tion from his true humanity, which is nowhere hinted, and cannot without most dangerous consequences be allowed; nor could he have found any to whom he might preach. Some of the very early fathers, so far from imagining such a sleep to be the state of the disembodied spirit, rather collected from what Christ had done in his spirit, that his apostles also preached, and found souls to preach unto, in Hades. This is, perhaps, too bold a deduction; but it is not too much to argue, that we have here an intimation, not only of the conscious intellectual and moral activity of the souls of the faithful, but even of the kind of occupation which we may find in paradise. If Christ's occupation was in the exercise of intellectual powers in himself and others, and in the promotion of religious feelings, so perhaps may ours be; and the hearts that have sometimes, during their earthly pilgrimage, burned by the way, while emulating the converse of our risen Lord with his disciples, may again, for ought that we can tell, glow with a more divine flame, when they resume the pious conference, in the mansions of departed spirits.

Thus are those habitations of the dead, of which, chiefly perhaps because of their obscurity, we think with instinctive awe, invested with a less gloomy character; and we are taught to look upon them also as included in our beneficial possessions, seeing that we are Christ's, and Christ is God's. The world is ours, because Christ dwelt in it and overcame it; life, because Christ lived and sanctified life; death, because

he died and took the sting from death; the grave, because there he laid down for us his body, that thence he might recover it for us; and Hades, because thither he in his soul descended, illumining those regions of darkness with his light, and dispelling what there was of spiritual gloom by his preaching and as he both died and rose again, that he might be Lord, as well of the dead as of the living ; so surely did his soul, leaving his body in the grave, descend to the place of spirits, that he might be Lord of the dead in both places, and under every circumstance.

Certainly, however, since at the best Hades is a place not of fruition but of expectancy; not of glory but of repose; the assurance that we shall not there remain is a great part of the happy prospect which Christ's descent thither affords us. For we may and must look on his descent as connected, as well with his resurrection, which it necessarily preceded, as with his death, on which it was consequent. And herein also are we triumphantly participant in Christ's victory over Hades; and we may say, as it was said of him, Thou shalt not leave my soul in hell, that is, for ever.

And commensurate with our rejoicing, and hope, and victory, and dominion in these things, may we imagine to have been Satan's rage and despair, when he beheld Christ approaching each successive stage of his human career. From all his possessions, assumed or permitted, was he successively thrust out. At the

grave

going forth of the first heralds of his kingdom, Christ saw Satan falling as lightning from heaven. By his whole life he overcame, and assumed as his right by conquest, that world which the arch-apostate had declared to be his, to give to whom he would: and again and again was Satan driven from the bodies and spirits of men, at the word of the Son of God. Did he retreat into the regions of the air, of the princes of the evil powers of which he was the chief? Thither, too, Christ on the cross followed him, and thence did he cast him down; and purified both the air and the earth from the effects of his malignant contact; on the one, pouring down water and blood from his side, and stretching forth his holy hands into the other. The and hades seemed yet open to the person and machinations of the Enemy; and how gladly would he have retained these, even though he must for that purpose have relaxed in his persecution of Jesus! With what cunning malice did he suggest the taunt and the temptation: If thou be the Son of God, come down from the cross: He saved others, himself he cannot save! But Christ had another way to save others, and to prove that he had saved them, than by sparing himself; and another way of declaring himself to be the Son of God with power, than by listening to the suggestions of the deceiver. Into his last retreat, and that through the ordinary gates of death, did the Saviour pursue his enemy and ours; and now hath he driven him to his own place, and to his own tortures; while we, who, even in this

world, through him who thus wounded and bound the great dragon, tread on serpents and scorpions unhurt; in the state of separation look for nothing but rest, and the full assurance of approaching triumph and happiness and by faith united with Christ we may say henceforth, O death, where is thy sting; O grave (for here the grave includes the intermediate state and habitation of the soul), where is thy victory. Thanks be to God, who giveth us the victory, through Jesus Christ our Lord.

153

SERMON IX.

HE WAS BURIED-THE THIRD DAY HE ROSE AGAIN FROM THE DEAD.

ROM. i. 3, 4.-His Son Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh; and declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead.

THE resurrection of Jesus Christ, consisted as much in the return of his soul to the light of heaven, as in the rising of his body from the grave. As a mere historical event, therefore, it is as well and equally connected with the descent of Christ into Hades as with his burial; yet as forming a part of the evidence of Christianity, the resurrection of Christ is so much more closely connected with his burial, than with the separate state of his soul, that I have ventured on disturbing the verbal order of the Apostles' Creed, which says of Jesus Christ: HE WAS BURIED, and DESCENDED INTO HELL; THE THIRD DAY HE ROSE AGAIN FROM THE DEAD; reserving the article