for the accommodation of the blessed, there will be materialism, not merely new heavens, but also a new earth. The second is that, as distinguished from the present which is an abode of rebellion, it will be an abode of righteousness.

"I. We know historically that a solid material earth may form the dwelling of sinless creatures in full converse and friendship with the Being who made them; that instead of a place of exile for outcasts, it may have a broad avenue of communication with the spiritual world for the descent of ethereal beings from on high; that like the member of an extended family it may share in the regard and attention of the other members, and along with them be gladdened by the presence of Him who is the Fattier of them all. To enquire how this can be, were to attempt a wisdom beyond Scripture; but to assert that thishas been, and therefore may be, is to keep most strictly and modestly within the limits of the record. For we there read that God framed an apparatus of materialism, which on His own surveying He pronounced to be all very good, and the leading features of which may still be recognised among the things and the substances that are around us, and that He created man with the bodily organs and senses which we now wear, and placed him under the very canopy that is over our heads, and spread around him a scenery perhaps lovelier in its tints, and more smiling and serene in the whole aspect of it, but certainly made up in the main of the same objects that still compose the prospect of our visible contemplations, and there, working with his hands in a garden, and with trees on every side of him, and even with animals sporting at his feet, was this inhabitant of earth, in the midst of all these earthly and familiar accompaniments, in full possession of the best immunities of a citizen of heaven; sharing in the delight of angels, and while he gazed on the very beauties which we ourselves gaze upon, rejoicing in them .most as the tokens of a present and presiding Deity. It were venturing on the region of conjecture to affirm whether if Adam had not fallen, the earth that we now tread upon, would have been the everlasting abode of him and his posterity. But certain it is that man at the first had for his place this world, and at the same time for his privilege an unclouded fellowship with God, and for his prospect an immortality which death was neither to intercept nor put an end to. He was terrestrial in respect of condition, and yet celestial in respect both of character and enjoyment. His eye looked outwardly on a landscape of earth, while his heart breathed upwardly in the love of heaven; and though he trod the solid platform of our world, and was compassed about with its horizon, still was he within the circle of God's favored creation, and took his place among the freemen and the denizens of the great spiritual commonwealth.

"This may serve to rectify an imagination of which we think that all must be conscious, as if the grossness of materialism was only for those who had degenerated into the grossness of sin, and that when a spiritualizing process had purged away all our corruption, then, by the stepping stones of a death and a resurrection, we should be borne away to some ethereal region where sense and body, and all in the shape either of audible sound, or of tangible substance were unknown; and hence that strangeness of impression which is felt by you, should the supposition be offered that in the place of eternal blessedness, there will be ground to walk upon, or scenes of luxuriance to delight the corporeal senses, or the kindly intercourse of friends, talking familiarly and by articulate converse together, or in short any thing that has the least resemblance to a local territory filled with various accommodations, and peopled over its whole extent by creatures formed like ourselves, having bodies such as we now wear, and faculties of perception, and thought and mutual communication such as we now exercise. The common imagination that we have of paradise on the other side of death is that of a lofty aerial region, where the inmates float in ether, or are mysteriously suspended upon nothing, where all the warm and sensible accompaniments, which give such an expression of strength and life, and coloring to our present habitation, are attenuated into a sort of spiritual element that is meager and imperceptible, and utterly uninviting to the eye of mortals here below, where every vestige of materialism is done away, and nothing left but certain unearthly scenes that have no power of allurement, and certain unearthly ecstasies with which it is felt impossible to sympathize. The holders of this imagination forget all the while that really there is no essential connection between materialism and sin,; that the world, which we now inhabit, had all the amplitude and solidity of its present materialism before sin entered into it; that God so far on that account from looking slightly upon it after it had received the last touch of His creating hand, reviewed the ,earth, and the waters, and the firmament, and all the green herbage with the living creatures, and the man whom He had raised in dominion over them, and He saw every thing that He bad made, and behold, it was all very good. They forget that on the birth of materialism, when it stood out in the freshness of those glories which the great Architect of Nature had impressed upon it, that then 'the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy.' They forget the appeals that are made everywhere in the Bible to this material workmanship, and how from the face of these visible heavens, and the garniture of this earth that we tread upon, the greatness and the goodness of God are reflected on the view of His worshippers. No, my brethren, the object of the administration we sit under, is to extirpate sin but it is not to sweep away materialism."

And again he says,

"Were our place of everlasting blessedness so purely spiritual as it is commonly imagined, then the soul of man after at death having quitted his body, would quit it conclusively. That mass of materialism with which it is associated upon earth and which many regard as a load and an encumbrance, would have leave to putrefy in the grave without being revisited by supernatural power, or raised again out of the inanimate dust into which it had resolved. If the body be indeed a clog and a confinement to the spirit instead of its commodious tenement, then would the spirit feel lightened by the departure it had made, and expatiate in all the buoyancy of its emancipated powers over a scene of enlargement. And this is doubtless the prevailing imagination. But why then, having made its escape from such a thralldom, should it ever recur to the prison of its old materialism, if a prison -- house it really be. Why should the disengaged spirit again be fastened to the drag of that grosser and heavier substance which many think has only the effect of weighing down its activity, and infusing into the pure element of mind an ingredient which serves to cloud and to enfeeble it. In other words, what is the use of a day of resurrection, if the union which then takes place, is to deaden or to reduce all those energies that are commonly ascribed to the living principle in a state of separation. But as a proof of some metaphysical delusion upon this subject, the product perhaps of a wrong though fashionable philosophy, it would appear that to embody the spirit is not the stepping stone to its degradation, but to its preferment. The last day will be a day of triumph to the righteous, because the day of the re-entrance of the spirit to its much loved abode, where its faculties so far from being shut up into captivity will find their free and kindred development in such material organs as are suited to them. The fact of the resurrection proves that with man at least the state of a disembodied spirit is a state of unnatural violence, and that the resurrection of his body is an essential step to the highest perfection of which he is susceptible. And it is indeed an homage to that materialism which many are for expunging from the future state of the universe altogether, that ere the immaterial soul of man has reached the ultimate glory and blessedness which are designed for it, it must return and knock at that very grave where lie the moldered remains of the body which it wore; and there inquisition must be made for the flesh, and the sinews, and the bones which the power of corruption has perhaps for centuries before assimilated to the earth that is around them, and there the minute atoms must be re-assembled into a structure that bears upon it the form and the lineaments and the general aspect of a man, and the soul passes into this material frame -- work which is hereafter to be its lodging place for ever, and that not as its prison, but as its pleasant and befitting habitation, not to be trammeled as some would have it in a hold of materialism, but to be therein equipped for the services of eternity, to walk embodied among the bowers of our second paradise, to stand embodied in the presence of our God:

And lastly,

"The imagination of a total and diametric opposition between the region of sense and the region of spirituality, certainly tends to abate the interest with which we might otherwise look to the perspective that is on the other side of the grave, and to deaden all those sympathies that we else might have with the joys and exercises of the blest in paradise. To rectify this, it is not necessary to enter on the particularities of heaven, a topic on which the Bible is certainly most sparing and reserved in its communications. But a great step is gained simply by dissolving the alliance that exists in the minds of many between the two ideas of sin and materialism, or proving that when once sin is done a way it consists with all we know of God's administration that materialism shall be perpetuated in the full bloom and vigor of immortality. It altogether holds out a warmer and more alluring picture of the Elysium that awaits us when told that there will be beauty to delight the eye, and music to regale the ear, and the comfort that springs from all the charities of intercourse between man and man, holding converse as they do on earth, and gladdening each other with the benignant smiles that play on the human countenance, or the accents of kindness that fall in soft and soothing melody from the human voice. There is much of the innocent and much of the inspiring, and much to affect and elevate the heart in the scenes and the contemplations of materialism; and we do hail the information of our text that after the dissolution of its present frame -- work it will again be varied and decked out anew in all the graces of its unfading verdure and of its unbounded variety; that in addition to our direct and personal view of the Deity, when He comes down to tabernacle with men, we shall also have the reflection of Him in a lovely mirror of His own workmanship; and that instead of being transported to some abode of dimness and of mystery, so remote from human experience as to be beyond all comprehension, we shall walk for ever in a land replenished with those sensible delights and those sensible glories which we doubt not will be most profusely scattered over the new heavens and the new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness.

