and actually preached to that old world; but by the ministry of a Prophet, by the sending of Noah, "a preacher of righteousness," yet to do any thing by another, not able to perform it without Him, as much demonstrates the existence of the principal cause as if He did it of Himself without any intervening instrument."

What our Saviour says of Himself, as a sojourner on earth, applies to all, "the night cometh, when no man can work." (John ix. 4.) And I defy any one to produce a single expression of our Saviour's, or of either of His apostles, which affords the smallest pretence for flattering ourselves that there is any locus pœnitentiæ beyond the grave, and this methinks should suffice to prevent learned commentators from exercising their ingenuity in order to make an obscure text speak, by implication, a different language from the entire volume of the Scriptures.

I so dislike pulling a giant such as Bishop Horsley to pieces, that I decline to follow him through the further mazes of his bewildering discourse; contenting myself with subjoining the peroration to a sermon of unusual length and effort.

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Having now, I trust, shown that the article of Christ's descent into hell is to be taken as a plain matter of fact, in the literal meaning of the words; having exhibited the positive proof that we find of this fact in holy writ; having asserted the literal meaning of my text, and displayed in its full force the convincing proof to be deduced from this passage in particular; I shall now, with great brevity, demonstrate the great use and importance of the fact itself as a point of Christian doctrine.

"Its great use is this, that it is a clear confutation of

the dismal notion of death as a temporary extinction of the life of the whole man; or, what is no less gloomy and discouraging, the notion of the sleep of the soul in the interval between death and the resurrection. Christ was made so truly man, that whatever took place in the human nature of Christ may be considered as a model and example of what must take place, in a certain due proportion and degree, in every man united to Him. Christ's soul survived the death of His body, therefore shall the soul of every believer survive the body's death; Christ's disembodied soul descended into hell, thither therefore shall the soul of every believer in Christ descend; in that place the soul of Christ, in its separate state, possessed and exercised active powers, in the same place, therefore, shall the believer's soul possess and exercise activity: Christ's soul was not left in hell, neither shall the souls of his servants there be left, but for a season; the appointed time will come, when the Redeemer shall set open the doors of their prison-house, and say to His redeemed' Go forth!""

Now, no one denies that all will be subjected to the same conditions with our Saviour, as to His humanity; our souls, like His, will return to God, there to remain "until the appointed time will come, when the Redeemer shall set open the doors of their prison-house, and say to His redeemed, 'Go forth.""

What a chimera is the intermediate expectant state, whether contemplated as a state of happiness, or a state of misery!

The parable of Lazarus and Dives countenances, as I hope I have shown, neither of these opinions.

Its

corporeity shows that it does not apply to the disembodied spirit; its reference to Moses and the prophets shows, and that is the gist of the parable, that we must not expect more evidence of a day of judgment, and of resurrection to eternal life, than is already afforded us in the Bible. In a worldly point of view, no one will deny that, in dealing with such an imaginary state as a locus pænitentiæ, the Romanists have turned it to a good

account.

As for the comfort of supposing that we shall be in a state of individual consciousness between death and the day of judgment, and not that our souls, apart from our bodies, will, as incomplete existences, be in the safe keeping of God, I believe it to be a fallacy altogether. How infinitely more consolatory is the analogy of our death with sleep, consonant alike with the unsophisticated belief of the vulgar, when not in the trammels of Romanism, and with that of religious philosophers, like Sir Thomas Brown, who in his nightly colloquy with God thus expresses himself:

Moreover, is not the doctrine of an intermediate state virtually negatived, in all assemblies of Christians, as

often as they join in Bishop Ken's beautiful Evening

hymn ?

"Teach me to live, that I may dread

The grave as little as my bed;

Teach me to die, that so I may
Triumphing rise at the last day.

O may my soul on Thee repose,
And with sweet sleep mine eye-lids close;
Sleep that may me more vig'rous make,
To serve my God when I awake."*

* Correctly given according to the version in the "Life of Bp. Ken, by a Layman." 2nd ed. p. 822.

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CHAPTER III.

'SOCIOLOGY,' A MODERN SCIENCE, OF WHICH IT IS DIFFICULT TO GIVE ANY PRECISE DEFINITION.

HAVING received much information and pleasure from the writings of Sir James Stephen, I must confess that some parts of his "Epilogue" occasioned equal surprise and regret. I complain, in particular, of his attempting to found any refutation of the Roman doctrine of transubstantiation on the suggestion that, after all, no such words as those employed by the Evangelists, St. Matthew and St. Luke, may have been used by our Saviour. The Greek words, TOUTO Eσti to owμa μov, “this is my body," "may not," he says, "be a correct version of those used by our Saviour, who spake in the Syro-Chaldaic tongue, which was the vernacular idiom of the Jews at that time, and which Sir J. Stephen pronounces to be the poorest and least elevated of the instruments of discourse ever used among civilised men. We can only, therefore, conjecture what His very words were; and in the wide field of conjecture it is morally impossible that a real unanimity of judgment should prevail." "Human language," he had previously observed, "being impressed with all the infirmities, and darkened by all the mental obscurities of those who have