minds. The disease of sin jaundiced their eyesthey saw everything with a diseased and distorted vision, and, worse than all, they could not receive Him who came to purify their lives, to heal their diseases, and to give sight to the blind. They said they were zealous for the law and the prophets, but they had not the mind of Him whose spirit moved Moses and the prophets to write and to speak. They said they were Moses' disciples, as men say now that they are Bible Christians. Alas! they say so, while their lives correspond not with the words of God, and we know their faith is not based upon the letter of those Scriptures which they pretend to venerate. In the hands of Satan, through the perverse mind of man, tradition has done for the Christian Church what it did for the Jews of old-made the plain words of God of none effect. His words concerning the incarnation of His Son in our mortal flesh, are not believed and rejoiced in. His doctrine concerning His Atonement; His words concerning the intermediate state; His words concerning the resurrection of the just and the unjust; His words concerning the Kingdom of Christ, and His glory as a King on the earth; His words concerning the unchangeable form and organization of His Church, concerning her abiding ministries and gifts; and, finally, His words concern

ing the restitution of all things, are either called in question or entirely ignored. How did one of the first believers lay down the foundation of the truth? He laid it in these words: "We have found Him of whom Moses in the law and the prophets did write." These words have led us to recognize Him, to embrace Him, and to follow Him as our Messiah under the veil of suffering humanity. What simplicity was there in this man! A poor fisherman, haply leaving his net from time to time at the door, and going into the synagogue, to hear the words of Moses and the prophets; thus his mind was prepared to receive, not only the person of Jesus, but also to receive His words, and to rejoice in His works, without questioning. Moses and the prophets are those who lead us to Christ; and who when we fall back would push us forward. They should be as the voice behind us, saying, "This is the way; walk ye in it," when we would turn to the right hand or to the left. All the work and service of Moses in his erection of the Tabernacle, as well as his and the words of all the prophets, lead us to Christ, as the Head of His Church; and in the light of the spirit they lead us to discern the true order and organization of His body-the Church. If we hear not Moses and the prophets, if we are not brought to a change of mind and heart,

through attending to them in the light of the Spirit of God, then in vain may we talk of power, or cry for miracles; the resurrection of all saints will have no more effect upon us than the resurrection of the Lord had upon the men of His own day and generation. Of course, Abraham could not say, "They have the Gospel, the Epistles, and the Revelation of Jesus Christ." These unattended to, with the other Scriptures, only increase the condemnation of the thoughtless and unbelieving. But in this dispensation, when we carefully give heed unto Moses and the prophets, and unto Christ's Gospel, and the ministers thereof, we are found indeed worshippers of the Lord God of Israel, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ; then we truly acknowledge Him who of old dwelt between the cherubim, and now dwells in flesh. Thus closeth the ministry of our Lord Jesus as the Jew; the minister to the circumcision, who, by His teaching, confirmed the faith of their fathers, and ministered to them the truth touching their intermediate state, into which for a time He was about to pass, when His human soul should be separated from His flesh, ere they should both be united by resurrection, and bound together in imperishable blessedness, and, as such, be taken up unto God to reveal His glory for ever and ever.

CHAPTER VIII.

HE DESCENDED INTO HELL.

By which [i.e. the Spirit] also Jesus went and preached unto the spirits in prison.-1 PETER iii. 19.

For this cause was the Gospel preached also to them that are dead, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit.-1 PETER VI. 6.

Ir was the prayer of our Lord in the days of His flesh, groaning under the burden of mortality, and weighed down under the burden of our sins, that in due time, by His death, He might get quit of them, and totally remove them from flesh, making an end of sin by the sacrifice of Himself. His prayer was, that though He had willingly come under the law of mortality, yet the Father would not leave Him under its law to see corruption in the tomb where they laid Him; and though His human soul was under the law of all human souls, and was dismissed to the receptacle and abode proper to the human soul, yet His prayer

was that the Father would not leave His soul in Hades, where the souls of other men were left. Therefore it is written, His flesh rested in hope, in the hope of a joyful resurrection, and His soul was confident that it should not remain in the place of separate spirits, but that on the third day it would be reunited to the body, and thus He would stand up again on the earth, a perfect man, manifesting in our nature both life and immortality. The Father was always placed before that Man, and consequently He was not moved away from His steadfastness. He was, therefore, steadfast in faith, joyful in hope, and rooted in charity. He drank of the brook, the rivulet that flowed in the way. He slaked the thirst of His soul at the river of His Father's pleasure, and consequently His heart was glad, and His glory, or the Spirit of God and of glory, rejoiced in His renewed being; His flesh rested in hope, and His soul was assured that though the gates of hell prevailed to enclose Him, He would, Samson-like, carry them away in the hour of nature's silence, awaking from under the sleep of death, and thus prevail to open the Kingdom of Heaven to all believers, thereby assuring us that, as the Shepherd and Keeper of His people, He would not henceforth suffer the gates of Hades to prevail against His Church, or to enclose the members of His body. For, saith the Apostle,