The idea that the righteous dead will spring into being in a state of incorruption, and that the living faithful will be instantaneously transformed, in their scattered places throughout the earth, and changed into the spiritual nature before appearing in the presence of Christ is an error of a serious nature, since it practically sets aside the New Testament doctrine of the judgment (itself a first principle), and tends to destroy the sense of responsibility and circumspection induced by a recognition of the fact that we must all stand before the judgment-seat of Christ, that we may receive in body according to that we have done, whether good or bad. To profess a belief in the judgment while holding this view, is only to retain a form of words out of admiration to New Testament terminology while having lost that which is represented by the words. If only the righteous dead are to awake to incorruptibility, than, Jesus is robbed of his honour as judge, and the judgment-seat ! is robbed of its usefulness and its terror. If the living are to be subject to immortalisation, say in their own houses, before Christ pronounces them blessed, is the judgment-seat not a mere empty form? If (worse than all) the wicked are not to be there to hear and receive their doom, it is no judgment at all, but a mere collection of the chosen; no terror at all, but a ceremony stripped of every element of anxiety, since to have a part in it, according to this theory, is to be safe beyond measure; no
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