could inflict upon Him no further punishment. In other words, they killed His body, but were unable to kill His soul. Such was the culminating point of those sufferings which our Lord had to endure at the hands of wicked men. We must now pass on to examine what was done to Christ by His heavenly Father.

In considering what was done to Christ by the Almighty Himself, we must be careful to distinguish between the pains of dying, and the pains of death; because they are two things as essentially distinct from each other as the head and the heart. They must of necessity take place at different times and in different places. It is as impossible for the two to exist simultaneously as it would be for two bodies to occupy the same place at the same moment of time. The pains of dying must terminate before the pains of death can begin. The former state belongs exclusively to this world, the latter to the next world. The pains of dying are felt while a man is still living; the pains of death are only experienced after he is dead. It is as impossible for a living man to experience the pains of death as it must be for a dead man to suffer the pains of dying. We are told that St. Peter himself was crucified, and if this be true, then we are justified in asserting that he suffered the pains of dying, but surely he never experienced the pains of death, unless he entered upon a state of punishment after the death of the body. The pains of dying appertain to a man in the body, the pains of death to a man out of the body. We might illustrate this great fact in various ways, but perhaps one or two examples will be sufficient to make it well understood. This distinction was clearly exemplified in the case of the two thieves who were crucified with Christ. Both those offenders were compelled to endure the agonies of crucifixion, and therefore both suffered the pains of dying. What became of the two malefactors after they were dead? The penitent thief was immediately taken to a place of happiness, and therefore he did not suffer the "pains of death." The impenitent thief went to no such abode of felicity, but to one of misery, and therefore after he had undergone the pains of dying,

BRANY

REESE

HADES

115

SCRIPTURAL DOCTRINE OF HADES.

he would also experience the pains of death. All good
men suffer the pains of dying, but none of them have ever
endured, and they never will endure, the pains of
death." Was this not the case with Cranmer, Ridley,
Latimer, and other martyrs who were burned at the stake
for their religious opinions? They all suffered pain while
they were dying, but we believe they never experienced
pain after they were dead. In fact, the "pains of death"
are only experienced by such as perish in their sins.
Christ was an exception to this rule, because He was the
substitute for sinful man. When, therefore, the apostle
declares that God "loosed the pains of death," he inti-
mates the liberation of Christ from the anguish He was
suffering in Hades. To loose the pains of death, means
to put an end to them. The loosing of these pains im-
plies that Christ was previously suffering them. Hence
physical death in this world and spiritual death in the
next were the things done to Christ, or the punishment
He was compelled to undergo. The things done for
Christ were also two. God delivered Him from the pains
of Hades, and then raised Him from the region of the de-
parted dead. On this account St. Paul tells us (Rom. vi.
9) that "death hath no more dominion over Him," which
surely implies that He was once under the dominion of
death. As a further confirmation that Christ suffered
anguish between His death on the cross and His resur-
rection, I may observe that in the Acts (ii. 24) the read-
ing of the Syriac and Vulgate is Hades. And in Psalm
cxvi. 3, we have a prediction of our Lord's sufferings dur-
ing the time of His disembodied state that corresponds
with the passage in the Acts which we have been consid-
ering, and it is written in these words: "The sorrows of
death encompass me, and the pains of Hades gat hold
upon me."
I hope the arguments in this chapter alone
are sufficiently cogent to satisfy any reasonable inquirer
after truth, that our Redeemer did not descend into the
prison of Hades with a view to preaching, but for the
purpose of suffering. It may, however, be asked Why it
was impossible for Christ to be holden in death? The
answer is, Because He had paid the full penalty of man's

disobedience. Death having no further demands upon Him, could no longer exercise dominion over Him. On the ground of justice alone His further detention became impossible.

