He Descended into Hell, the Third Day He Rose Again from the Dead

“THou wilt not leave my soul in Hades” — with those words on His lips, our Lord breathed out His soul into the care of the Father. We are expressly told that when He had cried with a loud voice, saying, “Father, into Thy hands I commend My Spirit,” He gave wp His spirit. It was clearly a deliberate and voluntary act. He laid down His life of Himself, for this commandment and authority had been given Him of His Father (John x. 18). As man, in the early prime of life, with all the wonderful possibilities that continued life suggested, it was natural that He should cling to it, and may not the thought of surrendering it so early have been one of the ingredients in the cup? But at the Father’s bidding He became obedient to death, even the death of the Cross.

Can you not hear Him singing to Himself as He descended the darksome iron staircase into

the Crypt of Death, “Thou wilt not leave my 93 soul in Hades, neither wilt Thou suffer Thine Holy One (i.e., My Body) to see corruption; Thou wilt show Me the ways of Life, and make Me exceeding glad with Thy countenance.” His voice grows fainter as He descends into those unexplored depths, but it does not falter. The Father would surely raise Him up again, and give Him another life, richer, fuller, and more perfect than could be contained within the limits of His manger-cradle and the rock-hewn grave. “This Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we all are witnesses.” When the believer reaches the moment known as death, his soul, so far as we can understand, goes forth from this mortal case, leaving it as some of the lower forms of life slough off their outer skin. It is not unusual to meet with the skin, which the snake has cast aside, amid the withered leaves of autumn. But the soul is not disembodied. The radiant body of Resurrection may not as yet be given, but it is robed in the psychical, or astral, body, which is being woven beneath this. It is probable that we are building it up by each deed of self-denial and self-sacrifice. Every time that we bring into subjection the body of our humiliation, we are contributing to the growth of that fair tenement of the soul, which shall be its more perfect expression and implement,

This surely is the House which is of Heaven, concerning which Paul speaks so rapturously (2 Cor. v.).

Thus attired, the soul passes into the presence of Christ. It is not adequate to speak of that condition of existence as being Paradise, for surely the Resurrection, of Christ has greatly altered our whole conception of the Unseen World. He went with the dying thief to Paradise, but Paradise is only the third heaven (compare 2 Cor. xii. 2, 4); and now He has ascended far above all the heavens (Eph. iv. 10). We have a Great High Priest, who hath passed through the heavens (Heb. iv. 14). If then when we are absent from the body we are present with the Lord, it must be true of us also, when we depart to be with Him, that we enter upon the fulness of that blessed state, which is transcendent and heavenly. What other changes may await us we know not. What may be prepared for us, as the trumpet of the Archangel sounds, and the dead are raised, is a Divine mystery, or secret. But this we know, that the time, long or short, which may elapse between the moment called Death and the hour of full consummation and bliss is not a thin and attenuated existence, when the bodiless ghost shall be carried hither and thither by the breath of Eternity. Still less is it a period of uncon; sciousness. The body sleeps, but the untiring soul, as keenly alive as ever, is ever elaborating new plans and going forth on new exploits. Not one moment of cessation from vivid consciousness,

The works of those who die in the Lord follow with them into the Eternal World. They see His face, and serve Him, and His Name is on their foreheads. Some rule over ten cities, and some over five; others judge angels; and some surely will be sent with the good news of the revealed Love of God to announce them to distant worlds “to the intent that now unto the principalities and the powers in the heavenly places may be made known, through the Church, the manifold wisdom of God.”

In the case of the Lord there was no period of unconsciousness between His death and Resurrection, and there will be none for us. A moment of shadow as the soul disentangles itself from its grosser embodiment, then freedom in the morning air of Eternity.