Human tradition asserts that man can never die. It makes death to mean eternal life in misery. Because, forsooth, the term "death" is often applied in Scripture to that spiritual condition in which man is alienated from the life of God," it is assumed that death never means death. But the reason why this spiritual state is so called is that it inevitably leads to the destruction of the being that is thus severed from God. If anything is plainly taught in Scripture, it is that there can be no eternal life for man apart from Him. Hence the sinner who dies in body, must also lose his soul. His whole being is thus dissolved, and all that gave him life and heritage in manhood is gone. Such a man is dead-blotted out of existence as a man -but not yet wholly extinct. Personal identity must still be latent in the outcast spirit. Otherwise the same man could not be brought back through resurrection. But resurrected life, unless it become linked in with the life of God, cannot be eternal. And hence to those to whom it does not bring this highest good a second death becomes possible. And as no resurrection is promised out of this second death, we infer that it is total and final. This view of the penalty of sin preserves to the uniform teaching of Scripture that "the wages of sin is death," its proper meaning. At the same time, it provides room for those Scriptures which assume the prolonged existence of the soul after the body dies, the subsequent extension of the death-process to the soul, the re-habilitation of the outcast spirit through resurrection in virtue of the redeeming work of Christ, before

the great issue of eternal life or death, as now raised by His gospel, is finally, and for all men, forever settled.

The only other passage in this epistle which speaks of future retribution occurs in the fifth chapter; and it is perfectly consistent with this idea that judgment for the sins of this life is visited in and after death and before resurrection. It begins with a strong philippic against rich men who had accumulated wealth by fraud and oppression of the poor, and warns them that they must reap as they had sown-that their treasures would be speedily burned up in consuming judgments, whose fires would also enwrap their own flesh. But the reference evidently is to a judgment "at the door" (vs. 9). It would be altogether arbitrary and unnatural to refer the language here used to a distant judgment day, and to torments to be inflicted upon these doomed men in body and soul after a remote resurrection from the dead. Wicked men do not have to wait until then to learn that "God is a consuming fire."

St. Peter's first epistle has the same general characteristic. It assumes that there is a death to be shunned and a life to be gained. It warns unwary Christians against the adversary who "goeth about, like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour" (v. 8). It reminds them that judgment is approaching-yea, that it was already beginning at the house of God (v. 17). And if the righteous could only with difficulty survive its ordeal, "where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear ? " Here also the language does not comport

with the thought of a far-distant assize to which those tried should be introduced after resurrection, but of a near issue of life and death in which the righteous man would preserve his soul alive, while that of the ungodly must sink into the gloom of death and hell. But, as we have repeatedly seen, all this is inflicted before the light of another life shall break in upon this darkness. It involves the utter ruin and loss of this present gift of life. It is that bankruptcy of being and bondage in Sheol which precedes resurrection.

And hence we find in this epistle a plain allusion to the fact that such deliverance is in store for "spirits in prison." It affirms that Christ, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened in the Spirit, "went and preached unto the spirits in prison, which aforetime were disobedient, when the long suffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing' (iii. 18-20). We have not time and space to enter upon a full critical discussion of the various interpretations put upon this famous passage. Orthodox commentators have seen at a glance that its surface meaning is opposed to the current teaching of the church concerning the final destiny of all men as unalterably fixed at death. And, therefore, ingenuity has been exhausted in efforts to force into the passage some other meaning than the obvious one. And yet the effort has so far failed that an increasing number of even this class of writers now accept the ancient and catholic view, which the words themselves require.

This is what the passage states:

1. That Christ, after His death and resurrection,* "went and preached."

2. Those to whom the preaching was addressed were, at the time of it, "spirits in prison" of the men who, in a former age, had despised the warning message of Noah.

We do not understand, however, that this was the same gospel offer as is made to men in this life. It is only on the arena of manhood that the gospel prize of eternal life and of joint-heirship with Christ can be won. These outcast spirits were no longer men. They must be raised from the dead before they could get back to man's estate or be capable of reaching its high goal. But the proclamation by Christ to them of His resurrection was to them a gospel, because it gave hope of their own future resurrection.

That this was a message to the dead is further proved by the subsequent allusion to it in the next chapter (vs. 6), "For unto this end were the good tidings preached even to the dead, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to

* We call attention here to a palpable mistake in the prevalent assumption that the preaching in question took place in the interval between His death and resurrection. The statement in the text is that it was in the Spirit by which He was quickened out of death that He went and preached. It must therefore have been after His resurrection. For this quickening is resurrection (Rom. i. 4, viii. 11. Comp. Eph. ii. 5–6, Col. ii. 12, iii. 1). The Greek word for "preached" here means "heralded" (ěkýpužev). This makes it probable that the direct object of the preaching was to announce the fact of His resurrection.

one.

God in the spirit."* That "the dead" here spoken of are not the merely spiritually dead, but those who had actually died appears in the use of the term "dead" in the previous verse: "Who shall give account to Him that is ready to judge the quick and the dead." No one would apply any other meaning to the word dead" in this title of the Christ than the ordinary And therefore the same word in the next verse in 'immediate connection must refer to this same class. It was captives in the realms of death to whom these good news came. However, then, interpreters may quibble in the effort to evade the plain meaning of these two passages, it is evident that they lie right athwart the dogma that the eternal destiny of all men is irrevocably fixed at death. There is at least a glad tidings of a coming resurrection through a Risen Redeemer proclaimed to all the dead. That this resurrection will issue in the final salvation to eternal life of all is not here affirmed. But that it is a boon, that it brings with it a recovery of lost spirits to that heritage in life and manhood out of which they were cast, that this renewed life will bring new opportunities

*This expression "judged according to men in the flesh," etc., suggests that wherever the glad tidings of Christ's resurrection are made known, whether to men in the flesh, or to spirits in prison, it is both a word of judgment and of life. It puts all that pertains to the flesh, and all of evil that cleaves to the spirit, under the ban of judgment. And it brings life only to those who acquiesce in this judgment and accept it as their just due, and who, out of deserved death, look alone to the Risen Christ for life. From this point of view it is quite possible to believe that there is a probation for resurrection, which will indeed, finally reach every man, but only in his own time and order. For none are raised who do not first hear the voice of the Son of God (John v. 25-29).