What was the object of the descent into hell? First, to fulfil the conditions of our human life. But besides this St. Peter tells us He preached to the spirits in prison-a very difficult place of Scripture, with whose full elucidation we are not now concerned; but it seems to imply clearly that the human spirit of our Lord had communication with the spirits in Hades. Thence we draw the important conclusion that the spirits of the departed can hold communication with one another. What was the subject of our Lord's preaching we are not told; it may probably have been an announcement to them of the glorious news of the redemption by His death.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

THE RESURRECTION.

"In the end of the Sabbath, as it began to dawn towards the first day of the week, came Mary Magdalen and the other Mary to see the sepulchre. And, behold, there was a great earthquake; for the angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from the door of the sepulchre, and sat upon it. His countenance was like lightning, and his raiment white as snow; and for fear of him the keepers did shake, and became as dead men. And the angel answered and said unto the women, Fear not ye, for I know that ye seek Jesus, which was crucified. He is not here, He is risen, as He said” (Matt. xxviii. 1—6).

The first view of the great fact of the resurrection is its evidential importance. It was the crowning sign of His character and mission. He had twice over, when asked for a sign by the unbelieving Jews, given them this sign"Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it upHe spake of the temple of His body" (John ii. 19-21); "There shall no sign be given you but the sign of the prophet Jonas; for as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale's belly, so shall the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth" (Matt. xii. 40). He had given the same assurance to His disciples: "From that time (viz., of Peter's confession of His divinity) began Jesus to show unto His disciples how that He must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed and be raised again

the third day" (Matt. xvi. 21, also Matt. xvii. 23, and xx. 19); for He said, "I have power to lay down My life, and I have power to take it again." Had He not risen again the world would have heard no more of Jesus of Nazareth. His rising again "as He said," proved that He was what He professed to be, God incarnate; that His death had been, not the triumph of His enemies, but the voluntary sacrifice of the Lamb of God to take away the sins of the world; that He was master of death and the grave.

Next, His resurrection is the assurance to us of our resurrection; it is the seal of those great words which He spoke by the grave of Lazarus, "I am the resurrection and the life; he that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live, and whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die" (John xi. 25).

Our Lord was the first-fruits of them that slept. There are other examples of men who returned from the other side of death. The man who revived when let down into the grave of Elisha, the child of the Shunamite lady, Jairus's daughter, the widow's son of Nain, Lazarus. But these were cases of resuscitation. They were brought back to life again for a time only, and died again, and are now among the dead. "He dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over Him" (Rom. vi. 9). Christ's was a true resurrection; His human body and soul had undergone the change which will by God's power be effected in all the redeemed at the great day of resurrection.

This resurrection, like other great acts of creation and redemption, is attributed to all Three Persons of the Holy Trinity. Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father (Rom. vi. 4); "Being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit” (1 Pet. iii. 18); "Destroy this temple, and I will raise it up. He spake of the temple of His body" (John ii. 19, 21); and again, "No

man taketh it (My life) from Me, but I lay it down of Myself, I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again" (John x. 18).

His raised body is the type of the bodies of the redeemed. "When He shall appear we shall be like Him"; we shall have the same bodies as in this life as to their identity, yet changed as to their properties; purified, spiritualised, glorified; not subject to pain or decay; with improved senses and powers; perhaps with new senses and powers now lying undeveloped in us; bodies fitted to be the instruments of purified and glorified spirits restored perfectly to the likeness of God; bodies fitted for the nobler and grander life of heaven.

Lastly, Christ's risen life is the source of spiritual life to His people. This is a subject to which, especially, attention needs to be directed. There is an imperfect popular theology which makes it the end of religion to obtain for the sinner pardon for sin and reconciliation to God through the precious blood of Christ. This is indeed truth, but it is not the whole truth. In this view of religion the death of Christ is everything. The Incarnation only enters into it as telling beforehand of the Divinity of the person who was about to suffer, and the consequent all-atoning value of His suffering. The resurrection enters into it chiefly as the crowning evidence that He who died was really Divine. How many there are who are looking forward to the attainment of pardon and the sense of pardon as the goal of their religious endeavours, a goal which is still in the future; not recognising that anything higher and better, nobler and happier, is within their reach; not understanding that Christ's plan of religion is that they should accept pardon for sin, through the finished work of Christ, and then go on full of rejoicing and hope, in the power of the risen Lord, to serve Him "in all good works which He has prepared for them to walk in.” This is

what makes many religionists afraid of insisting much on "good works"; they are afraid lest men should be doing good works in order to obtain the pardon which is purchased only by the precious blood, not understanding that, being first pardoned through the death of Christ, we then bring forth good fruits by the power of the risen Christ.

Another view of religion looks upon the pardon of the sinner through Christ as not the end but only the beginning of his religion-the beginning of the new life which the Christian leads in Christ, by the grace which flows to him from Christ. They who take this view realise strongly that the Christian's life is not an independent life; it flows to him from Christ, it is the life of Christ in him. "Now I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." They believe that it is not merely an imperfect figure of speech which calls Christ the second Adam, but that it speaks of a deep and true analogy. Our natural life flows to us from Adam, it is Adam's life continued in us; so our spiritual life flows to us from Christ, it is Christ's life continued in us : This is the

record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He that hath the Son, hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God, hath not life" (1 John v. 11, 12). This gives force to their apprehension of the sacraments which Christ has ordained in His Church. The effect of the first they take to be to graft us into the Vine, to make us members of the Body of Christ, to impart to us the beginnings of the spiritual life. So the effect of the Holy Communion, to those who receive it with faith, they take to be the feeding of this spiritual life derived from Christ. Feeding it with what? With His "body and blood,"

with His life, the life of His humanity.

There are two aspects of Christian work: the first, the missionary, which preaches repentance and remission of sins in Christ's name, and thinks of nothing else; the second,

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