Philologos
Bible Prophecy Research
Misc Study: The Future Glory of the Christ
Submitted by: research-bpr@philologos.org
Date: May 30, 1998
URL: http://philologos.org/bpr/files/Misc_Studies/ms006.htm
THE CHRIST OF GOD
Horatius Bonar
(1808-1890)
THE FUTURE GLORY OF THE CHRIST.
Earth has a future in connection with the Christ of God. His body is composed of its dust, and this of itself forms a link which cannot be broken.
The Son of God is the 'second man,' or 'last Adam,' and as such He is to have dominion over all that of which the first Adam was king. God's eternal purpose includes not only the king, but the kingdom; and the history of the Christ carries along with it the history of this earth, past, present, and to come.
We have already alluded to this in passing, but let us ere we close take it up a little more fully; and let us do so in connection with the second chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews, where the humiliation and the glory of 'the Christ' are brought strikingly into view. Without expounding that chapter in detail, we may bring out some of its more outstanding points.
Into four great parts, or sections, does the apostle here divide the history of Him who is the brightness of Jehovah's glory, and the express image of His person. Of these sections the headings are these: The things which we have seen, or Jesus made a little lower than the angels; the things which we do not see (i.e. which do not yet exist), or all things not yet put under Him; the things that we do see (i.e. which now exist), or Jesus crowned with glory and honour; the things that we shall see, or all things put in subjection under Him, and the kingdoms of earth made His de facto, as they have been His de jure, from the beginning. Each of these four points the apostle brings to bear upon his argument, in his great demonstration of the super-Adamic, super-angelic, super-Mosaic, glory of the Christ, the last Adam, the Head, the King, the Priest of 'the world to come.'
The first two of these four parts are marked by a common aspect of darkness; the second two, by a common aspect of brightness. The first of all is the period of Messiah's self-abnegation here, in the days of His flesh, when, though rich, for our sakes He became poor, was made perfect through sufferings, and bore our curse upon the tree. The second is the present period of His non-manifestation and non-assumption of actual and visible rule in our world, to which as the risen Christ and the enthroned King He was entitled, but for which He was content to wait for the fulness of the times, and the gradual evolution of the Father's eternal purpose. The third is the period of His investiture with the royalty of heaven, His session on the Father's throne; angels, and authorities, and powers being made subject unto Him. The fourth is the period of His manifestation or glory here, when His enemies shall be made His footstool, and all things put under Him; when, as the 'second man,' He shall undo what the 'first man' did; and as Son of God, yet also Son of Mary, Son of David, Son of Abraham, Son of Adam, Seed of the woman, true Heir of all things, He shall gather up into Himself the unfinished types, and predictions, and foreshadows, in which the Church of past ages dimly saw Him, and in the name of that humanity which He represents, dispossess the usurper, and claim creation for His own.
The first of these four epochs has long since run its course, and the last has not yet begun; but the second and the third are now in progress. The things which we do not see, and the things which we do see, are now unfolding themselves, parallel and contemporaneous with each other; the one in heaven, the other upon earth; the one all obedience, and splendour, and holiness, the other all rebellion, and shadow, and sin;--like a sky of sunshine bending over a wild and lawless ocean; or like two streams, one clear, the other turbid, flowing separate, yet parallel, and terminating in a clear, calm lake, in which the one loses all its foulness, and into which the other pours all its translucent crystal.
It is at this interval that we stand; realizing both the evil and the good,--the evil all around us, and the good above us--and longing for the time when the light shall descend and swallow up the darkness, when the terrestrial shall take on the image of the celestial, when neither the moral nor the physical world shall be 'without form and void,' when obedience shall take the place of rebellion, and instead of the multitude of jarring wills the one will shall be done on earth as it is done in heaven.
Seeing Jesus now crowned with glory and honour, yet not seeing all things put under Him, but the world lying in wickedness,--the lawless one giving law to the nations, and Satan inspiring the false religions of earth,--we should feel like disappointed men, and be tempted to ask, 'Where is the promise of His coming?' did we not remember that the Church's posture in the Bridegroom's absence is that of patient waiting; and that it is God Himself who has taught us this song of hope: 'Let the heavens rejoice, and let the earth be glad; let the field be joyful, and all that is therein; let the floods clap their hands; let the hills be joyful together before the Lord; for He cometh, for He cometh to judge the earth.'
