THE IUDGMENT DAY.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXVI, Issue 10344, 8 May 1912, Page 6

THE IUDGMENT DAY.

Bishop Orossley has been criticised of late with reference to some remarks of his regard jug the life after deaMi, gays au Auckland telegram. At tit Si a ty’ e Cathedra! Sunday night he replied la a sermon Ho said ; “I have been congratulated on having got_rid of my Christian philosophy of heaven and hell 1 might jnst as reasonably have been congratulated on getting rid of Cod Himself. One writer the * r- H y of whose works I recummei ■;>>«: ‘Nc man has ever yet gone ej heaven. No mau has ever yet been finally judged; no man has ever yet been finally damned ’ I hold to the belief that heaven and hell do not supervene upon death. ” Christianity, continued Dr, Crossley, demanded nothing that was either opposed to reason or contrary to the moral aspirations with which God had endowed them all. What was after death? He approached this sermon with an intense sense of reservation. Whats , "o'd be noted was the strongly marked reservation of those very creeds of their own Christianity. All that the creeds said about after death was enshrined in three statements: ‘That our Lord descended into hell; that He will return to judge the living and the dead,” and, lastly- “We lock for the -.e&ur. action of the body and the life everlasting.” Toe still more striking fact should bo noted of the silence in a i.vge r~*'* of the only man who ever knew, and Chat was Jesus Christ. They viewed the calm aloofness and self assertion of Jesus of Nazareth when he spoke of death or of judgment, though in the Jewish leligious world in His day there was elaborate upon the after death. There was a tremendous danger of building theories upon isolated texts, upon texts dissociated from the recognition oi the spiritual progress made at tiie moment they were said or written. Thera was a danger of forgetting that the great minds of Christianity had not been at one throughout the centuries upon ibis great subject Bishop Orossley, continuing, said there was tlie danger of assuming tinea tilings on certain witness : 1. The danger of assuming the everlasting life of the devil; 2 the danger of as nming the everlastingness of s>u; 8. the danger of assuming the necessary sverlastinguese of yourself. There was to be special note on the word ‘ ‘ necessary. ” The question faced them; “Am I an animal, slowly developed, shorter lived than many other animals, and yet supa?'lor to all? Am I & body only? One thing I know, my brain is my own, but it is not me. What is this ‘ ’Something obtains wit ! in me thEfc I can discipline, hue.not altogether control. There is personality that lias a most potent expression in memory. Memory is the most mysterious thing so myself. Memory acts whether I like it or not. Memory is a sort of self, but it does not die. Wnatam I? 3 am, I believe, a spirit with continued and unint rrnptpd existence and a body that constantly chances ” What was after death? There was me certainty in after death. It was this; The Day of Judgment was the last day, and that last day throughout the Scriptures was associated with the return of the Son of Man. Was the Day of Judgment the day of death? He said that upon judgment ami not until judgment depended heaven or hell. It was clean ayainst the New Testament to say the Bay of Judgment was the day of one’s death. If the Day of Judgment: was net the day of death, what happened to the soul after death? Jesus Christ bad told the story of the rich man and Lazarus, and in that story there was nothing more clear than two things—the continuation of conscience and the identity of character. Those who believed that they were to be judged cn the day of the:r death must find it riiffi cult to fix ideas of reality upon that tremendous real thing, the Day of Jndgm c nt, which most clearly not occur until the return of Christ if there was to be a stage when memory and conscience continued to act afior death, what was it? Christ on the Cross looked into the face of the dying criminal., who had asked Him to remember him when he camo into His Kicgom, and he answered, To-day thou shalS be with Me iu paradise,” They would get into dire confusion, said the Bishop, if they thougi t paradise was heaven The word had been used to describe the place of tho souls that had died waiting for the judgment after the Day of Hesurreotion. Ohilst said; “Touch me not. I am not yet a> cended unto your Father and My Father,” Paradise was what was described in the creed as the descent into hell. In the revised version, the word used was Hades. Hades meant the unknown, the unseen place, the place of rest, and peace of conscience and memory.

Concluding, the Bishop said that the long he'd view of the Church of Uod was that heavea and that hell were not esistant for people till’the Dev of Judgment. They would pass Into a stage after death with character, personality, and with memory.