best way I can and if I find myself wrong when I get into the other world it will all be put right." Surely the Scripture was never intended to encourage such a state of mind as that.

The Rev. J. J. B. COLES said: "We know that it is a golden rule in the interpretation of difficult passages of Holy Scripture such as 1 Pet. iii, 18-21, always to bear in mind the general tenour and teaching of the book or epistle as well as to pay close attention to the immediate context in which the passage is found.

In 1 Pet. i, 2, we read: "Searching what, or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify (rò èv avtoîs Πνεῦμα Χριστοῦ) when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should follow."

It is then to the teaching of the "Spirit of Christ" through Noah, to the men of those days, that the Apostle is referring-who are awaiting the judgment, as also are the fallen angels who had helped on the awful corruption which called for the destruction by the Flood.

That the Lord did descend " into the heart of the earth," that He did go to the Paradise, to the place of the faithful departed, to "Abraham's bosom "-He himself tells us when He promised the dying thief" This day shalt thou be with Me in Paradise."

Now, may I suggest an important inference from what is found in the next passage in the New Testament in which "Paradise" occurs, 2 Cor. xii, 4, "Now that he (St. Paul) was caught up into Paradise?" The Lord when He rose from the dead, vanquished the power of death and the gates of Hades-and led captivity captive. The principalities and powers and Satan who had "the power of death" (kpáros) were led as captives before Him while God's faithful people of old time followed as the rescued ones in His triumphal train. A triumph, the full effects of which will be seen when in the glorious resurrection day resurrection bodies complete the victory over Death and Hades-which was then effected. Since that first resurrection morn "to depart and be with Christ" (for St. Paul was caught up to Paradise-so the place of Paradise is no longer in the heart of the earth, but where Christ is) is the happy lot of those who fall asleep in Him, and who can say, as Stephen said, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit."

This teaching gathered from Holy Scripture alone, is certainly "very far better" than the false doctrine of purgatory and

purgatorial pains which from early days has clouded over the faith of the Church of God.

As to myths and mythological legends, they were perversions of Patriarchal faith by those who changed the truth of God into a lie, and who altered the true teaching of the Zodiacal Constellations in which were figured the victory over Satan by Death and Resurrection of the Seed of the Woman. His risen glories are now the joy of His redeemed and the earnest of still brighter glories to come.

These are days when a true scientific comparative study of "religious origins" reveals the undoubted fact that nearly all the supposed "anticipations" of Christian faith in the religions of Assyria, Babylon, Egypt and India were corruptions of truth revealed to the Patriarchs and especially perversions of those Constellation Figures to which I have referred in my recent paper on Theosophy and about which Mr. E. W. Maunder, of the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, has written in so interesting a manner in his Astronomy of the Bible. (Sealy Clark, Publisher.)

A comparative study of religious beliefs has resulted in demonstrating how impregnable is the Rock of Holy Scripture, and how unassailable is the position of one who defends his Christian position by a faithful use of the Sword of the Spirit which is the Word of God.

The Rev. DUGALD MACFADYEN said: Anything that I say will be mainly on the valuable paper which has been read to us this evening. I feel that it will be a great pity if we should part without having expressed our appreciation of the value of the paper. Its value to myself was in the happy combination of scientific study and the working of a religious mind on facts scientifically studied. At one of the first of the congresses on comparative religion, somebody got up and asked the question whether the reader of a certain paper was a religious man. The reply came from the Chairman that he could not answer for that, but that he would say he was a paratively religious "man. I felt to-day that Canon MacCulloch was giving us the working of a student of religion, and also of a religious One felt also that it very greatly confirmed a feeling which has constantly come to my own mind in reading such papers, that men came in the first century as they do now to the religion of Christianity, to the teaching of the word of Christ, with certain ideas already in their minds, and certain great questions waiting to be answered.

man.

com

One of these questions is undoubtedly, what is the fate of the dead, of our loved ones? They found in the doctrines of a descent into Hades some answer to that pressing question, and to me the especial value of the paper lay in these last paragraphs. The paper is not a negative paper, it is a positive paper. It deals with the use of Scripture in answer to modern needs. Many people who are aware of these ancient stories realise how difficult it is to use that passage in Peter. Canon MacCulloch has borne that difficulty in mind, and he has suggested a use for a passage almost disused. If we believe in the love of God and recognise its omnipotent supremacy, do we suppose that the supremacy of the divine love ends with death? Canon MacCulloch has helped us to read a real and valuable testimony to the love of God into the passage in Peter. He has made it a testimony to the belief of all Christians in that love from the beginning. It secures, not indeed universal restoration, but the universal proclamation of the Gospel of the grace of God. When we come to look at the paper as a whole we shall value it for those last sentences in which this is summed up.

There is a story of a descent into Hades in Scottish literature which was not mentioned. It appears, by the poet Dunbar, in the poem the "Dunes of the Seven Deadly Sins," and I mention it because it was carried through by a person of my own name. It says that he descended into Hades in order to play a coronach on the bagpipes to those who were in distress, and that he suffered the direst penalties from the lord of those parts in consequence.