This interval or break the apostle designates by the word 'Now,'--'Now we see not yet all things put under Him, but we see Jesus crowned with glory and honour.' In reference to this interval, he elsewhere uses the same word, in various aspects: 'Christ is not entered into the holy places made with hands, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us' (Heb 9:24). 'Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation' (2 Cor 6:2). 'The whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now' (Rom 8:22). 'The spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience' (Eph 2:2). 'Even now are there many antichrists' (1 John 2:18). Of the length of this 'now,' little is said; but of its bearings on us, and of its momentous character as the womb of infinite events and eternal issues, much has been written by the Spirit of God. Again and again, for warning, persuasion, instruction, consolation, has He held up to us this interval, so unique in its character, and so marvellous in its results; and made that word 'now' to ring in our ears.
An interval so long and gloomy, filled up during so many centuries with revolt, and defiance, and blasphemy, is not what we should have expected. Seeing that all power, on earth as well as in heaven, was given Him as the risen Christ; seeing that He fought the fight, and won the victory upon the cross; we wonder that He should not at once reap the harvest; that He should still be the rejected of men, His Church a minority, His cause upon the losing side, Himself defied by that world which He overcame, that Satan whom He led captive, that death over which He triumphed, that curse, for the enduring of which He took flesh and died.
Under this sore perplexity and disappointment we take refuge where He did, when men turned away from His words: 'Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in Thy sight.' The purpose of God, as we read it in the light of ages, assumes the necessity for the development of evil, and error, and unbelief, and rebellion; so as to bring out, not merely what the fall did, the frailty of creaturehood, but the depths of Satan and the depths of sin,--the abysses of evil that are to be found in every corner of a human heart. In the sight of God, this development of creature fallibility and evil is a thing of vast moment, and has a far larger space assigned to it in the history of men and devils than our philosophy would deem safe, or our theology account for. The revelation of evil upon earth before Messiah came was fearful; but it was explicable on the fact that the Destroyer of evil had not yet descended. But its far wider range and more malignant type since He came; nay, since He finished His sin-bearing work; nay, since He sat down upon the throne, it more perplexing, and no less appalling. Terrible are these words of His, 'I came not to send peace upon earth, but a sword.'
O sin, sin, what an infinite evil art thou! How exceeding sinful, and how prolific in thy sinfulness; how tenacious of life; how expansive in thy potency; how remorseless in thy cruelty; how all-pervading in thy dominion over creaturehood; one seed of thine, dropt in Paradise, covering earth for six thousand years with its hellish harvest! O heart of man, what a pit, what a sea of wickedness, and lawlessness, and atheism art thou! O Satan, Satan, god of this world, and ruler of its darkness, how vast thy resources of strength, and skill, and cunning; defeated, yet gathering power from defeat; wounded with a deadly wound eighteen hundred years ago, yet still surviving, and mustering thy hosts for battle; still multiplying thy subtle wiles, and seducing sophistries, and strong delusions, and dazzling falsehoods, to deceive if possible the very elect; still forging thy fiery darts and wounding men to death, or leading them captive at will; still warring against truth, hiding the gospel, raging against the Lamb, assailing His cross, His throne, and His saints; still vitalizing the old and sapless idolatries of earth, inventing new infidelities, sending forth new blasphemies, making, not heathendom, nor Moslemdom, but Christendom, thy chief seat and chosen citadel; and exercising a power everywhere that both alarms and perplexes us, as if the Christ of God had not been really crowned, or as if the reins of the universe had snapped asunder in His hands!
This, then, is the fact to which we ask your attention, 'Now we see not yet all things put under Him.'
The word translated 'put under' does not merely intimate abstract right, but actual surrender and obedience. That Christ is Prince of the kings of the earth, and Head over all things, as well as Head of His body the Church, is part of every Christian creed; but to how few,--individuals, Churches, nations,--is it aught beyond a mere abstraction! The recognition of the dogma is accompanied with no acknowledgment of the laws in which it declares itself, and with no subjection, personal, political, or ecclesiastical, to Him for whom the Father claims absolute obedience: 'Kiss ye the Son.'
