has here been guilty of wrong, must there suffer punishment, torture his soul." So that the question is, not about giving to Hades in the Scriptures, a new signification, one not found in the classics, but merely which of its classical significations predominates; a question which can be determined only by the actual use of the word in Scripture. It occurs in the Septuagint sixty-four times, and in all save four, is the translation of the Hebrew Sheol, and may therefore be regarded as substantially its synonym. Indeed, both words etymologically denote an unseen, dark, dismal place. And in exact accordance with this original signification of Hades is its usage; never in a single case, either in the Old or New Testament, expressing or implying anything desirable, but always that which is gloomy and forbidding. Hence it is used first of the grave.

This is its most frequent sense. As when the Psalmist speaking of the wicked, says: "Like sheep they are laid in the grave; their beauty shall consume in the grave." "The Lord killeth, and maketh alive; he bringeth down to the grave, and bringeth up" (1 Sam. 2: 6). Says Jacob: "Then shall ye bring down my gray hairs with sorrow to the grave." "But his hoar head, bring thou down to the grave with blood" (1 Kings 2: 9). "For in death there is no remembrance of thee, in the grave who shall give thee thanks?" (Ps. 6: 5.) A question plainly without point, if Hades here denotes an intermediate place like Paradise, where the righteous are supposed to dwell. For they there surely praise and give thanks after death.

It is also frequently used to denote death, or a state of death. "What man is he that liveth and shall not see death, shall he deliver his soul from the hand of the grave?" (Ps. 89: 48.) "I will ransom them from the power of the grave, I will redeem them from death" (Hosea 13: 14). "Let death seize upon them, let them go down quickly into the grave (Ps. 55: 15).

Again, it signified a deep, dark, dismal place, as opposed to heaven. "It is as high as heaven; what canst thou do? deeper than hell; what canst thou know?" (Job 11: 8.) "If

I ascend up into heaven, thou art there; if I make my bed in hell, thou art there" (Ps. cxxxix). (Ps. cxxxix)." Though they dig into hell, thence shall my hand take them; though they climb up to heaven, thence will I bring them down" (Amos 9: 3). "For a fire is kindled in mine anger, and shall burn to the lowest hell" (Deut. 32: 22).

Again, it sometimes implies a place or state of extreme suffering. "Thou hast delivered my soul from the lowest hell" (Ps. 86: 13). "The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God" (Ps. 9: 17). "Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and shalt deliver his soul from hell" (Prov. 23: 14).

We have, then, Hades in the Old Testament, with four different meanings; the common idea of something dark and gloomy underlying them all, viz.: the grave, death, a dark unseen region in contrast with heaven, and a place of extreme suffering. Now death and the grave, surely, are the lot of all, good and bad; but other than this, there is no intimation of any common residence. The images, and figures, and concomitants employed, are all indicative of evil; not only so, but if the righteous are spoken of, it is as rescued from these states or places; in this respect, standing in contrast with the wicked. True, Jacob is represented as saying, I shall go down to Hades to my son, mourning. Yet this as it stands, may, without any violence to the language, merely mean, I shall follow my son to the grave, mourning. But properly translated, it reads, I shall go down to the grave, mourning for my son. Not only is the Hebrew preposition often used with this meaning; but see 2 Sam. 1: 24; Josh. 21: 6, where it is so translated, coming as it does here, after a verb of mourning. So translated, the passage affords not a shadow of ground for making Hades mean anything more than death or the grave. The only other passage that occurs to us in the Old Testament, which can, by implication, teach the doctrine of a common receptacle for the souls of the dead, is found in that highly figurative and sublime passage in Isaiah 14: 9, where of the king of Babylon it is said: "Hell from beneath is moved for thee, to VOL. XIII. No. 49.

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meet thee at thy coming; it stirreth up the dead for thee, even all the chief ones of the earth." This may be either a bold personification of the grave and its inhabitants, as moved by the appearance of so august a personage as the king, or what is more probable, a direct reference to the world of woe. Certain it is that we have here no mention made of any of the righteous as being in this assemblage. We call attention to this fact, the more as the passage is so often quoted to prove an indiscriminate residence of the dead, which it is so far from establishing, that, as far as it goes, it proves the opposite. All that it brings to light is a gloomy gathering of the Nimrods, and other mighty hunters of mankind, taunting each other for their dark and desolate habitation, their disastrous and dreadful overthrow. But if there be no traces of a common intermediate abode for the spirits of the dead in the Old Testament, how is it in the New?

