CHAPTER XVII.

THE DAY OF JUDGMENT.

THE Conventional opinion entertained of the day of judg ment has been inimitably satirized by that master of the art of ridicule, Dean Swift, in one of his miscellaneous pieces, entitled, "A true and faithful narrative of the anticipated "last day, and destruction of the earth by a comet."

Among other particulars enumerated of the proceedings of various parties, in preparation for the anticipated catastrophy, Swift mentions the following (but students of theology should diligently peruse the whole in the original)::

"A grave elderly lady, of great erudition and modesty, "seemed extremely shocked by the apprehension that she "was to appear naked before the whole world, and no less so "that all mankind was to appear naked before her, which "might so much divert her thoughts as to incapacitate her to "give ready and apt answers to the interrogatories that might "be made to her. * * One would have thought that "the whole city had been really and seriously religious; but "what was very remarkable, all the different persuasions "kept by themselves, for as each thought the other would "be damned, not one would join in prayer with the other."

The expected cataclysm of cometary fire, however, did not take place as was confidently predicted, and implicitly believed. So the Dean observes that:

"All the quality and gentry were perfectly ashamed, nay "some utterly disowned that they had manifested any signs "of religion, and with the common people appeared with

"their usual indifference, they drank, they whored, they "swore, they lied, they cheated, they quarrelled, they "murdered, in short the world went on in the old channel."

Men have always chosen the arbitration of armed battalions to settle their disputes, and the law of might in civilization does practically legalize the right, whatever fine wire-drawn theories professors of jurisprudence and statesmen may select for the edification of their admirers and supporters. "Judge not, and ye shall not be judged,” is a law of the universe. Judgment invokes judgment, and from this there is no escape; for just as every shout raises somewhere an echo, so every cry of accusation and condemnation necessitates a tu quoque response. So surely does this law obtain throughout the cosmos, that even when the witness and messenger of Deity comes to judgment, and passes sentence of condemnation, crying death to man, he must himself submit to the judgment he has invoked himself, and die as a man like the rest. Thus all messengers of Deity coming to judgment have been liable to the contingency of death, and escape is the exception and not the rule. A witness of Deity is a MARTYR to the divine truth.

Since men have chosen the judgment seat of brute might to establish the legal right, they must go to the ordeal they have themselves selected; and thus the last great revolution of all is destined to establish the final truth after the sword has been struck from Goliah's grasp upon the battle field. The place of this last struggle is already marked down. The old Hebrew prophets have noted it, and some, like the Ezekielite seer, with marvellous detail. In reference to it Jesus of Nazareth remarked to his disciples, "Where the "carcase falls there will the eagles (symbolical of the "nations) be gathered together."

The Hebrew psalmist say :

:

"The kings of the earth, and their armies, are gathered "together against the Lord, and against his anointed One."

This judgment of the arbitration of the sword against itself is not the conventional interpretation of the day of judgment. The sacerdotal idea is, that the disembodied

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souls of men shall be summoned from Hades, or some mysterious locality, and be judged, each one in turn, by the great God of heaven and earth, to receive from him their individual reward or punishment for all future time.

It is extraordinary that this false idea should not only be held by the heathen, but be even more tenaciously maintained by the professing followers of Jesus of Nazareth, who said, that the absolute, infinite, or eternal Father judged no man, but had committed all judgment to his Son, because he was, as the Son of Man, equally related both to man and his postulated judge.

