Must not a man of Paul's flaming zeal and devoted activity have preferred such a life of conflict for the kingdom of Christ, to a slumbering and dreaming existence or a life of shadows? In 2 Tim. iv. 18, he also describes an entrance into the kingdom of Christ as immediately following death; though this last passage is not so decisive, as the interpretation in this point of view may be disputed.'

It may perhaps be thought that a progress on this subject in the development of Christian knowledge took place in Paul's mind. As long as he expected the second coming of Christ and the final resurrection as near at hand, he had little occasion to separate from one another the ideas of an eternal life after death and of a resurrection; and, in accordance with the Jewish habits of thinking, he blended them together in a manner that led to the idea of a certain sleep of the soul after death. But when, by the course of events and the signs of the times, he had learned to form clearer notions of the future, and when he was induced to think that the last decisive epoch was not so near (as appears from his later epistles), the idea of a higher condition of happiness beginning immediately after death must have developed itself in his mind, under the illumination of the divine Spirit, from the consciousness of the divine life as exalted above death, and as destined to perpetual progression, and from the consciousness of unbroken communion with the Redeemer as the divine fountain of life. The illumination of the apostles' minds by the Holy Spirit was surely not completed at once; but was the operation of a higher power possessing a creative fertility, under whose influences their Christian knowledge and thinking progressively developed, by means of higher revelations which were not violently forced upon them, but coalesced in a natural manner with their psychological development, as we have seen in the example of Peter; ante, p. 72. This might be the case with Paul; and it might happen that he was led to a more perfect understanding of the truth exactly at that point of time when it was required for his own religious necessities

1 The remarks by Weizel of Tubingen, in his essay on the original Christian doctrine of Immortality, in the Studien und Kritiken, 1834, Part iv., have not occasioned any alteration in my views on this subject. 2 This seems to be the view taken by Usteri.

and those of future generations. But it is against this supposition that, in the fifteenth chapter of the First Epistle to the Corinthians, he expresses himself on death and the resurrection, in the same manner as in the First Epistle to the Thessalonians, and yet we find in the Second Epistle to the Corinthians written some months later, a confident expectation expressed, that a life of a higher kind in communion with Christ would immediately succeed the dissolution of earthly existence; for it is impossible to understand 2 Cor. v. 6-8 in a different sense; when Paul marks, as correlative ideas on the one hand, the remaining in the earthly body and being absent from the Lord (a want of that higher immediate communion with him which would belong to an existence in the other world), on the standing-point of faith; and, on the other hand, the departure from earthly life, and being admitted to the immediate presence of the Lord, and to an intimate communion with him no longer concealed under the veil of faith. How could he have described what he longed for, as a departure from this earthly life and being present with the Lord, if he intended to describe that change which would arise from the rapovoia of Christ, from his coming to believers? We also find in the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, the same views presented as in the Epistle to the Philippians; yet it is not probable that in the few months between the time of his writing the First and the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, such a revolution had taken place in his mode of thinking on this subject. From a comparison of the First and Second Epistle to the Corinthians, we may therefore conclude that Paul, even when, in his earlier statements respecting the resurrection, he said nothing of the state of the souls of individual believers in the interval between death and the resurrection, still admitted the uninterrupted development of a higher life after death, though he did not particularly bring it forward, as he was accustomed to found all the hopes of believers on the resurrection of Christ, and to connect them with the doctrine of the resurrection; perhaps, also, he thought that last great event so nigh, and was so constantly turning his attention to it, that his mind was not directed towards the other fact. But as he became aware that the period of the consummation of the kingdom of God was not so nigh as he

had formerly anticipated, he was induced to bring forward more distinctly a subject which had hitherto been kept in the background.