"II. But though a paradise of sense it will not be a paradise of sensuality. Though not so unlike the present world as many apprehend it, there will be one point of total dissimilarity betwixt them. It is not the entire substitution of spirit for matter that will distinguish the future economy from the present. But it will be the entire substitution of righteousness for sin. It is this which signalizes the Christian from the Mahometan paradise; not that sense and substance and splendid imagery and the glories of a visible creation, seen with bodily eyes, are excluded from it, but that all which is vile in principle, or voluptuous in impurity, will be utterly excluded from it. There will be a firm earth as we have at present, and a heaven stretched over it as we have at present, and it is not by the absence of these, but by the absence of sin that the abodes of immortality will be characterized. There will both be heavens and earth, it would appear, in the next great administration, and with this speciality to mark it from the present one, that it will be a heaven and an earth wherein dwelleth righteousness."

THE FUTURE HUMAN KINDOM OF CHRIST

CHAPTER II.

ST. MATTHEW.

IN the examination of the Holy Scriptures which I have undertaken to make, I trust it will not be considered necessary to the completeness of the argument, that I should go through the Old Testament as well as the New. Though both in the Old and New Testament everlasting life is offered to mankind by Christ, yet it is obvious that life and. immortality were only clearly and openly brought to light through the blessed Gospel. Bishops Warburton, Bull, Pearson, and others, may be referred to as having written fully upon the comparative degree of light which was shed forth in the ancient and modern Scriptures. The general scope of the Old Testament is that the ancient patriarchs, looked for a deliverer with a very dark insight into the nature of the promises to be fulfilled by Him. Even the Law only offered temporal rewards, though Moses and the more spiritual among the old fathers had a more enlarged expectation. The doctrine of a future life of some kind, appears more openly under David and the prophets; and it is undoubted that the doctrine of the immortality of the soul at least, and partially that of the resurrection of the body, had become the national belief of the Jews at the time of our Savior's appearing. There is also one passage in 2 Kings 2:11, in which it is directly stated in the English version that Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven; and as the seventh of our thirty-nine articles declares that the Old Testament is not contrary to the New, and also that they are not to be heard which feign that the old fathers did look only for transitory promises this passage in all fairness demands our attention. But granting to the fullest extent the clear insight of those holy men of old, who looked for exceeding great and precious promises, yet it is obvious upon the whole face of the Old Testament, that the future life expected by the old fathers, though an eternal, and not a transitory, life, was yet a life on earth, and that the whole aspect of the Old Testament promises is earthly -- not transitory, indeed, but yet earthly. The passage in question becomes therefore an exceptional and isolated one; and it will be better to defer the consideration of it till we have thrown the light of Christian revelation upon its true meaning. I will not forget to come back to it, but proceed now to go fairly through the whole of the New Testament in a methodical order, omitting only in certain Evangelists what has been noticed in one of the others.

May we, in the study of these Scriptures, be granted knowledge of God's Truth, and in the world to come Life everlasting.

Matthew 2:2 - Where is he that is born King of the Jews?

It is an undoubted fact that we are now living under a dispensation in which there is no distinction between Jew and Gentile. A Divine message has been delivered, baptisms have been administered, truth has been manifested and taught, and men have been built up towards perfection for 1800 years; but in no respect has there been one gospel, one baptism, one truth for a Jew and another for one of ourselves. A curious and unhappy result has followed from this. It is curious that we who boast so loudly of our scriptural knowledge, should have failed to distinguish God's intimations of his purposes for different classes of mankind; and it is not less unhappy than curious that we should have to ask in sober seriousness, after these 1800 years, Where is he that believes that Christ was born King of the Jews? And, having once confounded together things which ought to have been kept separate, other kindred Christian doctrine has suffered; so that we may also ask, Where is he that distinguishes, with Holy Scripture for his guide, between Christ's redemption of all mankind and his special salvation of them that believe (1 Timothy 4:10)? or again, between His appearing and his kingdom (2 Timothy 4:1), or between his merely destroying the works of the devil (1 John 3:8) and his bringing many sons unto glory (Hebrews 2:10)? presenting them to himself a glorious assemblage, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing (Ephesians 5:27), when he is again brought into the world (Hebrews 1:6)?

That the Man who was born of Mary was ordained to be -- endeavored earnestly in a human way to be -- and is certainly yet to be -- the human King of the Jews, is so clearly revealed in Scripture, that religious teachers have a difficult task in persuading young people to explain away the fact. Young people read of God's anger when the Jews demanded another king, like the nations around them, before Christ appeared. They find that the Jews were nowhere told to proselytize other nations, and that Christ came not but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel; and that he prevented his disciples preaching, except to Jews. Go not into the way of the Gentiles; and into any city of the Samaritans enter not; but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. They read that he was born King of the Jews. They read that he entered into Jerusalem King of the Jews; and that his title in three languages, at his death, was Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews. This, and much more, which we might collect to the same effect, would probably be considered amply sufficient to establish a ' peculiar relation of the Jews to Christ as their king, in the usual sense of the word, were it not that the Jews, having at a particular period nationally fallen from the true Jewish religion of their own prophets, and certain individual Jews and Gentiles having, at and since that time, accepted the full and complete Christian true Jewish religion, it has' become a difficulty to determine, in some particular texts, whether the word "Jews" applies to these individuals or to the physical descendants of Jacob. There are, however, it seems to me, such a considerable number of passages where the kingship of our Lord over Jews must be taken in a literal sense -- some of which, in their proper place, I shall endeavor to bring forward -- that I shall here only remark that if we interpret these apparently plain portions of Scripture in a way which opposes us to the unanimous opinion of the whole ancient Jewish Church, the opponents of the peculiar truths of the Gospel will, on their part, be able to use the following strong argument: Since pious Jews, in and before the Christian era, were quite wrong, as you all now say, in giving the natural sense, which they unanimously did give, to such apparently plain prophecies, you pious Christians are probably equally wrong at present, unanimous or not.

It is true, indeed, that Christ recommended his countrymen to pay tribute to the Romans; but this merely shows that he who washed the feet of his disciples, would have been willing (as we know he was) to be a tributary, until he was recognized as the Creator; and this is quite in accordance with the gradual nature of all his great works which we know of, whether in nature or grace.

