from God," at the very time of his descent into Hades? Was he,-was his human soul,-at once above earth and below it, of whom St. Paul says that he who ascended "first descended into the lower parts of the earth?" This seems improbable; and therefore, if a strict interpretation of the expression "to-day" be contended for, there is no alternative but to place Paradise below, in that Hades, into which our Lord's human soul most certainly descended. But this alternative would probably be found no less inconvenient : for it is hard to believe that our Lord's human soul was in Paradise both when he was in Hades, and also when he left it; or to place it in the Hades which shall eventually be "cast in the lake of fire." Paradise is probably above, and was entered by our Lord at his ascension. The question is certainly obscure; but whatever may be understood by Paradise, it can never be shown, that Christians in general have a better claim to be admitted to the privileges of the robber, than they have to be translated or transfigured with Enoch, Elijah, and Moses.

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CHAPTER VI.

THE INTERMEDIATE STATE CONCLUDED.

T

HERE is another point of view in which the intermediate state may be regarded, which opens questions of vast extent, and which from their importance demand a serious and cautious investigation. If there be any consciousness immediately after death, it is reasonable to suppose that it owes its existence to the same causes, (if we may so speak in reference to the counsels of the Most High) the same causes which will produce the Resurrection at the Last Day; and the final state of happiness or misery :-that the intervening worlds are rather anticipatory of resurrection, than consequent on death: that (even if the interval be occupied, as some imagine, with recollections of the world left behind, as well as with anticipations of a world to come,) the soul must nevertheless be in an introductory state, not a state conclusive or consummatory: just as the imprisonment of a criminal before trial, however notorious his offence, is enforced and sanctioned by the law, solely from its relation to a future day of trial and judgement. It is in the fact that a man will live, when the last trump has sounded, not in the fact that he has lived for threescore years

and ten, that a reason must be sought for the belief in a consciousness beyond the grave.

But here a difficulty presents itself which may at first sight appear insurmountable and distressing. It has been just assumed, that the proper consequence and effect of death is, total insensibility; that any mode of consciousness, any modification of life, which takes place after death, must arise from the power of Christ, exerted in overcoming death. "As in Adam all die, even

so in Christ shall all be made alive." It must be taken for granted, that the assumption of humanity by Christ, His Passion and death, his Resurrection and Ascension to the right hand of the Father, and his promised second Advent with power and great glory are not merely the accredited signs and pledges of the resurrection of all men from their graves, and the admission of the faithful into immortality, but have actually wrought out, and are the causes of that resurrection and that immortality. And if the causes of the resurrection of the good, and of their entrance into eternal happiness, then also the causes of the resurrection of the wicked unto damnation, and their banishment to the "furnace of fire, where shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth :" and the causes no less-of whatever consciousness there may be, between death and the resurrection.

What then, it might be asked, was the penalty originally imposed upon Adam, and entailed on all the offspring of his fallen nature? If it was nothing worse than a liability to pain and sickness

and sorrow, to be terminated by an event which multitudes of the heathen look forward to as a blessing,--by a total cessation of existence mental and corporeal, a dissolution of the body, and dreamless sleep and torpor of the soul, what are we to think of the mediation of Christ? Did the Son of God come down, and will He revisit the earth, not only to save a chosen few, (for though many are called, few are chosen) but to add infinitely to the punishment of the rest? To recal to existence those enemies of God, who had been else blotted out of creation ;-to rend the strong chain of slumbers which but for His Omnipotent hand must have bound them fast for ever; to compel them, in an agony of fear, to wait for the coming judgement; and finally to consign the victims of his indignation, imploring in vain to be permitted to return to Hades, and even claiming nothingness as their birth-right, to a dungeon of sleepless despair? Will the Sun of Righteousness shine,

"To waken flesh upon the rack

Of pain anew to writhe"

which had else been eternally concealed beneath the curtain of oblivion?

And for the chosen heirs of salvation; from what shall they be saved? Can it be said that Christ will rescue them from the everlasting fire; when, but for his resurrection, they had never risen from the dust?

To these questions, which in their very form

and language seem, if not to impeach the justice, at least to derogate from the mercy of God, a more comprehensive view of the nature of the Christian dispensation, and the wide extent of its bearings, furnishes a sufficient check, if not a satisfactory reply. It must become evident, that the supposition of a fall of man, and a penalty of death, without an advent of Christ to accomplish the redemption, is altogether extravagant and inadmissible into our human reasonings. Unless we choose to suppose the ways of God to men, to be not the ways of perfect wisdom and justice and goodness, or unless we can imagine two widely different, nay, contrary administrations of the world to be both equally consistent with the perfection of these attributes, we must conceive the creation of human and peccable creatures, without the redemption, to be a thing impossible. And this, not by any means because we presume to judge beforehand what the Almighty can, or cannot accomplish, but because we are told that both are parts of ONE DIVINE SCHEME; and we therefore conclude that they are literally, in the nature of things, which is nothing else than the will and ordinance of God, inseparable. It is always dangerous, and generally unprofitable, to indulge in speculations founded on a different system of things from that which divine wisdom has established. We have not faculties for the task.

We cannot positively know whether even the most trifling occurrences in the material, as well as moral world are not controlled by a strong neces