WHAT THE BIBLE AND THE CHURCH SAY ABOUT THE NEAR HEREAFTER
Only three hours later the Lord passed through into that Unseen Land.
"Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit, and having said this He
gave up the ghost," and departed on the mysterious journey. If we
could know anything about what He saw and did on that mysterious
journey surely it would give some hints about our dear ones departed.
§ 1
That journey of the Lord into the world of the dead has been made a
great article of the Christian faith. We all repeat it regularly in
the Apostles' Creed, "He descended into Hell." I need not translate
that clause. Every well taught Sunday-school child knows its meaning.
"He descended into Hades," into the world of the departed in the great
waiting life before the Judgment. But there is a great deal more than
this to be said about it.
Now, let us consider this statement. Clearly it deals with the three
days between our Lord's death and resurrection. Where did His spirit
go? "To heaven, of course," somebody says. "No," says the Lord
Himself after the resurrection, "I have not yet ascended to My Father."
Where, then, did His spirit go? "Nobody can tell," you say. Yes, one
person could tell, and only one--the Lord Himself. He only could have
told of His solitary temptation in the wilderness, and He evidently
told it. He only could have told of the solitary scene in Gethsemane,
it would seem that He told it. He only could have told of His visit to
the world of the dead, and I think that He told it. You remember that
after the resurrection He was with them "forty days teaching the things
concerning the Kingdom." I think He must have told them then of those
three days. Why? Because the knowledge of it was so wide-spread in
the early Church, and there was no one else to tell it. Some people
seem to think that there are only some obscure verses of St. Peter and
a few references of St. Paul in favour of such teaching. Not at all.
It was the belief of the whole Church. St. Peter and St. Paul were
only two in a crowd of teachers of early days who proclaimed
triumphantly the visit of the Lord into the world of the dead. St.
Peter seems to be thinking of it in his first sermon when he quotes:
"His soul was not left in Hades" (Acts ii. 31). Therefore St. Peter
knew that it was into that intermediate life--not into that final
Heaven--that our Lord went at death. This statement by itself would
not prove much, but when I find the same St. Peter long afterwards
telling so circumstantially in his first epistle (iii. 18) that when
his Master was put to death in the flesh He was made more alive in the
spirit, in which spirit He went and preached to the spirits in prison
who had been disobedient at the flood. "For which cause (chap. iv. 6)
was the gospel--the glad news--preached to them that are dead," I think
it is a fair inference that St. Peter had some definite information.
And then I find St. Paul, in Eph. iv. 9, when he is writing of the
gifts bestowed on the Church by her ascended Lord. The word "ascended"
causes him to pause abruptly. Men must not think that His work in the
unseen was limited to that work for us in Heaven after His ascension.
"Now that He ascended, what is it but that He descended first into the
lower parts of the earth (_i. e._, the world of the departed) that He
might fill all things." Hades and Heaven had alike felt the glory of
His presence.
And then immediately after the Apostles' days I find the knowledge
wide-spread in the Church. I read the writings of the ancient bishops
and teachers of the Church, beginning at the death of St. John, the
very men to whom we refer for information as to the Baptism and Holy
Communion and the authenticity of the four Gospels, and there I find
prominently in their preaching the gospel of our Lord's visit to the
world of the departed.
§ 2
The earliest is known as Justin Martyr. He was born about the time of
St. John's death, and he feels so strongly about the Descent into Hades
that he actually charges the Jews with mutilating a prophecy of
Jeremiah foretelling it.
Irenaeus, the great Bishop of Lyons in France, a little while later
tells how the Lord descended {59} into the world of the dead, preaching
to the departed, and all who had hopes in Him, and submitted to His
dispensations, received remission of sins.
Then away in Egypt comes St. Clement of Alexandria, born about fifty
years after St. John's death. I have been greatly interested in some
little touches in his chapter on the descent into the world of the
dead. He asserts as the direct teaching of Scripture that our Lord
preached the Gospel to the dead, but he thinks that the souls of the
Apostles must have taken up the same task when they died, and that it
was not merely to Jews and saints, but to heathen as well--as was only
fair, he says, since they had no chance of knowing. Don't you like
that honest appeal of his "as was only fair"?
St. Clement's great disciple, Origen, comes next. His evidence comes
in curiously. A famous infidel named Celsus, knowing of this
wide-spread creed of the Church about the preaching in Hades, laughs at
the Christians. "I suppose your Master when He failed to persuade the
living had to try and persuade the dead?" Origen meets the question
{60} straight out: "Whether it please Celsus or no, we of the Church
assert that the soul of our Lord, stript of its body, held converse
with other souls that He might convert those capable of instruction."
