There is no "fact of the future" more clearly revealed in Scripture,
or more certainly believed in by the Christian Church, than that "God
hath appointed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness
by that man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assurance
unto all men in that he hath raised him from the dead."

No doubt this fact is denied or explained away by many modern critics.
But it would be difficult to say what revealed fact, from Genesis to
Revelation, is admitted by them, or what things may now be "_most
surely_ believed among us." We retain our first faith in the future
judgment, and shall endeavour to look at it in a practical rather than
in a speculative light.

There is, indeed, among mankind a general anticipation of a coming
time when the mystery of God's providence will be cleared up, and His
righteousness displayed in the final judgment to be then passed on the
evil and on the good. What the human race are led to anticipate, as
likely to occur hereafter, from the many unsettled questions here
between man and his brother, and between man and his God, Scripture
reveals to us as certain.

While, however, every Christian believes in the coming of Jesus to
judge the world as firmly as he does in the fact of His having risen
from the dead, there seems to us to be very inadequate conceptions in
the minds of many as to the designs of this day, or the ends which it
is fitted to accomplish in the kingdom of God.

It is hastily assumed, for example, that the _day_ of judgment will be
short as the period included between an earthly sunrise and sunset;