As the resurrection is inseparably connected with the second coming of Christ, the words of Christ in John 14:1-3, are equally in point on this question. When he was about to leave his sorrowing disciples, he told them that he was going to prepare a place for them; he informed them moreover of his design that they should ultimately be with himself. But how was this to be accomplished? Was it through death, by which a deathless spirit would be released to soar away to meet its Saviour? No; but, says he, I will _come again_ and receive you to myself, that where I am, there ye may be also. Should any say that this coming of the Saviour is at death, we reply that the disciples of our Lord did not so understand it. See John 21:22, 23. Jesus incidentally remarked concerning one of his followers, “If I will that he tarry _till I come_, what is that to thee? follow thou me;” and the saying went immediately abroad among the disciples, on the strength of these words, that that disciple should _not die_. The eminent and pious Joseph Alleine also testifies:-- “But we shall lift up our heads because the day of our redemption draweth nigh. This is the day I look for, and wait for, and have laid up all my hopes in. If the Lord return not, I profess myself undone; my preaching is vain, and my suffering is vain. The thing, you see, is established, and every circumstance is determined. How sweet are the words that dropped from the precious lips of our departing Lord! What generous cordials hath he left us in his parting sermon and his last prayer! And yet of all the rest these are the sweetest: ‘I will come again and receive you unto myself, that where I am there ye may be also.’ What need you any further witness?” Dr. Clarke, in his general remarks on 1 Cor. 15, says:-- “The doctrine of the resurrection appears to have been thought of much more consequence among the primitive Christians than it is _now_. How is this? The apostles were continually insisting on it, and exciting the followers of God to diligence, obedience, and cheerfulness through it. And their successors in the present day seldom mention it.... There is not a doctrine in the gospel on which more stress is laid; and there is not a doctrine in the present system of preaching, which is treated with more neglect.” CHAPTER XXVII. THE JUDGMENT. We have seen how the grand doctrine of the future resurrection of the dead, demolishes with its ponderous weight the gossamer fabric of the immortality of the soul. There is another doctrine as scriptural and as prominent as the resurrection which opposes its impregnable battlements to the same anti-scriptural fable--a fable, weak, though encased in the coat of mail with which heathendom furnishes it, and not very imposing in appearance, though adorned with the gorgeous trappings of the mother of harlots. We refer to the doctrine of the future general Judgment.