in his whole person, God and man, after his burial descended into hell, vanquished Satan, overturned the power of hell, and took away from the devil all strength and power." But nothing is asserted in any of the symbolical books of the Lutheran Church as to the mode in which Christ accomplished this result.

Luther himself, however, has expressed his opinion about the point a little more clearly. I know, says he, "that Christ himself, personally, has destroyed hell and has bound the devil," and "that all the devils ran and fled before him as before their death and poison." Hollaz taught, and this we believe to be the common Lutheran idea,—that Christ descended into hell "in order to shew himself as the Conqueror of death to the wicked spirits and the damned souls."

Now all these interpretations of the article in the Creed are grounded on this very passage of St. Peter, although several other texts are cited to throw light upon its more obscure portions.

We must not forget that this sense, too, was put upon the passage in the Articles of the Church of England published in King Edward the Sixth's reign, but happily omitted from the present Thirty-nine Articles :-" That the body of Christ lay in the grave until his resurrection: but his spirit, which he gave up, was with the spirits which were detained in prison, or in hell, and preached to them, as the place in St. Peter testifieth."

We need scarcely remark that the passage in its very form. utterly precludes such a meaning from being, on any sound principle of interpretation, extracted from it. Christ's preaching, wherever and whenever it took place, is in the text limited to those persons who were disobedient in the days of Noah. We must insist upon the point, that from this passage alone we have no right to infer that he preached to others. There are other objections which are of weight against both the views stated above, but we purposely waive their discussion at present.

Another view of this passage has been proposed, which has had defenders almost in every time, and which Dean Alford

• Dean Alford asserts that this is the view of the great majority of commentators, ancient and modern. It may be so; but it must not be forgotten that the ancient commentators consist chiefly of the Fathers, whose minds were warped by superstitious fancies of every kind, and whose judgment is consequently of little value in such a question. The modern commentators referred to consist principally of those orthodox German theologians, who have felt themselves bound as far as possible to support the opinions of Luther and of their Church, by which an unnecessary mystery has been thrown over the simple article of Christ's descent into the realms of the dead. Most of the rationalistic commentators, too, adopt the same view of the passage, from a too evident desire to graft upon Scripture notions which seem, at least at first sight, to partake of the spirit of the legends of the middle ages. The majority, however, of orthodox Protestant divines since the Reformation (the Lutherans in general being excepted), have rejected this interpretation.

will have to be its only possible meaning. It is, "that our Lord in his disembodied state did go to the place of detention of departed spirits, and did there announce his work of redemption,preach salvation in fact, to the disembodied spirits of those who refused to obey the voice of God when the judgment of the flood was hanging over them.

Bishop Horsley is one of the most noted of the English theologians who has adopted this view. He admits that "the great difficulty in the description of the souls to whom this preaching for this purpose was addressed, is this; that they were the souls of some of the antediluvian race." Yet he proceeds to say :

....

"Not that it at all startles me to find antediluvian souls in safe keeping for final salvation. On the contrary, I should find it very difficult to believe (unless I read it somewhere in the Bible), that of the millions that perished in the general deluge, all died hardened in impenitence and unbelief; insomuch that not one of that race could be an object of future mercy, beside the eight persons who were miraculously saved in the ark, for the purpose of repeopling the depopulated earth . . . . But the great difficulty, of which, perhaps, I may be unable to give any adequate solution, is this: For what reason should the proclamation of the finishing of the great work of redemption be addressed exclusively to the souls of these antediluvian penitents? Were not the souls of the penitents of later ages equally interested in the joyful tidings? To this I can only answer, that I think I have observed, in some parts of Scripture, an anxiety-if the expression may be allowed-of the sacred writers to convey distinct intimations, that the antediluvian race is not uninterested in the redemption, and the final retribution. It is for this purpose, as I conceive, that, in the description of the general resurrection, in the visions of the Apocalypse, it is mentioned, with a peculiar emphasis, that the 'SEA gave up the dead that were in it;' which I cannot be content to understand of the few persons, few in comparison of the total of mankind, lost at different times by shipwreck; a poor circumstance to find a place in the midst of the magnificent images which surround it; but of the myriads who perished in the general deluge, and found their tomb in the waters of the raging ocean.'

