According to this teaching of the New Testament concerning the general judgment, the following particulars require emphasis:

1. The judgment is the assize, which differs in character and in its results, though not in principle, from all judicial dealings of God with men on earth, or at the article of death, or in the intermediate state.

2. The Son of Man is the Judge; not the Son of God, but the Son of God incarnate, "the self-same one who has before offered Himself for me to the judgment of God."

All men, good and bad, will be made manifest before the judgment-seat of Christ, and the award of the Judge will be according to the deeds of each class and each person.

4. The judgment passed upon men will consist in the judicial separation of the bad from the good: the condemnation of 'all that cause stumbling and do iniquity,' who "shall go away into eternal punishment;" and the approval of the righteous, who shall inherit the kingdom prepared for them from the foundation of the world.

5. The principle of the award is the relation of men to Jesus Christ: works done in His service are approved and issue in blessedness; while all works not done in His service fall under condemnation and issue in misery.

6. The day of judgment will be the final epoch in the judicial history of the world.

1 Heid. Cat., 52.

§ 384.

The day of judgment marks a judicial proceeding peculiar to itself, yet in principle it is identical with all preceding judgments of God.

An inflexible moral necessity binds all persons, men and angels, to do the right.

Since the introduction of sin into the world, the moral necessity binding angels and men to do the right has also become the necessity for the condemnation of wrong.

The occasion of the day of judgment is the perverted moral order of the world.

1. The judgment is not an assize which may be or may not be held, as God's sovereign will may arbitrarily determine. It does not depend on a divine decree different from the moral order of the world.

The judgment is internally connected with the righteous economy of grace, which enjoins obedience to Christ and condemns unbelief. The ground of the economy of grace is the moral order of the first creation, which enjoins loyalty to truth and condemns those who obey unrighteousness. Of the truth to which the moral.order of the first creation requires obedience, Jesus Christ in His person and mediatorship is the final development and realization. Thus related to the established moral order, the day of judgment is not optional but necessary; not an incident but a conclusion, historical and logical.

The necessity of the day of judgment is a teleonomic force active from the beginning in the growth of the kingdom, being rooted both in the ethical nature of Messianic revelation and in the divine idea of the first man. position of Adam in Eden, who was commanded not to eat

The

of the fruit of the tree in the midst of the garden, presumes the existence of the antagonistic kingdom of darkness. The same antagonism is a presupposition of the entire economy of redemption. This antagonism implies the conflict of truth with falsehood, of right with wrong, of Christ with Satan, a conflict which ultimately will reach a decisive crisis.

That crisis will be the conclusion of the historic antagonism, the result of the spiritual war going on in the world since the apostasy of the angels. The original purpose of God in bringing the world into existence will triumph, and the end which the moral battles of history have been anticipating will be accomplished. This triumph will be the ripe fruit of all the processes, whether natural or ethical or judicial, which from the beginning has been growing from the living seed of righteousness, the immanent action of the Logos. Being the conclusion and culmination of all the judicial processes of man's history, the general judgment by this fact differs from God's antecedent judicial dealings.

2. A necessity and a conclusion, the general judgment is a fact, the force of which pervades the progress of Messianic revelation from the primeval promise onward through the ages.

All events of human history, whether sacred or profane, evince the presence of moral and of judicial forces. An unseen law is ever working with resistless might, which connects right doing with approval and blessing, wrong doing with condemnation and misery, thus amid fierce conflicts announcing an eventual solution of the world problem. A spiritual eye only is needed to interpret the signs of coming judgment which the monuments of every battle-field have been predicting.

Especially may we discern in the judgments of sacred history imperishable prophesies of the judicial conclusion. The pre-Christian economy adumbrates the ultimate fact in its pregnant epochs. Consider the expulsion of Cain, the deluge, the calling of Abraham, the exodus of the Israelites; the overthrow of Pharoah, the conquest of Canaan, the deportation of the ten tribes, the Babylonian captivity, each a vindication of the right and a condemnation of the wrong.

More significant still are the judgments declared by Christ and His Church. Consider the downfall of the Herodian family, the victory of Jesus in the wilderness, His resurrection from the dead, the destruction of Jerusalem, and the overthrow of the Græco-Roman Empire. Every war of ideas waged by the sword, every social convulsion, every victory of right over wrong discernible in the experiences of nations or individuals, is a sign of divine judgment. History has a physiognomy, every line of which manifests not merely policy nor might nor selfishness, but mingled with these transient powers manifests the deeper vitalizing force of judicial blood.

3. The impending event is indicated on nearly every page of the sacred record. Let it suffice, in addition to the passages above quoted, to note several places in the Old and New Testament: Gen. iii. 15; xviii. 25; Ps. i. 5, 6; xcvi. 10, 13; Eccl. xii. 14; Dan. xii. 2; Matt. xxiv; Mk. xiii; Acts xvii. 31; Rom. ii. 16; 1 Thess. v. 1-3; 2 Thess. i. 5-10; Heb. ix. 27; 2 Pet. iii. 5-13; Rev. xxii. 11-15. The mighty God, the Lord of hosts, great in counsel, and mighty in work: whose eyes are open upon all the ways of the sons of men, to give every one according to His ways, and according to the fruit of his doings.'

1 Jeremiah xxxii. 18, 19.

§ 385.

He who will sit on the throne of judgment is the Son of Man. Says our Lord of Himself: "As the Father hath life in Himself, even so gave He to the Son also to have life in Himself: and He gave Him authority to execute judg ment, because He is the Son of Man." The same teaching we have in many other places: as in Matt. xiii. 41: the Son of Man shall send forth His angels; in Matt. xxiv. 30: they shall see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory; in Matt. xxv. 31: when the Son of Man shall have come in His glory, and all the angels with Him, then shall He sit on the throne of His glory; in Matt. xvi. 27: for the Son of Man shall come in the glory of His Father with His angels; in Acts xvii. 31: God will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He hath ordained; in Rom. ii. 16: God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ; in 2 Cor. v. 10: we must all be made manifest before the judgment seat of Christ; and in Rev. xxii. 12: behold I come quickly; and my reward is with me, to render to each man according as his work is.

The Father does not judge any man, but He has given all judgment unto the Son. Not God as God will sit on the judgment-seat, but the Son of God incarnate.

The perfected humanity of our Lord qualifies Him to be our chief Prophet, our only High Priest, our eternal King. To the question: What benefit dost thou receive from the holy conception and birth of Christ? the Reformed Church answers by saying, "that He is our Mediator." The assumption of human nature qualifies the Son of God to 2 Heid. Cat., 36.

1 1 John v. 26, 27.