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out of this our knowledge let the adequate feeling arise. They who mocked Him there had not the knowledge: else they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. His Mother and His beloved disciple, and the faithful women with them, who alone remained beside His cross, had not the knowledge we have. None other then gave Him love and pity, Who was full of love and pity for all. But now surely He may see of the travail of His soul. Among the millions who this day wait before His Cross, and adore Him Who was crucified, He sees His seed. Be we of the number, in the reality of our emotion, in the depth of our contrition. But that we may so be, forget we ourselves, and look only on Him. Before our eyes this day Jesus Christ is evidently set forth, crucified, among us. The preacher has but to direct all eyes to the amazing sight: and then-the fewer words the better.

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Behold, we wait before Thy Cross; we adore Thee, O Thou that wast crucified. Draw us unto Thee, conform us to Thine example, and now and henceforth let us take up our cross and follow Thee in this world, looking for our reward in the regeneration, in the kingdom of Thy glory. Amen."

EASTER EVE.

"He descended into Hell."

THERE are no holy days, save the very greatest, for which such ample provision is made in our Prayer Book as for this Holy Saturday. Let us briefly consider the teaching of its Services.

I. First of all we have a summary statement of the doctrine of that which we commemorate, in the Greek anthem appointed for Forenoon Prayer :

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"Thou wast present as on this day, O Christ, with Thy body in the tomb; with Thy soul Thou wast in Hades, fulfilling to the thief Thy promise that he should be with Thee in paradise; and on the throne Thou wast abiding with the Father and the Holy Ghost, filling all things, and uncircumscribed of any."

The Eternal Son had taken manhood into God. That manhood was perfect,-of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting. While He lived, soul and flesh remained united; when He died, they became separate,the body laid in the tomb, the soul going to Hades, the invisible, the place of the departed. But He, the Eternal Son, was with His separated as with His united manhood, with His flesh in the tomb as with His soul in Hades, for He had taken both into indissoluble union with Himself. At the same time He now, as during His life on earth, abode in the integrity of His Divine Nature with the Father and with the Holy Ghost, manifested in glory

in heaven, and also present everywhere and filling all things. This is a great mystery: but it is no less a certain fact, and we do well to state it with our lips while we bow our heads and adore.

II. Secondly, we are taught certain truths as to the condition in which our Lord's body rested in the tomb and His soul tarried in Hades.

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1. Of His body we learn from those words of the 16th Psalm which we are taught by St. Peter to understand of Him :-" My flesh also shall rest in hope: for Thou wilt not suffer Thine Holy One to see corruption." Corruption is that resolution of the body into its component parts, that return of dust to dust, which ensues upon its ceasing to live. Unless prevented by the power of God, this change would have begun in the body of Jesus, as in those of other men, almost immediately upon death. We are assured, however, that His flesh, preserved by that power, experienced no such change. And so it rested in hope. The hope was not in the flesh, but in Him Who was with His flesh, Who, feeling His Father's operation in it in the very darkness of the tomb, knew that He was being treated thereby as His Holy One, and kept in safety till the hour when He should be shewn the path of life, and brought back to His Presence where is fulness of joy, and to His right hand where are pleasures for evermore.

2. Of our Lord's consciousness in His human spirit while this was separate from the body, we have several intimations. That it was "Paradise" to which He went, -whereto He would welcome the penitent thief, not when He came in His kingdom, but on the very day of His death*this shews that it was to the happy side of *Luke xxiii. 42, 43.

the great gulf* that His steps were directed. That it was in joy and felicity that His spirit abode appears from the same 16th Psalm. "My heart is glad, my glory " i.e. my soul" rejoiceth '—so He sang. But observe the

reason why :-" For Thou wilt not leave My soul in Hades." It was not because Hades was a delightsome place, but on the contrary-because of the sure hope of emerging from it.

There is therefore another side to the condition of spirit in which our Lord abode in the Invisible. It is that expressed by St. Peter when he says, "Whom God hath raised up, having loosed the pains of death."+ Death —the state in which soul is separate from body—has its "pains," its restraints. The human soul in its creation was inspired into a body, and only in a body can live its perfect life. Without it it is homeless and naked‡: it is incapable of its full enjoyment and its consummate work. And accordingly we use to express the mind of Christ at this time the prayer of Jonah in the whale's belly, and the lament of David when driven by the rebellion of Absalom from the city of God and His temple, and the cry of the Psalmist de profundis.§ He felt the earth with her bars about Him: He was in the night, though in that night the Lord's song was with Him: His soul waited for the Lord more than they that watch for the morning.

And if He felt thus while in Hades, can we doubt that His people have like experience there? That the spirits of those who sleep in Him do abide in joy and felicity, we are sure. But their joy, their felicity cannot be

*Luke xvi. 26.

† Acts ii. 24.
§ Ps. cxxx.

2 Cor. v. I-5.

greater than His were: and as in Him these emotions were consistent with the sense of restraint and the longing for resurrection, so must it be with them. Hades is indeed Paradise to them, a garden of sweet repose: it is more so than ever since He entered there, and Death's darkness has been made beautiful with Him. But they desire something better still, even to be clothed with their changed garments, to inhabit their house from heaven, and therein to work for God. And so from out of their hallowed rest we hear them with the ear of faith joining in the Church's "Come, Lord Jesu!" we know that in them as in the living there is

"One weary heart, one never-silent cry,

'O Lord, how long' or ere the hour be nigh,

When Thou from heaven to earth again shalt come,

To take Thy Bride to her eternal home?"

III. Thirdly, the Services of this day teach us what was our Lord's occupation during the interval between His death and resurrection.

His occupation, we say; and herein speak of His spirit, not of His body. His body as yet belonged to the old creation, and kept on this Holy Saturday its Sabbath of rest. But His spirit had entered upon the life of the new creation, which knows no weariness and needs no repose. And, "put to death in flesh, but quickened in spirit," He went therein, says St. Peter in to-day's Epistle, and "preached unto the spirits in prison which sometime were disobedient, when once the long-suffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing." He found in the invisible world to which His

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