xi. 7-9; Amos ix. 2. The sheol of the Hebrews much more nearly coincides with the hades of the Greeks, than with either our hell (in its now universally received acceptation) or the grave." "Along, however, with these points of obvi ous agreement between the sheol of the Hebrews and the hades of the Greeks, there were points, two inparticular, of actual diversity. One was that sheol was not, in the esti mation of the Hebrews, a final, but only an intermediate state. It was the soul's place of rest, and it might be, for aught they knew, of absolute quiescence during its state of separation from the body, but from which it was again to emerge, when the time should come for the resurrection of the dead. Closely connected with this was the other, that sheol was not viewed as a separate realm, like hades, withdrawn from the primal fountain of life. With the heathen, the Lord of the lower regions was the rival of the King of the earth and heaven. But with the more enlightened Hebrew there was no real separation between the two." Such, then, were the views respecting the destination of the departed prevailing in the early ages of the church. "At the Christian Era, popular phraseology would have made little distinction between the fact of a man's death and the idea of his descent to the lower regions. The latter was regarded as implied in the former." (Huidekoper, Christ's Mission to the Underworld.) Says Tertullian: "To us the nether world (inferi) is not an exposed cavity, nor any open receptacle for the bilge water of the world; but a vast region extending upward and downward in the earth, a profundity hid away in its very bowels. For we read that Christ passed the three days of his death in the heart of the earth, that is, in an internal recess, hidden in the earth itself, and hollowed out within it, and based upon yet lower abysses" (De Anima, c. 55). The language of Irenaeus, as translated by Prof. Huidekoper, is: "Therefore the Lord descended to the regions under the earth, preaching to them also his advent, the sins of such as believed on him being remitted." In a controversy with Celsus, Origen uses this language: "With a soul divested of its body, Christ dis coursed to souls divested of their bodies." In short, scarcely any dogma stands out more conspicuously upon the pages of patristic theology than this. Our limits do not allow us to quote the passages of the Old Testament that were regarded as predictions of Christ's mission to souls in their intermediate state. Says Bishop Pearson: "Many have been the interepretations of the opinion of the Fathers made of late; and their differences are made to appear so great, as if they agreed in nothing which concerns this point; whereas there is nothing which they agree in more than this, which I have already affirmed, the real descent of the soul of Christ unto the habitation of the souls departed. The persons to whom, and end for which he descended, they differ in; but as to a local descent into the infernal parts, they all agree." Such, then, was the interpretation given to this text by the church, regarded as a whole, at the time the fifth article was introduced into the creed. Indeed, we may say this interpretation, in all its essential features, has been generally maintained down to the present time. Dr. Bloomfield says: "the opinion that Christ went down and preached (i. e. proclaimed his Gospel) to the antediluvians in hades, is the common one, supported by the ancient and many of the ablest modern expositors." Bishop Horsley, in a sermon upon this text, maintains the same view, and asserts that "prison," as here used, is the "hell of the Apostles' creed." So, also, Dr. Christopher Wordsworth, in his very learned and discriminating commentary upon this passage, founds his exposition upon the same idea. His language is: "Christ after death went in his disembodied spirit to the nether world. Death opened to him a new sphere of missionary enterprise. He went and preached to the spirits in prison. He made two journeys, one downward, in his human spirit, to the nether world of disembodied spirits, and another upward, in his risen body reunited to his spirit, to the heavenly world, and to the right hand of God. Christ, who before had preached on earth to man in bodily presence, now, after his removal from them by death, preached also, or even, to human spirits in the region under the earth." De Wette, also, finds in this text the same fundamental idea. According to him, the passage teaches that Christ, in his spiritual personality (die geistige persönlichkeit), went not to the entire under-world, but to that department assigned to unbelievers. "Was den Ort betrifft, wohin Christus ging, so ist es nicht die ganze Unterwelt, sondern der verwahrungsort der im Unglauben abgeschiedenen Geister in derselben." But this interpretation, which, with all its modifications, retains the notion of the local descent of Christ's spirit to a common depository or receptacle of departed spirits, we cannot accept as the true one. For if we do receive it, it must be for one or the other of the two following reasons. (1.) In the first place, either that it accords with the general drift and scope of the teachings of Christianity on the subject; or (2.), in the second place, that the apostle Peter uses this language by accommodation, or “ex vulgari opinione." In other words, that the apostle conforms his language