word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day.”  So I contend, that though the resurrection is also called the last day, and represented as raising all mankind at one instant of time, still simply means, that the doctrine of Christ (viz.  The judgment and resurrection) should, at his coming in his kingdom, be fully revealed to the living by their seeing his prophesies fulfilled in the abrogation of the ceremonial law, and this doctrine of life and immortality be permanently established and commence its sway over the living, as the last and best system of God to man, and this resurrection day continue down to all subsequent generations of slumbering dead, raising every man in incorruption and glory.  The judgment and resurrection of the world are therefore both progressing, for these two constitute the gospel reign of Christ.  He is “the resurrection and life of the world,” as well as “judge of quick and dead.”  Both are to be accomplished in the last day, and that day is now progressing.  A general resurrection, at the last vibrating pendulum of time, cannot I humbly conceive, be substantiated by the oracles of truth, any more than a general judgment.  I am rather inclined to think that the judgment of the world by Jesus Christ expresses the whole, including the resurrection and all; even as the high priest, clothed with the breastplate of judgment on the day of atonement, closed his services by raising the nation into the holy of holies, “which was a pattern of things in the heavens.”

If the Scriptures afford us any evidence of the third coming of Christ, to raise the dead, for one, I must acknowledge my utter ignorance of the fact.  In John (chap. vi.) Jesus several times uses the expression, “and I will raise him up at the last day.”  If others contend that this has reference to “the last day of the last generation of the human race on the earth,” yet I must candidly acknowledge, that I cannot see a shadow of evidence to prove this position.  The last day in this instance, refers to the gospel dispensation, which commenced at the destruction of the temple, and involves the whole reign of Christ.  It is synonymous with the “day of Christ” and the “day of the Lord” mentioned in several places by the apostles.  Nor do I conceive it means, that Christ would raise them up by his own immediate power, but that God would raise the dead according to that doctrine, which he sent his Son to reveal to men, and this would be fully established in the world, and be believed and felt by Jew and Gentile Christians at the coming of Christ in his kingdom, at the end of that dispensation. Then and not till then were the predictions of Christ fulfilled, and then were those Christians, who had not seen Jesus after his resurrection, “made perfect in faith.”