must judge His people. And yet when they humbled themselves under His mighty hand, He repented Himself for His servants when He saw their power gone (Lev. xxvi. 41-45; Deut. xxxii. 36-43). Then, His judgments which seemed to be turned against them were made to be for them, and against the enemies who had brought them into their sad plight. His judgments are indeed a great deep, for they contemplate the overthrow of all those hostile powers who have brought this curse of sin and death upon man, and upon the created system of which he is the head. And, therefore, we are not to think it strange if to this resurrection of judgment there is a delivering and redeeming aspect. Man's present life is a process of judgment. The natural man is throughout it under judgment, yea, under an abiding wrath of God (John iii. 18, 36). So the unjust, in resurrection, continue under judgment. But as this brings to men now corrective discipline, we may infer that this will be its character and issue in the life to come. Not that all men will by correction learn righteousness and be made heirs of eternal life. In some, sinful character will have hardened into such permanence as to become "eternal sin " (Mark iii. 29, R. V.). And for such as suffer the second death there would seem to be no second resurrection. And yet we shall fall far short of the intent and meaning of this resurrection of judgment, if we suppose that it is only preliminary to the sinner's deeper damnation. It is to all its subjects a recovery and a boon. It gives them another standing and opportunity in life. It brings them within the sphere of those gracious operations of God of which the resurrection of

Christ is the centre. It makes room, as we have seen, for the fulfilment of great and precious promises to the human race, and to nations specifically mentioned as to be blessed through the Christ, and who are dead and gone.* These promises must prove a nullity if there is no such room beyond death for God to make them good. It provides also for the infant and imbecile portion of the race, without the necessity of supposing that all of this class belong now to the redeemed church of God. All that is necessary to make this passage fit in with all we have learned from the study of these ancient promises, and of the grand outlines of God's redeeming plan, is to divest our minds of that narrow view of His judgment which has become traditional, and we shall see that the resurrection of judgment makes room for all these features of blessing. While at the same time its punitive character is preserved. Even the setting of the judgment and the opening of the books in Daniel's vision (vii. 11) was preparatory to something more than a judicial trial. It introduced an administration by which all peoples, nations, and languages were brought under the gracious dominion of the Son of man. And so in all His judgments, which are unsearchable, and His ways which are past finding out, we are to view them as connected with His great redemptive economy. Even the final picture of universal judgment given in Rev. xx. 11-15 is accompanied by that glorious triumph over death and hell

*Many obscure allusions to this gracious issue become luminous when once this key to Old Testament promises is found; e. g. in Ps. xxii 27-31 where the Messiah's resurrection-triumph is set forth. Among all the kindreds of the nations who shall worship before Him, verse 29 declares," All they that go down to the dust (that is, the dead, see Gesenius sub voce) shall bow before Him; even he that cannot keep his soul alive."

which leaves them cast into the lake of fire. And it is followed by the vision of the new heaven and earth which is the goal of all our desires.

It is therefore in accord with all God's wondrous ways that we regard the resurrection of judgment as a prelude to an administration, both gracious and corrective, over those multitudes of mankind who, in this life, were ignorant of God or shut up in unbelief. And such an administration we have seen to be positively required in order to make good to mankind the promises He spake by the mouth of all His holy prophets.

To recapitulate, then, the leading features of this resur rection of judgment, we find:

I. That it is not for the repetition of a sentence already pronounced, and of a penalty already inflicted.

2. It is not unto life, that is, unto life unfettered and eternal.

3. It is to a state of being not yet freed from bondage to death. Its subjects have not yet "passed from death unto life." They are still "under judgment."

4. It is to an inferior, a mortal and corruptible body. No other life can keep a body immortal but eternal life. There is but one kind of immortal embodiment, the glorified manhood of Christ. There is no instance in Scripture of an order of evil beings immortally embodied. And the contemplation of such an order is foreign to the whole plan of Creation and redemption.

5. It must introduce its subjects to that corrective discipline which characterizes every economy of God's judgments, in this age or the age to come.

6. It must issue, in the case of all who prove incorrigible under this discipline, in a second death.

7. The rehabilitation in life of men whom the judgment of God had consigned to death and hell is, however, essentially a blessing, the fruit of that far-reaching redemption which secures the resurrection of even the unjust.

CHAPTER VI.

THE JUDGE OF QUICK AND DEAD.

This is one of the official titles of the Christ. The apostles constantly presented Him in this character to their hearers, and gave great prominence to it. In the first official proclamation of the gospel to the Gentiles by Peter in the house of Cornelius, he declares: "And He charged us to preach unto the people, and to testify that this is He which is ordained of God to be the Judge of quick and dead" (Acts x. 42).

The term "quick" here is the translation of the Greek Cávτw. It occurs in several similar passages. It would have been better if the word were rendered uniformly "living," as we find it in Romans xiv. 9: "For to this end Christ both died, and rose, and revived, that He might be Lord both of the dead and the living." The objection to the archaic word "quick" is that many readers refer it to those who are to be quickened at Christ's coming, and so virtually identify this class with the "dead," who are then to be raised. The word refers to the living masses of mankind as distinct from the dead. And the two words together are designed to include both classes, and to set forth the universal character of the Messiah's judgment, as embracing all the families of the earth, both living and dead. This official title then comprehends the two aspects of His judgment which we have recently studied, and which are especially set forth in the two notable passages, Matt. xxv. 31-46 and John v. 29. In the first, as we have seen, the Christ