It is noticeable that the writers of the New Testament, and Jesus himself, refer chiefly to the resurrection and the last day as sources of comfort, and also of warning.  Now this is made a principal ground of belief, with many, that there is either no consciousness between death and the resurrection; or, that none have gone to heaven, nor to hell, but to intermediate places, seeing that final rewards and punishments are, in so many instances, wholly predicated of the last day.

But those who believe that the souls of the righteous are, at their death, made perfect in holiness, and do immediately pass into glory, see proof, in all this prominence which is given to the last day, and to the resurrection, that the sacred writers regarded the resurrection and final judgment as the great consummation, towards which souls, in heaven and in hell, would be looking forward with intense expectation and interest; that neither will the joys of heaven nor the pains of hell be complete, till the account of our whole influence upon the world, extending to the end of time, is made up, and the body is added to the soul.  When Paul comforts the mourners of Thessalonica, he bids them to “sorrow not as they that have no hope; for,” (and now he does not speak of heaven, and of souls being already there, as the source of consolation, but) “if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them, also, that sleep in Jesus will God bring with him;” and he proceeds to speak of the resurrection,—­not of the speedy reunion of friends after death, but of the departed as coming with Christ at the last day.  This, instead of being an argument against the immediate departure of souls to heaven, arises from the desire to employ the strongest possible proof that the pious dead are not only safe, but are greatly honored.  “Resurrection” was an abounding subject of thought, argument, and illustration in those days; the state of the dead between death and the last day, is comparatively disregarded by the apostles, while their minds were full of the great question of the age—­the Resurrection.  This fullness of thought and constant occupation of mind about the resurrection, as the cardinal doctrine of Christian hope, explains the apparent belief of the apostles, in some passages, that the final day was near.  This the apostle Paul expressly denies, in the second chapter of the Second Epistle to the Thessalonians.  But a greater event, looked at in the same line of vision with an intermediate and smaller object, will, of course, have the prominent place in our thoughts.  The less will be held subordinate to the greater; perhaps we shall seem to underrate the less, in our exalted conceptions of that which rises beyond and above.  We shall see, as we proceed, why the expectation of the last day seemed to occupy the thoughts of apostles as the paramount object of expectation.