It is true that he hid himself when a crowd came by force to make him a king; but this is attributed by himself to the fact that they followed him, not from having come round to his principles, but from motives common enough when religion is profitable. It is true again that he said, My kingdom is not of this world; but this does not interfere in the slightest degree with our expectation that this world will some day be of his kingdom.

We find, moreover, that not only the expectation of the Jews, but that of the whole heathen East, was based upon this apparent plain sense of the letter of Scripture. Tacitus (Hist. v.), in describing the fall of Jerusalem, and talking of the Jews, says, "There was a general persuasion that it was asserted in the ancient books of the priests, that at that very time the East would recover itself, and that certain who should go forth out of Judaea should obtain the Dominion." Suetonius, in his Life of Vespasian, says, in much the same words, "An ancient and immovable opinion was spread over the whole East, that certain who should go forth out of Judaea should obtain the Dominion."

The sort of unwilling, unpractical, yet wide spread belief with which the Church has always been able to leaven the world, is well described in these heathen testimonies to an article of revealed. truth. They may have got their assertions indeed from Josephus, but the repeating it thus stamps it with the authority of their own testimony. Such faith as has fought its way like this into foreign nations must, one would think, necessarily have had a solid foundation, though Christians now hardly seem to think so. We seem now to own a Teacher, and one who died on our behalf; but to repudiate the notion of Christ as the great human Social Regenerator, the great human Temporal King, as well as the great divine Author and Sustainer of physical, chemical, vital, and mental force upon the earth. In opposition to the present Christian unsatisfying acquiescence in the substitution of faith for sight, spirit for spirit soul and body, grace for glory, diseases for health, and hope for enjoyment, I own I think the Jews were right. I believe in "the gospel of the kingdom."

So do we all, doubtless, in a sense. I further then believe it to be most scripturally explained as follows: --

The kingdom of the man Christ, received from the Father as the reward of his sufferings in the redemption of all mankind, is a pure human government, to be distinguished from his sovereignty as God over all created things. 'Wherefore God also hath highly exalted Him' (Phil. 2:9). 'We see Jesus, for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honor' (Hebrews 2:9). 'To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame and am set down with my Father in his throne' (Rev. 3:21). These texts

"must relate to his human nature. As God, coequal and coeternal with the Father, he was ever in His everlasting unchangeable glory, which could as little admit of increase as of diminution To God the Son, the Father gave no glory; for He ever was in the glory of the Father -- the glory equal, the majesty coeternal. It is then his manhood, inseparable from his Godhead, before which all creation bows -- angels, archangels, men., and devils -- in reverence or in terror." -- Dr. Pusey.

By a human government, I do not mean that angels and other heavenly potentates are not to be subject to Christ in this kingdom; but that they are to be subject in it to a Man; who, with human faculties in a spiritual body, will make use of human methods to do his Father's will; even the hidden wisdom which God ordained before the world unto our glory. What part the angels will fill in it we know not, except that they will ascend and descend, so as to hold constant communication with the Head Christ, the Son of Mary, and his members on earth.

In order to have anything like an accurate notion of the sense in which this triumph of a Man is described in Holy Scripture, we must carefully note its several stages.

I omit then, as sufficiently understood already, the kingdom which consisted of the physical descendants of Isaac -- God's kingdom; whether in tents or in houses; whether before sin was imputed or under the law; whether in the land of Ra, and Khem, and Thoth, or in Canaan; under Moses, or judges, or kings, or the Shekinah, or prophets; in Babylon, or in all the world; in the temple, or in synagogues, they were, in a quite comprehensible and in a quite human way, the chosen nation, people, and kingdom of Christ.

Of this we need not now speak particularly. But in the course of ages came a change. The kingdom was taken from them, and was to be given to another nation, if they should continue in God's goodness, and bring forth the fruits thereof; other wise they also were to be cut off (Romans 11:22).

Accordingly I think we may fairly judge that, for a time after Pentecost, Christ's kingdom existed visibly on earth as a mixed body of Jews and Gentiles. By the word "visibly," I mean to imply that it was quite the exception for a Church person to be a bad or indifferent man. Good Christians were not a hidden election, I suppose, at that time, but a visible body. A man might, in far the majority of cases, have been safe in trusting money, for instance, to any Church person, whether friend or stranger, and not, as a general rule, to a non -- Church person. There was no difficulty felt then in saying -- Open your eyes, look about you; you can see these men are Christians; they were all regenerated at baptism; there is evidently some difference between them and world people. Christ is, I doubt not, really in them at their commemorations. If they reject a man,. we may be sure he must be rejected of God. How different are their social rules from ours. We imprison and slay -- they confess their sins in public and are loosed. Truly the world receives an overflow of blessing from them. They are Christ's body.

Such Was Christ once on earth. But it was prophesied that a "falling away" should take place, which should last until Christ returned, in body soul, and spirit, to the earth. Accordingly we find that the bait which was refused by the King was accepted by the subjects. All these things will I give thee if thou wilt fall down and worship me. The Church agreed that Constantine and all the great men should be baptized. The death -- bed was found the most comfortable time for the purpose. Sanctification was separated from Regeneration. Good men agreed to become a hidden election, which they have been ever since from that time to this. "To the woman were given two wings of a great eagle, that she might fly into the wilder ness, into her place, where she is nourished for a time, and times, and half a time, from the face of the serpent." "Whereas thou sawest iron mixed with miry clay they shall mingle themselves with the seed of men: but they shall not cleave one to another even as iron is not mixed with clay."

At present, therefore, the House of God may be compared to some royal palace, such as we have seen possessed by a mob among whom should be found individuals rightly owning it. All the doctrine taught and all the ordinances established by the Apostles remain among us. They are verily profitable to those who keep the gospel, but if they be breakers of the gospel, their baptism is made apostasy. This phase of the kingdom of Christ will last till He comes and finds apparently but little faith upon the earth.

Next comes the day of His presence. The Parousia seems to me a useful word -- the Purgatorial period of restitution. There are millions on millions of degrees of beauty, intelligence, happiness, and what we call perfection,, in all God's works which men have ever yet seen. If invisible things are known by the visible, which we are assured is the case, we cannot be wrong in extending this rule to futurity. And to strengthen this opinion, we know that all men, the hidden election, the visible election, and the heathen, will be judged according to their works. Infinite in variety are their works, so also will be their final state. One star differeth from another star in glory, so also is the resurrection of the dead. At Christ's coming, those destined to the highest glory will rise from the graves to meet him, or will be changed and taken away from the living to meet him, and be gathered together unto him through the air to Jerusalem. They are then and there portrayed as composing the members of the government under the Lord. The remainder of men will not submit to his government at once. There will be a time of trial, a judgment of the living, purgatory, an arising to shake terribly the earth. The air which is mentioned in the passage I am here alluding to is, it must be observed, quite an earthly creation, not an heavenly that we know of. Still more so are the clouds, which never rise more than two or three miles from the earth's surface. If we, who desire to form a consistent notion of what is really revealed to us in Holy Scripture on these matters, do not begin soon to do so, a stumbling block will be cast before many Christians, who will think their understandings have led them contrary to God's revelation, when this has not really been the case. The Jews who shall be alive at this period will be nationally Christ's once more. We cannot pretend to certainty, but may with good reason imagine that Daniel and other good Jews, who lived before Christ, will "stand in their lot at the end of the days" with them, i. e., shall be partakers of the first resurrection; such, for instance, as the sons of the woman mentioned 2 Maccab. 6., who were tortured, not accepting deliverance, that they might obtain a better resurrection. A portion apparently of this period is in one place of Scripture spoken of as a duration of a thousand years. We may very well accept this literally, but if any should think it is not so to be taken, it seems not a matter of importance for us now to know. If indeed we are to enter into the chronology of this phase of Christ's kingdom we must be careful not to confound this period of the predominance of good with the whole period of contest in question, during which good and evil will alternate, but with the result, under Christ's guidance, that man will be at last raised above every enemy, and even death destroyed.

