saving truth. Souls who have not heard of Christ will hear of Him, we trust, before the Day of Judgment; the Judge of the earth is sure to do right. God has winked at the times of ignorance (Acts xvii. 30); because, in fulness of time, the ignorant should have the key of knowledge given to them; that they might be dealt with in the same manner as those will be who now, everywhere, are commanded to repent. By no means should this be applied to wilful impenitence and unbelief, to men who hear God's Word and deliberately reject it. We must use our Lord's own words for every one of them; even as He did when He wept over Jerusalem: "If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes" (Luke xix. 42).

We pass to consideration of our Lord's descent into Hell.

The Intermediate Place, where the souls of men remain, between the Day of Death and the Day of Judgment, is called, in Hebrew, Sheol, "a hollow place; in Latin, Inferna; in Greek, Hades. In it are two realms: the Jews spoke of two-Abraham's Bosom, or Paradise, for the good; Gehenna, with its fire, for evildoers. The Greeks and Romans were familiar with descriptions of Elysian Fields; and of Tartarus, the abode of the wicked.

Sheol and Hades are each used sometimes as a general term for the spirit-world, that in which the soul of the Messiah was not to be left : “Thou wilt not leave My soul in hell" (Ps. xvi. 10; Acts ii. 27).

"His separate soul to Hades flew,

The Receptacles of the Dead to view;

T

O'er ghastly Death His Triumph to proclaim,

And make all Tophet tremble at His Name,"

Bishop Ken, on the Resurrection, Works, vol. i. pp. 170-172.

Paradise, and the Elysian Fields, are the promised place to the dying thief (Luke xxiii. 43), and are meant by Abraham's Bosom, where the beggar Lazarus was; the rich man was in torment, in Gehenna, in Tartarus, in Inferna (Luke xvi. 22-26). At the General Resurrection, when body and soul are reunited for judgment, those spirits who are in Paradise will enter Heaven, to partake of everlasting bliss (Matt. xxv. 34); the spirits in Gehenna, or Tartarus, will go into Hell, into everlasting darkness (Matt. xxv. 41; Rev. xx. 14, 15). The pain and darkness are spoken of as eternal, even as the blessedness and light are eternal (Matt. xxv. 46). In reference to this final state of the incurably wicked, our Lord said, “Fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul but rather fear Him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell" (Matt. x. 28).

The soul of our Lord really and truly went into the spirit-world. It is not necessary to think that He entered the realms of the utterly lost; if utterly lost, they could not be blessed by Him; if not utterly lost, they would not be there. "There is a worm that never dieth, which could not lodge within His breast; that is, a remorse of conscience, seated in the soul, for what that soul hath done." Nevertheless, all who are about to die, and desire to be with Jesus, should be told, "Whithersoever the soul goes, thither the Lord has been: He hath been in, and is acquainted with, all the paths and places of human sojourning." It is not less certain that our Lord's entrance gave freedom and wrought changes; for

1 Pearson on the Creed, art. v.

we are told graves were opened, and many bodies of the saints arose (Matt. xxvii. 52, 53).

Our Lord, having gone to the world of the dead, the lower parts of the earth, which generally mean Sheol,1 thence ascended to Heaven, leading captivity captive; after this, He received gifts for men, of such a nature that the Lord God might dwell among them (Eph. iv. 8, 9; Ps. lxviii. 18). Things under the earth, being thus subjected, bow to Him (Phil. ii. 10). The Book of God's Judgments is in His hand, and under His control (Rev. v. 1-3). His sovereignty, being above all, is acknowledged throughout the unseen world, and He has the keys of Hades and of Death (Rev. i. 18). The end of the Redeemer's work on earth was a beginning of help, of comfort, of deliverance, in the spirits' realm. The sense of Bishop Horsley's sermon, on 1 Pet. iii. 19, is this: It is very difficult to believe that of the millions who died in the Flood all died impenitent. The beneficent proclamation of the Gospel was limited to those who repented before death. Christ certainly preached neither repentance nor faith; for the preaching of either comes too late for the departed soul. He rather gladdened penitent souls, and gave them new gleams of hope. We are warranted in this belief: "The souls of them that depart this life do neither die with the bodies nor sleep idly. They which say that the souls of such as depart hence do sleep, being without all sense, feeling, or perceiving, until the day of judgment . . . utterly dissent from the right belief declared to us in Holy Scripture." 2

1 Ps. ix. 17; lxiii. 9; Isa. xliv. 23; Ezek. xxvi. 20; xxxi. 14, 16, 18; xxxii. 18, 24.

2 Article XL. of the Forty-two Articles put forth in the reign of Edward VI.

In the flesh, our Lord was manifested as man; in His human soul, or spirit, He was justified before God (1 Tim. iii. 16). In the flesh, He was put to death; in the spirit, He was quickened with new power of life (1 Pet. iii. 18). On the Cross, He said, "Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit;" and that moment of death brought freedom (1 Pet. iv. 1, 2). Then the Lord entered where the souls of men are; and to those who waited for salvation, as Jacob, salvation was made known. Luther, commenting on Hos. vi. I, wrote, "Christ appeared to the departed fathers and patriarchs

also preached to some who in the time of Noah had not believed, and who waited for the long-suffering of God; that is, who hoped that God would not enter into so strict a judgment with all flesh; but that they might acknowledge their sin, and be forgiven through the sacrifice of Christ." Thus Christ, in His flesh, wrought with and for men living in the flesh; in His spirit, He wrought with and for the spirits. If there is a grain of faith, of love, of knowledge, of obedience, which could not grow in this life; yet, wanted to grow; there will come light, warmth, opportunity. Judgment accords not less with goodness than wisdom. As to the utterly reprobate, "It is impossible for those who were once enlightened; and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, and have tasted the good Word of God, and the powers of the world to come, if they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance, seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh and put Him to an open shame” (Heb. vi. 4-6 ; Jer. xiii. 23; Rom. ii. 8).

Nearly the whole of our research has concerned Holy

Scripture for we must bear in mind that "outside the sphere of special revelation, man has never obtained such a knowledge of God as a responsible and religious being plainly requires."1 Not less certain, however, is it that, when we think of the three spiritual stages of preparation: (1) from Christ's humiliation till His coming in glory; (2) the stage, or season, of gathering out all evilnatural, human, Satanic; (3) the scene of victory in Eternal Glory; we find their physical counterpart in: (1) the creative process; (2) the disciplinary process, a selection of survivors; (3) the perfecting process, the mutual co-ordination of everything, and of everything with all. To this must be added the three stages, grades, processes, of the spirits' world: (1) the realm where the blessed rejoice, and are in blissful expectation; (2) the realm of discipline, varying as do the nature of the spirits; (3) the realm where body and soul are reunited for ever. Sometimes, men in the past, and our own beloved ones, were afraid; as to them, and as to ourselves, we say, “ Christ, by entering that place of the departed, frees us of our fears; as, by His ascension, He assures us of our hopes." 2 "Life, onward sweeping, blends with far-off Heaven."

"O joy of deep amaze !

Beneath the everlasting hills we stand,

We hear the voices of the morning seas,

And earnest prophesyings on the land,

While from the open heaven leans forth at gaze

The encompassing great cloud of witnesses.'

Edward Dowden, Awakening.

The work of Christ looks backward from every pre

sent moment, and forward from every present moment,

1 Professor Flint, "Theism," p. 305.

2 Pearson on the Creed, art. v.