The abstract right or prerogative is that which the apostle demonstrates from the eighth psalm: 'Unto the angels hath He not put in subjection the world to come, whereof we speak; but one in a certain place testified, saying, What is man, that Thou art mindful of him? or the son of man, that Thou visitest him? Thou madest him a little lower than the angels; thou crownedst him with glory and honour, and didst set him over the work of Thy hands.' Thus this psalm, which carries us back to the first chapter of Genesis, and embodies God's original grant of authority over creation to the first Adam, is accepted by the apostle as a proof of God's purpose to confer on Christ, as the last Adam, the lapsed sovereignty and forfeited sceptre of the first; to perpetuate in the line and dynasty of that race which Adam represented the lordship of His handiwork; not to alienate the inheritance because of the transgression of the first proprietor, but to continue it in the same stock and family; to place, not upon an angelic, but a human brow, creation's diadem; to confide, not to angelic, but to human hands, the sceptre of the universe.
This grant of dominion to the last Adam the apostle shows to be as wide as God's creation. For thus he interprets and expands the psalmist's words, 'in that He put all in subjection under Him, He left nothing that is not put under Him.' So that as in person the last Adam is more glorious than the first, so is His throne more exalted, and His empire as much larger in compass as is His worthiness of honour and fitness to reign. In Him, as very God and very man, the crowns of heaven and earth are united; and the slain Lamb is He who alone is worthy to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and honour, and glory, and blessing, from every creature in heaven, and earth, and sea.
What then? Has God's purpose failed or changed? Has the rebellion of this present evil world proved stronger than was reckoned on? For the right of dominion and the actual subjection have not been co-extensive. Christ is King of kings, yet Satan is still god of this world, and prince of the power of the air. It is to this point of divergency between the earthly and the heavenly, of conflict between the rightful and the actual, that the apostle brings us when he says, 'But now we see not yet all things put under Him'; just as our Lord Himself did in the parable of the nobleman who went into the far country, to receive for himself a kingdom, and to return; but who, in the interval of absence, was but poorly served by some of his servants, and hated by his citizens. The divine meaning of this strange divergency between the upper and lower regions of Messiah's domain is too large and too profound a subject for present discussion. The reasons for this delay in assimilating the terrestrial to the celestial; in transmuting the universal right into the universal fact; in following up the conferred sovereignty with the accomplished submission, would lead us into the mystery of sin's first entrance and present sufferance, as well as into the question why a sinner at his conversion is not at once made perfect, and not at once translated into the heavenly glory. Our object is simply to call attention to the state of non-submission to Christ in which we find our world, and which is declared to be specially the characteristic of the interval, or 'now,' spoken of by Paul. Man and his world have not yet bent the knee to Him; and the Father has not yet interposed to bring about the submission. 'Thy people shall be willing in the day of Thy power,' is still a futurity both for Israel and for the world.
Let us look at the facts referred to in the words, 'We see not yet all things put under Him.'
I. Christ is a Saviour; yet all have not been saved. His power to deliver is as boundless as His right is unchallengeable; yet millions have perished since He ascended the throne. All have not come, and the Father has not drawn them. Few are saved; and many are called, but few are chosen. Messiah is still the rejected of men. This is personal non-submission, in other words, unbelief; individual refusal of the great salvation; the soul's deliberate rejection of God's free gift of everlasting life; the sinner's determination not to submit himself to the righteousness of God.
Hear yon reckless scoffer, as he says, I want none of your Christs or your pardons, your gospels or your Bibles. I care not for your heaven, and do not fear your hell, or your devil, or your judgment-day. Hear you proud Unitarian, as he tells you, I believe not in your Trinity, or your Incarnation; and I had rather risk all your hells than be so mean as to take a salvation which I had not deserved, or could not pay for: fair play and no favour is all I ask. See yon poor Romanist, doting upon his penances, and throwing them into the scale with the sufferings of the Son of God. Listen to yon Protestant, unpricked in conscience and whole in heart, but religious after a sort, as he congratulates himself on his good life and sound creed as his passport to the kingdom. Mark yon awakened sinner, who has just made the discovery of the hell within him, crying for mercy, and asking, What must I do to be saved? and to whom we speak in vain of the completed propitiation of the cross. Are not all these specimens of non-submission to the Son of God,--rebellion against His power as Saviour of the lost? Are they not some of the many ways in which man's dissatisfaction with the cross, and his disbelief of the divine testimony to the work of the Sinbearer, give vent to themselves; in which is daily coming to pass the saying that is written, 'Now we see not yet all things put under Him'?