In

It will be found, when the ancient Hebrew prophets are carefully studied, that each and all proclaim their mission as sent to judge, and they all have authority to pull down and build up. They may not repeat, like parrots, the same words; but their cry is the same, they are each and all Daniels, they are each and all "sent ones" to judgment. What is true of one chosen or anointed messenger applies in principle to them all; and though a specialized part is allotted to each, they are yet witnesses of the one vital word. arithmetic the last number includes all that preceded it, and in Hebrew the number "seven" stands for perfection, completion, or the end; therefore when a seventh messenger is spoken of, it means that as the seventh he is put into a position that completes the circle; he comes last, and is first because the end of the circle meets the point whence it was drawn. A seventh, and consequently final prophet, is spoken of in the Bible, as a Daniel or divine judge, but it is not the fact that this was or is to be Jesus of Nazareth. Nowhere does Jesus say so. He speaks of the "Son of Man" sent to final judgment, and proclaims himself to be a Son of Man, but not that special and final one who is to mark the end. He tells his disciples that in consequence of his return to the Father, this coming witness shall do more wonderful things than they then saw performed; and when, after his resurrection, Jesus comes to John, and constitutes him his angel or messenger to the seven churches, the expressions there made use of by him are not such as to lead any

unbiassed mind to conclude that he is speaking of himself, for he says, "He shall receive, even as I have received of my Father, and so on.

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So that, whoever this final Son of Man may be, and whenever and wherever he may suddenly appear, as a thief in the night, it is plain that he cannot be Jesus of Nazareth, for Jesus has said, "I came not into the world to judge the "world, but that the world through me might be saved." The world is to be judged thus: "The word that I have "spoken, that shall judge a man at the last day." But it is not a logical deduction to assert that because Jesus said his word then spoken should finally judge the world, that therefore he himself should come to repeat his own word. The inference deducible is exactly to the opposite effect. When anyone says, "I have not come to transact this business "because the time is not arrived to do it, but I leave full "instructions how it is to be done when the hour arrives," we naturally conclude that another person, as his agent or attorney, is authorised to act for the one who so speaks of

the future.

How are we to define the meaning of the sacerdotal day of judgment, when its doctors and scribes cannot themselves furnish any logical quantities of its extension or comprehension? The theological conception of the day of judgment is as vague, rambling, undefined, and incomprehensible as one of the spirit-rapper's messages from Necropolis.

When is the theological day of judgment? To answer this, it is essential to know what the term "judgment" means. If it means distribution of eternal rewards and punishments, then there is no day of judgment, for we are told in the Bible, that immortality is not a reward at all, in any sense. It is a FREE GIFT, and it would cease to be a free gift for ever, if it were once, in any single instance, made a reward. There is no reward for good, for Deity alone is absolutely good, and Deity does not reward himself. He can concede it, and impute it where it is so freely given, but it is not logical to argue that anyone absolutely rewards a man for having a sovereign in his possession, by giving him

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another, when both pieces of gold originally came out of the same purse, for even if the money was doubled, because keeping faithfully the first entitled the conserver to a second piece of money, it would de facto be only doubling the original gift. If the man lost his first pound, that is punishment enough. He cannot be eternally punished for losing what was necessary for life, and he loses his life and there is an end of him. If he had kept his first gift he would have had the gift enlarged, and like those circles in a pond that result from a stone thrown into it, the first wave would have gone on widening for ever.

Since then eternal life is a freely conceded gift, and not a reward, there is no reward, and as there is no reward, neither is there eternal punishment. Life is a gift, and death as the loss of that gift is the eternal punishment. For if life be made eternal, death as its antithesis must be eternal also. Otherwise the words life and death would generate the same conception in the mind, and language would stultify common

sense.

The day of salvation is declared to be an "eternal now in the Bible. The words are," Now is the day of salvation." If the now here spoken of were not eternal, it would be equal to that want of definite or explicit quantification, that would reduce the predicated period of salvation to a day represented by the expression of "now and then!" And this would make the divine energy the result of caprice or inadvertence. The day of salvation must be an eternal now ; and as the day of salvation knows no postponed performances, in the same way the day of condemnation is an eternal now, and cannot be said to refer to postponed punishment.

Condemnation, or the day of condemnation, has already been pronounced upon man, says the Bible, because man, as his own name from Adam shows, is, "he who dies," or he who lives in the image of dust, and springing from dust returns finally to dust again. As in the Adam of man, or "image of the dying one," all do perish, so in the Adam or Christ of God, shall all who inherit the promised estate be made self-existent.