We examine the general conception of "the Day of the Judgment," as given in the New Testament.
As there is that which with terrible emphasis is marked off as "_the_ Judgment,"[261] "_the_ Parousia," so there are other judgments or advents of a preparatory character. As there are phenomena known as mock suns, or haloes round the moon, so there are fainter reflections ringed round the Advent, the Judgment.[262] Thus, in the development of history, there are successive cycles of continuing judgment; preparatory advents; less completed _crises_, as even the world calls them.
But against one somewhat widely-spread way of blotting the Day of the Judgment from the calendar of the future--so far as believers are concerned--we should be on our guard. Some good men think themselves entitled to reason thus--"I am a Christian. I shall be an assessor in the judgment. For me there is, therefore, no judgment day." And it is even held out as an inducement to others to close with this conclusion, that they "shall be delivered from the bugbear of judgment."
The origin of this notion seems to be in certain universal tendencies of modern religious thought.
The idolatry of the immediate--the prompt creation of effect--is the perpetual snare of _revivalism_. _Revivalism_ is thence fatally bound at once to follow the tide of emotion, and to increase the volume of the waters by which it is swept along. But the religious emotion of this generation has one characteristic by which it is distinguished from that of previous centuries. The revivalism of the past in all Churches rode upon the dark waves of fear. It worked upon human nature by exaggerated material descriptions of hell, by solemn appeals to the throne of Judgment. Certain schools of biblical criticism have enabled men to steel themselves against this form of preaching. An age of soft humanitarian sentiment--superficial, and inclined to forget that perfect Goodness may be a very real cause of fear--must be stirred by emotions of a different kind. The infinite sweetness of our Father's heart--the conclusions, illogically but effectively drawn from this, of an Infinite good-nature, with its easy-going pardon, reconciliation all round, and exemption from all that is unpleasant--these, and such as these, are the only available materials for creating a great volume of emotion. An invertebrate creed; punishment either annihilated or mitigated; judgment, changed from a solemn and universal assize, a bar at which every soul must stand, to a splendid, and--for all who can say I _am saved_--a triumphant pageant in which they have no anxious concern; these are the readiest instruments, the most powerful leverage, with which to work extensively upon masses of men at the present time. And the seventh article of the Apostles' Creed must pass into the limbo of exploded superstition.
The only appeal to Scripture which such persons make, with any show of plausibility, is contained in an exposition of our Lord's teaching in a part of the fifth chapter of the fourth Gospel.[263] But clearly there are three Resurrection scenes which may be discriminated in those words. The first is spiritual, a present awakening of dead souls,[264] in those with whom the Son of Man is brought into contact in His earthly ministry. The second is a department of the same spiritual resurrection. The Son of God, with that mysterious gift of Life in Himself,[265] has within Him a perpetual spring of rejuvenescence for a faded and dying world. A renewal of hearts is in process during all the days of time, a passage for soul after soul out of death into life.[266] The third scene is the general Resurrection and general Judgment.[267] The first was the resurrection of comparatively few; the second is the resurrection of many; the third will be the resurrection of all. If it is said that the believer "cometh not into _judgment_," the word in that place plainly signifies _condemnation_.[268]