Oct. 1, 1865. clear and precise on the point it would be impossible to frame. "Lord," said the dying robber, "remember me when thou comest in thy kingdom." As though he had said, "Now Thou art despised and rejected, naked and dying, but despite Thy present miserable circumstances, I recognise in Thee the evidences of a kingly dignity, the right to Divine honour as Lord and Christ; and though this is the hour of the power of darkness, I know that the kingdom shall at last be Thine, and when it comes, as come it must, oh! then remember me. Yea, though long ages may have rolled away, though I may long have dwelt in Hades' sunless gloom, yet at the resurrection morning, Thou shalt call, and I will answer Thee; Thou wilt have a desire to the work of Thine hands." To which the Saviour in effect replied, "Thou shalt not need to wait to that distant period for help; even now in my apparent humiliation I am mighty to save." "To-day"-ere the fast coming night has descended on the most tragical day in the annals of God's universe-" TO DAY thou shalt be with me in Paradise." Great was the faith, but greater still the grace; blessed the prayer, but more blessed still the promise! The appeal cried "Lord," therefore, He says, "Verily I, this Lord, say unto thee." "Remember me"-this also is surpassed, "Thou shalt be with me!" instead of the mere remembrance, perfect fellowship and communion is promised. "When Thou one day shalt come in Thy kingdom," in opposition to this indefinite futurity, we hear, To-day." This last declaration also surpasses the request, since it places a condition of blessed satisfaction for the malefactor in the place of the kingly authority of Jesus; yet there is on the other hand something in the to-day which corrects and restricts the indistint notion of his petition. Not at once into the kingdom but just into Paradise.* Oh, it is a mournful proof of the blindness and prejudice of even Christian men and Christian teachers that attempts should have been made to evade and fritter away the plain meaning of these blessed words. One is almost tempted to adopt the scornful language of Bishop Bull, and say:-"The subterfuges and shifts of heretics to evade this text are so perfectly ridiculous that I must make myself ridiculous if I should mention them, much more if I should go about seriously to refute them." But perhaps, for the sake of some who may be unskilled in the science of Scripture, it may be well to advert to a few of them. The first "shift," then, is to adopt a new punctuation of the passage by attaching σquepov, "to-day," or "this day," to the preceding words, "Verily, I say unto thee," and reading, "Verily I say unto thee this day.' "This attempt," says Dean Alford, "considering that it not only violates common sense, but destroys the force of our Lord's promise, is surely something worse than silly."+ Indeed, it may safely be said that it would never have suggested itself to any one who had not a theory to support, and it is truly painful to find so able and spiritually-enlightened a writer as Mr. B. W. Newton willing to adopt it for the purpose of serving his theory about Paradise.‡‡ * Words of the Lord Jesus, in loc. "Works," vol. i., p. 33. Oct. 1, 1865. Another mode of evading this passage, adopted both by Archbishop Whateley and Bishop Courteney, is to assume, without a particle of proof, nay, in the face of abundant proof to the contrary, that the case of the penitent thief was so "peculiar" that we cannot infer from it "what shall be the lot of other men." But in order to carry out this view fully we must suppose not only that the case of this man was peculiar, and the promise made to him peculiar, but that the Paradise to which he was taken was one peculiar to himself, which latter supposition certainly agrees well with the whole theory as being itself not a little "peculiar." Only one other evasion of this hardly-used text need be mentioned, that, namely, adopted by Mr. M'Causland, who tells us that "the introduction of the word 'to-day' can give no difficulty to those who adopt the Scriptural view of the intermediate state as one of utter, absolute, and positive unconsciousness; for in that case it would necessarily be, to the thief's apprehensions, an immediate passing out of the predicaments in which his crimes had involved him into the blessedness and glory of the kingdom' he sought." I mention this interpretation only as one deserving the severest reprehension. What is it but to put an equivoke in those holy lips in which could be found no guile? What is it but to evaporate the promise of the dying Saviour into a shadow and lie? If any other answer be needful it may be given in the words of one of his own authorities, Bishop Courteney, who says:-"Beyond dispute the reward promised was not one that might be conferred at the resurrection; for thus Jesus would merely be remembering the suppliant, when he came in His kingdom."" Have we need of any further witness? Then let Paul be called. Surely if ever son of Adam lived a noble life on this earth it was the great apostle. To him to live was not only to