O man, child of rebellion and wrath! hast thou submitted thyself to the Son of God? Hast thou received the Father's testimony to Him by whom the lost are saved; and in receiving that testimony ended for ever thy rebellion against Him? Is the work done upon the cross by which God justifies the sinner, thy one resting-place? and does the great salvation satisfy thee, so as to give thee God's sure peace, and introduce thee into the liberty of happy sonship? Or art thou still an alien, a stranger, a rebel? If so, poor soul, what will thy non-submission avail thee in the day when the Father shall take righteous vengeance upon the despisers of His Son? How shalt thou escape, if thou neglectest the great salvation?
II. Christ is Teacher; yet the world remains untaught. He has compassion on the ignorant, but the ignorant do not avail themselves of His pity. He says, 'Learn of me'; but men refuse His instruction, and slight His wisdom. He is God's Prophet; the one infallible Master, in whose school there is no speculation, or conjecture, or mysticism, but only truth. He teaches as One that has authority, and claims the submission of the human intellect. Hear me, says a human teacher; and every one who has something of moment to say may claim a hearing. One Teacher alone is entitled to say, Hear me, and at your peril disbelieve my doctrine. Human reason asserts itself the judge of divine revelation, and declines to receive its philosophy or its theology from any infallibility beyond itself, from any oracle beyond its own intuitions. Science proffers but scanty allegiance to this heavenly Teacher; poetry does not sing His praises; history is not enwoven with His name; philosophy craves no help from Him; metaphysics is often the perversion of His truth; and fiction excludes Him from its pages of sensation, and passion, and vanity. The press is not upon His side; in the great world of journalism He is hardly named; in the chairs of learning He has no seat, and often in the pulpit His truth is muffled, if not disowned. Scholars blush to name Him; critics scrutinize His words with less reverence than those of Homer or Cicero; statesmen go not to Him for counsel; the wisdom of this world refuses to owe anything to Him, and its literature would count itself disfigured by an allusion to the cross. As a new classification of human ideas, or a new exposition of social ethics, somewhat more elevated than those of Persia, or Greece, or Rome, His Gospel may be listened to, but not as the good news from heaven, in the belief of which is life, in the non-belief of which is death.
It is not merely yon German pantheist, turning the New Testament story into a myth; nor yon French infidel, dissolving the biography of the Son of God into a romance; nor yon African dignitary, giving the broad lie to Moses and the prophets; nor yon philosophic lecturer, boasting of a Christian liberality that can afford to be generous to Jupiter; nor yon bevy of poets and artists, sighing over the gods of Greece, or re-touching the worn-out statues of Apollo, or re-beautifying the obsolete idolatries in their chants to Endymion and Astarte, or gilding (to speak colloquially, whitewashing) the obscenities of heathendom by their fair idealisms. But it is that the tone of literature, and science, and art, is not Christian. The current of the age,--in the Church an under-current, in the world an upper-current,--is running against the Bible, and especially against the cross of Christ. the leaders of opinion refuse to be led by the one Prophet sent from God, and would rather go back to the cave of the sibyl, or the grove of Dodona, than consult the Urim and the Thummim on the breastplate of God's Prophet-priest, in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. This intellectual rebellion against Christ as the divine Prophet, this philosophical non-submission to Him, indicates too plainly that all things are not yet put under Him.
Going apart, then, from all these insincerities and perversities, separating thyself from these philosophies, hast thou, O brother-man, delivered thyself over to the divine tuition of the great Prophet, so as to draw thy scholarship from Him? Is that truth to thee which He teaches? Is that error which He disallows? Hast thou submitted thyself, thy mind, thy soul, thy body, thy whole being, to Him? Is thy daily life the echo of His teaching? Is thy business put under Him? Thy employments, thy recreations, thy pleasures, thy plans, thy expenditure, thy efforts for others, moral or physical, thy accomplishments, thy gifts, thy learning, thy speech, thy silence,--are all these put under Him? Is He thy absolute Master, the Manager of thy affairs, thy Counsellor, thy Lawgiver, thy Guide? And dost thou all the more unreservedly put what is thine under Him, because so few, in this creation of His, own either His sceptre or His rod?
