CHAPTER V.

SURE HOPE-EXCHANGE-DEATH-NO INTERMEDIATE PURGATORY OR SLEEP-GRACE-PORTRAITS OF CHRIST-IMPUTED

EOUSNESS.

RIGHT

THERE is throughout this chapter a deep and solemn feeling it is impossible to mistake; but combined with that, and following immediately upon it, a grandeur and intensity of appeal to all that have souls to be saved, almost without precedent or parallel in any other part of the New Testament scripture. He begins the chapter by saying, "Well, should martyrdom be our lot, should we fall as the soldiers of Christ in this arduous conflict, if our earthly house is dissolved," or as the Greek properly means, "disunited," the word scarcely meaning destroyed, but rather, dissolved, or disunited from the soul, "then we have a building, a home, a habitation of God "-"in my Father's house are many habitations, mansions"—" a house not made with hands; "the tent in which I dwell "—for Paul was a tent-maker, and borrows his imagery from his own trade-"is a tent that human hands may erect or strike; but that tent, that tabernacle, that mansion, into which we are emerging from this, is a house not made with hands, therefore indestructible, and eternal in the heavens." What a happy thought is that for a Christian! death is not extinction,

it is only transition. When a believer dies he does not go from life; or if he does, it is from life to life; it is from the dark, damp, miserable crypt below to the grand, the beautiful, the sun-lit cathedral that is above; it is from a house made with hands, crumbling into ruin, an economy temporal and transient, into an economy eternal, glorious, divine. And then he says, "In this we groan;" all creation groaneth and travaileth in pain; we are in an unnatural state, in an abnormal condition, "earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house"—that is, to be admitted into, to have that vesture or investiture-" which is from heaven; if so be that, being clothed, we shall not be found naked;" that is to say, I have no wish to die; I do not wish to leave this tabernacle; it is only the prospect, the cheering prospect, of a more glorious one that makes me ready to leave that house which is made with hands. "For," he says, "not that we would be unclothed," that is, not that we would wish to lay aside the only tent that we have, "but it is because we wish to be clothed upon." In other words, no Christian likes death. When we sometimes hear true Christians speak of loving death, and of wishing to die, or of not caring about death, they speak very irrationally, or very unintelligibly. The fact is, there is nothing upon earth in itself more horrible than death, nothing in our experience more monstrous, more unnatural, than that a creature that thirsts for life should know that he must die, or that this fine organization should break up, or that we should feel moving up to that point where the tie that knits the soul to its tenement must be dissolved, the one, fearfully and beautifully made,

to lie down in the grave, and to call the worm its sister, and corruption its mother.

But, what is meant, you ask, by those expressions, constantly employed by Christians, about desiring to depart? For instance, "I desire to depart." Simeon says, "Now, Lord, lettest thou thy servant depart in peace." The meaning is, they are willing to go through the deep, dark, moaning sea that lies between this island of ours that we call the world, and the grand continent of heaven, not that they love the midway passage, for they shrink with all the instincts of their nature from that, but that they are so charmed with the sight of the sun-lit shores beyond, that they count the transit as nothing, compared with the magnificence of the scene on the other side. In other words, the enlightened view that a Christian has of death consists in readiness to brave death for the sake of what it leads to, not in his courting or loving death for its own sake. And hence the apostle says, "Whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord;" and again, "We are willing to be absent from the body," but not to stop there, "because we are so anxious to be present with the Lord." Now mark the lesson this teaches. Could a man have said this who believed, as some modern divines think, that the soul enters into a state of insensibility at death? There are some who really believe that the soul sleeps in unconscious insensibility after death. But if so, could an apostle have said with any propriety," Absence from the body is presence with the Lord"? Does not the very expression, "present with the Lord," imply conscious, enjoyable happiness?

Again, is there not in these words an answer to

the corrupt doctrine of a fallen church-that the moment that a believer dies, he is to pass into an intermediate state, where he is purified, and made fit for a holier and happier? What does such theology teach? It implies that Christ's blood is not perfectly sufficient : that fire in purgatory must finish what Christ's atonement has failed to do. But is such a thing compatible with the language of the apostle, who says "that to be absent from the body is instantly to be present with the Lord;" that is to say, the moment death comes, that moment glory unspeakable receives us? And therefore the very idea that we go into an intermediate state is incompatible with the plainest statements of Scripture. Besides, I know nothing more melancholy. When, for instance, I accompany to the grave the remains of a Christian, I can say and feel this blessed truth, "Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord;" but a poor Roman Catholic, accompanying the most eminent member of his church to the grave, cannot say so, he dare not say so; on the contrary, he believes that the most sainted priest, or bishop, or prelate in it, the moment that he dies, goes into a place where,-I give the very Latin words of the catechism of the Council of Trent,—animæ piorum igne cruciantur, "where the souls of the faithful are tormented by fire until they be made fit to enter into heaven." And so dreadful is that torment, according to the traditions of that Church, that there are some ancient popes at this moment still in purgatorial fire; and they believe that when one, however eminent, dies, he remains in it until masses have been said sufficient to extricate and admit him into heaven, or the whole of his sins have been burnt out and put away. What an awful doctrine! and how completely is it

refuted by the words of the apostle, "To be absent from the body is instantly to be present with the Lord”! "We must all appear

He says in the tenth verse, before the judgment-seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in the body, according to that which he hath done, whether it be good or bad." Some one says, Does not that teach works of merit? No our blessed Lord justly paraphrases this, when he says, Come, ye blessed of my Father," there is the ground of your acceptance, "inherit the kingdom :' when a man inherits a thing, it does not imply merit ; in the case of a peer, or a viscount, or a duke, his eldest son inherits his dignity, and rank, and property, whether that son be a good man or a bad man. It is his relationship, not his merit, that settles the matter. So here, "Come, ye blessed, inherit;" it is not their good deeds that are the ground of the inheritance, but their relationship as sons of God by adoption, through faith in Christ. But when he has said this, what does he add? "For I was in prison, and ye visited me; I These things are

was hungry, and ye gave me bread." not quoted as the grounds of their welcome, but as the evidences of their relationship. And so at the judgment-seat, the good deeds that believers have done are quoted, not as the grounds of their acquittal, but as the evidences that they are believers, and justified, and accepted, and sanctified, and heirs of everlasting glory.

The apostle next alludes to himself again, and to those who misrepresented him ; and vindicates his own character in few words, and passes on to his great theme. "For the love of Christ constraineth us;" we are under its ceaseless constraint: it is the motive-spring