And again: "Behold, we go to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man shall be betrayed to the chief-priests and the Scribes, and they shall condemn Him to death, and shall deliver him to the Gentiles, to be mocked and scourged and crucified; and the third day He shall rise again" (St. Matt. xx. 18, 19). In these prophecies the words "three days," "three days and three nights," and "the third day," are used as equivalent expressions, and simply imply part of three days. We have a parallel passage, Esther iv. 16, where the phrase "three days and three nights" is used to signify two nights and one full day. And we sometimes use an analogous expression in English.

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So well known were the prophecies of the resurrection, that the chief-priests and the Pharisees, after they had seen our Lord expire on the cross, came together to Pilate, saying, "Sir, we remember that that Seducer said, while He was yet alive, After three days I will rise again. Command therefore the sepulchre to be guarded until the third day lest perhaps His disciples come, and steal Him away, and say to the people, He is risen from the dead: and the last error shall be worse than the first. Pilate said to them: You have a guard: go, guard it as you know; and they departing, made the sepulchre sure, sealing the stone and setting guards" (St. Matt. xxvii. 62-66). All these precautions, instead of having the effect which the enemies of our Lord desired, only served to place the truth of His resurrection beyond the possibility of a doubt. For the guards who had been stationed at the tomb to prevent the disciples taking away the body of Christ, became witnesses of the fact of the resurrection, and began to proclaim it in Jerusalem, till the chief-priests stopped their mouths with bribes, and persuaded them to say, "His disciples came by night, and took away the body while we were asleep" (St. Matt. xxviii.).

The truth of the resurrection rests on the clearest and most incontestable evidence. Besides the testimony of the guards, we have that of the disciples of Christ, so many of whom laid down their lives in attestation of the truths which they had witnessed. To these our Lord appeared frequently during the forty days that He abode

upon earth after His resurrection. Sometimes He manifested Himself to one or two, sometimes to all the Apostles together; and on one occasion, we are told by St. Paul, He was seen by more than five hundred brethren at once (1 Cor. xv. 6). So far, indeed, were the Apostles from being over-credulous, that St. Thomas, one of their number, on being told by the rest that they had seen our Lord, refused to believe, and said, "Unless I see in His hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the place of the nails, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe." In condescension to the weakness of this Apostle, and to confirm our faith, our Lord next appeared when Thomas was with them, and said to him, "Put in thy finger hither, and see My hands; and bring hither thy hand, and put it into My side; and be not faithless, but believing. Thomas answered, and said, My Lord and my God" (St. John xx. 25-28). After such evidence as is given us in the simple and natural accounts left us by the writers of the New Testament, nothing more could possibly be required to place the reality of the resurrection on the most solid foundation.

CHAP. XXIII.

Sixth Article: "He ascended into heaven, and sitteth at the right hand of God, the Father Almighty."

WHEN our Lord had remained forty days on earth after His resurrection, speaking with His disciples of the kingdom of heaven (Acts i. 3), instructing His Apostles in many divine secrets concerning His Church, and the matter and form of the Sacraments, the time had come at which He was to leave the world, and ascend to His Father. We need not dwell on the various circumstances which attended His departure from the world, as they belong to sacred history rather than to doctrine. It is enough to point out that our Lord ascended into heaven, (1) To take possession, in His human nature, of the glory which He had merited by His life and death; for the Lamb that was slain is worthy to receive power, and divinity, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory" (Apoc. v.

12). (2) He ascended into heaven to prepare a place for us. In His Father's house are many mansions, and He is gone to prepare a home for us; but He will come again and take us to Himself, that where He is we also may be (St. John xiv. 2, 3). A throne is ready waiting for us, and will undoubtedly be given to us unless by our own fault we forfeit it. (3) He has gone to plead our cause with His Father. "We have an Advocate with the Father," says St. John, "Jesus Christ the just; and He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world" (1 John ii. 1, 2). He has carried the marks of His sacred Wounds with Him to heaven, to speak in our behalf, and to represent unto His Father the immense price at which we have been redeemed. He ascended as a conqueror, taking with Him all the holy souls who had died in His grace, as the first-fruit of His victory: "ascending on high, He led captivity captive, He gave gifts to men" (Ps. Ixvii. 19).

