e Judge of the quick and dead, and the
vengeance which he shall take upon them that know not God, and obey not
the gospel. Any allusion to the judgment seat of Christ fills them with
fury, and causes them to pour forth awful blasphemies. They know that
the Lord Jesus repeatedly declared himself the Judge of the living and
the dead--that "the hour is coming in which all that are in their graves
shall hear his voice, and shall come forth: they that have done good,
unto the resurrection of life, and they that have done evil, unto the
resurrection of damnation;" and that the very last sentence of his
public discourses is, "And these" (the wicked) "shall go away into
everlasting punishment; but the righteous into life eternal." When they
drop the mask for a moment, they can accuse apostles and disciples with
"dwelling with noxious exaggeration about the _person_ of Christ."[29]
Christ, as revealed in the gospel, they hate with a perfect hatred. But
when it becomes necessary to address Christians, and beguile them into
the deceitfulness of Pantheism, the tune is changed. Christ becomes the
model man--"one conceived in conditions favorable to the highest
perfectibility of the individual consciousness; and so possessed of
powers of generalization far in advance of the age in which he lived.
They can listen to and honor one of the best expounders of God and
nature in the Man of Nazareth."[30] The vilest falsehoods of Pantheism
are ascribed to Jesus, that those who, ignorant of his doctrine, yet
respect his name, may be seduced to receive them. Of him who declared,
"Out of the heart of man proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries,
thefts, false witness, blasphemies," they have the hardihood to declare,
"He saw with open eyes the mystery of the soul; alone, in all history,
he estimated the greatness of man." Calculating upon that ignorance of
the teaching of Christ which is so general among their audiences, they
dare to represent the only begotten Son of God as teaching Pantheism:
"One man was true to what is in you and me; he saw that God incarnates
himself in man, and evermore goes forth anew to take possession of his
world. He said in this jubilee of sublime emotion, 'I am divine. Through
me God acts; through me, speaks. Would you see God, see me; or see thee
when thou also thinkest as I now think.' Because the indwelling Supreme
Spirit can not wholly be got rid of, the doctrine of it suffers this
perversion, that the divine na