The word Hades occurs eleven times in the New Testament, and with the same general characteristics as in the Old: sometimes referring to the grave, sometimes to the world of woe; yet always involving something evil, and never with any necessary reference to a common abode of the dead. The passage where it has most the appearance of such a reference, is in Acts ii., in a quotation from the sixteenth Psalm, where Christ is represented as saying: "Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, nor suffer thy holy one to see corruption." The argument is, if Christ went to Hades, then not only do the good go to Hades, but Paradise is a part of it. Yet admitting that Hades here refers, not to the grave (as we suppose, and shall presently endeavor to prove), but to the place of the dead, we still refer it, with its uniformly bad signification, exclusively to the place of the wicked dead, and maintain (what we have thus far found true, viz.) that the righteous do not go to, or have anything to do with, Hades, in any other sense than the grave, is the very truth here taught. The Hebrew verb translated "leave in," may, and often does, mean "leave or abandon to," that is, thou wilt not abandon or give over my soul to Hades, wilt not allow me to go there. This translation of the verb is confirmed, on

merely philological grounds, by Gesenius, Alexander, Noyes, and others, who cannot, like ourselves perhaps, be charged with varying the text to suit a theological creed. So that even if Hades refer, in this passage, to the abode of spirits after death, we say that Christ did not go there; and our position is still good, that none but the wicked are spoken of, in Scripture, as going there. Nor does this conflict with what is said in 1 Pet. 3:19. For the preaching there spoken of, is not said to have been by Christ in person, but by his spirit, viz. the Holy Spirit, speaking through Noah, a preacher of righteousness. Nor was it to spirits when they were in prison, but to spirits now in prison, that is, when the apostle wrote. The time when he preached, is added below, viz. : "when once, in the days of Noah, the long-suffering of God. waited upon them." them." The more probable signification, however, of the word Hades, in this passage, is the grave: 1. because it is the common meaning, while the other is certainly an uncommon one; 2. it completes the Hebrew parallelism, which the other destroys; 3. it better suits the argument of the apostle, whose object in the quotation is to prove the resurrection of Christ from the dead. It was the fact that his body had not remained under the power of death, and that, in thus rising from the dead, contrary to the law of the race, he had proved himself to be the Son of God, and, as such, was at the right hand of God, shedding forth that which his hearers saw and heard. Of the remaining nine places where the word occurs, five have this same signification: Rev. 1: 18, I am alive forevermore, Amen, and have the keys of death and hell: that is, the fact of his being himself alive from the dead, is given as proof of his having the keys, or power over death and the grave. 1 Cor. 15: 55, O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? What more appropriate, after closing a triumphant argument for the resurrection of the body, than this? It was the body that was in question; and the grave had held it, not Hades, or any other intermediate place. It was the grave, therefore, that was triumphed over. Rev. 6: 8, Death and hell followed him; that is, Death, on the pale horse, was natu

rally followed by the opening of the grave, to receive whom he had destroyed. Rev. 20: 13, And death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them. Here, again, it is the resurrection, not of the soul, but of the body, that is spoken of. The body was in the grave; hence death, which has power only over the body, and the grave, which holds the body when dead, are most appropriately represented as delivering up the Idead which were in them. Rev. 20: 14, And death and hell

were cast into the lake of fire. The meaning is here, necessarily, the same as in the preceding verse. The remaining passages point directly to a penal hell. Luke 10: 15, And thou Capernaum, which art exalted to heaven, shalt be thrust down to hell. Hades, here, can mean nothing but the extreme of evil, and that, too, as the punishment of wickedness; what else is this than hell? Matt. 16: 18, And upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. So far from any allusion being made, here, to the righteous as dwelling in Hades, its inhabitants or powers are spoken of as opposed to and warring against the church. The only remaining instance where the word is used is in the parable of Lazarus and Dives, the latter of whom, we are told, lifted up his eyes in hell, being in torment.

Thus, then, we do not find, in the Scriptures, a passage which requires the term Hades to be referred to any indiscriminate abode of the dead, other than the grave: there is not a passage which speaks of a righteous man as going to it, or being connected with it. It always involves the idea of something dark and dreadful. The wicked are often said to enter it; it is, many times, positively represented as a place of punishment. Surely, then, it could not have been into a place with such characteristics, that the Saviour promised to usher the dying thief! Indeed, the idea of a common residence of the good and bad, after death, was gratuitously borrowed from classic mythology. We say gratuitously borrowed, for, it matters not what ideas the Greeks or Romans, or even the Jews, entertained respecting the dead. Their ideas on this, as well as on other subjects, may have been erroneous, mere vagaries of the imagination, and are