I suppose there is no teaching more frequently insisted upon in the Old and in the New Testament as the truth of a judgment, now, or in the future, upon the misdeeds or sins of men. Let criticism prune and cut as it will, while it exhibits the deplorably low standard of morality once prevalent among the Hebrew peoples, and therefore prevalent among their Gods, their Elohim, Adonai and Jahveh, one thing, at least, is undeniable--that that which is recognised as immoral is reprobated and forthwith visited with condign punishment. Doubtless, acts which to us are wholly reprehensible are discussed without attaching any stigma to them, and are even permitted, and sometimes suggested, by Jahveh himself, as in the story of Judith and Holofernes. Such ethical insensibility is wholly natural, viewing the state of development at which the Hebrew people had arrived, and should cause no wonderment in those who are familiar with the Deity of Christian Mediaevalism, and the methods and practices he was supposed to favour. But what should be carefully noted is, that nothing is adjudged immoral but is forthwith sternly reprobated and condemned to a fitting retribution. "The way of transgressors is hard" was a conviction with the race. In the same way, the ethical note rings out in the New Testament, that right and wrong are eternally dissevered, sheep ever separated from goats; that virtue must be rewarded and vice be condemned and punished. Now, this teaching of the judgment to come, the bare announcement of which by Paul filled Felix, the Roman governor, with such dire consternation, is the subject of which we propose to set forth the philosophical and ethical explanation. In the Bible we have the mythical setting much as we have the mythical version of the agony of spirit undergone by Christ before he definitely committed himself to his prophetical work. It is for us to-day to disentangle the substantive truth from the maze of legend with which an imperfectly developed age has surrounded it and discover the true _raison d'etre_ of that doctrine which "the Bible Christian" confesses under the aspect of the "Last Judgment". Now, I take it that no educated man believes in the drama, or rather, the panorama, of the "last judgment"; the vision of Jesus sitting in the clouds, with every human being that ever was or shall be gathered before his throne to hear definite sentence pronounced upon them. The _mise-en-scene_ demands of course the presence of bodies, and I suppose it is needless to point out the dogma of the resurrection of the body, insisted upon by all the Christian Churches, is a blank impossibility. We may acquire other bodies in that unknown state, should we stand in need of such appurtenances--a fact which we may wholly disbelieve--but of one thing we may rest assured, that these identical bodies in which we die can by no possibility conceivable to us be brought back.