Epistle of Peter about Jesus going down to preach to the spirits in prison. Into that Hades, so the tradition of the Church ran, Christ had descended, being, however, by His Divine nature able to escape, to loose the bonds of death, the first of men to return to the light, bringing Adam with him' after an imprisonment of four thousand years. By being the first to rise again into life, He had overcome death, and thus proved to men that God had removed the penalty of sin. In this way His resurrection demonstrated the completeness of the reconciliation or atonement. It was a redemption not in any sense by the innocent suffering for the guilty. But its essence lay herein that Jesus, having devoted His life freely for the sake of others, had by His triumph even over death, revealed the divine and crowning gift of eternal life, converting it from a dim speculation into a glorious certainty. Any one who will re-read the Epistle of John with this key to his meaning will not fail to see how much its language gains in force. Not until he has grasped this key will he realise the fullness of the Apocalyptic declaration, "I am the first and the last and the Living one; and I was dead, and behold I am alive unto the ages of the ages, and I have the keys of death and of Hades."

With the Epistle to the Hebrews we need not stay. It is avowedly an ex parte argument, written by one who to the Jews became a Jew that he might gain the Jews. The whole of its chapters that deal in the language of the temple ritual with sacrifices and sin offerings, may, along with rites, ceremonies,

1 Four thousand three hundred and two years, according to Dante. (Paradiso, Canto vi. 119).

and beliefs, now discarded as superstitious, be left with reverence on the same shelf as other relics of Hebrew origin; things right and appropriate in their time and in their place, but having now no significance other than as a lesson of that which has been, which has served its good purpose, and which in the ordering of Divine Wisdom has been superseded.

But what, it may be asked, of the Epistles of Paul? Paul, too, shared the current conception as to the under-world; and with him the term "death" is used often to connote not merely the dissolution of the physical body from the soul, but the imprisonment of the soul in Hades. According to this view Adam was by his sin compelled to sojourn in the under-world, and all mankind sharing his sin were associates in his fate. From that fate the resurrection of Christ released mankind. As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive again— revivified. If any one living close to the time of Paul could tell us of his meaning, that is what he would say. That is, in fact, what Origen explicitly does say in his commentary on Paul's words, "the wages of sin is death," explaining that here "the under-world in which souls are detained is called death." When Paul announces that "Jesus Christ hath abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel," it is clear he does not mean physical death-because Christians. must still all die: Christ has not abolished physical dissolution. Neither does Paul mean by death merely "sin" and its attendant separation from divine happiness. He means that our descent and detention in the under-world, in which Paul and all

his hearers believed, are abolished, and our heavenly destination made near. "Not that we desire to be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality may be swallowed up of life." The Kingdom of Heaven is by Christ's resurrection literally "at hand." Could words be more emphatic than these which Paul addressed to the Corinthians: "If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith also is vain, ye are yet in your sins"? Plainly, all the orthodox modern theologians notwithstanding, Paul presents as the one efficacious feature in Christ's mission of redemption, the resurrection, not the crucifixion. The dying was the mere preliminary to the all-important rising. Jerome, commenting on the passage on the victory of Christ over the sting of death and the strength of sin, says: "We cannot and dare not interpret this victory otherwise than by the resurrection of the Lord." The Pauline conception of redemption is this Christ voluntarily died in order that by His rising again He might convince men that the Father would freely deliver them from the bondage of death in the under-world. For our sins Christ died, and was buried, and rose again the third day

are not these Paul's own words? Christ was delivered to death because of our offences, and was raised again because of our justification. His rising was the assurance of life for us. The Calvinistic misinterpretation of these utterances completely misses the mark and does violence to the construction of the words. Paul makes no appeal to us to believe in the death of Christ-everybody believed that He had been put to death. Paul makes no appeal to us to believe in the atoning sacrifice of

Christ the atonement by sacrifice was one of those Jewish ideas which he had had to put behind him in pressing toward the goal for the prize of the upward call. What Paul did emphatically say was this: "If thou shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved." Believe in the resurrection with all that is involved, the destruction of the fear of death, the triumph over Hades, the victory over sin and bondage; believe that as the Lord Jesus triumphed and rose, thou also mayest triumph and rise-that is salvation unto thee, a gospel of life unto life. When He had first descended into the lower parts of the earth, He ascended up on high, leading captivity captiveleading out a multitude of captives. What can these words mean if not that already set forth? And they are but an echo of Christ's own words, "I if I be lifted up will draw all men after Me"? The unperceptive gloss of the recorder who added, "this He said signifying what kind of death He would die has confused our Lord's real meaning.

1 Alger, History of the Doctrine of a Future Life, p. 284.

"A prominent feature in the belief of Paul, and one deserving of distinct notice. . . is the supposition that Christ was the first person, clothed with humanity and experiencing death, admitted into heaven. Of all the hosts who had lived and died, every soul had gone down into the dusky under-world. There they were all in durance, waiting for the Great Deliverer. In the splendours of the realm over the sky, God and His angels dwelt alone. That we do not err in ascribing this belief to Paul we might summon the whole body of the Fathers to testify in almost unbroken phalanx, from Polycarp to St. Bernard. The Roman, Greek, and English Churches still maintain the same dogma. But the apostle's own plain words will be sufficient for our purpose. "That Christ should suffer and that He should be the first that should rise from the dead.' 'Now is Christ risen from the dead and become the first fruits of them that slept.' 'He is the beginning, the first-born from among the dead, that among all He might have the pre-eminence.' 'God raised up Christ from among the dead, and set

Lastly, the primitive Church instituted the observance of the Lord's Day, to be held as a day of rejoicing for the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. It was to be held not on the Sabbath, with all the deadly inertia of Jewish thought which clung to Sabbatical observances; but instead, on "the first day of the week." This observance of Sunday as a Christian feast-day perpetuates the simple rejoicings of the first Christians in having found the gospel of life. The observance of Fridays as commemorative of Christ's death was a much later institution introduced by the monkish advocates of the gospel of death.

We have seen what the teaching of the Apostles was; and it is not seriously disputed that for nearly two centuries the Church continued to be a Church of the resurrection. Life, not death, was its central thought. The crude frescoes on the catacombs of Rome, silent but uncontrovertible witnesses of the purity of the early faith, teem with allusions to the

Him at His own right hand in the heavenly places, far above every principality and might and dominion.' The last words refer to the different orders of spirits supposed by the Jews to people the aerial regions below the heaven of God. 'God hath' (already in our antici. pating faith) raised us up together with Christ and made us to sit in heavenly places with Him.' These testimonies are enough to show that Paul believed Jesus to have been raised up to the abode of God, the first man ever exalted thither, and that this was done as a pledge and illustration of the same exaltation awaiting those who believe. 'If we be dead with Christ we believe we shall also live with Him.' And the apostle teaches that we are not only connected with Christ's resurrection by the outward order and sequence of events, but also by an inward gift of the Spirit. He says that to every obedient believer is given an experimental knowledge of the power of the resurrection of Christ,' which is the seal of God within him. . . 'Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him; but He hath revealed them unto us, for we have received His Spirit.""