These are solemn words of our Prophet, 'Because I tell you the truth, ye believe me not' (John 8:45); and again, 'My sheep hear my voice, and they follow me' (John 10:27). Hast thou, O man, heard this voice, and art thou following Him who speaks? Hast thou given thyself into the hands of this great Prophet, and submitted thy whole intellectual being unreservedly to His instruction? Say not, I should in that case be a machine, a slave. Suppose it were so, would it be a misfortune to be thus moulded, irrespective of that proud will of thine; to be clay in the hands of such a potter as the Son of God? But it is not so. Never art thou more thoroughly free, more truly thyself, than when completely in the hands of this Prophet. For all truth is liberty, and all error bondage; and He who can give us most of truth is our deliverer. Call it force or compulsion, it is divine force, and the compulsion of Omnipotence is the perfection of creature liberty,--the compulsion of the irresistible light, which liberates earth each morning from the bondage of darkness, which raises the dew-drop from the cold grass, and draws it up to roam the sky in liberty and brightness; the compulsion of the hammer that smites in pieces the prisoner's chains, and compels him to be free!
III. Christ is Mediator; yet the world has not accepted His mediation. Its millions have chosen, and still choose, to stand upon their own footing, and be represented by no substitute. The communication between earth and heaven by one divine medium has never been recognised or acted on by men, though established and proclaimed by God. I do not refer merely to the supplanting of the One Mediatorship by that of Mary, or the saints, or the Church. I speak of man's non-acceptance of the priestly intercession of the risen Christ, in various forms, and his preference of human mediatorship, or of no mediatorship at all, to this. To stand at a distance from God is felt to be incompatible with our relation to Him as creatures, or with our safety as sinners. There must be a drawing near of some kind, whether that may amount to fellowship or not; and men have multiplied inventions for securing an approach, in the idea that any method will do, if the inventor be at all in earnest. God's one way of bringing the visible into contact with the invisible, the unholy into fellowship with the holy; His one meeting-place between Himself and the sinner, his one reconciliation between earth and heaven, is rejected, and each man will have his own way of dealing with Jehovah. Instead of the one Priest, the one temple, the one altar, the one sacrifice, there are priests many, temples many, altars many, and sacrifices without number. The one Sinbearer is not accepted; His blood, His cross, His advocacy, His intercession, are treated as unimportant, if not rejected wholly.
These are blessed words of the apostle elsewhere in this same Epistle, 'Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus; and having an high priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart, in full assurance of faith.' In the midst of a world to whom the sacrificial mediation of Christ is nothing, shall we not cleave to the mighty privilege here presented to us? Shall we not personally realize the 'boldness' which the blood gives to each one who credits the divine testimony to its emboldening power? Or shall we treat that blood as if devoid of efficacy, and go to God in uncertainty, as men experimenting upon its properties, and incredulous of its power to purge the conscience and prevail with God?
IV. Christ is King; yet the world has not yet honoured His crown. I do not speak now of that ecclesiastical non-submission displayed by churches that name His name, yet are governed by other laws than His. I point specially to the political non-submission manifested by the kingdoms of earth. As Prince of the kings of the earth He is unrecognised, either by its princes or its people; and the thought of His royal sceptre is distasteful to kings and emperors, to presidents and statesmen. In their cabinets He has no seat assigned to Him. In their counsels He is not consulted. They prepare their congresses, and hold their conferences, and form their conventions, without reference to Him. They enter into commercial treaties; they send out their ambassadors; they make peace or war; they construct their navies; they muster their armies; they build their fortresses; they sheathe and unsheathe their swords, without taking Him into account. We seek Him in the palace, in the castle, in the senate-house, in the camp, in the fleet, in the hall of justice, but we find Him not. There was room once in Bethlehem for every one but the young Child; and there is room in this wide world for every one but its King. Republic, monarchy, despotism, federation,--they are all alike! Christ is shut out! He comes unto His own, and His own receive Him not.