The Rev. Prebendary Fox said: Expecting that I should have the privilege of being here to-day, I refreshed both memory and spirit last night in reading Bishop Pearson's exposition of the subject now under discussion; and I would suggest that any present, who can, should do the same. His book on the Apostles' Creed is, I fear, less well known, even by the clergy, in these days than it should be. The bishop proves from various passages of Holy Scripture with forceful conclusion the fact of our Lord's descent into Hades, but expresses himself cautiously as to the effects of His presence among, or of His preaching to, "the spirits in prison." Our Lord's object, he believes, was that, as He had shared the conditions of human nature on earth and in the act of dying, so He might be equally partaker with men in the place where the departed await the Resurrection.

The contrast between the dignified restraint of the Biblical statements of this mysterious fact and the turgid exaggerations of the myths which have been so fully set before us to-day, is in itself evidence for differentiating their respective origins.

Chancellor LIAS, who had originally consented to preside, but was unable through ill-health, sent the following communication:— I regret that I was unable to preside, as announced, at the reading of Canon MacCulloch's able and learned paper. I feel that the thanks of the Institute are due to him for having thrown such light on a most interesting subject. The Descent into Hades is quite a common subject for treatment in medieval art. I remember the impression produced on my mind fifty-five years ago by a fresco of it in the cloisters of Santa Maria Novella at Florence. Many of the medieval hymns and sermons bear witness to the detailed belief of the Church in that period, as described in Canon MacCulloch's paper.

He refers to the famous "Dated Creed of Sirmium," so genially ridiculed by Athanasius for its pompous words of introduction, as the first Creed in which the Descent into Hades appears. That Creed, as the historian Socrates tells us (Hist. Eccl., II, 37), was drawn up in Latin. The Greek Creed, submitted to the Council by Mark of Arethusa, omits the Descent. The Apostles' Creed, the only one of the three Creeds contained in the Service Books of the Church of England which mentions the Descent, is also of Latin origin. This looks very much as if the belief in the Descent in early times was more prominent and more detailed in the West than in the East.

Canon MacCulloch starts with the part of the Gospel of Nicodemus which contains the legend of the Descent. I confess I can hardly understand why. The Gospel of Nicodemus has come down to us in many forms, in Latin as well as Greek, and seems in its present shape to be the result of a gradual process of evolution (see the Canon's fifth note on p. 213), and to be of considerably later date than the third century, in which some critics imagine it to have appeared. The starting point of our investigations should surely be 1 Pet. iii, 18-21, as confirmed by iv, 6. I am not in sympathy, I must confess, with modern analytic eriticism, and I can hardly admit that St. Peter (see p. 218) followed "an early tradition" in these passages. He had ample opportunities

Q

of instruction by his Master in such matters, for we learn that during the great Forty Days between His Resurrection and His Ascension, He spake to His disciples concerning the things of the kingdom of God. Besides, as the Canon has shown, our Lord Himself prophesied His Descent into Hades (or Sheol). We may be sure that the Apostles of Christ were careful to follow His warning against supplementing His teaching by the "traditions of men." St. Peter, it is true, says nothing about a release from Hades, and he appears to confine Christ's preaching to the disobedient at the Deluge. Yet it would be strange if no results came of that preaching, and there seems also no reason why the Lord's work in Hades should be confined to the contemporaries of Noah. St. Peter's indefinite language can, I believe, only be explained by the intentional reticence observed by our Lord and His immediate disciples concerning the Intermediate State.

I observe that Canon MacCulloch, in common with most writers on Origen, imagines that this voluminous writer definitely taught that the ransom Christ paid for us was paid to the devil. It is true that Origen says so more than once. But few persons appear to realize that Origen, the pioneer of free speculation on the truths of religion, often dropped suggestions which fuller consideration induced him to retract. Thus he frequently speaks of St. Peter as the Rock. But when he comes to comment on Matt. xvi, 18, he rightly interprets our Lord's words as referring, not to the Apostle, but to his Confession. So in his sixth Homily on St. John (c. 37), (as also elsewhere), he treats the sacrifice of Christ in a very different fashion, saying that there "is more than one way by which Christ accomplishes the work of redemption. Some of these are clear to the mass of mankind, and some not.”

Again (p. 214) to "keep secret" the way of salvation (the phrase used by Ignatius, is not, surely, equivalent to "deception "). Irenæus once more (p. 216 and elsewhere) says nothing about Hades, in speaking of Christ's Redemption in the passages cited in the paper, but he does not say that "Satan was vanquished by the keeping of God's Commandment by the Son of God," a statement equivalent to St. Paul's teaching in Rome.

The definite statement of Clement of Alexandria (p. 217) that the Saviour effected an 66 universal movement and translation " by His visit to Hades, discloses to us a feature in Alexandrian theology