But now a very important question indeed arises. What is to be the final state of mankind in general when all things shall. have been gathered into Christ? heathens included, and the mass of Christians since the apostasy? After this parousia, after this millennium, after the general resurrection and judgment of the dead, after the end is come, and the kingdom which we are talking of, shall have been presented or delivered up to the Father as having been the Devil's and now being Christ's, where are those millions to be placed who, we humbly but confidently trust, are not devils, but who are not noble, not energetic, not conquerors? Where are to be the idiots, the deaf and dumb, the irresponsible, the ignorant, the very large class who are undoubtedly sinners, and sufferers from the Devil, but hardly his conscious agents?

In answer to this, I shelter myself under the authority of Dr. Maitland in his striking work "Eruvin," and with him I distinguish the "nations of the saved" from the "Bride of Christ." The doctrine of universal redemption is not, I think, to be interpreted as a mere universal salvability on conditions which we know historically have not been historically made known to eight -- ninths of our species. It is revealed that Christ shall succeed in his work, which -- is to destroy the works of the Devil.; this he would not have done if nine-tenths of mankind were to be doomed to the Devil's eternal society; but men are to be judged according to their works, the mass of men are not to be glorified, they are to be saved, i, e., saved from sin, and as it is revealed there are gradations of stripes, and it is revealed there are gradations of reward, and we know there are an infinite number of gradations of works and characters, according to which these stripes and rewards will be given, can we be very wrong in believing that, in accordance with the rule which we trace in all God's works without exception, these nations will fill up with an infinite number of gradations the huge interval between the glorified and the damned? Far be it from men who can hardly decide, after 6000 years of experience, whether a sponge belongs to the animal or the vegetable creation, to speculate too nicely upon the extreme limits in either direction to which Christ's kingdom will then extend; or to lay down whether the gulf which is beyond salvation is beyond Him in whom are all things even the wicked for the day of evil. It is a comfort to have a very fair ground for confidence that taking the mass of mankind the works of the Devil will be found to have been destroyed, and Christ therefore to have really gained the victory; then the majority of men, untempted, not miserable, but not glorified, nor perfectly happy, will walk in the light which the head and the habitation of the manifested sons of God shall spread upon the restored earth.

We may then, as I shall endeavor to show, without any fanciful transgression of what is written, imagine the mass of mankind as living for ever on this earth, showing Christ to be the social Regenerator of mankind as well as the individual Friend of his friends. We are to imagine men eating food, using property, and living apparently in cities as at present, and different saints will have different numbers of cities of saved men entrusted to their government. Be thou ruler over ten cities.

The appointment, it may be observed, to the offices of government in Christ's kingdom, were not Christ's to give beforehand; they shall be given by him to them for whom it is prepared of the Father. The man Christ never predestinated, or appointed before knowing them, that such and such of his brethren should be nearer to him than others. To pray and strive for men is his saving work. To predestinate their positions is the wise and loving act of God.

It remains in this short sketch but to notice the peculiarity of the title "King of the Jews." The Jews have once, it is evident, had the exclusive offer of office in Christ's kingdom. But it is no less evident that a remnant only have accepted it. It is not for us to ask questions about what would have happened if they had accepted, on the first offer, Christ's principles as well as his person, but we are to examine into what has happened. God then is now visiting the Gentiles, in order that a predestined fullness of Gentiles may come in; or, in other words, that a filling up by Gentiles of the deficiency of office -- bearers may take place. This view by no means depreciates the privileges of individual Christian Gentiles below that of Christian Jews (as some seem inclined to do) in the present dispensation; and yet there seems abundant reason for believing that the Jews who accept Christ will not lose their national organization, or the inheritance of Abraham, hereafter, by so doing; but that, on the contrary, in the multitudes of mansions among the saved, they will yet be nationally higher than any other people, because they will sooner nationally turn to Christ. Though God is still enlarging Japhet, he will still dwell in the tents of Shem. When the fulness of the Gentiles shall have come in, and the requisite number of the elect been accomplished; when the Epiphany and Parousia shall have taken place, and judgment begun at the House of God, and all things that offend in it shall have been gathered out, then the man Christ, and the children whom God hath given him, shall be for signs and for wonders in Israel from the Lord of Hosts which dwelleth in Mount Zion (Isaiah 8). Then will Christ be seen upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom; to order it and to establish it with judgment and justice from henceforth, even for ever. He will be a light to lighten the Gentiles, but he will be the glory of His people Israel.

If the above is not accepted as a scriptural sketch, though brief, of the gospel of the kingdom, what other account are we to give of the announcement in this text? Does it simply and merely mean that the Church was to be established by Constantine in the fourth century? or again that Innocent III. was to rule over a small quarter of the globe in the thirteenth? or that our Lord was to reign invisibly in good people's hearts? Each of these three suppositions has had, I am aware, considerable currency, but see how clear is prophecy "He shall judge among the nations," says Isaiah ii. 4, "and shall rebuke many people, and they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning -- hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more." No one can say that this has yet come to pass; nor do either of these three suppositions make Jerusalem the seat of government, or give any relevancy to the peculiar title " King of the Jews."

Whatever theory, however, we give of this kingdom, what I am now principally concerned to remark is, that all the explanations, so far as they are either scriptural or historical, refer equally to a dominion over men in the earth, and not to a distant rule over men and angels in heaven. If these and all the other theories which may have been broached concerning the kingdom of Christ are found, when not built upon mere fancy, to have reference to men upon this earth, is it not a fair preparatory supposition to bring before our minds, that the prophecies concerning our future glory in the second Adam really do relate to the earth?

Matthew 3:2 -- Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

We find John the Baptist, our Savior and his twelve apostles, all severally but in unity proclaiming these words. It is agreed on all sides that to say, Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand, did not mean Repent ye, for a certain number of people are very soon to go to heaven.

In inquiring then how this phrase was meant to be understood, we must dismiss from our minds a great part of the full explanation which I have just given; for it is founded partly on our experience acquired since then, and partly on prophecies which were not then given. We must take the kingdom of heaven whose advent was here preached to be that phase of it which was really at hand, viz., the Pentecostal Church.

Then why is the organized Church on earth, or Christ's influence in men's hearts on earth, called the kingdom of heaven? If this does not appear to us any difficulty, it is probably because we are so habituated to the phrase; but there lurks a somewhat of inconsistency in our usual explanation, which would strike us more forcibly, were it not for our long habit of acquiescing in this mode of expression. We usually distinguish between the present kingdom of grace as the kingdom of heaven on earth, and the future kingdom of glory as the kingdom of heaven in heaven, and the kingdom of grace is called the kingdom of heaven, though it is now on earth, because we say its citizens will eventually ascend into heaven in a body, to become members of the kingdom of glory. But if it were understood that both the present kingdom of grace and the future kingdom of glory were to be in the same locality, viz., on earth, as the first Christians seem to have thought, then there would be no appearance even of inconsistency in calling them both by the same name, whatever that name might be; and this is the scriptural method. And, similarly, if men directly they repented and were converted were to be called up to heaven, to undergo probation there, as well as to reign there if they endured to the end, then all would be simple and consistent.

