for an idea which had possessed him. As we have already said, such men are not rare. Every great crisis brings to light multitudes of them. Almost every small community can furnish examples.

That Luke ever practised his profession of medicine does not appear, and is not probable beyond what was necessary to discover to himself his own unfitness for it. So far as appears, he never availed himself of his knowledge when he might naturally have been expected to do so. He had far more confidence in the supernatural powers of Paul, either in curing the bites of vipers or in treating the father of Publius for dysentery and fever, although his medical knowledge comes out in the accurate description of the disease. His art, as I have already suggested, was probably a temporary resource from a disagreeable profession.

He was not of himself by nature a leader of men, but having found his leader, there was no further question. Clinging with all the enthusiasm of a poetic nature to one.whose will should shape his way, he bound himself to the fortunes of Paul, ready to follow to the death, if need be, wherever Paul led, and the glorified Christ beckoned the way.

We may count it fortunate, if fortunate be not too trivial a word, that the great apostle to the Gentiles should have had such a follower and such a historian: and we shall, perhaps, find a new sympathy with Luke and a new light shed upon his life when we consider him as Physician, Painter, and Poctbut this last, first, and most of all.

Biblical Notes.

THE SPIRITS IN PRISON.

IN the third chapter of the Apostle Peter's First Epistle we read.. "Because Christ also suffered for sins once, the righteous for the unrighteous, that He might bring us to God; being put to death in the flesh but quickened in the spirit; in which, also, he 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, wherein few, that is, eight souls, were saved through water; which also after a true likeness doth now save you, even baptism, not the putting away," etc. The extract is taken from the revised version, which accurately represents what is now generally received among scholars as the true text of the original and the correct meaning of the words. The early Greek fathers with one consent understood the passage to narrate what was done by our Lord's human soul after His death on the cross. Augustine, however, interpreted it a referring to a work done by Christ in the days of Noah when he preached, non in carne, sed in spiritu, to those spirits who now suffer deserved punishment in prison. This view was adopted by Thomas Aquinas, the greatest of the schoolmen; by Beza, the most learned of the Reformers; by Pearson, the celebrated Episcopal divine; by von Hofmann, the eminent German critic, and by very many others. Yet it is not unfair to say that they have been influenced more by their theological views, or by what is called the analogy of faith, than by the laws of strict exegesis.

It may be said, in opposition to this explanation, that (1) It is not the natural sense of the passage, that which would occur to an unprejudiced person on first reading it. (2) It is inconsistent with the word veμari as contrasted with oapki, not that these two words do not at times denote respectively the divine side of Christ's person and the human, but that here the exact balance of the clauses requires both datives to be rendered in the same way. If the one is to be understood as meaning in the flesh, or as to the flesh, then the other must mean in the spirit, or as to the spirit. Consequently, the latter cannot be interpreted of Christ's divine nature, or of the Holy Spirit, for in no conceivable sense could He be said to be made alive in either of these. (3) No account is made of Topeveeis, which here, just as in verse 22, "who is on the right hand of God, having gone into heaven," must refer to a local transfer, a real change of place, which certainly did not occur in what was done through Noah..

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(4) There is an unauthorized and capricious separation of 707€ from the word ameoasi, to which it must belong by Greek usage ("which aforetime were disobedient"), and an equally capricious connection of it with expugev ("aforetime preached"). Followed as TOTE is immediately by őre, it is impossible to allow such a violent disjunction as is here proposed. (5) Moreover, the occurrence of #vevμao in verse 19 in the undoubted sense of human spirits gives a very strong probability that the same noun in the singular in verse 18 is used in the same sense.

On the other hand, it must be admitted that there is a difficulty in the word woones on the modern critical view. For, how could Christ's human soul be said to be made alive, when, as we all believe, it never died? Some escape the difficulty by rendering "preserved alive," but this is not the fair, natural sense of the word. It is better to regard the term as stating that while Christ did really die as to the flesh, i.e., ceased to live any longer in the body, yet, as to His human soul, He was quickened to fresh energies, to a higher spiritual life than was compatible with an existence hampered by flesh and blood. It may be added that any reference to our Lord's resurrection is out of the question, for that change takes place in the body and not in the spirit, which alone is spoken of in this clause.

were

This is the view taken by Alford, by Fronmüller in Lange, by Hüther in Meyer, by the "Speaker's Commentary," and by Ellicott'sCommentary. Nor can it well be doubted by any one who will consider the well-marked antithesis of the two modal datives and the force of the participle represented by the verb "went." The act reported must have been performed by our Lord in person, i.e., by His disembodied spirit, and, therefore, took place between Hisdeath and His resurrection. But, as the statement stands alone in the New Testament, and we have no aid from parallel passages, it must be interpreted strictly, neither adding to nor taking from the natural force of the words employed. The "spirits in prison those, of course, of the persons who perished in the flood, and it is of little consequence whether we consider them as being in penal durance as condemned criminals, or simply in custody as prisoners awaiting the day of doom. It is enough to know that they were persons who had died in sin. The question is, what did Christ do to them? There are many who answer at once, He preached the Gospel. But this is by no means clear. It is true that the Greek word npvoow is often employed without an object to denote preaching the Gospel, but in all such cases the omitted object is easily, or rather necessarily, supplied from the connection. There are, however, other instances in which it neither has nor can have such a meaning. Matt. x. 27, "What ye hear in the ear, proclaim upon the housetops." Mark i. 46, He went out and began to publish it much;" vii. 36, "So much the more a great deal they published it." Rev. v. 2, "I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a great voice." It is certain, therefore, that our Lord made a pro