We cannot but regard Bishop Horsley's attempted solution of the difficulty to which he alludes, as eminently unsatisfactory. The counter-difficulty he raises against the common opinion that the antediluvian sinners were finally lost, is just the objection which has ever been brought against any wholesale condemnation of the wicked at all. We think that the conclusions at which we arrived in our last paper moderate the force of this objection; we do not pretend that they completely remove it.

e

d It is not at all necessary to suppose that millions perished by the flood. However, this is a question which it is out of our present purpose to discuss. Bishop Horsley's sermon On Christ's Descent into Hell, and the Intermediate State, appended to his Translation of Hosea, with notes explanatory and critical. London: 1804.

But there is this much to be said of Horsley's view, which is worthy of high commendation, and that is, he does not strain the text beyond its plain statements. Whatever be intended to be conveyed thereby, the preaching of Christ in the text is limited to the antediluvian prisoners, and to such Horsley is willing to limit it.

Mr. Kerf is a commentator of quite a different school. The conclusions which a Horsley feels he cannot make, a Ker has no hesitation to draw. In pages 84, 85, 86 of his treatise, the little difficulty that the antediluvian dead are alone mentioned, is very quietly not alluded to at all. However, on page 133, an attempt is made to grapple with it. He there says:

"It is true that this preaching seems to have been limited to those of Noah's days. But no good or just reason can be assigned why the limitation should be so insisted on, as to exclude the belief that others might also experience a similar grace. Once admit the principle that there is hope for any of the departed, and we are justified in extending that blessed hope to all who have in every age, or in any age, departed this life in involuntary ignorance of the Saviour. I say 'involuntary,' because, as I have often and earnestly impressed upon you, for those who depart this life in the wilful rejection of Christ, the Scripture holds out no hope of any kind."

We will not stop to expose fully the want of logical reason which characterizes the above. Our argument against all similar expositions of the place under consideration is: Peter, in his Epistle, limits the preaching of Christ, at the time referred to by him, to the antediluvian apostates. But no good or just reason can be assigned why the antediluvian sinners should be deemed worthy, above all others, of that mercy being offered to them in the intermediate state which Scripture does not warrant us to say is offered to others. Therefore there is an à priori presumption that, on a careful examination, the preaching of Christ referred to will be found to have taken place in this world, and is to be identified with the preaching of Noah, who is also alluded to in the very passage itself.

If, of course, it be logical to draw a conclusion from the particular to the universal, and assert that what is stated to refer to some refers to all, if we are to introduce our surmises to fill up the gaps left in Scripture, unquestionably then, but not till then, our whole line of argument is proved to be invalid.

Dean Alford is more cautious in his expressions, but no less

The Popular Ideas of Immortality, Everlasting Punishment, and the State of Separate Souls, brought to the test of Scripture. A series of discourses by the Rev. William Ker, M.A., Incumbent of Tipton. London: Simpkin, Marshall and Co. 1865.

surely tends to the result at which Mr. Ker has arrived, which Mr. Barlow accepts as dogmatic truth, and which all the advocates of this interpretation feel to be more or less required in order to render their view tenable.

Dean Alford indeed rounds the corner very nicely, and hints what he feels he cannot broadly assert.

"Why these [the antediluvian transgressors] rather than others are mentioned-whether merely as a sample of a like gracious work on others, or for some special reason unimaginable by us, we cannot say. It is ours to deal with the plain words of Scripture, and to accept its revelations as far as vouchsafed to us. And they are vouchsafed to us to the utmost limit of legitimate inference from revealed fact. That inference every intelligent reader will draw from the fact here announced :—it is not purgatory; it is not universal restitution; but it is one which throws blessed light on one of the darkest enigmas of the divine justice: the cases where the final doom seems infinitely out of proportion to the lapse which has incurred

it.