"Sitteth at the right hand of God, the Father Almighty." As God, Jesus Christ is equal in every thing to His Father, and as man He is exalted far above all pure creatures. To represent to us the honour and glory with which He is crowned in His human nature, the Apostles, by telling us that He sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty, give us to understand that He occupies the highest place in heaven. He is said to be seated at the right hand of God to express His exalted dignity and the unalterable repose of His beatitude. The expression here used is of course only figurative; for, as God is a pure spirit, He has no body nor hands, nor does our Lord sit any more than stand, for St. Stephen tells us, 'he beheld the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing on the right hand of God' (Acts vii. 55). In expressing heavenly truths, the Apostles were obliged to use human language, and in this instance the idea is taken from the analogy of what happens among men of different rank who meet together. Ás the right hand is the place of honour, it is assigned unto our Lord, and He is said to sit or to stand as contrasted with the highest among the angels, whom the sacred Scriptures represent as prostrate before the throne of God,

with their faces veiled, as if unworthy to appear in His presence.

CHAP. XXIV.

Seventh Article: "From thence He shall come to judge the living and the dead."

As our Lord ascended into heaven, the disciples continued gazing steadfastly after Him; and when He had disappeared from their sight, two angels were sent to announce unto them that this same Jesus who had been taken from them into heaven should so come as they had seen Him go into heaven. Our Lord then will come again on the last day, to demand of all mankind a strict account of the way in which they have served Him. All our words and actions, and even our inmost and most hidden thoughts, will be made known to the whole world, and we shall be rewarded or punished as we deserve. But as every one is judged immediately after death, a general judgment at the end of the world would seem superfluous; it will therefore be well, in the explanation of this Article, to point out some of the reasons which the holy Fathers use to prove the advantages of a solemn promulgation before the assembled universe of the sentence passed on each one at his death.

1. The influence which men have exercised by their example, their teaching, by the books they have written, by the children or followers they have left behind them, continues after their death; and the good and evil of which they have been the cause can be more clearly manifested at the end of the world.

2. The character of the virtuous is often unjustly taken away, while the wicked in this world frequently obtain the praise of virtue; it is therefore fitting that this apparent injustice should be remedied at the end of the world.

3. The good and bad alike have their bodies as partners in their virtues or guilt, and consequently it is fitting that in the general resurrection they should share the glory or ignominy of a general judgment.

4. The good have frequently to suffer in this world. while the wicked prosper, or they are involved in the

temporal calamities which the wickedness of others has brought on a whole city or nation; and it is therefore fitting that the providence of God in His dealings, both with the good and the bad, should be vindicated before the whole world on the last day.

We are left in darkness and uncertainty about the time of the end of the world; but there are three principal signs, or forerunners, of the last day: (1) The preaching of the Gospel throughout the world, for our Lord says (St. Matt. xxiv. 14), "This Gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then shall the consummation come;' (2) a great falling-off from the faith; and (3) the coming of Antichrist: "unless there come a revolt first, and the man of sin be revealed,” the judgment will not take place (2 Thess. ii.).

It is worthy of remark, that, in the account which is given of the last judgment in the New Testament, no mention is made of a middle state; but we are simply told of the eternal happiness of the good, and the eternal reprobation of the wicked. The reason of this is, that all who go to Purgatory will finally go to heaven, and after the last day Purgatory will no longer exist.

Before

This Article is the last of those which specially refer to the second Person of the ever-adorable Trinity. proceeding to speak of the Holy Spirit, it will be well to mention that the actions ascribed to our Lord in the foregoing Articles were performed by Him in His human nature. It was in His human nature that He was conceived and born of a virgin, that He suffered and died for us, that He rose again from the dead and ascended into heaven, which, in His divine nature, He had never left. But though all these things happened in His human nature, it is quite true to say that it was God who was born, who suffered, who died, who was buried, who rose again and ascended into heaven; because, whatever belongs to the nature belongs to the person who rules and sustains that nature. Just in the same way as every thing which we do or suffer, whether in the body or the mind, is attributed to our person, so the actions or sufferings of our Lord, whether in His human or divine nature, belong to His one Divine