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immortality be permanently established and commence its sway over the living, as the last and best system of God to man, and this _resurrection day_ continue down to all subsequent generations of slumbering dead, raising every man in incorruption and glory. The judgment and resurrection of the world are therefore both progressing, for these two constitute the gospel reign of Christ. He is "the resurrection and life of the world," as well as "judge of quick and dead." Both are to be accomplished in the _last day_, and that day is now progressing. A _general_ resurrection, at the last vibrating pendulum of time, cannot I humbly conceive, be substantiated by the oracles of truth, any more than a _general_ judgment. I am rather inclined to think that _the judgment of the world by Jesus Christ expresses the whole, including the resurrection and all; even as the high priest, clothed with the breastplate of judgment on the day of atonement, closed his services by raising the nation into the holy of holies, "which was a pattern of things in the heavens_." If the Scriptures afford us any evidence of the _third_ coming of Christ, to raise the dead, for one, I must acknowledge my utter ignorance of the fact. In John (chap. vi.) Jesus several times uses the expression, "and I will raise him up at the last day." If others contend that this has reference to "_the last day of the last generation of the human race on the earth_," yet I must candidly acknowledge, that I cannot see a shadow of evidence to prove this position. The _last day_ in this instance, refers to the gospel dispensation, which commenced at the destruction of the temple, and involves the whole reign of Christ. It is synonymous with the "day of Christ" and the "day of the Lord" mentioned in several places by the apostles. Nor do I conceive it means, that Christ would raise them up by his own immediate power, but that God would raise the dead according to that doctrine, which he sent his Son to reveal to men, and this would be fully established in the world, and be believed and felt by Jew and Gentile Christians at the coming of Christ in his kingdom, at the end of that dispensation. _Then_ and not till _then_ were the predictions of Christ fulfilled, and then were those Christians, who had not seen Jesus after his resurrection, "made perfect in faith." The dead are to be raised at the _last_ trump; by which I understand the _seventh_, for no other _last_ is reve
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