be in some intimate sense with Christ (Acts vii. 59; Phil.i. 23; 2 Cor. v. 1, 2, 6-8). It follows that they will still retain the indwelling Spirit.

But if the spirits of the holy departed have intercourse with one another, intercourse perhaps of a more intimate kind than any which they were able to hold by means of the bodily senses, then the life in the under world is not entirely one of solitary reflection and meditation and expectation; it is a life of social intercourse with the wise and holy.

Again, if the spirits of the holy departed are with Christ, and still have the indwelling of the Spirit, they must be growing continually under His inspiration to higher degrees of wisdom and holiness, until they become "the spirits of just men made perfect" (Heb. xii. 23). Man is not a perfect creature without his body; but though he will be perfected, and enter into a more glorious life, when he enters into his raised body, with all its intenser senses and increased powers, yet the calm and blissful life of the spirit in its intermediate state is far preferable to the life which we lead in this world; "to depart and be with Christ is far better" (Phil. i. 23), to be freed from the cares and sorrows of this earthly life, to be freed from temptation and sin, from fault and failure, to have a keener sense of union with the Lord Jesus, to correspond with little effort or hindrance to the influences of the Holy Spirit, to have sympathy and communion with all the wise and good of the world's past ages, to be looking forward with ever brightening hope to the glorious day when we shall rise again, and shall see the Lord with our bodily eyes, and shall enter upon the mighty activities and keen enjoyments, the grand occupations and sublime worship, of the new heaven and new earth.

CHAPTER L.

THE GREAT DAY-THE COMING OF CHRIST-THE RESURRECTION-THE JUDGMENT-THE REGENERATION.

THE point to which our Lord Jesus Christ directed the expectation of His followers was that day which is called. the great day (Jude 6), the day of Christ (2 Thess. ii. 2), the day of the Lord (1 Cor. v. 5, &c.), the day of God (2 Pet. iii. 12), the great day of Almighty God (Rev. xvi. 14), the day of judgment (Matt. xii. 36, &c.). And the primitive Christians did look forward to it, and long and pray for its appearance. "Our conversation is in heaven, from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall change our vile body that it may be like unto His glorious body" (Phil. iii. 20), "looking for that blessed hope and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ." The very saints in paradise are represented as longing and praying for its appearance; the souls under the altar cry, "How long, O Lord, holy and true?" (Rev. vi. 10). Let us see what is to happen on that wondrous day, and we shall understand why our Lord so constantly pointed forward to it, and why the primitive Christians so earnestly longed for its coming.

Let us take our Lord's description of it in the 25th chapter of St. Matthew, 31: "When the Son of Man shall come in His glory, and all His holy angels with Him, then shall He sit on the throne of His glory: and before Him shall be gathered all nations, and He shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats;

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and He shall set the sheep on His right hand, and the goats on His left."

That day will come unexpectedly-of the day and hour knoweth no man-it shall come as a thief in the night; therefore I say unto all, watch! The world's life will be flowing on as usual; men buying and selling, eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, the sun shining on some calm bright day, and the world looking as it has done any day for a thousand years. Then suddenly, without a sign of warning, the end shall come. The sign of the Son of Man, which all the Fathers concur in understanding to be the cross, a cross of fire, shall flash across the length and breadth of the heavens. And the sun and moon shall be darkened, and the heavens and earth shall shrivel up like a parched scroll. And the Lord shall descend from heaven sitting on a great white throne, amid the luminous clouds of the Shechinah, with all the holy angels.

Not in silence, but "with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God."

See Him sitting on the great white throne. It is as man that He comes: "He hath given Him authority to execute judgment, because He is the Son of Man" (John v. 27); "He will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom He hath ordained" (Acts xvii. 31). But no longer as in His humiliation. The Son of Man shall come in His glory. No longer hiding the Godhead, but suffering its fulness to shine through His humanity; as He did for a moment at the transfiguration, when, on the mountain top, in the darkness of the night, in the presence of His three disciples, He allowed His glory to appear, and "His face did shine as the sun, and His raiment was white as the light" (Matt. xvii. 2). As He was seen by St. John at Patmos : "The Son of Man, clothed with a garment down to the foot, and girt about the breast with a golden girdle. His

hair bright, like snow-white wool for brightness, His eyes like flames of fire, His feet glowing as fine brass glows when heated in a furnace, His voice like the voice of many waters, and His countenance as dazzling bright as the midday sun" -i.e., the most majestic human form, with the brightness of the Godhead shining through the human veil with inconceivable and (to mere mortal eyes) intolerable splendour.

We have seen in former chapters that some of the Fathers believed it probable (and there are passages of Scripture which support the idea) that the incarnation of the Son of God was designed from all eternity, and would have taken place though man had not fallen. That the infinite God, who cannot be seen as He is by even the greatest of created intelligences, designed to make a revelation of Himself to all His reasonable creatures, in the nature of that racewhich forms the connecting link between the two great: realms the spiritual and material realms of being. That it was only the mode of the incarnation, and the character of the earthly life of Jesus, which were modified to meet and counterwork the fall. We have seen the supposition that the great sacrifice of Calvary had a meaning and relations to other worlds and other races of beings beyond our own. It is also believed that the great day of the Lord. will be a crisis in the history of angels as well as of men,. for the evil angels are not yet cast down into hell; they will be judged, and they will enter on their final condition, at that last great day.

These considerations give additional meaning to our Lord's declaration, that when He shall come in His glory, "all the holy angels shall come with Him." In the former part of the same conversation, He says that that day will come unexpectedly to the angels as well as to us: "Of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but My Father only." "The Lord God shall

blow the trumpet," says the prophet Zachariah, and that shall be the signal to angels and to men. And the archangel, watching through the ages for that awful signal, shall lift up his voice: "I saw," says St. John, "another mighty angel, clothed with a cloud, and a rainbow was upon his head, and his face as it were the sun, and his feet as pillars of fire. And he set his right foot upon the sea, and his left foot on the earth. And he cried with a loud voice, as when a lion roareth; and when he had cried seven thunders uttered their voices. . . . And lifted up his right hand to heaven, and sware by Him that liveth for ever that time should be no longer." And the angels inhabiting different worlds, or fleeing through space on the errands of God, shall hasten at the signal to the great assembly of the universe.

"All the holy angels !" "The thousand thousands who minister unto Him, and ten thousand times ten thousand who stand before Him." Countless myriads of the various orders! Not in a confused mass, hurrying and crowding with vulgar curiosity to see and hear. No! Ranged in their orders, cherubim and seraphim, the angels of love and wisdom, according to their high prerogative, nearest the throne; the thrones, dominions, virtues, principalities, and powers in their order and degree. The archangels, Gabriel and Michael, and the angels over whom they preside. All in the ceremonious, stately order which befits the court of the King of kings on a day of high solemnity; with the reverence of wise and holy creatures in the presence of their God, with the confidence and joy of those to whom nearer access to Jesus is increase of delight.

See the glorious spectacle! The great white throne in the midst, and the majestic humanity of Jesus seated thereon, with the glory of the Godhead shining through in inconceivable and awful splendour. The ranks of angels