But now the kingdom of grace is on earth, and ,the kingdom of the glory is put in heaven; and yet we may observe that He by whom, we have access into the grace wherein we now stand, is now in heaven; and the " Lord of the glory " (1 Cor. 2:8), instead of remaining in heaven is to return to earth; after which Holy Scripture is quite silent as to his re-ascension. On the usual hypothesis there is certainly a slight confusion in our terms.

It appears then at least that the phrase kingdom of heaven need not imply in any way that we shall reign in heaven, for it does not imply that we are passing our day of grace now in heaven.

Matthew 5:3, 5 -- Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth.

It admits of question whether our Savior meant to encourage meek people by telling them they should inherit the earth in a present or a future state. But the reward certainly seems future in the other beatitudes; and those whom our Savior would expect to influence were the more spiritual among the Jews; who would confidently apply his words to the long -- looked -- for glorious kingdom of David. The rewards in the other beatitudes too, are not rewards which naturally follow of themselves, but distinct promises, annexed to certain conditions; and if our Lord only and exclusively meant that meek people, after all, did get more of the real good things of this life than haughty tyrants, and that contentment made them more satisfied with a little than violent men are with much, it would hardly have been understood so.

It is no natural consequence of a Jew honoring his father and mother, that he should live long in Judaea; it is a distinct promise, which the spiritual among them would doubtless expect to see fulfilled after the resurrection, and in the land of Judaea. The present promise would be understood in the same way. The poor in spirit are much the same as the meek, and having the kingdom of heaven is apparently much the same as inheriting the earth; or else the meek would be to all eternity separated from the poor in spirit. It may indeed be doubted whether poor-spirited meek people do get happiness in this world. It may be matter of opinion that some of them do, but hardly all; and one single case of a meek person not getting on happily in this life, would be enough to prove that our Savior really meant to refer to another and a future life. And, if he did, the earthly locality of our future inheritance is at once proved; for, observe, our Savior did not say, Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the kingdom of the earth, which might be ambiguous; nor, Blessed are the poor in spirit, for they shall inherit heaven, which we believe they will not do.

If our Savior had meant to refer to this natural reward of meekness, would he not have said that the meek should inherit the things of the earth. But the word used was the earth, which was connected in the minds of his hearers with a distinct promise. Thus (Psalm 22), "The meek shall eat and be satisfied" is connected with "all the ends of the world remembering and turning to the Lord, for the kingdom is the Lord's, and he is the governor among the nations." This is future. Again (Psalm 37.), "Those that wait upon the Lord, they shall inherit the earth; for yet a little while and the wicked shall not be; yea, thou shalt diligently consider his place and it shall not be." This is future. "But the meek shall inherit the earth, and shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace." See also the end of Psalm 69. The meek shall see this and be glad; viz., Christ's future complete triumph, when the cities of Judah are to be built, that they may dwell there and have it in possession. Similar passages are too many to be quoted. See Isaiah 11:4. He shall reprove with equity for the meek of the earth. Still future; and Isaiah 29:19. The meek also shall increase their joy in the Lord; still future, &c. &c.

Matthew 5:12 -- Rejoice and be exceeding glad, for great is your reward in heaven.

The reconciling of different texts of Scripture most commonly depends upon attention to minute points of criticism. In the Greek text here the words are, "Great your reward in heaven," leaving the reader to supply the omission of the verb with either great is or great will be. But the words are placed in such a position that the sense "great is your reward" seems to come much the most naturally. Now, if our Savior had said, Great will be your reward in heaven, the words could have had but one meaning, to which it would have been found possible to bend all other statements; viz., that at some future time people were to go to heaven to receive their reward there. But he does not say so. The natural translation is, great is your reward in heaven. And this is a statement quite susceptible of a meaning, a little more recondite, certainly, but far from forced or -- unnatural. A man may fairly be told to rejoice if an inheritance, or reward, or crown is now laid up for him in a distant place, without implying that he is to proceed in his own person to receive it. It would be sufficient were it to be brought to him by a mediator, at an appointed day. Now St. Paul says (2 Timothy 4:8), thenceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, viz., the particular crown in question, which the Lord shall give me (or rather, give me according to covenant) at that day, and to all that have loved his appearing. So St. Peter (1 Peter 1:4) names the inheritance reserved in heaven unto salvation, ready to be revealed in the last time. And (1 Peter 5:13) he talks of the grace or gift that is to be brought at the . revelation of Jesus Christ. And in (1 Peter 4:13) he hopes that when Christ's glory shall be revealed, -- those to whom he was writing also might be glad with exceeding joy. And (1 Peter 5:4) that when the chief Shepherd shall appear, they might receive the crown of the glory, viz., the particular crown of the particular glory in question.

There are very many similar testimonies to the fact that Christ is to bring our reward, and that we are not to go for it ourselves. It follows then, if we are to take the analogy of Scripture, that our text does not mean what at first we might think it to mean, viz., that people persecuted for Christ's sake shall be greatly rewarded by going to heaven at some future day; but that there is, at the present time, a great reward laid up and reserved for such people in heaven; which reward is to be brought down to them at the appearing on earth of One who has expressly proceeded from this earth to heaven, in order to intercede and obtain gifts for men. For this cause St. Paul (2 Timothy 1:12), who himself suffered such things as our Savior here alluded to, was not ashamed, but was persuaded that God is able to keep that which he (viz., St. Paul) had committed unto hint, against that day. He had committed to God a treasure which was then in safe keeping in heaven, where his heart was with it. He expected the treasure to be safely kept and brought back by Christ, but does not allude to going there to enjoy it there himself.

In accordance with this view, we are ordered (1 Peter 6:20) to do what we find St. Paul did; viz., to "lay up" this treasure in heaven now, during our present life. St. Paul (1 Timothy 6:19) expresses it still more strongly by saying, Lay up in store for yourselves a good foundation against the time to come, -- the time when he that shall come will come, -- that you may lay hold on the eternal life.

Matthew 5:17, 18 -- Think not that I am come to destroy the law or the prophets; I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill. For verily I say unto you, till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law till all be fulfilled.

Here we shall have to inquire,

1st. St. Whether our Savior says heaven and earth are to pass away?

2nd. Whether every tittle of the prophets is to be fulfilled as well as of the law? and,

3rd. What we may suppose to be the way in which the law has been or is to be fulfilled?

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1st. Does our Savior say heaven and earth are to pass away?

The word "heaven," in the sense in which it can pass away, is evidently the visible created System of air, clouds, &c., called by the Jews the first or lower heavens; and we play remark that St. Luke's words are, " It is easier for heaven and earth to pass, than one tittle of the law to fail." This sense being quite compatible with one of the senses we may give to St. Matthew, and the other sense we might give to St. Matthew being not compatible with St. Luke, it follows that St. Luke's sense is correct, and that our Savior therefore does not here imply anything one way or other about the enduring of the visible system around us. So that these words do not throw light one way or another on the locality of our future abode. From other parts of Scripture, but not from this, we know that there will be a considerable change in the present visible world -- that there will be a resurrection, as it were, of a new material system, but still that there will be a new heaven and earth wherein dwelleth righteousness,

2ndly. Is every tittle of the prophets to be fulfilled as well as of the law?