Paul represents as the ultimate object of his hopes, the complete victory of the kingdom of God over all the evil which had hitherto prevented its realization, over everything which checked and obscured the development of the divine life. Believers, in their complete personality transformed and placed beyond the reach of death, will perfectly reflect the image of Christ, and be introduced into the perfect communion of his divine, holy, blessed, and unchangeable life. The perfected kingdom of God will then blend itself harmoniously with all the other forms of divine manifestation throughout his unbounded dominions. Inspired by the prospect of this last triumph of redemption, when sin with all its consequences, death and all evil, shall be entirely overcome, with the certain knowledge of the victory already won by Christ, the pledge of all that will follow, Paul exclaims (1 Cor. xv. 55-58), "Where, Death, is now thy sting? (Death has now lost its power to wound the redeemed from sin, since they are already conscious of an eternal divine life.) Where, Grave, is thy victory? (the victory which the kingdom of death gained through sin.) But the sting of death is sin; that which causes the power of sin to be felt is the law. (What the law could not do, which made us first feel the power of sin in its whole extent, that Christ has done by redeeming us from sin and thus from death.) God be thanked who hath given us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." Inasmuch as the kingdom of Christ is a mediatorial dispensation, which maintains a conflict with the kingdom of evil for a precise object, which is founded on the redemption accomplished by him, and by which all that his redemption involves in principle must be realized-the kingdom of Christ in its peculiar form will come to an end, when it has attained this object, when through the efficiency of the glorified Christ, the kingdom of God has no more opposition. to encounter, and will need no longer a Redeemer and Mediator. Then will God himself operate in an immediate manner in those who through Christ have attained to perfect communion with him, who are freed from everything that

1

opposed the divine operation in their souls, and transformed into pure instruments of the divine glory. The mediatorial kingdom of God will then merge into the immediatorial. Such is the declaration of Paul in 1 Cor. xv. 27, 28. But if we understand what is said in that passage of the universal subjection and conquest of all the enemies of God's kingdom, in the strictest sense of the words, it would follow, that all subjective opposition to the will of God will then cease, and that a perfect union of the will of the creature with that of the Creator will universally prevail. This will necessarily be the case, if we understand the words that "God may be all in all," in absolute universality; for then it would follow, that the kingdom of God is to be realized subjectively in all rational creatures, and that nothing ungodlike will any longer exist. Then would be fulfilled, in the most complete sense, what Paul expresses in Rom. xi. 32. But though this interpretation is in itself possible, and founded on the words, still we are not justified by the connexion to understand the expression in an unlimited sense. If that subjection were to be understood as only objective and compulsory, it might be affirmed that the enemies of God's kingdom will have no more power to undertake anything against it, that they will no longer be able to exert a disturbing influence on its development. By the "all," não, in whom God will be "all," тà Távтα, we may understand merely believers, as in v. 22 by návrεs, those who enter by faith into communion with Christ; and it certainly appears from the connexion to be Paul's design only to represent what belongs to the perfect realization of Christ's work for believers. The words in Philip. ii. 10, 11, may indeed be supposed to mean, that all rational beings are to be subjected to the Redeemer as their Lord, although this will not be accomplished with respect to all in the same manner; in some there may be a subjectively internal free obedience, in others only what is outward and compulsory, the obedience of impotence, which can effect nothing against the kingdom of Christ. The question arises, whether in the words "bow the knee in the name of Christ,

2

1ãow may be taken either as masculine or neuter.

2 If the emphasis be laid not on the πάντες, but on the ἐν τῷ Χριστῷ, that here everything proceeds from Christ, as on the other side from Adam.

and confess that he is Lord to the glory of God," something more is meant than a description of such forced outward obedience, if we understand these words according to the Pauline phraseology.' The passage in Coloss. i. 20, we shall interpret in the simplest and most natural manner, if we can admit such a reference to the reconciling and redeeming work of Christ on the fallen spiritual world. And we can then combine in one view the three passages, and interpret them by a mutual comparison. A magnificent prospect is thus presented of the final triumph of the work of redemption, which was first opened to the mind of the great apostle in the last stage of his Christian development, by means of that love which impelled him to sacrifice himself for the salvation of mankind. At all events, we find here only some slight intimations, and we acknowledge the guidance of divine wisdom, that in the records of revelation destined for such various steps of religious development, no more light has been communicated on this subject.

1 The doctrine of such a universal restitution would not stand in contradiction to the doctrine of eternal punishment, as it appears in the gospels; for although those who are hardened in wickedness, left to the consequences of their conduct, their merited fate, have to expect endless unhappiness, yet a secret decree of the divine compassion is not necessarily excluded, by virtue of which, through the wisdom of God revealing itself in the discipline of free agents, they will be led to a free appropriation of redemption.

LONDON: PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STREET.