e
installation of a divine kingdom, and the brilliant reign of
universal righteousness and happiness among men, as if under the
very eyes of the Messiah and the very sceptre of God. The
Christians shall reign in Jerusalem, which shall be adorned with
indescribable splendors and shall be the centre of a world wide
dominion, the saved nations of the earth surrounding it and
"walking in the light of it, their kings bringing their glory and
honor into it." "God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes,
and there shall be no more death." That is, upon the whole, as we
understand the scattered hints relevant to the subject to imply,
when Christ returns to the Father with his chosen, he will leave a
regenerated earth, with Jerusalem for its golden and peerless
capital, peopled, and to be peopled, with rejoicing and immortal
men, who will keep the commandments, be exempt from ancient evils,
hold intimate communion with God and the Lamb, and, from
generation to generation, pass up to heaven through that swift and
painless change, alluded to by Paul, whereby it was intended at
the first that sinless man, his corruptible and mortal putting on
incorruption and immortality, should be fitted for the
companionship of angels in the pure radiance of the celestial
world, and should be translated thither without tasting the
bitterness of death, which was supposed to be the subterranean
banishment of the disembodied ghost.

CHAPTER IV.

PAUL'S DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE.

THE principal difficulty in arriving at the system of thought and
faith in the mind of Paul arises from the fragmentary character of
his extant writings. They are not complete treatises drawn out in
independent statements,butspecial letters full of latent
implications. They were written to meet particular emergencies, to
give advice, to convey or ask information and sympathy, to argue
or decide concerning various matters to a considerable extent of a
personal or local and temporal nature. Obviously their author
never suspected they would be the permanent and immensely
influential documents they have since become. They were not
composed as orderly developments or full presentations of a creed,
but rather as supplements to more adequate oral instruction
previously imparted. He says to the Thessalonians, "Brethren,
stand fast and hold the traditions which ye have been taught,
whether by word or by our epistle." Several of his letters also
perhaps many have been lost.