and that, during this brief interval, the dead shall rise, and be
judged before the throne of Jesus Christ, along with fallen angels. It
is accordingly asked, with doubt and wonder, what good can be gained,
or what purpose served, by this summoning those whose doom has long
been sealed to appear at the bar of Jesus, and there to receive a
formal sentence? If Judas goes to his own place, and Stephen to the
arms of his Redeemer; if the wicked rich man departs to the burning
flame, and Lazarus to the bosom of Abraham; if Satan and his angels
have long ago experienced the horrors of a state which they know to be
unchangeable, because they are themselves unchanged; what conceivable
reason can there be for appointing a day in which all the wicked and
the righteous are to be assembled, only to receive their respective
sentences of condemnation or acquittal?

I know not how such questions can be answered by those who suppose the
day of judgment to be nothing more than one on which Jesus Christ will
_publicly_ declare what the eternal fate of His creatures is to be for
ever; without any trial beyond that which has already taken place in
the court of each man's conscience, and in the presence of the living
God.

We at once admit that the difficulty, or impossibility even, of
answering such questions, is no adequate reason for our denying any
fact clearly revealed in Scripture which may suggest them. But if
these belong, not to the fact itself, but to what appears to us to be
a wrong interpretation of it; if a different view is freed from
such difficulties, without others, more numerous and serious, being
evolved; if the information afforded by Scripture is to be received as
authentic; and if, moreover, while keeping strictly to the letter
of Scripture, it is more in harmony with the grand ends to be