I conceive that on our answer to this question depends whether we shall take, when we can do so, the literal interpretation of the prophets, or what is usually, but improperly in my opinion, called the spiritual view. Take, for instance, a prophecy already quoted -- "They shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning-hooks, &c." It will be found not inconsistent with the rest of the Scriptures to expect a literal fulfillment of this prophecy. Are we then to do so? Now it is undeniable that the blessings and graces of the Christian covenant have prepared many true Christian men, and given them a susceptibility for peace, joy, and love, which no heathens have ever had; but the outward circumstances of mankind and the world are continually harassing, grieving, and cooling the hearts so prepared. It is incontestable that the most tremendous war, considering all things, which the world has ever seen, was only finished a generation back. It is irrefragably the fact that Constantine, Alaric, Attila, Charlemagne, the Danes, Mahomet, the Crusaders, multitudes of Henrys, Othos, Pascals, Leos, Charleses, Roderics, Johns, Alberts, Roberts, Frederics, and Louises, down to Napoleon and others, have been the instruments of anything but peace, and that at the present day there are millions of mankind who live as paid soldiers. Therefore, if no jot or tittle of this prophecy is to pass without being fulfilled, the time it describes must be yet future. And if a jot or tittle is to pass away, then it may very fairly be asked where are we to stop? How are we to know right from wrong? Who is to be judge among interpreters? The prophecies may then be made to mean. almost anything, according to the bias of nations or individuals, and the Pope may very sufficiently claim to have been described in them as the head of the Church. But, throughout the teaching of the apostles, the inspired declaration, continually reiterated, concerning the kind of fulfillment which the law was to receive, is an implicit announcement that this peculiar kind of fulfillment was to apply to the law only, and not to the prophets. "The whole law is fulfilled in this -- thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." " The law was given till the promised seed should come." We are "dead to the law;" we are "loosed from the law." It is to continue "to the time of reformation." "The priesthood being changed, there was, of necessity, a change in the law;" and numberless other texts, show what I mean. Not a word is hinted of any such peculiar system of interpreting prophecies as is here applied to the law; and no reason, except a new revelation, being sufficient to persuade a Christian that the prophets were not prophets after all, we unhesitatingly conclude that the events they foretell are undoubtingly to be expected to come to pass among us.

And 3rdly, what "may we suppose to be the way in which the law has been or is to be fulfilled?

The difficulty is to reconcile our Blessed Savior's most emphatic and solemn declaration, that he did not mean to destroy the law with the reiterated apostolic arguments, that the very salvation of his followers was involved in their believing that, in some sense, he did do so; that the law for instance was an interpolation, added for a particular purpose, showing an essential imperfection by the very fact of its having been ordained in the hand of a mediator; showing therefore a want of unity between two parties; and that it was eventually to be fulfilled in some Body which should be One, -- i. e., should be thoroughly united in Love, and need no mediation between it and God, who is Love.

Let us see whether the prophets do not describe a state of things where the law is both to be kept, as our Savior said it should, and at the same time to have been fulfilled by the building up of Saints into a system prefigured by the law.

The last chapter of Isaiah describes, as I have laid it down: first, a class of saints who partake of Christ's glory; secondly, the nations of the saved in imperfect communion with Christ, who see his glory, and keep the law, not a jot or tittle of which will then be found to have passed away; thirdly, the peculiar position, among these, of the Jews; and lastly, the miserable damned. "Hear the word of the Lord ye that tremble at his word; your brethren that hated you, that cast you out for my name's sake, said: Let the Lord be glorified; but he shall appear to your joy, and they shall be ashamed. A voice of noise from the city, a voice from the temple, a voice of the Lord that rendereth recompense to his enemies . . . . . . . . Rejoice ye with Jerusalem, and be glad with her all ye that love her, rejoice for joy with her all ye that mourn for her; that ye may suck and be satisfied with the breasts of her consolations, that ye may milk out and be delighted with the brightness of her glory. For thus saith the Lord, Behold I will extend peace to her like a river, and the glory of the Gentiles like a flowing stream; then shall ye suck, ye shall be borne upon her sides, and be dandled upon her knees, as one whom his mother comforteth so will I comfort you, and ye shall be comforted in Jerusalem." On the face of it this is a description of individuals, not of nations; they are the men who have lived hitherto in God's fear; the voice of the Lord from the temple -- the last trump -- is heard! A definite locality is indicated for their dwelling -- place, viz., Jerusalem, which is described as in travail and then rejoicing. Then after alluding to a great tribulation which is to take place at our Lord's coming, the prophet says: "It shall come that I will gather all nations and tongues, and they shall come and see my glory, and I will set a sign among them, and I will send those that escape of them unto the nations to Tarshish, Pul, and Lud, that draw the bow, to Tubal and Javan, to the isles afar off, that have not heard my fame, neither have seen my glory, and they shall declare my glory among the Gentiles. And they shall bring all your brethren" (Here are the Jews) "For an offering unto the Lord out of all nations, upon horses, and in chariots, and in litters and upon mules, and upon swift beasts to my holy mountain Jerusalem, saith the Lord, as the children of Israel bring an offering in a clean vessel into the house of the Lord. And I will also take of them for priests and for Levites, saith the Lord. For as the new heavens and the new earth which I will make, shall remain before me, saith the Lord, so shall your seed and your name remain. And it shall come to pass that from one new moon to another, and from one sabbath to another shall all flesh come to worship before me, saith the Lord." Here are the nations of the saved indeed, but not glorified, not in intimate and continuous communion with Christ. "And they shall go forth and look upon the carcasses of the men that have transgressed against me; for their worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched: and they shall be an abhorring unto all flesh." Here, too unmistakably to be denied, is a portion of mankind described as having lost that communion with their fellows which constitutes a great portion of our happiness.

Zechariah 14 describes the same events, and the same final state of things, and St. John, by quoting him in his last chapter of the revelation, shows that nothing further is revealed to us after this; no re-ascension of Christ or the saints, still less of the saved nations, into heaven. After describing the time of trouble he says (Zech. 14:5): "And the Lord, my God, shall come, and all the saints with thee . . . . . . . . and it shall be in that day that living waters shall go out from Jerusalem, half of them toward the former sea, and half of them toward the hinder sea; in summer and in winter shall -- it be. And the Lord shall be king over all the earth, in that day shall there be one Lord, and his name one." The saints united with Christ are here specifically named. Next, "All the land shall be turned as a plain from Geba to Rininon south of Jerusalem, and it shall be lifted up and inhabited in her place from Benjamin's gate unto the place of the first gate, unto [he corner gate, and from the tower of Hananeel unto the king's wine -- presses. And men shall dwell in it, and there shall be no more curse, but Jerusalem shall be safely inhabited." This is the Septuagint phrase quoted by St. John. The plague of those who have fought against Jerusalem is then described: after which "it shall come to pass that every one that is left of all the nations which come against Jerusalem shall even go up from year to year to worship the king, the Lord of Hosts, and to keep the feast of tabernacles, and it shall be that whoso will not come up of all the families of the earth unto Jerusalem to worship the king, the Lord of Hosts, even upon them shall be no rain. And if the family of Egypt go not up that have no rain, there shall be the plague wherewith the Lord will smite the heathen that come not up to keep the feast of tabernacles. This shall be the punishment of Egypt and the punishment of all nations that come not up to keep the feast of tabernacles. In that day shall there be upon the bells of the horses holiness unto the Lord. And the pots in the Lord's house shall be like the bowls before the altar. Yea every pot in Jerusalem and in Judah shall be holiness unto the Lord of Hosts, and all they that sacrifice shall come and take of them, and seeth therein, and in that day shall there be no more the Canaanite in the house of the Lord of Hosts."

