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preached to those sinful men as He preached to sinful men in the time of His Incarnation. But the reference in verse 22 to the Ascension seems to suggest that the preaching took place after Christ's death.
^ The weighty authority of E. H. Charles may be invoked to prove that the interpretation which accepts Christ's mission to the dead fits in with our fuller knowledge of contemporary Jewish literature. It throws light on one of the darkest enigmas of the Di\dne justice. At the same time full justice will be done to the early Christian tradition that in some way or other Christ benefited the souls of the faithful departed. But it must be admitted that the bare statement of the Apostles' Creed asserts only that Christ's soul passed into the condition which our souls will enter at death, sanctifying every condition of human exist- ence. Harnack writes that " the clause is too weak to maintain its ground beside the others, as equally independent and authori- tative," but, as Swete says, he fails to point out in what the weakness lies, while " to us it appears to possess in a very high degree the strength which comes from primitive simplicity and a wise reserve."
Thus the consensus of theological opinion justifies the teaching of the poet of the Christian Year :
Sleep'st Thou indeed? or is Thy spirit fled,
At large among the dead ? Whether in Eden bowers Thy welcome voice
Wake Abraham to rejoice, Or in some drearier scene Thine eye controls
The thronging band of souls; That, as Thy blood won earth. Thine agony Might set the shadowy realm from sin and sorrow free.i
2. Christ breaks through all barriers, and proclaims His Lordship in the realm of spirits. The " Keys of Hades " in the Book of Kevelation serve to interpret " the proclamation to the spirits in prison." Whatever the details may mean, the central picture in the Petrine passage is the triumphant march of the crucified Jesus through the domain of Hades. He is there taking command of the keys. He has come as Lord of the citadel, and makes His proclamation as such to the spirits in ward. The Monarch has come to take possession. Just as His coming into
^ A. E, Burn, in the Dictionary of Christ and the Gospels, i. 716.
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our earth shook our world with a new power, so His entry into Hades shook this shadowy realm with new forces. He grasped the keys of all Hades throughout all its mysterious boundaries, and not merely of a part of it. Therefore St. Peter writes only of a fraction of the whole " proclamation " and triumph, this portion having been chosen for the enforcement of a particular lesson — the lesson of godly Noah's triumph over a turbulent and evil world. The Son of Man conquered the grave for the bodies of men, and took possession of Hades as Lord of the spirits of men. Therefore He will come to judge the quick and the dead alike. "For the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son."
^ The most primitive, or, at least, the earliest traceable, element in the conception of the Descensus would seem to be the belief that Christ, having descended into the under world after His death, delivered the Old Testament saints from that necessity of being confined in Hades which was thenceforward abrogated in the case of believers, and conveyed them to the Heaven which all believers have hereafter the right to enter,^
8. Christ proclaimed the glad tidings of His Kingdom to those in Hades. He who came down from heaven " to seek and to save that which was lost " did not count His work over when He had finished it for the generation that then lived, or when He had laid the foundation of it for other generations thereafter ; but He went also to those who had been so unhappy as to be born and to have died before He came. He went and continued His ministry among the spirits in prison. The Cross was set up, so to speak, in Hades. The promise to the penitent thief was not a promise to one ; it was a promise to all who had gone before Christ and desired to know Him, who had died in His faith, in His love, but without the sight of Him ; — it was a promise to all of them, that on that day He would bring rest and satisfaction to them. So we can think of Christ going there among all the dead, from Adam and Eve, and Cain and Abel, down to Isaiah and Micah, and John the Baptist — to all those who had been hunger- ing for Him, expecting and longing for Him, to the souls of the great heathen, longing for they knew not what, but surely finding at last their satisfaction in Him.
* Priedrich Loofs, in the Encychpcedia of Religion avd Ethics, iv. 661.
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^ It is impossible to shut Christ out of any region of His universe. He has a right everywhere. Hell and destruction are open before Him. He tracks " lost " man down to the deepest and darkest cavern. Even devils could not shut their gate of flame upon Him. He is " come to seek and to save that which was lost " ; and I rejoice to believe that every " lost " child of Adam shall have at least the opportunity of accepting Christ's mediation — that Christ's great work has been published through the universe — and that even from hell's floor of fire, clear up to heaven's loftiest pinnacle of jasper, the story of redeeming love is known in all the pomp of its simplicity, in all the omnipotence of its pathos.^