He suffered in
behalf of the human race.

But what is all that commotion and flutter, and surging to and fro
above Him and on either side of Him? It is a detailed regiment of
heaven, a constabulary angelic, sent forth to take part in that scene,
and to execute the mandates that shall be issued. Ten regiments, a
hundred regiments, a thousand regiments of angels; for on that day all
heaven will be emptied of its inhabitants to let them attend the
scene. All the holy angels. From what a center to what a
circumference. Widening out and widening out, and higher up and higher
up. Wings interlocking wings. Galleries of cloud above galleries of
cloud, all filled with the faces of angels come to listen and come to
watch, and come to help on that day for which all other days were
made. Who are those two taller and more conspicuous angels? The one is
Michael, who is the commander of all those who come out to destroy
sin. The other is Gabriel, who is announced as commander of all those
who come forth to help the righteous. Who is that mighty angel near
the throne? That is the resurrection angel, his lips still aquiver and
his cheek aflush with the blast that shattered the cemeteries and woke
the dead. Who is that other great angel, with dark and overshadowing
brow? That is the one who in one night, by one flap of his wing,
turned one hundred and eighty-five thousand of Sennacherib's host into
corpses.

Who are those bright immortals near the throne, their faces partly
turned toward each other as though about to sing? Oh, they are the
Bethlehem chanters of the first Christmas night! Who are this other
group standing so near the throne? They are the Saviour's especial
bodyguard, which hovered over Him in the wilderness and administered
to Him in the hour of martyrdom, and heaved away the rock of His
sarcophagus, and escorted Him upward on Ascension Day, now
appropriately escorting Him down. Divine glory flanked on both sides
by angelic radiance.

But now lower your eye from the divine and angelic to the human. The
entire human race is present. All nations, says my text. Before that
time the American Republic, the English Government, the French
Republic, all modern modes of government may be obliterated for
something better; but all nations, whether dead or alive, will be
brought up into that assembly. Thebes and Tyre and Babylon and Greece
and Rome as wide awake in that assembly as though they had never
slumbered amid the dead