Christ's description of the final judgment. In Oriental countries, at the time of Christ, the institution of civil government had never advanced beyond its primitive, simple, patriarchal form. There was no division, as there has been in the western world, in more advanced stages of culture and civilization, of the functions of government into the legislative, the judicial, and executive. The sovereign was everything, lawgiver, judge, and executive. All these functions were implied and comprehended in the very name of king. Christ, while on earth, as the king and head of the kingdom of Heaven, promulgated his laws; he laid down the principles of his government. It was necessary, in order to complete the functions of a king, that he should represent himself as a judge. He had declared what actions should be rewarded and what punished, what dispositions should prepare the soul for the society of himself and the saints in light, and what must necessarily banish their possessor into the companionship of the vile. He therefore proceeds to predict the final issue of things under various figures. At one time, the kingdom of Heaven is a feast, at which the faithful shall sit down with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, but the unworthy shall be shut out in outer darkness. At another time it is a bridal supper, to which the watchful and diligent came early and were admitted, but the negligent and the slothful came late, and were excluded. At another, it is a wedding feast, to which one came without a wedding garment, and was cast out. To sum up all in one tremendous scene, and set forth by the most impressive representation the winding up of this

world's probation, he represents himself to be, as he had been the lawgiver, so likewise the judge of mankind. He selects one virtue as the representative of the whole character, one grace as the pledge of the existence of all the rest; that love which is the fulfilling of the Law, that regarding of our neighbor as ourselves, which is more than all burnt-offerings and sacrifices, as the criterion of fitness for heavenly joy.

"When the Son of Man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory. And before him shall be gathered all nations; and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats; and he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left. Then shall the KING say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink; I was a stran ger, and ye took me in; naked, and ye clothed me; I was sick, and ye visited me; I was in prison, and ye came unto me. Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungered, and fed thee, or thirsty, and gave thee drink? When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in, or naked, and clothed thee? Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee? And the KING shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. Then shall he say also unto them

on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the Devil and his angels. For I was an hungered, and ye gave me no meat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink; I was a stranger, and ye took me not in; naked, and ye clothed me not; sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not. Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungered, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee? Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me. And these shall go away into everlasting punishment; but the righteous into life eternal."

I ought, perhaps, in conclusion, to say, that there is a diversity of opinion as to the meaning of this scenic representation. By most interpreters, it has been made to refer to the final judgment of all mankind. In that case, it must include those who had lived and died before Christianity was introduced, and the stress of the thought turns on the assembling of the whole human race before the throne of the Judge.

There are strong objections, it is said, to this view of things. It involves the conception, either of the sleep of the soul for ages and centuries, or its conscious existence in the unseen world for an equal length of time, unjudged and uncertain of its final condition. Either of these suppositions is naturally improbable.

Then it is to be observed, that the condition of the persons judged is made to turn on the manner

in which they have received and treated Christ's disciples, who seem to be introduced under the designation of "these my brethren." It is therefore thought by many, that Christ refers in this dramatic prophecy to the results which will attend the reception or the rejection of his religion in the world, and the good or ill treatment of those whom he sends forth to teach it to the nations. Those who receive his Apostles, and the glorious religion they teach, shall be for ever blessed and happy, and those nations or individuals who reject the Gospel, and maltreat its ministers, shall suffer untold miseries, here and hereafter.

These diversities of opinion, however, do not affect the subject of this Discourse, the figure of speech by which Christ denominates himself a King. It is as the Promulgator of the Truth and Law of God, by which mankind ought to be governed, and by which they are hereafter to be judged.

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DISCOURSE XXI.

CHRIST A KING.

JESUS ANSWERED, MY KINGDOM IS NOT OF THIS WORLD: IF MY KINGDOM WERE OF THIS WORLD, THEN WOULD MY SERVANTS FIGHT, THAT I SHOULD NOT BE DELIVERED TO THE JEWS: BUT NOW IS MY KINGDOM NOT FROM HENCE. PILATE THEREFORE SAID UNTO HIM, ART THOU A KING THEN? JESUS ANSWERED, THOU SAYEST WELL THAT I AM A KING. TO THIS END WAS I BORN, AND FOR THIS CAUSE CAME I INTO THE WORLD, THAT I SHOULD BEAR WITNESS UNTO THE TRUTH. EVERY ONE THAT IS OF THE TRUTH

I GAVE, in one of the preceding Discourses, some remarks on the relation of Moses and the Jewish dispensation to the age. I endeavored to show that the Mosaic institutions were shaped to meet the condition and the wants of the infancy of the world. Religion has no necessary connection with any form of civil government. Yet Moses, when he established a religion, established a government, not because there is any necessary connection between the two, but because the Israelites, having been slaves, had no nationality and no civil government, and were about, for religion's sake, to commence a