NOT HIS COMING TO INDIVIDUALS AT DEATH. 21

ous, to make that the primary and proper interpretation of a passage which is but a secondary, though it may be a very legitimate and even irresistible application of it.

Second, It is not enough that we believe the doctrines of Scripture numerically, so to speak. We must believe them as they are revealed-in their revealed collocations and bearings. Implicit submission to the authority of God's Word obviously includes this. If, then, Christ's second appearing, instead of being full in the view of the Church, as we find it in the New Testament, is shifted into the background, while other anticipations are advanced into its room, which, though themselves scriptural, do not occupy in Scripture the place which we assign to them, are we "trembling" at the authority and the wisdom of God in his Word, or are we not rather "leaning to our own un derstanding?" "Let not your heart be troubled, (said Jesus to his sorrowing disciples): In my Father's house are many mansions: I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go away"-What then? Ye shall soon follow me ? Death shall shortly bring us together?' Nay; but "If I go away, I will come again and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also." (John xiv. 1-3.) "And while they looked stedfastly toward heaven as he went up, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel; which also said, Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven, this same Jesus which is taken up from you into heaven, shall"-What? Take you home soon to himself, at death? Nay, but shall "so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven." (Acts i. 10, 11.) And how know we that, by jostling this event out of its scriptural place in the expectations of the Church, we are not, in a great degree, destroying its character and power as a practical principle? Can we not believe, though unable to trace it, that God's methods are ever best; and that

as in nature, so perhaps in revelation, a modification by us. of the divine arrangements, apparently slight, and attended even with some seeming advantages, may be followed by a total and unexpected change of results, the opposite of what is anticipated and desired? So we fear it to be here. But this leads to our last remark on this point.

Third, The coming of Christ to individuals at deathhowever warrantably we may speak so, and whatever profitable considerations it may suggest-is not fitted for taking that place in the view of the believer which Scripture assigns to the second advent. This is a proposition of equal interest and importance. It would bear to be established and illustrated in detail. A hint or two, however, may suffice.

1. The death of believers, however changed in its character, in virtue of their union to Christ, is, intrinsically considered, not joyous, but grievous-not attractive, but repulsive. It is the disruption of a tie which the Creator formed for perpetuity-the unnatural and abhorrent divorce. of parties made for sweet and uninterrupted fellowship. True, there is no curse in it to the believer; but it is the memorial of the curse, telling of sin, and breach of the first covenant, and legal wrath. All the ideas, therefore, which death, as such, is fitted to suggest, even in connexion with the better covenant, are of a humiliating kind. Whatever is associated with it of a joyous nature is derived from other considerations, by which its intrinsic gloominess is, in the case of believers, relieved. But the Redeemer's second appearing is, to the believer, an event of unmingled joyousness, whether as respects the honour of bis Lord, which will then be majestically vindicated before the world which had set it at nought, or as respects his own salvation, which will then have its glorious completion. How, then, should the former event be fitted to awaken feelings, I say not equally intense, but even of the

NOT HIS COMING TO INDIVIDUALS AT DEATH. 23

same order, as the latter? In connexion with his second appearing, the believer is privileged to regard his own death as bound up with the Redeemer's triumph, and a step to his final victory with Him. But as a substitute for it—as being to all practical purposes (as they say) one and the same thing with the expectation of the Redeemer's appearing, this looking forward to one's own death will be found very deficient in practical effect.

2. The bliss of the disembodied spirits of the just is not only incomplete, but, in some sense, private and fragmentary, if I may so express myself. Each believer enters on it for himself at his own death. His spirit is with Christ, resting consciously under his wing from the warfare of the flesh, and tranquilly anticipating future glory: "He shall enter into peace; they shall rest in their beds, each one walking in his uprightness." (Isa. lvii. 2.)

But at the Redeemer's appearing, all his redeemed will be collected together, and PERFECTLY, PUBLICLY, and SIMULTANEOUSLY glorified. Is it necessary to point out the inferiority, in practical power, of the one prospect to the other, or to indicate the superior class of ideas and feelings which the latter is fitted to generate?

3. To put the expectation of one's own death in place of the prospect of Christ's appearing, is to dislocate a beautiful jointing in divine truth-to destroy one of its finest collocations. Here it is, as expressed by the apostle: "The grace of God which bringeth salvation, hath appeared unto all men, teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world; looking for that blessed hope and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works." (Tit. ii. 11-14.) Here

both comings of Christ are brought together; the first in grace" the second in "glory;" the first "bringing salvation"-the second, to complete the salvation brought. To the first we look back by faith-to the second we look forward by hope. In the enjoyment of the fruit of the first, we anticipate the fulness of the second. Between these two the apostle here beautifully places the Christian's present holy walk. These are the two pirots on which turns the Christian life-the two wings on which believers mount up as eagles. If either is clipped, the soul's flight heavenward is low, feeble, and fitful. This is no casual collocation of truths. It is a studied, and, with the apostle, a favourite juxtaposition of the two greatest events in the Christian redemption, the first and the last, bearing an intrinsic relation in their respective objects. "As it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judg ment; so Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time, without sin, unto salvation." (Heb. ix. 27, 28.)* "If so be that we suffer with him, that we may

* The point of this beautiful passage is missed, I suspect, by most readers, as it certainly is by many commentators. It is not the saint's solemn anticipation of "death" and "judgment," as events common to him with all mankind. It is the sinner's "fearful looking for of judg ment"-which the work of Christ is designed to dispel. In the one verse, "death" and "judgment" are held up as the two great stages of the curse of the law. In the other verse, we have the corresponding stages of redemption from the curse, which Christ accomplishes by his two advents; at his first. "bearing the sins of many," and when he comes the second time, "appearing without sin unto salvation." "As man (says Dr. Owen on this passage) was to die once legally and penally for sin, by the sentence of the law, and no more; so Christ died, suffered, and offered once, and no more, to bear sin, to expiate it, and therefore to take away death, so far as it was penal. And as after death, men must appear again the second time to judgment, to undergo condemnation thereon; so after his once offering to take away sin and death, Christ shall appear the second time, to free us from judgment, and to bestow on us eternal salvation."

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be also glorified together." (Rom. viii. 17.) And who does not see that the comfort and the profit of this collocation in our own minds is as great as is the beauty of it in the text of Scripture? All is thus made to centre in the PERSON OF CHRIST-the contemplations and the affections of the believer travelling between his Abasement and his Exaltation, and finding in Jesus, under both aspects together, a completed salvation.*

BENGEL, with characteristic terseness and felicity, gives the same view in two lines: Obro, sic, i. e., Christus liberavit nos a morte et judicio; tametsi ut mors, sic judicium, nominetenus remanet.

* The reader will find a similar view of the coming of Christ in Dr. Urwick's interesting work on the Second Advent, though on this important head the illustration might with advantage have been fuller, in a series of popular discourses.