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SERMON XI.

FROM THENCE HE SHALL COME TO JUDGE THE QUICK AND THE DEAD.

ROM. xiv. 10.—We shall all stand before the judgment-seat of Christ.

IN these words the Apostle proposes to the faith of his Roman converts the general truth of a future judgment of all mankind, with the doctrine peculiarly Christian, that Christ Jesus is then to be our judge. The event itself is the same that the Jews and heathens of old expected, and that all theists now expect with various degrees of assurance: but we say plainly what the divine oracles of the Jews asserted but obscurely, and what no system of theology of which God himself is not the teacher can even distantly approach; that that event will be accomplished by Jesus,* now a Saviour and Mediator. Such is the doctrine of the text; and such the confession which we make in the Apostles' Creed when we say, that See JUSTIN MARTYR, Apol. viii.

*

Jesus Christ, who ascended into heaven, and sitteth at the right hand of God, SHALL COME AGAIN

FROM THENCE, TO JUDGE BOTH THE QUICK AND

THE DEAD. We propose now to demonstrate the truth of these distinct assertions of the Church, both as concerns the judgment in general, and as concerns Jesus Christ our judge; and to state some of the consequences which necessarily result from them.

ness.

The strongest possible proof that can be demanded or conceived, that we shall hereafter give an account of the actions of our present life, and hear a divine verdict, and receive a divine sentence, according as our works shall be, is the revealed purpose of God to judge the world: and this is so often declared both in the Old and New Testament, that were not one such declaration sufficient, it would be impossible in one discourse to state the evidence from Scripture for a future judgment, with any tolerable degree of fairAs it is, I am content merely to remind you, that God hath declared himself the judge of all the earth; that he hath again and again warned the wicked that he is a consuming fire; and that he hath inspired the Psalmist, and still permits the faithful, to anticipate the judgment in such joyous strains as these: The Lord shall judge the people righteously. Let the heavens rejoice, and let the earth be glad; let the sea roar, and the fulness thereof. Let the field be joyful, and all that is therein : then shall the trees of the wood rejoice before the LORD: for he cometh, for he cometh to judge the

earth: he shall judge the world with righteousness, and the people with his truth.

It is not to strengthen demonstration, that I add some of the proofs which reason suggests of a judgment to come; but rather that, while I refer you to your own conscience for its evidence, I may also excite in your hearts a practical response to the doctrine: and that while I refer you, for other evidence, to the world around you, I may present some safeguard against those temptations to doubt and discontent, which our arch-enemy has never been backward in suggesting, from that very state of things, which we should rather look upon as a confirmation of our hope of a future day of retribution.

Let me ask you, then, my brethren, If you have not, or at least had not, a faculty committed to you, which, though essentially a part of your moral constitution, yet seems to speak from a higher source; which is paramount over all your other faculties, and every exercise of your mind, or spirit, or will;* and which you cannot help recognising as the representative within you of God's approbation of virtue, hatred of all sin, and irreversible purpose to avenge the one and reward the other? Let me ask you, whether it is possible, on any system of government which can be conceived worthy of the Creator and governor of the world, that these dictates of conscience which are so peremptorily uttered, and so often disregarded, being

* See Bishop Butler's Sermon, and also Adam Smith on the Moral Sentiments, Part iii. ch. v.

as they are the voice of a greater than ourselves, (or even, if that be not admitted, yet being from their very moral nature essentially paramount,) can have continued from the first day on which we distinguished between good and evil until now, with no more effectual sanction than has yet followed them; and with no avenger more powerful, and better apportioned to the end in view, than the remorse which becomes less acute as it becomes more deserved? And what moral possibility is there, that the warning which has been uttered so often in vain, so far as any present effect is concerned, shall entirely and ultimately fail in the end for which it was given; and shall not, at some time or other, speak with an authority no longer to be slighted, with a terror that not the boldest shall brave? Because I have called and ye refused; I have stretched out my hand and no man regarded; but ye have set at nought all my counsel, and would none of my reproof; I also will laugh at your calamity, I will mock when your fear cometh; when your fear cometh as desolation, and your destruction cometh as a whirlwind; when distress and anguish cometh upon you:-When Solomon spake thus in the name of that wisdom which crieth within us, and we regard it not, he uttered sentiments that find a response in every breast: and thus conscience, which makes the anticipation of judgment so terrible to the wicked, is also a most irresistible evidence of the certainty of judgment; since, otherwise, the most sovereign faculty of our nature has been constituted

by Jehovah for a noble purpose in vain, and worse than in vain ; even to be despised and trodden under foot. The meanest of his works is not so disregarded and unavenged by his providence and sovereignty. And now, extend your view from your own heart to the apparent moral government of the world around you. So very contrary to all our notions of perfect justice is the present distribution of happiness and prosperity, of misery and misfortune, nay even of reward and punishment, that it is scarce possible sometimes to avoid the suggestions of doubt or discontent; and we are often strongly tempted to that impatience which the Psalmist so well describes, together with its appropriate remedy, in the seventy-third Psalm. It is not that the good are always poor, and despised, and wretched; and the wicked always happy, honoured, and prosperous: it is not that the pious and excellent of the earth are always cut off in the midst of their usefulness; and the wicked always suffered to practise iniquity with a strong hand, and to boast themselves through a long life that they can do mischief. Were this all, it were easy to that God permitted to the wicked their good things in this life, as to those who shall be tormented in the next; and always used afflictions and privations, passing and light in comparison, as an instrument to purify and exalt those who should share hereafter an exceeding and eternal weight of glory. It is that mixture of prosperity and adversity in the world, of which the virtuous and the wicked seem to receive an equal and

N

say,