ham; the wicked towards the left, to a place of misery. Jerome describes all the patriarchs and Hebrew saints as below in Hades, and the gate of Paradise as closed against them, till Christ descended and burst it open, and something like this seems the opinion of Owen, who supposes them till then in a qualified bliss. So Chrysostom says that death before conducted into Hades, but now to Christ. Justin Martyr even supposed that all of them, like Samuel, were under the power of such evil spirits as were allied with the woman of Endor. Augustin, however, doubted whether the name "hell" was anywhere in Scripture employed of the abodes of the just. Hilary gives to the gulf, between the just and unjust, the designation of chaos. A certain confusion has ensued, as soon as even the wisest and holiest of men have attempted to divide and bound what the word of God has left indistinct.

But, amongst all this confusion, the general faith of Christians, drawn from that word, has ever been that, after death, the souls of the faithful live in the world unseen, in rest and joy; the souls of the wicked in remorse and despair; that the former are in Paradise, in the bosom of Abraham, with Christ, in the blessed company of the just made perfect; the latter in the bondage and anguish which are emphatically and only within the gates of hell.

For both alike, this state is intermediate, as between death and the resurrection; and intermediate, as between this life and the consummated happiness or woe of the life which follows the judgment; but not intermediate, as if for either it were between bliss and misery. It was indeed a very ancient custom of the early church to include the blessed dead within the embrace of its general prayers, asking for them no more

than their perpetual peace and glorious resurrection ; and this in token of unbroken communion, not of needed intercession. "Not having any doubt at all," were the words of Charlemagne concerning Pope Adrian, "that his blessed soul is at rest; but that we may show faithfulness and love unto our most dear friend." Such prayers, and even the later prayers of the Roman communion, that the faithful departed "may not be condemned unto the everlasting pains of hell," are, justified by Cardinal Bellarmine, the great defender of that communion, "Not as if it were not certain that they should not be condemned unto those pains, but because it is God's pleasure that we should pray even for those things which we are certain to receive." An idea found in St. Augustin, however, that those who "are saved, yet so as by fire," might endure a kind of purgation in the flames which shall precede the final judgment, grew in the course of ages into the unfounded conception of purgatory. Of that fiction it is only to be wished that it were as harmless as it is baseless.

The language of St. Ambrose fitly expresses the general belief of the earliest as well as the latest time concerning each of the pious dead. "Theodosius," he says, "being freed from doubtful fight, doth now enjoy everlasting light, and continual tranquillity; and, for the things which he did in this body, he rejoiceth in the fruits of God's reward; because he loved the Lord his God, he hath obtained the society of His saints."

LX.

Paradise between Death and the
Resurrection.

"The dead are like the stars by day:
Withdrawn from mortal eye,

But not extinct, they hold their way
In glory through the sky.”

MONTGOMERY.

THE abode and the condition of the departed just have indeed been disclosed but by glimpses, through the divine oracles. Still, a few most interesting features, which the longing mind would have imagined, have thus an ample confirmation.

Our thoughts would turn to the pure skies for the destined habitations of pure spirits. One of our race went visibly, without the common form of dissolution, to a glorious rest; and he was borne into the skies. Was he at once admitted into a higher world than saints who die and leave their bodies to the sepulchre? Here, the lines between Paradise and the third heaven" fade away. The Saviour ascended in the body; but those who depart in Him are with Him, though their bodies rest in ten thousand graves. Moses died on Mount Nebo, and was buried in a valley of Moab, by unseen hands of angels; but he came with Elias, to bring together the law, the prophets, the Gos

pel, and the apostles on the mountain of the transfiguration. It would be difficult to avoid believing that either the body of Elias was left behind when he ascended, or that of Moses had been raised and glorified. They came to the summit of a hill, to a spot nearest to the skies, and from the skies they came; the skies, to which Elias had visibly gone; the skies, to which the Lord Jesus afterward ascended; the skies into which Paul was caught up; the skies, from which the Lord. will come again, bringing with Him those who sleep in Jesus. Not in delusion, therefore, nor merely in poetry, do we speak of such as gone upward, as in heaven.

The appearance of Moses and Elias is also a proof of some knowledge of terrestrial events amongst the saints above. At that one point at least, on that one great occasion, the worlds of the departed and of the living were in contact. There is no cause for affirming that single instance to be the one sole exception on that side of the veil, as well as on this. Their state is higher than ours, and must embrace wider and deeper knowledge. They do not come to us, and therefore can tell us nothing which happens there; but we go to them, and therefore they may well receive information of all which happens here. They are exhibited to us in Holy Writ as "a cloud of witnesses," by whom we are compassed about; a mighty mass of spectators, like those who, as if in one thick cloud skirting the horizon, encompassed and overhung the lists where the racers toiled on towards the prize. Witnesses they assuredly are; and they seem to be represented rather as witnesses who evermore look down upon the struggle, than merely as those who are soon to know its issue. St. John "saw under the altar," or at the foot of that

towering structure in the celestial temple, "the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held: and they cried with a loud voice, saying, “How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth? And white robes were given unto every one of them; and it was said unto them that they should rest yet for a little season, until their fellow-servants also, and their brethren, that should be killed as they were, should be fulfilled." Both the cry and the answer suppose a knowledge of the course of events below; a knowledge and an interest. The interest, indeed, could never be doubted; for no pure and hallowed affection dies.

That it should ever have been doubted, whether the. inhabitants of the spiritual world recognise each other in that abode, is but an example of the wide influence of unbelief, suggesting the strangest dimness wherever the Scriptures had not spoken in the most explicit words, even though the obvious reason for which the words had not been spoken was, that to speak them was needless. Why should not the departed recognise and be recognised? How can their very nature and being be so utterly changed that they should be able to exist in the same world, to remember, and to be a general assembly, a church, a society, without recognition? If the future life is the sequel and result and retribution of the present, how can recognition fail? Not a step can we proceed, not a conception can we form, not a statement of divine revelation can we clearly embrace, in our contemplations of the future life, without admitting or involving the necessity of mutual recognition as well as mutual remembrance and affection. Were Moses