Then away in Western Africa, the Church's belief is represented by
another great teacher, Tertullian. In Jerusalem, Cyril the Bishop,
teaches the people in his catechetical lectures this faith of the
Church with a ring of gladness and triumph. He sees Christ not only
amid the souls who had once been disobedient, but also in blessed
intercourse with the strugglers after right who had never seen His face
on earth. He pictures how the holy prophets ran to our Lord, how
Moses, and Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and David, and Samuel, and
John the Baptist, ran to Him with the cry, "Oh, Death, where is thy
sting? Oh, Grave, where is thy victory, for the Conqueror has redeemed
us."
I cannot go on to tell of St. Athanasius and the rest. I have said
enough to show you that in the early ages of the Church--the pure
loving ages--nearest to the Lord and to the Apostles, the Church
rejoiced in the glad belief that Christ went and visited the spirits in
the Unseen who had never seen His face on earth.[1]
§ 3
This was one of the gladdest notes in the whole Gospel harmony of the
early Church for five hundred years, in the purest and most loving
days, the days nearest our Lord and His Apostles. It was a note of
triumph. It told of the tender, thoughtful love of Christ for the
faithful souls who had never seen Hun. It told of the universality of
His Atonement. It told of victory, far beyond this life. It told that
Christ, who came to seek and save men's souls on earth, had continued
that work in the world of the dead while His body lay in the grave.
That He passed into the unseen world as a saviour and conqueror. That
His banner was unfurled there and His cross set up there in the world
of the departed. That the souls of all the ancient world who had never
known Him, and WHO WERE CAPABLE OF TURNING TO HIM (_i. e._, who in
their earthly probation, in spite of all their ignorance and sin, had
not irrevocably turned away from God and good), might turn to Him and
live. That the spirits of the old-world saints and prophets had
welcomed Him with rejoicing. That even men of much lower place had yet
found mercy. That even such men as those who had perished in the flood
in God's great judgment, BUT HAD NOT HARDENED THEMSELVES AGAINST HIS
RIGHTEOUSNESS AND LOVE, were not shut out from hope. In the "many
mansions" was a place even for such as they. To the teachers of the
early Church, I repeat, it was one of the most triumphant notes in
their gospel--the wideness of Christ's Atonement.
§ 4
That is what we mean, then, by the descent into Hades. Does it not
give a vivid reality to that world that we think of so vaguely? Think
of it. Was there ever before or since such a scene, such a preaching,
such a preacher, such a congregation? Could the wildest flights of
imagination go further? Yet it is all sober fact. Try to picture it
for yourselves for a moment. The Lord hanging on the cross, with His
heart full of pain for that humanity that He was redeeming; and yet
surely full of triumph, too, and glad anticipation. He was going to
show Himself to the poor souls who in the dark old world days had loved
God and Right. He had finished the work that was given Him to do. He
was leaving His Church with that blessed gospel of salvation to preach
through the centuries to all souls on earth. But what of the souls who
had gone out of earth from the beginning of the world without knowing
Him? The Church replies, through her Bible and through her Creed and
through her early teachers, that the Lord was not forgetting them. He
was about to go forth in a few moments, "quickened in His spirit," to
bring His glad gospel to the waiting souls. That was the first great
missionary work of the Church. May we not reverently see His own
anticipation of it in His departing words as He started on His mission,
"Father, into Thy hands do I commend My spirit" (in the journey on
which it is going). May we not read it in that "au revoir," not
"good-bye," to the thief beside Him, "To-day you shall be with Me in
Paradise"? May we not dwell on the wonder and joy and gratitude and
love which must have shaken that world within the veil, as the loving
conqueror came in amongst them? And may we not reverently follow Him
still in thought when He returned to earth and, as we conjecture,
somewhere in the Forty Days after the Resurrection, told His disciples
of His marvellous experience? I am not laying down this as a statement
of Scripture, but I think it is a fair conjecture, for how else could
they have learned it? And if we are right; think how the knowledge of
it would swell the glad confidence of St. Paul. "For I am persuaded
that neither DEATH, nor LIFE, nor angels, nor principalities, nor
powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, is able to
separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."
