Page:The Last Judgement and Second Coming of the Lord Illustrated.djvu/213

 manity which a contingency in the history of our race is to render superfluous! A notion, indeed, prevails in the professing Church, which supposes that the mediatory office of the Lord will cease. This view is expressed in the commentaries: it is drawn from a statement of the Apostle's, namely, "Then cometh the end, when He shall have delivered up the kingdom to the Father,—then shall the Son also Himself be subject unto Him, that God may be all in all" (1 Cor. xv. 24-28). However this passage may appear to teach such a doctrine, that certainly could not have been the Apostle's meaning. Peter has told us that Paul said some things hard to be understood (2 Pet. iii. 16), but the suggestion of a difficulty does not mean an impossibility. He who said of the Lord, "He ever liveth to make intercession for us," could never have intended to teach that the kingdom and power of Jesus were to continue only for a limited time. Those who so interpret the above passage make him inconsistent with himself, for of two opposite statements one only can be true. Besides, such a view supposes that the Saviour, after having saved the human race, is to be deprived of the glory belonging to His work, and made to retire from His connection with the Godhead! What is to be His position when so separated, no one professes to know. Well may Dr. A. Clarke, in summing up his strange remarks upon the passage, say, "How this shall be we cannot tell, nor know." Certainly not: but the difficulty is created by an untenable doctrine, and not by a correct interpretation of the Apostle's meaning. Speaking of the Lord, he said, "This Man for ever sat down at the right hand of God" (Heb. x. 12); that is, His manhood is for ever endowed with omnipotence to save. No man goeth to the Father but by Him; He is the Way, He has all power both in heaven and in earth. The Apostle was too wise to indicate so strange a thought as that of subduing the Omnipotent. The "end" of which the Apostle speaks is the Divine purpose of the Lord towards mankind; this end is their salvation; the means to it are truth and goodness. The Lord, as the Son, is the Truth, and as the Father, He is the good: He and the Father are one (John x. 30). In Him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily (Col. ii. 9). Men at first receive the truth, and submit to its direction; but in the process of their regeneration, the truth which they receive leads them on to goodness, until goodness is established in its full dominion. Thus the Son He is alive for evermore, and therefore there will always be people for the reception of His