clamation in the unseen world, but what the tenor of that proclamation was is not said, nor is it necessarily implied. To assume that it was the Gospel is to beg the question. Some have said that He went there to proclaim His own triumph, or to predict His deliverance from Sheol, or to announce the completion of the work for which He became incarnate. But no man can pronounce authoritatively in favour of any of these views. The materials for a decision are not at hand. But whatever may be concluded on this point, it is very certain that the parties our Lord addressed were not of the class who had been left to themselves, and who had sinned only against the law written in their hearts. For they had enjoyed the teaching of Noah, whom the Apostle (II. ii. 5) expressly styles a preacher of righteousness (čikaιoovvηs Kýpuкα). It is obvious, then, that their experience can shed no light upon the fate of others differently situated, such as the heathen. And it is very singular that they who insist that every man must have the opportunity of learning God's revealed will, appeal to a case which is not at all in point, even if their interpretation of its meaning be correct. For the impenitent in the antediluvian world had a very prolonged space in which to obtain the divine favour. The long-suffering of God waited upon them for more than a century. "His days (ie., the days of the race then existing) shall be an hundred and twenty years." During all this period Noah uttered the warning message by his voice, by his walking with God, and still more by his patient perseverance in the building of the ark. But all was vain. Even the very workmen who laboured upon the singular vessel gave no heed to its purpose. All filled up the measure of their iniquity, and when the appointed time was accomplished, the overwhelming flood came, and every soul perished. And that this was final and irrevocable, seems to be plain from the use which our Lord twice makes of the fact, as recorded in the address given by Luke (xvii. 26, 27), and also that given by Matthew (xxiv. 37-39). The former runs thus: "And as it was in the days of Noah, even so shall it be also in the days of the Son of Man. They ate, they drank, they married, they were given in marriage until the day that Noah entered into the ark, and the flood came and destroyed (Xerev) them all." It is impossible to see the force of this historical reference if it does not imply the spiritual overthrow of the antediluvians. If our Lord intended, and knew that He intended, to give them another opportunity of salvation by a personal summons made after His death in the unseen world, how could He, with any show of reason, adduce their case as an example of the danger of neglecting spiritual things and giving one's self up to the pursuit of the earthly and the perishing? Such a course would seem like trifling with His hearers.

But again, even admitting (which, however, is not admitted) that the words do mean, or may mean, that our Lord proclaimed a gospel to the spirits in prison, this proves nothing to the case of others before or since the time of the proclamation in question, for

the simple reason that then the circumstances were peculiar and extraordinary. And what is done on momentous occasions is no precedent for ordinary days, Because the conduits run wine instead of water when the king receives his crown, we are not to expect that they will do the same after the coronation is over. If, on the completion of our Lord's humiliation by His death, His disembodied spirit passed the interval before the resurrection in setting forth the fruits of His now finished work to some of the other disembodied spirits to be found in Hades, what reason is there for thinking. that such an exceptional experience will ever be repeated, much less become a normal feature in the administration of the divine government? Exceptional procedures are to be confined to exceptional occasions.

Still further, there is no intimation anywhere that the preaching, if made, was successful, nor is it at all necessary for the purposes of the connection of the passage that it should have been. The Apostle is setting forth the sufferings of Christ, together with His subsequent exaltation, and he simply interpolates between the death on the cross and the exaltation to God's right hand, something that was done in the intermediate state. Our Lord's disembodied spirit did not, even in the short interval during which it was fitting that His flesh should dwell in the grave, lie in a state of unconsciousness, or simply be in expectancy of the victory of the third day; but in triumphant and assured conviction of that victory, did make announcement to other disembodied spirits of the work of redemption. The point in question is not what they did, but what He did, or even if, as we suppose, and as other scriptures show, they neither received nor accepted an offer of salvation, yet the other fact remains that our Lord's human soul did, while apart from the body, make statements to other like souls, and the reason why this particular class of sinners, viz., the antediluvians, is mentioned, is that the flood was to be cited presently as a figure of Baptism. The cause, therefore, of Peter's silence as to the result of the proclamation is that that result had no bearing upon the matter in hand. It may, then, upon all these grounds, be safely asserted that this solitary text cannot be made to bear the huge weight of dogma attached to it, that the premises are far too small for the conclusion that is drawn, and that, therefore, the question of a new probation after death must be determined altogether by other Scriptures in detail, or the general tenor of Revelation as a whole.

T. W. CHAMBERS.