Non-acceptance of the Seed of the woman as Saviour was the sin of the earlier ages, from the days of Cain; and non-submission to this promised Seed as King and Lord was the sin of succeeding times, from Nimrod downward. The world's after-history, in all lands, and empires, and religions, shows us these two united; and earth to this day holds on in her old course of non-subjection to her rightful King. Babylon, Assyria, and Egypt have their counterparts in the modern kingdoms of the world. Lords many, kings many, emperors many, usurpers many, earth has had, and to them it has bowed the knee. But to this one King of the Father's choosing, anointing, and enthroning, it will vow no allegiance; or gives at the most, mouth-honour, breath, which the poor heart would fain deny, but dare not. He that sitteth in the heavens doth laugh, but He has not yet descended to speak to them in His wrath, nor to vex them in His sore displeasure. God is standing in the congregation of the mighty; He judgeth among the gods, saying, How long will ye judge unjustly, and accept the person of the wicked? But they know not, neither will they understand; and God has not yet arisen to judge the earth, nor to depose its rebellious dynasties, nor to constrain the obedience of the nations, nor to bring to pass the promised service of loyal love from the sons of the first Adam to their true Head and Kinsman the 'second man,' the Lord from heaven. The revolt is as wide-spread as ever, and it is only a handful, a remnant here and there, the result of God's eternal election, that owns Him as Head and Lord. The rest are blinded and hardened: 'Who is Lord over us?' is the cry of earth. All the world wonders after the beast, worships him, and receives his name in their forehead and in their hand. The spirit of antichrist is lawlessness, the contrast and contradiction of Him who magnified the law, and made it honourable. Antichrist is the self-exalting one, the opposer of God and His Christ; his aim, the monarchy of earth. The personification of all rebellion and self-will, he does his utmost to perpetuate and extend the world's non-reception of Christ, to prevent all things being put under Him.
As King, Christ is Judge; but the world accepts not His judgment; it believes not in His acquittals and His condemnations, either now or hereafter. His sentences, as moral verdicts of approval or disapproval, they may receive; but as judicial decisions of the highest court of appeal, inferring irreversibly the recompense of a glorious heaven or an unquenchable hell, they repudiate them. In this sense Christ is not Judge, and there is no judgment-day, and no great white throne. All things are not yet put under Him as Judge!
As King, He is Avenger, but the day of recompense has not yet come, and 'sentence against an evil work' has not yet been executed. Therefore not only does the world reject Him as the Avenger, but a large section of modern Christianity disowns the very idea of vengeance, as incompatible with love, and the effeminate theologies of the age refuse to believe that the wrath of the Lamb is a reality, that the day of vengeance is in His heart, or the rod of iron in His hand. They have yet to learn the divine antipathy to sin, and the divine determination either to pardon or to punish eternally every sin, and every fragment of a sin, on whomsoever it shall be found. They have yet to understand the meaning of these awful words, 'I will tread them in mine anger, and trample them in my fury.'
As King, He is the Conqueror; but though His great victory is won, His conquest is not yet complete. The routed host still rallies, disputes the field, nay, recovers ground so widely, that men ask, Where is the Conqueror, and where is His victory? Heathendom is as populous and as idolatrous as ever, and Christendom is yet more hostile to Christ and to Christianity than paganism of old. The sway of antichrist is vast; and Satan is not yet bound, but goes to and fro throughout the earth, the inspirer of its false religions, the instigator of its rebellions, the forger of its errors, the soul of antichrist, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience.
As King, He is Deliverer, the opener of all prisons, and the looser of all chains. But the gates of brass are not yet broken, nor the bars of iron cut asunder. The curse still poisons the soil and troubles its tillers,--the curse of barrenness, disease, pain, weariness, vanity, the sweating toil of man, and the travail-pangs of woman. The wilderness has not yet been glad, nor the desert blossomed as the rose.
As King, He is the Resurrection and the Life; but the dead have not yet risen, the grave has not refunded its ill-gotten treasure. The dust of saints, though precious in His sight, is undistinguishable from the mould of earth; and forms beloved of Him and beloved of us are still the prey of corruption. He has the keys of Hades and death, but He has not unlocked their two-leaved gates, nor said to the prisoners, Go forth. The churchyards of earth have not yet been emptied, nor has the sea delivered up its dead. The worm still feeds on bodies which are parts of Christ's body, and the Head has not yet interposed. The shroud still wraps forms which are the temples of the Holy Ghost, and He who has the residue of the Spirit has not yet rescued one particle of that holy dust. Death still reigns, and 'he who has the power of death' still continues to slay. The tomb still holds the countless atoms of redeemed mortality, and this corruptible has not yet put on incorruption. Death, the last enemy, has not yet been destroyed, and the grave can still boast of its victory.
Now we see not yet all things put under Him; but we see Jesus on the Father's throne, crowned with glory above, in anticipation of the like crown below. For earth's long rebellion shall come to a 'perpetual end.' Each spoiler shall be spoiled, each conqueror conquered, each prison opened, each boaster silenced, each blasphemer confounded, each antichrist smitten, each rival throne overturned, when 'the Christ' shall take to himself His great power and reign.