And as we cannot say to what other cases this kývμa may have applied, so it would be presumption in us to limit its occurrence or its efficacy. The reason of mentioning here these sinners, above other sinners, appears to be, their connection with the type of baptism which follows. If so, who shall say that the blessed act was confined to them?"

The italics are our own. The process of thought in the above is very interesting to note. Horsley's notion that the reason of the preaching referred to was "some special reason unimaginable by us," is alluded to, but felt to be unsatisfactory, and hence let drop out of view. If Scripture does not lead, imagination must run ahead. Wherefore we are first informed that it may be possible that the antediluvian sinners were only mentioned as a sample of a class upon whom a gracious work is performed; then the intelligent reader, it is concluded, will not fail to draw the proper conclusion from this passage,-that in cases where the doom on earth appears too heavy for the sin it succeeds, the balance is righted in the other world. In fact, who can dare to say that, "as a man soweth, so shall he reap," for there is a hope that in the intermediate state he may obtain that mercy which he refused to accept in this world?

We hope we have not done the Dean an injustice in making these remarks. We think his words convey the meaning we have given them. The unfairness of one of his remarks is, we think, clear. He says it is presumptuous to limit the occurrence, or the efficacy, of Christ's preaching to the dead. But Peter, so far forth as may be concluded from the text, does limit it to the antediluvian transgressors; and why should they be thought presumptuous who refuse to go beyond the text, and who maintain that Scripture gives us no grounds whatever to believe that the Gospel will be offered after death to any of the human family?

If the passage in St. Peter teaches that our Lord preached in Hades the Gospel to the persons who perished in the time of Noah, then Horsley's view is the only one which we are warranted to entertain, namely, that we neither know why or wherefore the Gospel was preached to them. If Dean Alford's conjectures are admissible, we see no valid reason why the text may not with equal fairness be cited as holding out hopes of a universal restitution.

We must here notice Dean Alford's rendering of this passage, and the criticisms which he brings to bear against what, for convenience sake, we may be permitted to call the Reformation view of the passage. The Dean renders it thus:

"Because Christ also suffered for sins once, a just person on behalf of unjust persons, that He might bring us near to God, put to death indeed in the flesh, but made alive [again] in the spirit: in which He also went and preached to the spirits in prison, which were once disobedient, when the long-suffering of God was waiting in the days of Noah while the ark was being prepared, in which a few persons, that is, eight souls, were saved by water."

His explanation of the portion under dispute is tolerably obscure.

:

ἐζωοποιήθη].

"Christ's flesh," he says, "which was living flesh before, became dead flesh Christ Jesus, the entire complex Person, consisting of body, soul, and spirit, was put to death oapki ['in the flesh'], but made alive [again] in the spirit; here there may seem to be difficulty: but the difficulty will vanish if we guide ourselves simply and carefully by the former clause. 'Quod ad carnem,' the Lord was put to death: quod ad spiritum,' He was brought to life [for this, and not remained alive,' must be insisted on the meaning of wooion]. His flesh was the subject, recipient, vehicle of inflicted death: His Spirit was the subject, recipient, vehicle of restored life. But here let us beware, and proceed cautiously. What is asserted is not that the flesh died and the Spirit was made alive; but that quoad' the flesh the Lord died, 'quoad' the Spirit, He was made alive. He the God-man Christ Jesus, body and soul, ceased to live in the flesh, began to live in the Spirit; ceased to live a fleshly mortal life, began to live a spiritual resurrection life. His own Spirit never died, as the next verse shews us. 'This is the meaning, that Christ by His sufferings was taken from the life which is flesh and blood, as a man on earth, living, walking and standing in flesh and blood. . . . and He is now placed in another life, and made alive according to the Spirit, has passed into a spiritual and supernatural life, which includes in itself the whole life which Christ now has in soul and body, so that He has no longer a fleshly but a spiritual body.'-Luther."

This explanation has a very mystical air about it, and if we found it in another man's book, we would suspect him of adopting the Lutheran view of the nature of our Lord's resurrection