to the erroneous opinions and narrow prejudices of the people of his time. But this theory of an "intermediate state," and Christ's mission to souls in it, is not in harmony with the general tenor of the New Testament. It savors too much of paganism. That the notion of a common subterranean mansion for the spirits of the departed should have been entertained before the Sun of Righteousness arose upon the world, is not strange. Such a notion would seem to be the natural result of the practice of burying the body, and the soul's native presentiment of its own continued existence. It ought to excite no surprise to find this notion upon almost every page of the poetry and mythology of Greece and Rome. Nor, indeed, is it wonderful that the Hebrews, anterior to the advent of Christ, held the same opinion. For we must remember they had received no distinct revelation of the future state. The Law and the Prophets contained only "slight hints," "faint dawnings," of a scheme which was to bring "life and immortality to light." "As for a future state of retribution in another world, Moses said nothing to the Israelites about that. Whatever may at any time have been revealed to himself, and to some other highly-favored individuals, on that sub. ject, it does not appear that he was commissioned to deliver to the people any revelation at all concerning a future state. This was reserved for a greater than Moses, and for a more glorious dispensation than his law. For, as we read in the Epistle to the Hebrews, "the law made nothing perfect; but the bringing in of a better hope did (Heb. 10); namely, the promises given through Jesus Christ, who brought life and immortality to light, through the gospel." (See Whately, Encyc. Britan., Vol. I. Dis. 3.) This idea of an intermediate state holds one relation to an age in which the future state was a dim and uncertain prospect, but quite another to the time when the future state is a clear and shining revelation. One of the great and distinctive characteristics of the gospel is, that it brings life and immortality to light. Christ takes this momentous doctrine of the destination of the soul after death out of the sphere of uncertainty, conjecture, and shadow, and places it in the realm of actual knowledge. This is just what might be inferred from the relation of the Jewish religion to Christianity. On this point Dr. Barrow forcibly remarks: "As God did not by the Jewish religion speak his mind to all, so did he not therein speak out all his mind. As rivers run into the sea, as shadows flee before the sun, so these small and shallow, these dusky and faint revelations, would discharge themselves into, would vanish before, a complete and universal one." (Bar. Disc. Auth. of Chris.) - Does, then, the New Testament countenance the notion of a common receptacle of the spirits of the departed, such as is denoted by the hades of the pagans and the sheol of the Hebrews? The word hades occurs only eleven times in the New Testament. It is found in only three of the recorded sayings of our Saviour. But are we to conclude à priori that hades in the New Testament has the same meaning as the same word in pagan literature, or as sheol as used by the Hebrews? Words are but repreVOL. XIX. No. 73. 2 sentatives of ideas, and in different eras the same words represent essentially different ideas. In the progress of knowledge the contents of words are increased, or diminished, or changed. This fact is strikingly illustrated in the passage from the old to the new dispensation. Christ did not coin new words so much as he, so to speak, recast old ones, refining them of the dross of human errors, and enhancing their richness by incorporating into them new conceptions. A striking example is the name of the Deity. From what misconceptions did Christ free it, and what volumes of new meaning did he crowd into it! The same may be said of the word love. How much broader and deeper the Christian than the Jewish sense of this word! So much so that Christ says: "A NEW commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another." The word freedom receives a like expansion of meaning in the transition from the old to the new dispensation. On one occasion the Jews indignantly reply to Christ: "We be Abraham's seed, and were never in bondage to any man. How sayest thou then, Ye shall be made free?" To whom Christ responds: "If the Son shall make you free ye shall be free indeed." As though he had said, Freedom has heights you have not yet scaled, and depths you have not yet sounded, and lengths and breadths you have not yet measured. There are more things in freedom than are dreamed of in your philosophy. Now the future state is in a very important sense a doctrine of Christianity. If Christ and his apostles in describing it use words employed by pagans or Jews, must we take it for granted they attach to those words essentially the pagan or Jewish sense? Because they employ the word hades, are we to assume they denote by it a common subterranean depository of the souls of the departed? By no means. We are to remember Christ came as the light of the world, as the truth; and in ascertaining the meaning of his language in respect to any doctrine we are to be guided by the connection in which the words stand, and by other words which he has uttered in regard to that same doctrine. Our Saviour's first use of the word hades is in the expression |