ing his descent to hades, and in this sense it is understood by Tertullian, Jerome, Erasmus, Estius, Olshausen, Lechler, Bleek, Baur, Delitzsch, Rückert, Ewald, Meyer, and Whedon, who excels them all, the perspicuity of his style reflecting the clearness of his thought.

The final text now used is

10. 1 PETER III, 19, 20.

No one can look upon this passage without feelings similar to those which one experiences in looking over some historic battle ground. Generations of the best scholars in Christendom have been arrayed against each other on this text of contention. It recalls Kaulbach's "Battle of the Huns before the Gates of Rome" in the Berlin gallery; and, indeed, were it not so heathenish, we might sing the praises of the departed exegetes as Ossian did those of his Celtic heroes, who, from the land of clouds witnessing the deeds of their clansmen, reach for their swords, which, like fleeting mist, forever elude their grasp.

That this Scripture teaches a literal descent of Christ to hades is almost as plain as that he ever did any thing recorded of him in the gospels. A comparison of passages in which his acts are recorded with this text will strengthen the statement. Moreover, the Greek language was the mother-tongue of the early fathers; and the remarkable fact is, that the writings of the first century are unar.imous, and in succeeding centuries even to Augustine practically so, in the belief that our Lord did, between his death and resurrection, visit the realms of the dead. This certainly was the belief expressed by Hermas, Irenæus, Clemens Alexandrinus, Origen, Athanasius, Epiphanius, and many others; and it is a rational supposition that, if there was any real difficulty in Peter's Greek, which gives modern interpreters so much trouble, those early teachers of the Church, whose mother-tongue was Greek, would have some knowledge of it. The Syriac-Peshito sustains our view. It reads, "And he preached to those souls which were detained in ove, shiul, (hades), which were formerly disobedient," etc. (Dr. Murdock's translation.) So also Etheridge's: "He preached unto those souls who were held in shiul." By this same word the Syriac renders hades, or hell, in Luke xvi, 23: "And in shiul he lifted up his eyes;" also in Matt. xi, 23.

Rev. xx, 13:

"Death and shiul gave up their dead." Illustrious names are arrayed against this interpretation of 1 Peter, but truth is not decided by majorities. However, many just as learned and just as loyal to evangelical religion, such as Delitzsch, Van Oosterzee, Weisinger, Bloomfield, Alford, Fronmüller, Huther, Shott, Bishop Horsley, Wordsworth, and Canon Cook, affirm, as does Van Oosterzee,* that this text admits of no other interpretation.

The principal texts bearing upon the subject have now been cited, but in the nature of the case not all has been said that can be said. This much is settled: the voices of Scripture, both of the Old Testament and of the New, are one in the doctrine that Christ went at death to hades, the kingdom of the dead. From this rash inferences must not be drawn. Eccentricity of belief is not always synonymous with soundness of learning. "Eternal hope" is eternal disappointment.

Second, the witness of the Church. The early Christian writers called "fathers" are not quoted as interpreters but as witnesses of the belief of their times,† and because, as Wesley said, they "direct us to the strongest evidence of the Christian doctrine." Passing over the matter of Abgarus,§ we mention first IGNATIUS, bishop of Antioch (d. 116 A. D.). In his epistle to the Trallians, sec. 9, he says Christ "descended alone into hades but he arose accompanied by a multitude." The critic will object to this testimony taken from the Longer Recension, but the same idea is in the Shorter Recension, where he speaks of the crucifixion of Jesus.

POLYCARP, Bishop of Smyrna (d. 167 A. D.). In his epistle to the Philippians he exhorts them to bring forth fruit "unto our Lord Jesus Christ, who for our sins suffered even unto death, but whom God raised from the dead, having loosed the pains of hades.'" The words of Ignatius and Polycarp are impor tant from the relation of these men to the apostle John.

HERMAS (160 A. D.). The Pastor of this writer may be quoted because of the popularity it had not only among Athenian Christians, as Bunsen said, but also among the

But see extract from D. D. Whedon, in my Outlines of the Doctrines of the Resurrection," Note F, p. 406. Works, N. Y. ed., vol. v, pp. 705, 706.

§ See Euseb. Eccl. Hist., book i, chap. xiii.

I See Simm. ix, 6.

Churches every-where in the first part of the second century. Here also might be introduced the testimony in full of the Syriac Peshito version of the New Testament, but we pass to JUSTIN MARTYR (110-165 A. D.). In chap. lxvii, Dial. c. Trypho., Justin charges the Jews with having cut out some passages relating to Christ from the books of Jeremiah, among which was this: "The Lord God remembered his dead people Israel, who lay in the graves; and he descended to preach to them his own salvation." See also the statement of Christ being as another man in hades.

IRENEUS (120-202 A. D). Bishop of Lyons. "It was for this reason, too, that the Lord descended into the regions beneath earth, preaching his advent there also and the remission of sins received by those who believe in him." Adv. IIæret. See also c. xxxi, 1, 2.

TERTULLIAN (145-220 A. D.). "But what is that which is removed to hades (ad inferna) after the separation of the body; which is there detained; which is reserved until the day of judgment, to which Christ also on dying descended?" De Anima, vii, 55.

