The Judgment Day/Part 1/Section 1
PART FIRST.
THE THEATRE OF THE LAST JUDGMENT
SECTION FIRST.
The Popular Doctrine.
A general impression—Bishop Pierson—Passage from Exposition of the Creed—Thrilling descriptions—Passage from Young's Night Thoughts—Such views unsatisfactory to many minds.
The human mind appears to be deeply and generally impressed with the expectation of a day of judgment, or of moral retribution, when every man will be rewarded according to his works. This impression is so deeply engraven upon the inmost perceptions of the mind, and is so fully confirmed by the word of the Lord, and the dictates of reason, that it may justly be regarded as the general belief of mankind. But when we pass beyond the simple reception of this doctrine in a general form, and inquire when and how this judgment will take place, we instantly find ourselves surrounded by opposite and conflicting opinions. The most popular and general impression appears to be that the last judgment will take place on this earth, and that it will be accomplished by the Son of God, who will personally descend from heaven for that purpose.
This doctrine is very clearly expressed in its old and popular form, in the following passage which I copy from Bishop Pearson's Exposition of the Creed. This work is esteemed as very high authority and is regarded as strictly orthodox, especially in the Church of England and in the Protestant Episcopal Church in this country. This will be evident from the fact that it has long been used as a standard theological text book. The passage which follows is the closing paragraph of a long and critical exposition of the seventh article of the Creed.
"Having thus explained the nature of the judgment to come, and the necessity of believing the same, we have given sufficient light to every Christian to understand what he ought to intend and what it is he professeth when he saith, 'I believe in him who shall come to judge the quick and the dead.' For therein he is conceived to declare thus much: 'I am fully pursuaded of this, as an infallible and necessary truth, that the eternal Son of God, in that human nature in which he died, and rose again, and ascended into heaven, shall certainly come from the same heaven into which he ascended, and at his coming shall gather together all those which shall then be alive, and all which ever lived and shall be before that day dead, when causing them all to stand before his judgment seat, he shall judge them all according to their works done in the flesh; and passing the sentence of condemnation upon all the reprobates, shall deliver them to be tormented with the devil and his angels; and pronouncing the sentence of absolution upon all the elect, shall translate them into his glorious kingdom of which there shall be no end. And thus I believe in Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead."
To give force and effect to this doctrine of a literal judgment on this earth, and to impress it more deeply upon the mind, it has been customary to represent that last great day as being ushered in with an awfully sublime display of material imagery. Often has the crowded audience been held in breathless suspense while listening to some thrilling description of that day when the whole material universe will be thrown into the most awful convulsions, the sun and moon will disappear and the stars be hurled from their places in the skies, while earthquakes, lightnings and consuming fires will make this poor earth the victim of their unrestrained fury. In the midst of this awful scene, while planets will be rolling from their orbits, and earthquakes playing the funeral dirge of time, the blast of the archangels trumpet, louder than ten thousand thunders will reverberate from heaven to earth and awake the sleeping dead to meet their judge.
But this doctrine is much better suited to poetry than to prose, and I gladly avail myself of the following passage found in Dr. Young's Night Thoughts. It is true the passage has been quoted hundreds of times, but the distinguished reputation of the author, the great poetic beauty of the lines, and the unquestionable orthodoxy of the sentiments will constitute a sufficient apology for transcribing them once more.
"At the destin’d hour,
By the loud trumpet summon'd to the charge,
See, all the formidable sons of fire,
Eruptions, earthquakes, comets, lightnings, play
Their various engines; all at once disgorge
Their blazing magazines; and take, by storm,
This poor terrestrial citadel of man.
Amazing period! when each mountain-height
Out-burns Vesuvius; rocks eternal pour
Their melted mass, as rivers once they pour’d;
Stars rush; and final ruin fiercely drives
Her plough-share o'er creation!—While aloft,
More than astonishment! if more can be!
Far other firmament than e'er was seen,
Than e'er was thought by man: Far other stars!
Stars animate, that govern these of fire;
Far other sun!—A sun, O how unlike
The babe at Bethle’m! How unlike the man
That groan’d on Calvary? Yet he it is;
That man of sorrow! O how chang'd! What pomp!
In grandeur terrible, all heav'n descends!
And gods, ambitious, triumph in his train.
A swift archangel with his golden wing,
As blots and clouds, that darken and disgrace
The scene divine, sweeps stars and suns aside.
And now, all dross remov’d, heav'n's own pure day,
Full on the confines of our ether, flames,
While (dreadful contrast!) far, how far beneath!
Hell bursting, belches forth her blazing seas,
And storms sulphureous; her voracious jaws
Expanding wide, and roaring for her prey.
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And worldly fancy feeds on golden dreams,)
To give more dread to man's most dreadful hour,
At midnight, 'tis presum'd this pomp will burst
From tenfold darkness; sudden as the spark
From smitten steel; from nitrous grain, the blaze,
Man, starting from his couch, shall sleep no more!
The day is broke, which never more shall close;
Above, around, beneath, amazement all!
Terror and glory, join'd in their extremes:
Our GOD in grandeur, and our world on fire!
All nature struggling in the pangs of death!"
I am not disposed to intimate that such imaginative and poetical descriptions of the judgment day have been entirely useless. They consist in substituting the changes of the external and natural world for those of the internal and spiritual, and for many persons such apparent truths are undoubtedly of great use in keeping alive in their minds an impression of a future state of moral retribution, which impression might otherwise perish entirely.
But there is a class of minds to whom it seems just and reasonable to believe, that the last judgment will take place in accordance with the laws of our spiritual nature, and will leave the laws and operations of the natural world undisturbed; on minds of this class, the old and popular views of the judgment day have ceased to exert the least influence. They seem to them more like the creations of the imagination, or the visions of poetry, than like the stern and sober realities of our spiritual destiny. Such descriptions might serve to delight the fancy, were it not that the solemnity and importance of the subject renders it peculiarly unfit to be used for such a purpose. The conviction is every where becoming deeper and stronger, that the natural and spiritual worlds, though intimately united, has each its own peculiar laws; and that while the human body will be disposed of in accordance with the laws of the natural world, the last judgment and final destiny of the spirit, must be sought for in a knowledge of the laws of the spiritual world. Relying on this conviction I will endeavor to present, on the following pages, a few of those arguments on which the New Church rests the belief that the last judgment will take place in the spiritual and not in the natural world.