the first in whom it proved its power to conquer death. The second negation of death is the resurrection of those who belong to Christ, at his coming. At the Parousia of Christ, those who are dead rise again, those who are still living at the time are changed. Though they have not yet died and fallen under death's dominion, yet the principle of death is in them, and they would necessarily succumb to it sooner or later. In them also, therefore, death has to be overconre, the mortal in them has to be transmuted into immortality, else they cannot share that life which begins with the resurrection for those who rise. Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor can the corruptible, this material and sensuous life which is composed of earthly elements, inherit incorruption. On this account the apostle designates as a mystery what was an unavoidable feature of his view of the future life as a post-resurrection life. It was a mystery in so far as it was not clearly realized-that all would not have died at the time of Christ's coming, but that all would undergo a transformation (since the resurrection is also a transformation); in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump, as soon as it sounds, the dead will be raised incorruptible, and the living will be changed. For according to the order ordained by God, in which the whole process moves, from which the victory of the principle of life over the principle of death is to result, it cannot but be the case that this corruptible shall put on incorruption, and this mortal, immortality, 1 Cor. xv. 50-53. After the resurrection of the dead, and the transformation of the living, comes the end, the end of the whole present history; then, that is to say, when Christ delivers up the kingdom to God and the Father, when he shall have destroyed every rule and every authority and power, for he must reign till he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death, for he has put all things under his feet. But when it is said that all things are put under him, it is manifest that this means all things except him who put all things under him. And when all things are subdued under him, then shall he himself, the Son, subject himself also to

him that put all things under him, that God may be all in all: vv. 24-28. It is very evident that the apostle here regards the whole history of the world and men as the scene of the conflict of two principles, one of which has sway at first, but is then attacked and conquered and entirely destroyed by the other. The first of these principles is death; the history of the world begins with this one, and comes to a close when death, and with death the entire dualism of which the course of history is the development, has entirely disappeared from it. In order to break the might of the principle of death, Christ appeared at the time appointed him as the Son of God the Father. God caused him, as it were, to issue from himself, enters in him into the process of history, and subjects himself in him to the limitations of the world in its subjection to the principle of death; that in the finite the principle of infinity may be born and appear, and the world of death be changed into the world of life. The power of the death-principle is broken by the resurrection of Jesus, yet the life-principle cannot assert its full supremacy as long as the world's history still goes on in time. Thus the common division of history into the ante-Messianic and the Messianic period is replaced in the apostle's mind by the higher view that we are now in the αἰὼν οὗτος, and that the αἰὼν μέλλων is to follow it. Now is the world of opposition and of struggle: Christ bears rule in the name of God, but only that he may subdue all hostile powers in which the principle of death continues to assert itself. The world to come is the higher world where the battle between life and death has been fought out, and the victory is complete; where every jar is stilled. Here the eternal and absolute God, who stands above all, takes back into himself, out of the historical process in which the world he had created stood over against him, all that is his, and embraces it all in the eternal unity of his own undivided essence. If the conflict of the two principles, life and death, be now concluded, and transformed to unity, then Christ, who is identical with the principle of life, cannot be any longer outside of God,—he must be in God. The opposition through which God sought to bring about the unity of

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the world with himself has now come to an end, and there is no longer any need of mediation or of a mediator. Corruption has put on incorruption, the mortal has put on immortality, and the words of Scripture are fulfilled: death is swallowed up in victory; death is robbed of its sting. The apostle adds, The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law; but the victory is given through the Lord Jesus Christ. In these words he recapitulates the momenta through which the transition from the one principle to the other takes place inwardly as well as outwardly. The mediation consists, in a word, in this: that the life in which death is overcome and abolished is the Sikaiwois (wŶs (Rom. v. 18).

Here we might ask if God's being all-in-all is held to imply the final cessation of evil by the conversion of the wicked and of the devil. The question might be answered in different ways, but is of slight importance. It makes little difference in the main, whether the evil powers continue to exist in a state of entire exhaustion and impotence, or whether they be at last attracted by the irresistible power of good. Whatever be thought on the question, it must be perfectly clear that if death is to be robbed of his last sting, then there can be no eternal punishment.

Among the changes to take place in this development of the world's history there are two which we may mention specially. They are connected with the great final catastrophe, one in the physical, the other in the moral world. The first is the transfiguration of external nature spoken of by the apostle, Rom. viii. 19 sq. Nature is to be set free from the vanity and finiteness to which she has been made subject, and to be raised to the state of liberty which is the glory of the sons of God. Thus external nature also is one day to wear the likeness of that unshadowed Christian consciousness which is at one with itself and God, and is absolved from every limitation. The other occurrence which the apostle expects from the future is the conversion of the Jews. The blindness of a part of the Jews, he says, Rom. xi. 25, will last only till the fulness of the Gentiles be come in to the Christian body. Then all Israel will be saved. If this is to happen only after the con

version of all the Gentiles, then it must be at the end, just before the Parousia, and the general resurrection. And the apostle expected that he himself would live to see the Parousia! What mighty events did he compress into the immediate future! But he has not given his reasons for these two expectations, nor did he make definite doctrines of them.

SEVENTH CHAPTER.

FAITH, LOVE, AND HOPE, AS THE THREE MOMENTA OF CHRISTIAN

CONSCIOUSNESS.

THE process of the world's history is thus divided into two great periods, with Adam at the head of the first and Christ at the head of the second. The first comes to an end in the present world; the second has its beginning here, but stretches into the infinite beyond of the world to come. The Christian consciousness is similarly divided between the two elements of the past and of the future. It goes back in Adam to the past, and follows the whole process of the history that lies between Adam and Christ; and in Christ it directs its view to the most distant future, reaches out to the consummation of all things, and finds its rest in the result that lies behind that consummation, in God who has then become all in all. As directed to the past, the Christian consciousness is Christian faith; as directed to the future, it is Christian hope. Christian faith must of necessity be directed to the past. It is indeed the living present consciousness of Christ's dwelling in us through his spirit; yet the proper object of faith is something that has happened, that is past, and in this instance it is the death of Christ upon the cross. All the different momenta of Christian faith are centred in the cross. And it is impossible to understand these momenta except by tracing them backwards, and going up through the series, sin, death, law, to Adam, with whom the series originated. Christian faith is essentially historical; what is immediate in it has yet been mediated by past events, and has its roots in the past. Faith, therefore, goes back to the past. It does not, however, take its stand at any