him, and in it, he will fare in conformity with his present mode of conduct, passing accordingly from death either to a resurrection of life, or to a resurrection of damnation. Sheol as a spirit-abode, is entirely ignored in this text, and the soul or the rational and immortal principle of man -as it is usually defined, is declared to be in the grave, where it seemingly anticipates the awakening "voice of the Son of God," "to live, and move, and have-its being." The positive assurance of Christ that the souls are in the graves on the great and dread day of doom, deserves a further inquiry, and needs a little sifting.

How departed spirits can still, for example, inhabit graves, which may date back to the infancy of the human race, and which must have been obliterated myriad ages ago, by the various and important changes which the crust of the earth has since undergone, is a question which it requires at least several stupendous miracles to answer, each of which could not imply a less feat than a complete re-creation of the once buried but subsequently decomposed and dissipated dead. When a person is dead, we call what remains of him, his corpse-a dead, organic mass, in the incipient stages of decay and dissolution. He himself the supposed spirit, or the essential part of humanity the ego, has gone-it is generally believed, to some appropriate spirit-abode; some Sheol, either in the abyss of the earth, on its inferior surface: our globe being considered a plane, fixed in space, or in some far off transterrestrial realm, where it awaits further change in its circumstances, or prepares to meet the necessary modifications in its destiny.

But suppose that this view in respect to the immortal

part of man: his soul or spirit, is erroneous; that the corpse still embodies all the elements of a complete humanity, while it assumes only a different state and aspect of being, and that thus the whole man, body and soul-as we are accustomed to designate his presumed two-fold nature, is laid in the grave, it is clear that when the grave is empty, he can be no longer in it, but must be elsewhere, as it is an axiom in philosophy, that it is impossible for the same body to be in different places at the same time. Now it must be self-evident to any person of a little observation and intelligence, that literally innumerable graves -once the receptacles of dead men, have, during a long course of ages, been rendered tenantless, and that, of course, without the frequent and long-continued repetition of miraculous acts, it is impossible that in the graves at least, the dead should "hear the voice of the Son of God," and live! Experience teaches that usually in the course of a few years only, graves cease to give any evidence of the mortuary remains of man, except perhaps by the presence of some slight traces of the saline and acid bases, which once formed a constituent part of the human body, while the various gases with which they were united, have all escaped to mingle with other substances and to form new, organic combinations.

These apparent difficulties, presented by the case in question, could-of course, have been raised only from considerations emanating in a purely human stand-point, and in the unaided light of reason. Whence it may be inferred that they can be of but little account in their bearing on this important subject; for he that can raise the dead to life, performs a miracle, and he that can per

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form one miracle, may perform a hundred or a thousand as may be deemed expedient. Such being the case, all the objections that may be raised against the idea of a presence of "all the dead in their graves," on the LastDay, will constitute no more serious obstacles to a successful solution of the problem, than would so many fragile cobwebs, lightly floating on the breeze, or transiently gleaming in the sun-lit dew of the morning!

PARAGRAPH II.

The First Epistle of St. Peter, iii. 17-20.

The central doctrine, taught in this passage of Scripture, is that—after his death, Christ being quickened by the Spirit, "Went and preached unto the spirits in prison." The spirits mentioned here, were the shades of those wicked antediluvians who-in consequence of their flagrant sins, perished in the punitive waters of the Noachian deluge. Since that tragic event, they were shut up-it seems, in prison, where, according to St. Peter, Christ subsequently to his death, and in the significant interval between his crucifixion and his resurrection, visited their gloomy abode, and preached the Gospel to them. The word prison, it may be remarked, is Phulake in the original, and is rendered, in the Syrian version of the text, in Sheol or Hades; that is, according to this interpretation of the term, Christ preached to the spirits in inferis, which is synonymous with Sheol or Hades. The Apostle calls it a prison, because he seems to have considered it locked and bolted to make escape impossible.

There is no incident in the diversified history, recorded in the pages of the New Testament, more pleasing or

more admirable than this descent of Christ into Sheol, with the benignant intention to make known to its ghastly inmates the religion of the Gospel, and its adaptedness to their happiness. By this noble, philanthropic act, Christ displayed his humanity in the most charming and endearing light, and from it we are warranted in inferring that Sheol is not merely intended as a rendezvous of departed spirits, but as a disciplinary and ameliorating institution, purgatorial and redeeming in its nature. It was, hence, for the laudable purpose of teaching the spirits in Sheol, the truth of the evangelical religion of the New Dispensation, and thus through its instrumentalities and his example, to convert and save them, that Christ made this extraordinary excursion into the grim ghost-land of the dead.

Doctor Bartle, in his "Scriptural Doctrine of Hades," etc., insists that St. Peter by the use of the word ekéruxe, does not mean that Christ preached, but that he cried, namely in pain, while he suffered and made expiation for the sins of the wicked spirits in prison. Doctor Bartle seems to forget that the wicked spirits were not in Gehenna or Tartarus: in Hell, but only in Sheol or Hades, the abode simply of the dead or departed spirits,* and, besides, that the Apostle clearly teaches in the eighteenth verse of the text, that Christ had "once suffered for sins:" prior to his journey to Sheol. A truth, if possible, still more emphatically pronounced in the Epistle of Paul to the Hebrews, ix. 12, where we read: "He-Christ, entered in

*In the parable of Luke, xvi. 19-26, Hades assumes the place and character of Gehenna or Tartarus.

once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us:" all men! These facts should-it is to be presumed, be sufficient to induce us to allow to ekéruxe in the text, its usually accepted import.

The words of Doctor Bartle on this subject, may be in substance concisely thus stated: "If our Lord preached to the "spirits in prison" with a view to their reformation, then we must conclude that death does not materially alter a man's condition, inasmuch as the departed can repent and be converted to God there as well as here. One might indeed be led to suppose that human existence in the next world is a continuation of the same state of things experienced in this, if we had not declarations of Scripture to the contrary," etc. Instead of conceding that reformation, etc., was the object of the mission of Christ to Sheol, he advocates the theory that his errand there was to make redemption, and that he cried-ekéruxe, in the agony which he endured in the accomplishment of this end. He, therefore, adds: "The apostle, then, manifestly intends to carry out the notion that the crucifixion of Christ was not the end of those sufferings, which only found their culmination among the wicked dead in the prison of Hades,"

etc.

Finally, what strikes us in this case of signal compassion for the unfortunate dead, as extremely singular, is that Christ did not also preach to the spirits in the graves, where he expects-as we have seen, to find the dead in the Day of Judgment. For, according to his own statement, there are wicked shades there-probably in great numbers, "who shall come forth to the resurrection of damnation." Who can solve the riddle? or fathom the