Here then are the saved nations still under temporal reward and punishment. Thus no jot or tittle shall pass from the law after all. And if no tittle of the prophets, as distinct from the law, is to pass away -- without fulfillment, there will be a rapture and gathering of individual saints, and a turning of Jews to the son of Mary, and an everlasting kingdom of Christ will be established upon the earth, and in the light of it the saved nations will walk, as the East Indians in the light of British superior civilization.

The proposition which I am maintaining is, that men will hereafter live on this earth, and that the majority of those among them who shall be hereafter saved, i. e., saved from sin, will be in but partial communion with Christ.

Men who are in only partial communion with Christ must worship him with formal worship; the national worship once established by God was the law, which is probably a great deal better fitted than any of us are aware of for the purpose which it was meant to fulfill. If then the law is yet to be kept, Christ's words will have been literally true; nor will it be difficult to explain that the Apostolic teaching was for the building up of a far higher class of believers than those which shall be under the law, which was added because of transgression.

But I am far from supposing that merely the two quotations which I have just made will be considered of themselves to prove so important, and to many minds so novel, a doctrine. They must be supported in many different ways by the rest of the Holy Scriptures. On the plan, however, upon which I am writing this book, the arguments will be cumulative, and there will be much under other heads to lead to the same result.

The present being nevertheless the first occasion on which proof has been brought forward, it may not be amiss to introduce here a few general remarks independent of such prophecies as these, the whole of which, however, ought to be explained on some other system as well as on this before they can be set aside.

It is I doubt not a very moderate computation, and below the real state of the case, taking all ages of the world together, that one cut of every thousand of our species has been born and continued through life in what we consider the lamentable state of idiocy. Has it ever struck the reader that this average -- which any one who knows his poor neighbors in the country may see, even in these days, to be not very high -- would on the supposed population of the world since Adam show the astounding result that 100,000,000 of our race, 100,000,000 who shall rise from the dead, and for whom a Savior died, have passed the whole of their life here in this irresponsible state? a hundred million of idiots are to rise from their graves, a hundred million human beings who have never known right from wrong, nor God from the Devil, are to live for ever in the body.

No one surely can contemplate so large an aggregate of our common humanity thus brought together before their Maker at the great day of judgment, without mentally asking what state it is to Which they will probably arise. May we not expect to find that something has been told us, directly or indirectly, concerning so immense a body? May we not lawfully, and ought we not, to test our own systems, by inquiring whether they admit a fitting place for this large mass of the race redeemed by Jesus Christ?

Three parties would, I presume, make to this question three different answers. From the one we should hear, that not having committed known sin, it is to be held that they will go to heaven, for Christ's sake; others would say, that having been born in sin, and having had no faith, they are to be damned, for the first Adam's sake; and by others we should be told, that it is not fitting to intrude into any such inquiries, the answer to which we must leave altogether to God in futurity to reveal. These three answers seem all that our present traditions allow any one to make.

But the answer that 100,000,000 men are either to go to heaven without faith, or to be damned without sin, is in the first place obviously open to the anxious question of the inquirer -- Which then of the two? Eight-ninths of the world having been heathen, we may suppose that eight out of every nine of these have died unbaptized, and that some at least of the others have had an outward rite administered, which is generally called baptism from our want of a word to express that outward rite alone, when we know that it is not accompanied with that inward grace, which alone makes it to be baptism. Is then our comprehension of the Bible at present so clear that we are justified in laying down any opinion about the futurity of these hundred million men and women, whether unbaptized or passers through the above unnamed ceremony? How are we to say anything concerning salvation or perdition for a man who has neither faith nor charity nor sin, prayer nor conscience nor a rebellious will? Are men in general with their present traditions even able to distinguish between the extremely distinct ideas of being lost and being damned or condemned after a judgment? Who is there that will say, Without holiness a hundred million men will see the Lord, or without having committed known sin a hundred million men will be adjudged to eternal companionship with devils? With our present traditions surely this question is beyond us: we must answer, as many have answered, that, in the way we now explain the Bible -- not practically understanding as yet therefrom that our Lord will destroy the works of the Devil -- we are unable to see therein any guide to us upon the subject.

But if there are to be a hundred million who are to rise having lived in an irresponsible condition, how many hundred thousands of millions are there who, in their dense ignorance, being literally unable to distinguish their right hand -- from their left, literally unable to count five, and in this Christian land literally ignorant of the historical difference between Moses, Pontius Pilate, and the Lord; literally taught that to lie and steal is a duty towards their parents: how many of such are there who have been so near to irresponsibility in this their time of probation, that the same difficulties stand in the way of our declaring anything about them, as in the case even of idiots? Now pursue this line of thought and where do we stop? Just as in passing from the vegetable kingdom to the animal, and back and onwards through the millions of God's species of works, we find the distinction between any one and its neighbor all but imperceptible, but yet we soon own ourselves arrived at a distinctly higher order of dignity, -- so it is among the spirits of men. Some men's good deeds go beforehand to judgment; all men own and allow that some are good men; others, all own and allow are devils. There is no Scripture that I know of which implies that he whom we usually call the Devil is worse than many men. A few have their wills in accordance with God's will, whether they are tempted or not; a few others have devilish wills, where circumstances would naturally lead them to innocence; but the vast majority of mankind are placed in a continuous series containing an infinite variety of gradations between one and the other of the above two limits. If indeed the works of the Devil were destroyed for them, the great majority perhaps would not follow him, but while he does tempt them it is a very different thing to be able to resist him. And what way has the Lord taken hitherto to destroy the works of the Devil? The answer to this is a matter of history open to the observation of every one, and it is in complete accordance with what we should expect from the great spiritual differences among mankind.

Take the case of the slave trade. A hundred years ago the majority of minds in England, represented by, and forming, Custom and the Law, were tempted to, take the Devil's side of that question; and they did so. Now, however, that temptation has been destroyed; and their minds are therefore in conformity with God's upon it. But not one man in a hundred did anything to destroy the law of the land as it then stood. The vast majority of the nation are now a little better, not through their own work, but by acquiescing in that of an active minority.