CLEMENS ALEXANDRINUS (153-217 A. D.). "Wherefore the Lord preached the Gospel to those in hades. . . . But how? Do not the Scriptures say that the Lord preached the Gospel to those that perished in the flood, or rather had been chained, and to those kept in ward and guard? 1 Pet. iii, 19, 20. See the entire chapter. Stromata, c. vi.

ORIGEN (185-254 A. D.). "They do not read what is written respecting the hope of those who were destroyed in the deluge, of which hope Peter himself thus speaks in his first epistle." He then quotes 1 Pet. iii, 18-21. De Principiis, c. v. This view is more explicitly stated Contra-Celsus, c. xliii, 1. See also his Homilies on 1 Kings xxviii; Hom. xv, on Gen.; Hom. vi, on Exod., Num. Select, in Psalms.

HIPPOLYTUS (170-236 A. D.). In his treatise on Christ and the Antichrist, Hippolytus says that Christ "was also reckoned among the dead, preaching the Gospel to the souls of the saints, and by death overcoming death. (Also chap. xlvi.) Hippolytus was a disciple of Irenæus, Irenæus of Polycarp, Polycarp of the apostle John.

GREGORY THAUMATURGUS (205-265 A. D.). In his fourth

homily Gregory represents Christ as saying "It becometh me to descend into the very depths of the grave (Tov ädov, hades) on behalf of the dead who are detained there."

LACTANTIUS (260-330 A. D.). This father, the teacher of Crispus, son of Constantine, recognized in his Divine Inst., book iv, chap. xii, the descensus as of faith. "Christ," he says, "also suffered death that he might overcome and lay open the other world (inferos resignaret) also, and thus at length, rising again, he might proceed to his Father borne aloft on a cloud." See, also, chap. xviii.

I have now come to the Nicene period, an epoch when Christianity at last became triumphant, when the servants of Jesus are no longer the despised and hated of the earth, and when it could no longer be said, "Not many mighty, not many noble, are called." The religion of Jesus, surviving ten fiery persecutions, has spread from the Orontes to the Nile, and from the Thames to the Ganges. A Christian emperor sits upon the throne of the world, and the Council of Nice, the first representative body in history, is convened. Among all the principal writers of this period from the days of the holy John the apostle there is a consensus of belief in the descent of Christ to hades. To the number already quoted might be added Pamphilius, Julius Firmicus, Hilarius, bishop of Poictiers; Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria; Gaudentius, bishop of Bres cia; Theophilus, bishop of Alexandria, A. D. 385; Gregorius Nazianzenus; Basil the Great; Cyril, bishop of Jerusalem; Gregory of Nyssa; Philastrius, bishop of Brescia, 387; Ambrose of Milan; Amphilochios, bishop of Iconium; John Chrysostom, Epiphanius, Jerome, and Augustine-all severally representing the original Churches of Palestine, Arabia, Egypt, Asia Minor, Italy, North Africa, and Gaul. It is to be hoped that the expunged article will be restored to its rightful place in the Apostles' Creed as taught by our own Church, the mirror of the Ante-Cyprianic Church of the Pre-Nicene period.

EDITORIAL NOTES AND DISCUSSIONS.

OPINION.

WAS Adam Clarke, the eminent commentator, rationalistic in his interpretation of the Scriptures? Were he living now would he adopt the canons of higher criticism, and espouse the destructive theories of Kuenen and Wellhausen? We raise these questions because it has been hinted that the works of this Wesleyan scholar indicate propensity to independent and heterodox thinking, and that he was on the highway to the final conclusions of those who propose the reconstruction of the Bible and the emasculation of its doctrines. If there were any foundation for this suspicion the negative critics would make the most of it; but after a careful examination of his writings we cannot concede any tendency to rationalistic aberration in Dr. Clarke, or any ground for alleging that he was the forerunner of destructive criticism in biblical investigation. On the contrary, he is so specific in his statement concerning the problems at issue in the discussions of to-day, and antagonizes so many positions of the rationalists, that it is difficult to understand how any one acquainted with his teachings could attribute to him an unorthodox spirit, except on the general principal that errorists usually are extravagant in their claims as to the number and character of their adherents, and the widening extent of the work they are doing. On no question is Dr. Clarke more explicit than when he considers the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch. He says: "Every believer in divine revelation finds himself amply justified in taking for granted that the Pentateuch is the work of Moses." Of those opposed to this view he says, "They are worthy of little regard, as argument is lost on their unprincipled prejudices, and demonstration on their minds, because ever willfully closed against the light." Frequently, in his introduction and prefaces to the five books, he speaks of Moses as the writer of the Pentateuch. In his preface to Joshua, referring to events in the wilderness, he says: "In that wilderness he (Moses) wrote the book of Genesis, as well as the others that bear his name." He is equally emphatic as to the authorship of the book of Joshua, for he says it "is as truly his (Joshua's) work as the Commentaries of Cæsar are his." From such utterances we conclude, that, accepting the Pentateuch as of Mosaic authorship, he unconsciously rejected the theory of the Hexateuch, and furnished facts and arguments confirmatory of the former and destructive of the latter.

Passing to the prophetical books, Dr. Clarke occupies an unequivocal position on the questions they suggest, as well as on the subject of prophecy itself. He writes, that "the prophet was by office not only a declarer of events still future, but the general preacher of the day," his preaching