Being to find the standard of perfection. He has infinite goodness to choose the best ends, infinite wisdom to choose the best means, and infinite power to carry these means into execution. But His immutability is what gives security to the Universe. While in humble imitation of the Divine Original, we seek to give to human government the attributes of goodness, wisdom, and power, we shall fail, if we do not also imitate the immutability which crowns all the other attributes of God.

We conclude by quoting from the first Inaugural of Abraham Lincoln, whose words spoken for liberty and the Constitution are now forever consecrated: "I hold that in the contemplation of universal law and of the Constitution, the union of these States is perpetual. Perpetuity is implied, if not expressed, in the fundamental law of all national governments. It is safe to assert, that no government proper ever had a provision in its organic law for its own termination. Continue to execute all the express provisions of our national constitution, and the Union will endure for ever, it being impossible to destroy it, except by some action not provided for in the instrument itself."

ARTICLE VIII-SHEOL; HADES; THE INVISIBLE STATE.

THE place of the dead is distinguished from this world, in the language of the ancient Hebrews, as an invisible state, into which all men enter at death. All at death enter it, as their common residence, whether they are good or evil, the just or unjust, because at death the body is the tenant of the grave and corruption, and passes from the sight of men, and the soul, being a disembodied spirit, is not visible to mortal eyes. This fact of passing from our sight in this world is common in regard to all men at death. They go into Hades-the invisible world.

But this fact of their being absent from our sight indicates nothing about their particular place of residence or their condition. If they are in Heaven, they are in Hades-a world invisible to us. If they are in Hell, yésvva, they are still in Hades, a world invisible to us. The opinion of the Jews represented Hades as both the grave of the body in the ground, and the abode of spirits under the ground, in deep subterranean regions, as in the proverb against the king of Babylon. Isaiah, xiv. 9-20.* These were popular opinions among the Jews, the Greeks, and the Romans. Hence the universe of creatures is classed in Phil., ii. 10 as roupavíwv, supernatural or Heavenly, bysiwv, terrestrial, and xaraxoviwv, subterranean.

Now as death places all men in Hades, they remain in that state of invisibility to mortals, until they become visible by resurrection from the dead. Hence, to summon them back,

*"Hell (Hades) from beneath is moved for thee to meet thee at thy coming: it stirreth up the dead for thee, even all the chief ones of the earth: it hath raised up from their thrones all the kings of the nations. All they shall speak and say unto thee, Art thou also become as weak as we? Art thou become like unto us? Thy pomp is brought down to the grave, and the noise of thy viols: the worm is spread under thee, and the worms cover thee." *

the revelation of Christ asserts, that at the close of this system of redemption, when he shall come to assign the whole race, in full presence of the universe, their eternal awards, his voice shall call the dead from their graves; the dead beneath the ground shall hear his voice, and come forth to the resurrection. This is a figurative description of the power of his will. Not that literally there are any words used by Christ, or heard by the departed spirits; but, as when he said to dead Lazarus, "Come forth!" his soul was brought into living union with his still organized body, so his power reaches the souls, and reorganizes around them new spiritual bodies.

But do resurrection and the judgment follow immediately on the death of each individual, and are the resurrection and judgment of all mankind accomplished as the result of this progressive work on all the race, except that portion that remain alive on the earth at the close of Christ's earthly Kingdom? If so, there is no intermediate state between death and the judgment to individual souls; but all are on probation here, or in Heaven or Hell as their eternal state.

As to the question of time. The time is defined by the limits between death and resurrection,-the time of invisibility. Thus Christ was in Hades, when his spirit was out of the body, and out of Hades, when his spirit returned to quicken and inhabit the body. Where his soul literally was in that interval, whether in any congregation of the lost, or in any company of the saved, or roving in solitariness, awaiting his return to his still organized body, does not appear from the fact that it was in Hades, and would not be left there by the Father, who would show him the path of life.