I think we must see that this teaching of the Apostles and apostolic
men of the whole early Church is true. People sometimes ask, "Why,
then, is it new in our day?" The answer is easy. At the Reformation
time there were terrible abuses connected with the Church's doctrine of
the Intermediate life. The practice of purchased Masses, and Pardons,
and Indulgences, and all the absurdities connected with the Roman
purgatory, so exemplified in Tetzel's cry, "When money clinks at the
bottom of my box a soul is released from purgatory." With such
provocation one does not wonder--though one may greatly regret--that
the indignant reformers, in sweeping away the falsehood, sometimes
swept away also the underlying truth. The teaching about the
Intermediate Life, and the old practice of the Church in remembering
her faithful departed in prayer, were all put in the background as
leading to dangerous abuse; and so the people, getting no real teaching
about it, got the sad habit of trying to forget about the state of
their dear ones departed. In their ignorance, they could only guess
blindly what the Creed here means. So for centuries this has been the
"lost article of the Creed." But this teaching of the Creed is none
the less true, because it has been neglected in later days. And if it
be true, it is well worth our attention, for it confirms what we have
already learned from the previous teaching of the Lord, that the life
of the departed is a clear, vivid, conscious life, since Christ could
teach them and they could learn.
And it suggests that the departed souls of the old world who had no
chance of knowing Him have not by death lost all capacity for repenting
and receiving Christ. Those men that St. Peter thinks of had perished
in God's great judgment, but it would seem in their terrible fate they
had not hardened themselves irrevocably against God. Those who do that
on earth seem to close the door for ever. That is the sin against the
Holy Ghost--the only sin which our Lord says hath never forgiveness
either in this world or in the world to come. These evidently had
still their capacity for repentance. And this gives one stirrings of
hope in the perplexities of God's awful judgments. Don't be afraid to
think this. There is not one word in Scripture to forbid our thinking
it. It merely means that in the terrible fate which they had brought
on themselves they had not utterly hardened their hearts--and Christ
had not forgotten them in their misery.
§ 6
Estimate fairly the value of this evidence for our Lord's visit to the
Unseen Life. Do not overestimate it. It is not all Scripture. But
all that is not Scripture is the wide-spread belief of the primitive
Church which was afterwards crystallized into an article of the Creed.
Surely it is enough to deepen our sense of the reality of that Unseen
Life. It strongly confirms what we have learned already--that that
life is a vivid, conscious life into which "I" go my "self," with my
full memory of the past. And do not misread it. It is not offering
any hope to wicked men who, with full knowledge of Christ, wilfully
reject Him. It tells of men who had never known Him, and has hope only
of those "who were capable of receiving Him." There is nothing here to
make light of the responsibility of this life.
But this message comes to us to comfort the hearts and strengthen the
faith of thinking men and women who are puzzled and perplexed and
estranged from Christ by the terrible perplexities of life and of God's
judgments as they understand or misunderstand them. You have often
thought of the difficulty of reconciling the righteous justice of God
with His Fatherly love. You have often thought, in wondering doubt,
"Why did Christ come so late in the world's history? What of all the
old-world souls who could not have known Him here on earth? For you
know that there is no salvation save by Jesus Christ. You have read in
the Old Testament of whole nations, men, women and little children,
swept away in one dread destruction. What of them? You have wondered
about the vast heathen world passing in thousands every day into the
Unseen, with no knowledge of Him. You have sometimes read the
Registrar-General's return of deaths in your city, and thought of all
the little dead children, brought up in evil homes; of sullen prisoners
hardened in the jails; of grown men and women in the city's slums who,
through the hardening influence of circumstances, had little real
chance of ever being touched by that tenderness of God's love which
leads men to love Him in return. You know they have not died in
Christ. What of them?" If you had to stand at some death-beds at
which some of us have to stand you would feel as we do the insistent
pressure of that question for all in the ancient or modern world--the
vast countless world of the dead--who had no real chance of knowing
Christ or being touched by His love here on earth.
Oh, the generations old
Over whom no church bell tolled
Christless lifting up blind eyes
To the silence of the skies.
For the innumerable dead
Is my soul disquieted!
Trust them with God, says this teaching of the Creed. Christ will do
right by them. Christ does not forget them.
Trust Him, though thy sight be dim,
Doubt for them is doubt of Him.
* * * * *
Still Thy love, O Christ, arisen
Yearns to reach those souls in prison,
Through all depths of sin and loss
Sinks the plummet of Thy Cross.
Never yet abyss was found
Deeper than that Cross could sound.
In these two chapters we have touched on the chief statements in the
New Testament and in the beliefs of the primitive Church as to the near
Hereafter. There are others of less importance to be referred to as we
go on. It seemed well to lay down some basis to proceed on.
[1] See Plumptre, _The Spirits in Prison_.