be an unspeakable blessing to the whole Church, but personally it was burning zeal, joy unspeakable and full of glory, divinest fellowship with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ; in brief, to use his own emphatic and matchless words, "To him to live was CHRIST." And yet what does he add, "To me to live is Christ, and to die gain. (Phil. i. 21.) Gain even upon such a life! "Then, surely, it was not to enter into nothingness, and continue in nothingness, while the world stands. From the life of an apostle to a state of torpor is progress not from glory to glory, but from glory to death-is not gain, but blank and benumbing loss. Though his life here had many burdens, Paul proclaimed its joys to all; yet he had a desire to depart and to be with Christ, which is far better.' (Phil. i. 23.) He does not mean that the resurrection life is better, for it would not be delayed a day by his staying to profit the churches here, nor hastened by his departing. The 'better' state he had in view is manifestly one which is postponed while he remains in the body, but which will open so soon as he goes hence. Is it, then, better to be nothing than to be an apostle ? to miss days and years than to improve them? to be as inanimate as 'water spilled upon the ground' than to be communing with God and serving man ? Had Paul expected that in departing he would become inanimate, surely he would have regarded each moment added to his holy labours, not as a delay of a 'far better' life, but as so much golden time rescued from emptiness. Who can reconcile to his heart the notion of Christ's great ambassador desiring to depart and be a blank ? At last we see that great soul, within which the vital fire seems to have been 'heated seven times more than it is wonted to be heated,' standing on the verge of the world to come crying, 'I have finished my course.' Now it is gone! And what is it in its new dwelling? A dark and vacant thing or a living being still? Paul, thou art not dead! If even we live, and our life is sweet, surely thou livest, and thy life is far better.'"* Various other passages of Scripture might be cited in proof of the consciousness of departed souls in Hades. Notable amongst these is 1 Pet. iii. 19, 20; proving as it does, when grammatically and literally interpreted, not only the consciousness and activity of Christ's own soul, in the interval between His death and resurrection, but also the consciousness of those human spirits to whom He went and preached the Gospel in the unseen world. But as I shall have occasion fully to discuss this text hereafter, I shall at present content myself, with calling the reader's attention to what has already been said upon it, in the pages of the RAINBOW. Another important passage is Rev. vi. 9, 11; -"And when He had opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held, and they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth? And white robes were given unto every one of them; and it was said unto them, that they should rest yet for a little season, until their fellow-servants also and their brethren, that should be killed as they were, should be fulfilled." The point on which, chiefly, I am disposed to lay stress in this solemn vision, is the statement, that on the giving of the white robes, it was said unto them, that they must rest for a time, till others had been slain, making it quite impossible to understand the giving of the white robes, as denoting their admission into resurrection glory. For the "rest" spoken of is clearly contemporaneous with, if not antecedent to, the martyrdom of their brethren upon the earth. But I feel that further testimony is uncalled for; the mind that can resist the amount of evidence already adduced, would, it is to be feared, equally resist any evidence which the Scriptures could afford. I shall therefore, conclude this part of my subject, by indicating two collateral arguments for the consciousness of departed souls, which do not seem to have had much attention directed to them, by writers on the subject. The first of these is to be found in the remarkable phenomena of New Testament demonology. If with many learned and pious writers from the earliest ages of the Church down to the present time, we conceive the demons (dayóviov) mentioned some eighty times in the New Testament, to be the souls of dead men, especially the souls of wicked dead men, then have we, in the prominent mention made of them by the sacred writers, abundant proof of the consciousness and activity of the souls of the departed. Hence we find Justin Martyr, who *Rev. William Arthur's "All are Living," pp. 15-17. + See pp. 90, and 138, present volume. Oct. 1, 1865. distinctly describes the demoniacal possessions of the New Testament to the souls of the dead, using this very argument. "The oracular responses, delivered by the dead," he observes, "may well serve to convince you, that souls after death still retain sensation. And the same conclusion results from the condition of those who are possessed, and violently tossed about by the souls of the dead; for persons so