As to the question of place. Where is Hades? The popular idea was that the soul at death descends into subterranean regions and remains in them as shades, either in Elysium or in Orcus, as the Romans and Greeks believed, or in gardens of paradise, or in regions of flame and burning. Now as this was the popular idea, the popular language was employed in revelation, of souls descending at death into Hades and coming up at their return to earth and the body by resurrection. The origin of this idea of locality is probably from the

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impression that the soul, when the material body perishes in the earth, hovers around the place of its companion. Hence they supposed that the shades of those that perished in the sea hovered around in the waters, and that consequently, at the resurrection, when the sea gave up her dead, these spirits entered their quickened bodies and rose out of the sea, as the spirits under the land sought their quickened bodies in the graves of earth and came forth. But this popular belief and impression is used in revelation to denote the fact of a resurrection that is to take place. It does not intend to explain the mode; it simply asserts the great practical fact. Just as Scripture asserts that the sun stood still on Gibeon, not to assert the mode of continuing his light by stopping its motion, but the fact of miraculous departure from the course of nature in the continuance of his light at the word of Joshua. So in every passage in Scripture which speaks of the sun as performing his circuit in the heavens, as rising and setting, we have the fact asserted merely of apparent phenomena, not a philosophic account of the sun's motions. The descent of souls to Hades and their coming up to earth, then, when the language is used in Scripture, cannot be alleged as a revelation of the fact of a literal descent, or ascent. Hades, therefore, the invisible residence of departed spirits, is not proved in any such desription to be literally in the ground or sea. It may be in whatever place a disembodied spirit may be. It is as possible that they should be invisible around us, as in any other place, from the mere description of an invisible state. But if we look at particular cases spoken of in the Scriptures, it seems impossible to reconcile them with any notion of a literal underground location.

Thus Moses and Elijah were with the Saviour on the Mount, and became visible to the Apostles present. They were not under the earth. And though Elijah had never entered Hades because he had not died, yet Moses, it must be acknowledged, had, and had not yet reached the period of release by the resurrection. He at least was a spirit, coming out of Hades at the time, not by any ascent from subterranean regions, but by a miraculous clothing of light, which might be granted him there, whether he came up there from the subterranean re

gions, or came down to comfort the Saviour from the assembled spirits of the just made perfect, already at that day gathered in heaven. Again, of this assembly at least, we may say that so far as locality is concerned at all, they were not in any fancied region under ground, they were in the Heavenly Jerusalem, on Mount Zion above, in the presence of the innumerable company of angels, and before the Judge of all. At least if that assembly has any locality, it is not underground, but looked to by faith as above the heavens. So, too, Stephen, when about to be stoned, looked up into heaven, as opened to him by vision, and saw Jesus the ascended, and as he expired, he said, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit." Acts vii. 59. Did Christ take that spirit and admit it into the glori ous place seen of him in vision, or did he send it off and down into the lower parts of the earth? So Paul longed, by leaving the body, to be present with his ascended and glorified Saviour. Did he suppose that at death his soul would go down into the subterranean regions, away from the glorious vision of Christ, left with the bare conviction of the omnipresence of the Saviour, which accompanied him while in the body, and that he was still to be absent from the glorious vision for the ages to intervene until the general resurrection? Where, then, was his gain?

Our next question is, as to the condition of souls in Hades. Are they, as some suppose, in an unconscious state of torpor and inaction until the final resurrection? Paul asserts in his First Epistle to the Thessalonians, that believers in Christ who had died had fallen asleep, and were to sleep till the day of resurrection. But such language is taken from the bodily resemblance of sleep and death, and the peaceful state of Christian souls as resting in joy with Christ. There are passages of the Old Testament, which speak of this state as a deprivation of all present privilege, action, and feeling, such as Hezekiah's prayer, Isaiah xxxviii. 18,* and as Psalms xxx. 9,† cxv. 17, and

* "For the grave cannot praise thee, death cannot celebrate thee; they that go down to the pit cannot hope for thy truth."

+ "What profit is there in my blood, when I go down to the pit? Shall the dust praise thee? Shall it declare thy truth?"

+ "The dead praise not the Lord, neither any that go down into silence.”