6. Independently of the preceding arguments and Scriptural declarations in support of our view respecting the condition of the Saviour among the dead, I may remind the reader that St. Peter himself seems by the way in which he uses the names Christ and Jesus Christ, to distinguish between our Lord's state of humiliation and suffering, and that of His exaltation and glory. When the apostle refers to our Redeemer as being directly or indirectly connected with suffering, he simply calls Him Christ; and when he speaks of Him as having accomplished the great work of the atonement, he denominates Him Jesus Christ, or by some equivalent designation. In proof of this distinction, I must refer the reader to the following texts: I. Peter i. 11-19; ii. 21; iii. 18; iv. 1-14; v. 1. All the preceding passages view Christ in a state of humiliation and suffering. The subsequent texts allude to our Saviour in a state of exaltation and glory: I. Peter i. 1, 2, 3, 7, 13; iii. 21; iv. 11; and it is worthy of remark that our Lord observed this distinction when speaking of Himself after His resurrection, for He says in the Gospel of St. Luke (xxiv. 26): “Ought not Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into His glory?" Now, keeping this distinction in view, and bearing in mind that St. Peter tells us (I. Peter iii. 18) that "Christ once suffered," and does not use the term " Jesus Christ" till he speaks of His resurrection at verse 21, which was the first degree of His exaltation, we may fairly conclude that the inspired writer designed, from verse 18 to 21, to set forth the sufferings of Christ. This is another fact strongly corroborative of the view I am endeavoring to establish.

CHAPTER XVI.

The necessity and importance of attending to certain prophetic passages of Scripture-The true condition of Christ's soul during its separation from the body-Christ's suffering in Hades clearly prefigured by a remarkable event in the life of Joseph-The cause generally given of our Lord's agony in the garden of Gethsemane unreasonable and antiscriptural-His sufferings both in the garden and on the cross reasonably and Scripturally accounted for-If Christ made full atonement on the cross, why manifest such anguish of soul at the moment of victory-Why the two thieves manifested no signs of terror in the face of eternity.

In the course of this chapter I shall endeavor to point out texts of Scripture, to show where the soul of Christ remained while His body was in the grave, and also to prove that He was not preaching, but suffering during the whole of that time. Before doing so, however, I particularly wish that we should get a clear understanding of one most important truth respecting the language of the Bible, a deep and all-important truth which seems to have been so generally overlooked. I wish the peruser of these pages to note that, in reading what the inspired penmen say of themselves, there are in nearly every instance two meanings couched under the words—one having some application to the persons and times of the writer; the other, which is the real, genuine, deep meaning, referring to Christ and His Church. And most frequently in those passages where the Old Testament writers are apparently speaking of themselves, it is in fact our Lord uttering predictions through them concerning Himself.

In Psalm xvi. 9, 10, David says: "Therefore my heart is glad, and my glory rejoiceth; my flesh also shall rest. in hope. For Thou wilt not leave my soul in Hades; neither wilt Thou suffer Thine Holy One to see corrup

tion." Now these words, penned by David, were the expressions of our Lord, who was predicting His own resurrection through David as an inspired prophet. This is evident from the Acts of the Apostles (ii. 25, 26, 27), where St. Peter applies the very words thus: "For David speaketh concerning Him (Jesus). I foresaw the Lord always before my face, for He is on my right hand, that I should not be moved: therefore did my heart rejoice and my tongue was glad: moreover also my flesh shall rest in hope: because Thou wilt not leave my soul in Hades, neither wilt Thou suffer Thine Holy One to see corruption." I will just mention another text, so remarkable, that it must enable the most superficial reader to see the full significance of passages of this character. In Psalm xxii. 16, David, in describing his sufferings, thus speaks: "They pierced My hands and My feet." Here again it is manifest that our Lord was predicting His own sufferings through David. In fact these words cannot in any way be applied to David, for he never had his hands and feet pierced by crucifixion, because he died a natural death. For in the First Book of Kings (ii. 1, 2, 10), we find these words: "Now the days of David drew nigh that he should die, and he charged Solomon, his son, saying, I go the way of all the earth, be thou strong, therefore, and show thyself a man. So David slept with his fathers, and was buried in the city of David." not true and beyond the shadow of a doubt, that the words found in the sixteenth verse of the twenty-second Psalm were really the utterances of Christ, who foretold, through David as an instrument, the sort of death He was to die? Let this text then, in particular, be received by us as a sample of numerous other passages in the Divine record which are almost exclusively applicable to our blessed Lord. We may then, in this place, safely conclude that the portion of Scripture quoted from the Acts of the Apostles proves that the soul or spirit of Christ, when severed from the body, was in Hades, because St. Peter declares that God did not leave it there. It must, of necessity, have been in that region, otherwise its removal thence would have been an impossibility. That our Lord

Is it