3. But there seems also a fitness in Jesus being the Judge, from _His peculiar relationship to the Church._ "He created all things, that unto principalities and powers might be known by the Church the manifold wisdom of God." And He is now, in virtue of what He has done as a Priest, the Head over all things for the Church as a King. "Because he humbled himself, God hath highly exalted him." The grand end of His whole mediatorial reign is, "that unto God might be glory in the Church by Christ Jesus." But the work of Jesus Christ as Mediator will not have terminated, nor will He have received His full joy and reward, until He raises His people from their graves, and gathers His elect from the four winds of heaven; and opens the Book of Life, and from this biographical record adduces evidence of the reality of their loyalty, and of their love to the King; and reveals the glory of all His dealings towards them in every age:--until, in one word, the living Church, of which He is the Head, which "He loved" and "purchased with His own blood," and "sanctified and cleansed with the washing of the water of His word," shall be presented to Himself, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing, but holy and without blemish. His judgment of the Church will be the consummation of His mediatorial glory, and the fulness of His reward. As to the time _when_ Jesus Christ shall judge the world, we are ignorant. "Of that day knoweth no man, not even the angels." We know only that it will come suddenly--"as a thief in the night"--upon the whole world; and that "we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump; for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed." No words of man can venture upon any description of the appearance of the Judge, or the accompaniments of that great and terrible day of the Lord. But here are a few Scripture statements descriptive of this solemn scene:-- "For the Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father with his angels; and then he shall reward every man according to his works," (Matt. xvi. 27.) "And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven; and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other," (Matt. xxiv. 30, 31.)