circumstanced, are universally called, Demoniolepti, or Demon-possessed." * Various grounds upon which I conceive that we are warranted in thus identifying "demons," with disembodied human souls, have been given elsewhere,† and need not be repeated here. One, however, to which I am disposed to attach considerable weight, may be mentioned, the frightful phenomena of demoniacal possession so frequently mentioned in the Gospels. On this point, a thoughtful writer has made the following remarks:-"Man is a fallen spirit, like one of the fallen angels, but he is a fallen spirit in a human body, made of carth, and placed on the earth, and capable of getting from earth, all the pleasures which sensation affords. He thus can, in a measure forget himself in the enjoyments of sense. And it is only at his death, when he loses this earthly body, that he has (if he has rejected the means of restoration), like the evil spirits, no ground of rest or pleasure out of himself Thus, any earthly body is better than none for a fallen spirit. The animal sensualities of a pig may enable a demon to forget himself. And does not this render a reason for the fact, that evil spirits who enter men, and are the instigators and sharers with them, of sensual wickedness, were averse to their ejection? They were escaping from themselves, from their unmixed spiritual misery. That a spirit in such a plight should be always seeking a human body, wherein he might for the time drown this intensely wretched self-consciousness; and that wicked insanity, and very much of that brilliant evil, which, from its power over others, seems superhuman, are effects of such a union, is most probable." ‡ The other argument to which I referred is drawn from the experience of dying believers. All whose lot has been frequently to stand beside the bed of the dying, must have been struck by the fact that they sometimes evince a consciousness of the close proximity of the world of spirits, which however mysterious to us who are still dwellers in this world of sense, nevertheless carries with it an evidence of reality which we are unable to resist. Through the veil, which to their spiritually awakened eyes has waxed so thin as to have become semi-transparent, gleams of unearthly glory flash upon them; to their ears, dull to the sounds of earth, strains of celestial melody are borne from afar; yea, cases are not wanting in which the denizens of that other world have become visible to them, and in the forms of those who have been "loved long since and lost awhile;" or of those angelic beings whose loving office it is "to minister to them that shall be heirs of salvation," are seen waiting to receive and welcome the departing one into everlasting habitations. Let us not say that these things are mere halluci *Justin Apol. i. Op. p. 50. + See "Spiritualism Prophetically Considered," pp. 38-49. "Eveuing Thoughts," by a Physician, pp. 112-114. The extract is not verbatim. Oct. 1, 1865. nations; that they are the fruits of a distempered and feverish brain. Those who have been privileged to witness them find it difficult so to persuade themselves. They are made to realize, almost unwillingly it may be, the truth of the poet's words: "Eternity and Time, Met for a moment here; From earth to heaven, a scale sublime Whose steps a saintly figure trod, By Death's cold hand led home to God. "Thrill'd with ecstatic awo, And saw-yet wist not what they saw, What sounds the ear of rapture caught, "The nearer that Christian men approach their change," writes the Duke of Manchester, "the more vividly, generally speaking, do they realize the unseen world. What a wound do we give to all experimental religion, if we say that so many pre-eminently holy ones leave this world under a delusion!"'* And if these things be real, as I for one doubt not they are, what a beautiful and palpable evidence do they afford us that the world of spirits to which we are all hastening (unless, indeed, it should be our more blessed lot to be amongst "them which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord,") is not a region of darkness and death, but one of light, and life, and love. WILLIAM MAUDF. (To be Continued.) THE TWO THRONES. ONE great mistake made by many Christians is: the supposing Christ is NOW reigning. Holding in common with others the precious truth that He who descended has also ascended up far above all heavens (Eph. iv. 10), and "appears in the presence of God for us" (Heb. ix. 24), yet ignorant of the fact that HE COMETH TO REIGN, these Christians connect His present position and office at the right hand of God with His reigning there. This, if I mistake not, is the sentiment expressed by Watts in some of his hymns. But whether it be found in the sweet and lofty strains of the poet, or is the sentiment of other minds, original or imbibed, it is no little mistake. Light would, through the holy Spirit's teaching, dawn upon the mind by observing Scripture speaks of two thrones. Our Lord Himself thus distinguishes them. "To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with "The Intermediate State." Page 29. |