en he
wrote the words "redemption by the Blood of Christ" was this, the
rescue certified to men by the commissioned power and devoted
self sacrifice of Christ in dying, going down to the mighty
congregation of the dead, proclaiming good tidings, breaking the
hopeless bondage of death and Hades, and ascending as the pioneer
of a new way to God. If before his death all men were supposed to
go down to helpless confinement in the under world on account of
sin, but after his resurrection the promise of an ascension to
heaven was made to them through his gospel and exemplification,
then well might the grateful believers, fixing their hearts on his
willing martyrdom in their behalf, exclaim, "He loved us, and
washed us from our sins in his own blood, and hath made us kings
and priests unto God." It is certainly far more natural, far more
reasonable, to suppose that the scriptural phrase "the blood of
Christ" means "the death of Christ," with its historical
consequences, than to imagine that it signifies a complicated and
mysterious scheme of sacerdotal or ethical expiation, especially
when that scheme is unrelated to contemporaneous opinion,
irreconcilable withmorality,and confessedly nowhere plainly stated
in Scripture, but a matter of late and laborious construction and
inference. We have not spoken of the strictly moral and subjective
mission and work of Christ, as conceived by the author of the
Apocalypse, his influences to cleanse the springs of character,
purify and inspire the heart, rectify and elevate the motives,
regenerate and sanctify the soul and the life, because all this is
plain and unquestioned. But he also believed in something
additional to this, an objective function: and what that was we
think is correctly explained above.

We are next to inquire more immediately into the closing parts of
the doctrine of the last things. Christ has appeared, declared the
tidings of grace, died, visited the dead, risen victoriously, and
gone back to heaven, where he now tarries. But there remain many
things for him, as the eschatological King, yet to do. What are
they? and what details are connected with them? First of all, he
is soon to return from heaven, visiting the earth a second time.
The first chapter of the book begins by declaring that it is "a
revelation of things which must shortly come to pass," and
"blessed is he that readeth; for the time is at hand." The last
chapter is full of such repetitions as these: