more of painstaking instruction, would be useful in pulpit ministrations. But it is not to be forgotten that the preacher is called upon to minister to a great diversity of minds and hearts on every public occasion; and these occasions should be in a large degree for worship and spiritual culture. The precise style and extent of teaching that is needed by young men seeking Christian scholarship is not within the function of the ministry. Providentially, the Church has not only her pulpits but her colleges; and the methodical and comprehensive treatment of religious themes required by leading minds, not possible through the more popular agencies of the Church, may be furnished through the institutions for higher education.

Of course, it is understood that the highest Christian knowledge is not to be gained from the study of books or the professor's instruction. The strongest apprehension of Christian realities can be reached only by Christian living. But it is also true that Christian learning may be a help to Christian living, just as the lack of it may be a hinderance.

It should also be understood that we do not advocate the conversion of our colleges into theological seminaries. If it were not for what Professor Bowne calls the "great power of the misunderstanding," this statement would be unnecessary. We distinctly hold that the training required by a Christian minister is one thing, and that required by a Christian scholar is another. We also hold that the training furnished by our colleges at present is not of such a sort as to furnish one of the prime essentials of Christian scholarship; that in the scheme of general instruction Christianity does not find the place which properly belongs to it.

We would add, therefore, with becoming modesty, but also with becoming emphasis, that no Christian college is thoroughly equipped that does not contain a professorship well endowed and ably manned for instruction in the science of Christianity. Such instruction should have the dignity and advantage of a distinct department. Perhaps in no way could funds be more worthily bestowed than for the founding of such professorships. We need also a large outpouring of Christian offerings to make our educational institutions as powerful and complete and attractive as possible. Christian education should be in every sense the best. And this can be reached only by a larger

benevolence than the Church has as yet practiced, or even conceived. We need endowments for our academies as well as for our colleges. We need great universities, not merely in name but in reality, sheltering special technical schools, all under the care of the Church, to promote a learning at once thorough, symmetrical, and Christian.

The last need to be mentioned, perhaps not the last in importance, is the common need of Christendom-a deepening of spiritual life. Our institutions of learning should be, in the largest degree possible, living centers of religious power.

By no single measure, but by several-by larger attention to distinctively Christian subjects, by larger benevolence that broader schemes may be realized, by deeper piety that all may be crowned with the blessing of God-our Christian colleges may be brought to such a condition as to illustrate better than they do at present the distinction between Christian and secular education.

Whoever has found young men fresh from college, with minds awake upon a large variety of secular themes, but dull and empty and dubious with respect to subjects most vital, and has seen their ignorance rapidly ripening into unbelief; whoever has looked over society and seen the need, not merely of a learned ministry and an earnest evangelism, but of men of broad and splendid culture in heartiest sympathy with all the legitimate enterprises of the Church; and whoever has reflected upon the part that scholars hold, or should hold, in the affairs of the Church, the nation, and the world, must feel that few subjects are more worthy of attention than the one with which we have attempted to deal.

ART. IV.-CHRIST PREACHING TO THE SPIRITS IN

PRISON.

Ὅτι καὶ Χριστὸς ἅπαξ περὶ ἁμαρτιῶν ἀπέθανεν, δίκαιος ὑπὲρ ἀδίκων, ἵνα ὑμᾶς προσάγαγῃ τῷ θεῷ, θανατωθεὶς μὲν σαρκὶ ζωοποιηθεὶς δὲ πνεύματι· ἐν ᾧ καὶ τοῖς ἐν φυλακῇ πνεύμασιν πορευθεὶς ἐκήρυξεν, ἀπειθήσασίν ποτε ὅτε ἀπεξεδέχετο ἡ τοῦ θεοῦ μακροθυμία ἐν ἡμέραις Νῶε κατασκευαζομένης κιβωτοῦ εἰς ἣν ὀλίγοι, τοῦτ' ἔστιν ὀκτὼ ψυχαί, δεισώθησαν δι ̓ ὕδατος. 1 Peter iii, 18-20.

Because also Christ once for sins suffered, the just for the unjust, that us he might bring to God; being put to death as to the flesh (fleshwise), but made alive as to the spirit (spiritwise); in which also to the in prison spirits going, he preached (proclaimed) the disobedient at one time, when the forbearance of God waited, in the days of Noah, the ark being a preparing, through (by means of) which a few, that is, eight, were saved, by (through the agency of) water.— Literal Rendering.

"Because Christ also suffered for sins once, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God; being put to death in the flesh, but quickened in the spirit; in which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison, who aforetime were disobedient, when the long-suffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls, were saved through water."-Revised Version.

SCARCELY any other passage in the New Testament presents so many and so great difficulties as that given above. It is not chiefly that it is obscure, so that no sense can be made of it (as are some other passages), for that is not the case; but while it plainly declares very much, it also leaves so much undetermined that it is difficult to affirm positively what is its real meaning. It is introduced somewhat parenthetically into the general course of the thought of the context. If we read directly on to the middle of the eighteenth verse, closing with the statement of Christ's death, "the righteous for the unrighteons," we find the apostle exhorting his brethren to the patient endurance of afflictions and persecutions after the example of Christ; and if then we leap forward to the twenty-second verse, the course of the thought will seem to be continuous and consecutive. That which occurs between these two points seems to be introduced as make-weights and illustrations, designed to enforce the foregoing exhortations to patient endurance. It thus has the appearance of an episode-a turning away from the direct line of thought to pursue a side line-setting forth and explaining some things somehow connected with those exemplary sufferings, or, perhaps, simply their historical

sequents, and not immediately bearing upon the matter of the preceding exhortations. Viewed in this aspect, it becomes separated in its sense from the leading thought of the discourse, and so standing by itself to be interpreted according to the natural import of the language; and if so considered, the passage, in its direct grammatical construction, presents no special difficulties.

The latter part of verse eighteen declares that Christ, having suffered physical death (oapkí, fleshwise), was made (or found) alive (πνεúμaτ, spiritwise), and in that state (v6) “he went and preached (proclaimed) to the spirits in prison." The record of these things appears to be made in the order of historical sequence. He died as to the flesh, in which state he had been living, and was alive in another state, that is, as to the spirit, or in a pneumatical, as contradistinction from a physical, state; and then he is spoken of as, in that state, "going,”—ropɛv0ɛíç, signifying a change of place, a proceeding-apparently for the purpose of performing the act next designated, "preached," (ἐκήρυξεν), “ to the spirits in prison”—τοῖς ἐν φυλακῇ πνεύμασιν. Thus far the only question requiring to be settled is, "Who were these spirits in prison?" But out of that arises the whole difficulty of the case.

Before proceeding further, it may be well to examine more closely the language of the latter part of the eighteenth verse and the nineteenth verse. The interpretation of σapkí (in the flesh) and vεúμar (in the spirit), given by Alford, appears altogether satisfactory, and indeed felicitous. "It was thus, in this region, under these conditions, that the death on the cross was inflicted. His flesh, which was living flesh before, became dead flesh; Christ Jesus, the entire complex Person, consisting of body, soul, and spirit, was put to death, σapki (fleshwise), but made alive again (Swo¬оındɛís, quickened, raised to life), πvɛúμarı (spirit-wise).... Quoad carnem (as in respect to the flesh), our Lord was put to death; quoad spiritum (as to the [his] spirit), he was brought to life; not that the flesh died, and the spirit was made alive, but that quoad (as to) the flesh the Lord died, and quoad (as to) the spirit (his rational soul, his essential self) he was made alive (did not die). He, the God. man Christ Jesus (body and soul), ceased to live a fleshly, mortal (physiological and psychical) life, and began to live a

spiritual resurrection life. His own (human) spirit never died, as the next verse shows us." Here, too, we may introduce the language of Luther, as especially pertinent to the point in hand: "Christ by his sufferings was taken from the life which is flesh and blood, . . . and he is now placed in another life, and made alive according to the spirit (πνεúμаτı), has passed into a spiritual and supernatural life, which includes in itself the whole life which Christ now has,. so that he has no longer a fleshly but a spiritual body.”

...

In what is here given it will be seen that we depart from the rendering of our "Authorized Version," but agree with the Revised Version, in not construing TVεúμаTI (verse eighteen) "by the spirit," of the Holy Ghost, which is clearly contrary to the proper grammatical sense of the word in this place. That construction is also both exegetically and theologically objectionable, for only the mode of the designated quickening is meant to be indicated, without any reference to the agent by whom the work was effected. Nor was that quickening the same with our Lord's resurrection from the dead, which was historically an after-affair.

This construction also gives a better significance to the first words of the next (the nineteenth) verse, v , rendered by which in the Authorized Version, but in the Revised Version in which-that is, in which form or condition of being. Nothing is here said about the agency of the Holy Spirit in the work of quickening, predicated subjectively of our Lord after his death on the cross. It is simply indicated that after the crucifixion the human soul, still living, and as an inseparable part of the God-man, in its disembodied state "went and preached," of which transaction more will be said in the sequel.

The nineteenth verse ascribes to our Lord two distinct but closely related actions, going and preaching. The former of these is the equivalent to the well-known language of the Apostles Creed, "He descended into hades." The human soul of Christ, which departed from the body at the awful moment when "he dismissed his spirit," was at once, and by that act, brought into other conditions and environments, the passage into which sufficiently answers to the sense of the word "going” (700ɛv0eìs), though change of place as well as of condi