altar of the cross, to make atonement for the sins of the whole world.

He who hangs there is God. But since He is God He is the omniscient, under Whose eye all things past, present, and to come lie always in a perpetual now. Even as He hangs there all men and all things are under His eye. Each man's life, from the hour of his birth, all the acts and words and thoughts of his life, with their motives and consequences, are present to Him. There is not merely a vast mass of sin for which Christ makes atonement by a vast mass of suffering; there are not merely the millions of mankind for whom Christ makes atonement by one great act; but Christ makes an individual atonement for each man, and for every one of his sins.

You were there present to His Divine mind. Your whole life was present under His eye. Your every sin was as vividly present before Him as in the moment that it was committed. He gave the whole attention of His Divine mind to you, as truly as if there had been no other creature in the universe.

Jesus is God. But because He is God He then loved you "with an everlasting love." He loved you with the infinite love of that Being who is Love; with that intensity of love which made Him leave heaven, and become incarnate, and give His life-blood on the cross for you. He loved you as if there were no other creature in the universe for Him to love. "He loved ME, and gave Himself for ME."

He made a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction for your sins-for all of them, how many soever; for each of them, however horrible it may be.

Think of your sins; which is it which most makes you afraid? Jesus on the cross had that very sin present to His mind, made special mention of it to God, paid the

separate penalty due to it, made ample satisfaction for it, purchased God's pardon for it.

But you say your "sins are so many!" You think, then, that Christ's atonement was not sufficient for all mankind, and some men are left outside it? No; He made a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world. But some of your sins "are so great!" You think, then, that Christ's merits were not great enough for some sins which men commit? Know that His blood cleanseth from all sin.

How, then, shall I obtain forgiveness of my sins? By true repentance, i.e., breaking off sin; and by faith in Jesus Christ; and by coming to God and praying for the pardon which He purchased for you :-then "God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness."

CHAPTER XXXII.

THE DESCENT INTO HADES.

It is one of the vulgar errors of this day that immediately upon death the souls of the saved go to heaven, and those of the wicked to hell; and the true doctrine of an intermediate state between death and resurrection is confounded with the Roman doctrine of an intermediate place-purgatory -between heaven and hell. We will first, therefore, briefly state what is the difference between the Roman doctrine of purgatory and the true doctrine of the intermediate state; and, secondly, adduce a very few arguments in support of the true doctrine; and then we shall be in a position to understand the important truth of our Lord's descent into Hades.

The Roman doctrine of purgatory is that when men die their souls go at once into one of three places: the saints go straight to heaven, the damned go straight to hell; but a great number of men who are not condemned to hell, and are not good enough to go straight to heaven, are committed to a middle place-purgatory-where they suffer so many years of punishment as are due to them, and then at length are released and rise to heaven.

The true doctrine is this, that when men die their souls pass into "the place of departed spirits;" there the souls which have departed in peace are conscious, are in some sense "with Christ," are in peace and happiness, and are looking forward with hope and longing to the consummation of their felicity, when our Lord shall come again at the last

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day. The lost souls are also conscious, and are in misery, looking forward with dread to the terrible day when they will appear before the Judge, and will be cast into outer darkness, where is wailing and gnashing of teeth." But men do not enter into heaven or hell until the soul and body have been re-united in the general resurrection, and they have undergone the judgment.

We shall only glance at the arguments by which this doctrine is supported. The Jews believed in a state of being after death, in which the soul existed apart from the body until the resurrection, in a state of consciousness either of happiness or of misery. This state or place they called in Hebrew Sheol, in Greek Hades; the state or place of the blessed in Hades was called sometimes "Paradise," or "the Garden of Eden," sometimes "beneath the throne of glory," sometimes "Abraham's bosom." The place of the lost had no special name.

Our Lord and His apostles confirm this belief of the Jews. In the parable of Dives our Lord describes the two states immediately after death-both in Hades, one of them in Abraham's bosom. To the penitent thief He promised, "Today shalt thou be with Me in paradise." St. John (Rev. vi. 9) describes "the souls under the altar" (which is regarded as the throne of God, and so answers to "the throne of glory "), crying, "How long?" ie., expressing their longing for the coming of Christ and the consummation of their bliss. St. Paul, when looking forward to the hope of resurrection (in 2 Cor. v. 1-8), distinctly describes the state of the disembodied soul as imperfect, and though he says it is better to be absent from the body and present with the Lord, he still says that his earnest desire is for the resurrection of the body, which he calls being "clothed upon." Again (Rom. viii. 19—23) he represents the whole creation

* The name of the final place of the lost was Gehenna.

as longing to be delivered from the consequence of the fall, and we ourselves groaning within ourselves waiting for "the redemption of the body." And yet again, in Heb. xi. 40, at the end of his roll of ancient saints who died in faith, he says they have not received the promises, for they without us will not be made perfect. This was the doctrine of the early Church, for which may be quoted Tertullian, Irenæus, Origen, Lactantius, Hilary, Ambrose. The last-named father expresses the belief of the early Church thus: "While the fulness of time is expected, the souls await the reward which is in store for them. Some pain awaits, some glory. But in the meantime the former are not without trouble, nor are the latter without enjoyment."

Our Lord was truly man. He truly died upon the cross; "He gave up the ghost," i.e., His human soul was separated from the body. His body was reverently laid in Joseph's new tomb, His soul went to the place of departed spirits. This is sufficiently proved by one single text. St. Peter, quoting the 16th Psalm as a prophecy of Christ, tells us that" His soul was not left in Hades, neither did His flesh see corruption." The bodies of other men do go to corruption, their souls are left in Hades, till the last day. But on the third day our Lord's human soul returned from Hades, and re-entered into His incorruptible body, and He rose again from the dead.

When our Lord died, was His Divine nature separated from His human nature? No! the Divine and human natures were so united at the Incarnation that they are inseparable. But the human nature consisted of two parts, soul and body, which now were in different places; with which did the Divine nature remain united? With both. God the Son was still united with His soul in its descent into Hades, and yet was not absent from His body in the tomb.