Now though the mere fancy of man is never to be allowed to build up schemes for God which are not revealed to us either in his book or his works, yet the analogy of God's works has long been recognized as a firm and sure ground of argument. As God has given to individuals to destroy evil for the great benefit of the mass, who, though unable themselves to combat evil, are ready to reject it when overcome, so Christ is ultimately to destroy all evil. Not I say to alter the character of devils and devilish men, not to destroy them, or annihilate evil beings and men, but to destroy all the power which these evil beings and men now have over all the earth. We see in this life the three classes, those who resist evil, those who submit to evil, and those who love evil. The character of' the three will remain when the power of the evil is overcome. When Christ arises and his enemies are scattered, when the Anti-Christian confederacy flies before him, when he, the Father of the fatherless, defends the cause of the widows, even God in Jerusalem, the city of the great king, his holy habitation, then will he make men to be of one mind in an house; these will be glorified men in the house he is preparing from heaven; and he will bring the prisoners out of captivity; these are the saved nations; and he will let the runagates continue in scarceness; these are they who shall be an abhorring unto all flesh. Deliverance of captives from captivity is continually described as Christ's work for mankind; and expressly is it said, that he is to destroy the Devil, and deliver them who all their lifetime were subject to bondage; which seems to me to include a different class besides those who during this life have been by God's grace made free. The smaller class are free in this life -- time, having been enabled to resist the Devil, who thereupon fled; the larger being unable to resist him while lie is at large, will not be free until he is bound. Salvation, as distinct from glorification, though it often includes it, is primarily synonymous with this saving of those who do not love evil from evil. Some heathens will be saved by Christ without having known him.

To all this we may anticipate that what is considered to be one great and fundamental objection will be made, it will be said that men cannot be saved in any sense without faith.

Then the hundred million of idiots are to be damned?

But is it any where asserted in Holy Scripture that men in general, heathens for instance, cannot be saved without faith? or is anything equivalent to this asserted? The Epistle to the Romans will afford a more favorable opportunity than the present for anything like an accurate examination into the question. In a quite cursory way I have taken Cruden's Concordance, and looked under the word faith, and what I find there is this:

First, a vast number of promises, blessings, &c., to those who have faith. Therefore we must all agree that to be blest with faith is a gift we all most earnestly ought to covet. See remarks on Matthew 18:7.

Secondly, we are commanded to have faith. Therefore whoever hears of this command is bound to follow it. The better we do so the greater will be our reward.

Third. The promise that Christ, and good Christians in Him, should be heirs of the world, was through the righteousness of faith. Therefore no one who has not faith will be coheir of the world, i, e., be in a similar position with respect to their fellow creatures in the next age which heirs, and other rulers are in this age.

Fourth. Whatsoever is not of faith is sin (Rom. 14:23). The context shows that this means whatever a man does against his conscience is sin. When there is no law (in conscience or otherwise revealed) sin is not imputed.

Fifth. The Scripture hath concluded all under sin, that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe. Heathens have had no promise; yet we know that the Queen of the South, Nineveh, Sodom, &c., will be better off than some who had.

Sixth. The word did not profit some, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it. But this is the case of people to whom the Gospel was preached, not heathens or idiots. Those who do hear the word and yet have no faith will certainly be worse off caeteris paribus than if they had not heard it; it will not profit them. If they perish it will have been a savor of death unto death, and if they have no faith at all they certainly will perish.

Seventh. Without faith it is impossible to please God. Those who merely let others abolish the slave trade did not please God, yet they were saved from sin by that work of others.

And lastly, faith overcometh the world, i. e., the evil in the world. And the very point I am contending for is, that when this evil shall have been overcome by the faith of some people, the world will reap the benefit, just as the paralytic did that of the faith of others. The reader may look for himself at the word "believe." That the redemption of all mankind can only be explained by Barrow and other great men to mean the salvability of all mankind, is a proof to my mind of the utter confusion our lapse from the apostolic views has brought us into. Redemption is a great fact, Salvability is a mere hypothetical possibility. That even devilish men may be redeemed by Christ from the power of Satan, can be held by me while still holding that they will be themselves an abhorring unto all flesh and burnt up by evil passions and remorse. Happiness depends on character as well as on circumstances. It depends, that is, on circumstances and the way we use circumstances. Suppose every man that ever lived is to be redeemed from all interference from the Devil. Then reprobate runagates would still be damned; the prisoners would be loosed but have infinite variety of states; the good Christian would be in the Unity of God. It seems to me that we have not any evidence, either from Scripture, or more particularly from our Savior's words and actions, or from the analogy of God's works, from which we might deduce that all who shall be hereafter saved shall be pleasing to Christ, so as to move him to love them and have communion with then. A good man now is like Christ in his character, and a good man loves other good men and has communion with them; he also will do all he can to save the great majority of men from social, economical, and political evil; but this he will do without having communion with them; and he also hates the words and deeds of the wicked. Christ had communion with a comparatively small number, of people; I do not mean merely the twelve apostles, for there were many he had most interesting conversations with besides them; but he saved many, such as Malchus, deaf and dumb people, men with devils, &c., whom he had no communion with. How wilt thou manifest thyself to us, and not unto the world, was asked him? We will come unto a man, and make our abode with him, was an answer which is surely not synonymous with, I am the Lamb of God which taketh away the sins of the world, or I cane not to condemn the world, but that the world through me might be saved. Nor are the thousands of sorts of beasts, birds, fishes, and creeping things now existing, to be passed over as a standing memorial that God creates and preserves beings for enjoyment without communion with Him.

We have but too great a tendency towards imagining a character, and works for God completely different after the resurrection of man from that which he has revealed to us as His unchangeable Self in the Holy Scriptures. We know there are vast varieties of heavenly spirits; we see every grade of strength in earthly spirits; we see every kind of combination among ourselves of the faculties of soul and mind; we see every degree of strength of vitality; we see thousands of chemical affinities; we see most various simple forces acting on matter; and we can arrive at no limit to the divisibility of matter itself. Such is the seen work and delight of our Creator. Seeing this, and knowing that man is to be rewarded in an infinite variety of ways, I feel bound from general principles to say, that if it were indeed revealed that our future salvation meant glorification, I should accept it; but until it is proved that such is the case the a priori anticipation is altogether against it.

To return then to the text. A way has now, I imagine, been indicated, by which our Savior's words have been explained and justified. Nor is there-any great difficulty in understanding the seemingly contrary teaching of the apostles that the law was passed away and fulfilled in Christ. For the Church, at the time they lived, was actually a social organization, consisting in a very substantial, fair, general sense, of saints, and founded on love, and so really fulfilling the law of Christ. The return to the flesh of that which was begun in the spirit, was made after their days, at the time of the alliance with the world. The organization' of the Church has been since then founded on fear. Love is the fulfilling of the law. The law had in the apostles' days truly been fulfilled, but it has since then been again added, because of transgression. The visible body, to which the apostles belonged, was "dead to the law." The hidden election among us is so still, but not the Church as a body. Throughout the whole of Christendom the social habits of men are now legal. There is no Christian denomination of any magnitude where law has not much greater influence than love. The apostles were building up saints. Saints will never again be under the law, for God is One, and they One with Him; and law implies deficiency in Unity. They are loosed from the law in this life, in the liberty with which Christ has made them free, and in the life to come they shall be as the quotations I have made describe them.

Among the many prophecies which coincide in result with the above two, there is one so remarkable and so closely connected with what has been written, that I cannot conclude this article without bringing it forward.

In the last verse of Micah 3 it is said, "Therefore shall Zion for your sake be ploughed as a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps, and the mountain of the house as the high places of the forest." Note this as the first portion of a prophecy, and bear in mind to ask whether it was fulfilled in the Babylonian or in the Roman destruction. The first two verses of the next chapter declare that "In the last days the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be established in the top of the mountains, and many nations shall say, come and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord and to the house of the God of Jacob." Call this the second portion, and inquire whether it took place at Pentecost or is still future. The cessation of war upon the earth under Christ, who is to rebuke as well as judge strong nations, is then thirdly declared;