received as an authoritative description of our Lord's ministry in Hades. But just as from Bunyan's great Allegory we might very safely infer what the Puritan conception of the Christian life was in the seventeenth century, so from this "Gospel of Nicodemus" we may very safely infer what conceptions the Christians of the second century formed of Christ's descent into Hades. And in this Gospel it is expressly affirmed,1 that, when He arrived, the gates of the Hadean prison burst open before Him, and the King of Glory, taking our forefather Adam by the hand, and turning to the vast multitude of imprisoned spirits, said, "Come all with me, as many as have died through the tree which he touched; for, behold, I raise you all up through the tree of the Cross,"_words which, after all, are but a paraphrase of St Paul's great saying, "As by one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the obedience of One shall the many be made righteous."

This, then, was the faith of the early Church, before it became corrupted by heathen philosophies and heathen superstitions-viz., that the good news brought to earth by Christ was also preached by Him in Hades, preached even in Gehenna; that on the bridge of his Cross even the worst of the spirits in torment were able to pass over the "great gulf" and enter into the

1 The Gospel of Nicodemus, Part II., Chap. 8.

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joys of Paradise; that even the disobedient generation of Noah, though still "dead" in the judgment and censures of men, live unto God. Why should it not be our faith too? St Paul held it as well as St Peter; for in all those passages in which he speaks of the redemption of Christ as extending to all who are in heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, by those who are "under the earth," he signified the inhabitants of that vast subterranean kingdom in which, as he held, the spirits of the dead were reserved for the day of judgment. And St John held it as well as St Paul; for, in his Apocalyptic vision,2 he too beheld "every creature in heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth,”—i.e., in Hades, giving glory and power unto Him that sitteth on the throne, and unto the Lamb for ever and ever.

And if St Peter held the faith that even the most disobedient of the spirits in prison were quickened into life by the preaching of Christ; if St Paul held that every knee in the Hadean kingdom should bow to Christ, as well as every knee in heaven and on earth, and every tongue confess Him Lord, which yet no man can do but by the Holy Ghost: if St John heard every creature in hades as well as in heaven and on earth, singing the high praises of God and the Lamb,-why should not we also hold this faith? If

1 Cf. Philippians ii. 9-11.

2 Rev. v. 13.

Christ took flesh and dwelt among us that He might become at all points like as we are and throw open the kingdom of heaven to all believers; if He trod, step by step, the path we have to travel from the cradle to the grave,—must He not also, for us men and our salvation, have passed on into that dim unknown region on which our spirits enter when we die ? Did He leave, did He forsake our path at the very moment when it sinks into a darkness we cannot penetrate, just when, to us at least, it seems to grow most lonely, most critical, most perilous? And if He followed our path to the end, and passed into that awful and mysterious world into which we also must soon pass, could his Presence be hid? Must not truth and mercy, righteousness and love attend Him wherever He goes? Would not the eternal Gospel in his heart find fit and effectual utterance, and the very darkness of Hades be illuminated and dispersed as it was traversed by the Light of Life? Surely our own reason confirms the revelations of Scripture, and constrains us to believe that, in all worlds and in all ages, as in this, Christ will prove Himself to be the great Lord and Lover of men, and will claim all souls as his own.

IX. WHAT WE SHALL BE

WHEN we were commencing our study, at the very outset of these Lectures, I forewarned you that, in all probability, we should find in the Word of God no clear and detailed disclosures of the final estate whether of the good or of the bad; and that for this reason. Just as it is impossible to convey to a child many of the facts, relations, and intercourses of mature human life, i.e., of its own subsequent career, so, probably, it is impossible that the higher facts of the life which is purely spiritual and eternal, i.e., the ultimate facts and conditions of our own career, should be conveyed to us at this early and initial stage of it, and while we are under the conditions of sense and time. If St Paul, when he was rapt in the spirit into Paradise, beheld scenes which he could not depict and heard what he calls "unwordable words," words, i.e., which could not be uttered, much more, had he been caught up into the very heaven of heavens, would he have found himself surrounded by sacred and august realities which it is not possible for man to conceive, much less describe. My warning has been abundantly verified. Although we have now studied most of the leading

passages in the Gospels and Epistles which relate to the future life of the human race, we have found none as yet which carries us beyond the æons of time. While the New Testament has much to tell us of our future conditions, it has nothing, or nothing definite, to say of our final estate, but compels us, in so far as that is concerned, to "trust in the living God who is the Saviour of all men," and in a very special sense the Saviour of all who believe in Him. And, indeed, there hardly can be a final estate for finite creatures such as we are. We must ever be reaching forth to things before and beyond us, ever rising through grade after grade of being and of attainment, ever approaching yet never reaching that infinite perfection which we name God.

For the present, at all events, we must be content with the revelation which He has made of "the ages to come," the ages which are to succeed this present age and to precede that great "day of judgment" beyond which as yet we cannot, for want of clearer light, safely project our thoughts.

Now as we try to sum up all that we have learned of those future but intermediate ages, there rises before us the image of a vast Hadean world, with its Paradise for the good and its Gehenna for the bad, in which the spirits of all who have left this life are assembled, in order that every man may receive ac