“If I might leave one bequest to the rising generation of clergy, who will have (what I have had only incidentally) the office of preachers, it would be, 'In addition to the study of Holy Scripture, which they too studied night and day, study the Fathers, especially St. Augustine.'”—Dr. PUSEY. IN X. The Teaching of the Primitive Church N the period immediately following the apostolic age the Church did not formulate any dogmas as to the condition of the soul between the death and resurrection of the body. There seems no reason to doubt that some of the converts from Judaism continued to think of the righteous dead as awaiting the second coming of our Lord in a place similar to that which they had been accustomed to speak of as Abraham's Bosom. We must, however, bear in mind that the apostolic epistles had been very generally understood to teach that the return of Jesus Christ would take place very speedily. At first it was thought that the Lord would return during the lifetime of some of those whom St. Paul addressed. This may be gathered from much that the Apostle wrote in his Epistle to the Thessalonians1 -the first of the New Testament writings. Our Lord had used language that had been understood by the Apostles to mean that He would come again in their 1 I Thess. i. 10; iv. 15, 17; v. 2, 23. lifetime to take them to Himself. Had He not said, "Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom"? It was, therefore, with some such thought in his mind that St. Paul wrote to reassure those who supposed that the dead who had already "fallen asleep" before the Second Advent would suffer loss. "I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him. For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep. For the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God and the dead in Christ shall rise first: then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord."2 It seems that the Christian Thessalonians, or some among them, made the anticipation of this speedy return of their Lord an excuse for neglecting their daily duties and living in idleness. St. Paul, upon hearing this, wrote a second epistle to the Thessalonians, explaining that the "day of Christ" might yet be delayed for a long time; and in any case the steady 1 St. Matt. xvi. 28. 2 I Thess. iv. 13-17. 3 2 Thess, ii. 2. performance of the daily duties of life was the best preparation for the Second Advent. But it is beyond question that the thoughts of the Apostles and their immediate successors were fixed upon the great "day of the Lord," rather than upon the state of the soul awaiting that day. The Gentiles were already familiar with the doctrine that the soul survived the death of the body, although there was doubtless among all classes a widespread unbelief in any future life. What the Gentile world was not familiar with was the doctrine of the resurrection of the body. It was therefore upon the resurrection, and what followed it, that the Apostles and great Fathers of the post-apostolic Church insisted. The Christian faith concerned the sanctification of the body as well as the soul, and the corruption of morals prevalent in the heathen world made the doctrine of the resurrection of the flesh a very practical point of dogma. It is not meant, however, that there was no essential agreement among the sub-apostolic Fathers as to the soul in its intermediate state. The epistles of St. Paul had taught men to think of those who by reason of death were "absent from the body" as being, even before the resurrection, "present with the Lord." Alford in his learned Commentary says, with reference to this statement by St. Paul, that this is "all that is revealed to us of the disembodied state of the righteous." The point, then, to keep in mind is that Christ ascended N |