he is comforted, and thou art tormented." The objection that this is a parable will not avail to break the force of the great moral truths it teaches. It is either history or a parable. If history, then it is a record of events that have actually taken place; if a parable, then it is a representation of events that may occur. Now, Abraham is here placed before us again as in conscious being-capable of observing, and of receiving and making communications. Here, also, is the poor beggar, delivered from his life-long sorrow and suffering-not by a suspension of conscious being, but by sweet repose in Abraham's bosom. The rich man, too, is here, and, though his "lifetime" was past, is still conscious of his awful state; he remembers the good things of his former life, and would fain have his five brothers warned lest they also become his companions, in his awful place of torment.

When St. John, upon the island of Patmos, had heard the wonderful revelations made to him, filled with wonder and astonishment, he fell down to worship the messenger of God; but that messenger said, "See thou do it not; for I am thy fellow-servant, and of thy brethren the prophets, and of them which keep the sayings of this book." (Rev. xxii, 9.) Do we not here obtain a glimpse of not only the conscious being, but the avocations also of those who have died in the faith?

Again, St. John says, "I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true! . . . And white robes were given to every one of them, and it was said unto them that they should rest yet for a little season." (Rev. vi, 9, 10.) These souls not only possessed a conscious existence after they had been "slain" for the cause of Christ, but they were also conscious of the wrong they had suffered, and were looking forward to the period

of their vindication with anxious desire. Nor was this all; "they cried with a loud voice," and were afterward robed in white, and told to rest yet a little season. Here, then, they have a conscious existence, power to express their desires, and capability of being comforted by gracious assurances. Though persecution had done its work, and the bodies of the martyrs had been consumed by the fagot, or devoured by wild beasts, or wasted in deep and dark dungeons or dens and caverns of the earth, yet, after it had destroyed the body, there was a conscious life remaining over which it had no power.

Now,

Take another case-that of St. Paul when he was "caught up into the third heaven," and enjoyed the rapturous vision of the blessed abode and of God. So rapt was he in the glory of the vision, that "whether in the body or out of the body" he could not tell. whatever this vision may have been, or not have been; sink it, if you please, into the least possible significance; yet it unquestionably develops one thing, and that is that the apostle believed that the soul may have a conscious existence out of the body-an existence in which it may perceive and enjoy-nay, an existence in which it may be filled with the most ecstatic felicity. Else how could he have been in doubt whether his soul was really in the body or not when it enjoyed the glorious vision of God and heaven? Those, then, who assume to know that the soul can have no conscious existence out of the body assume to know more than was known by the great apostle. This passage is all the more important, because it was not with direct reference to this subject that the apostle wrote, and it, therefore, becomes one of those incidental and undesigned passages that corroborate the great and cardinal doctrines of the Gospel.

One more passage upon this point must suffice, though

it would be difficult to exhaust the many Scripture proofs that bear upon it. St. Paul says that Christ Jesus "died for us, that, whether we wake or sleep, we should live together with him." (1 Thess. v, 10.) How emphatic! Whether we wake or sleep, live or die, whether we are in this world or the other, we shall live together with him, shall enjoy his life and the consolation of his spirit here, and, in the eternal world, shall be glorified together with him. These words show that every-where, and in all circumstances, genuine believers, who walk with God, have life-and not only life, but also communion with Him who is the source of all life. Indeed, they clearly express that, so far as the great ends of spiritual life and communion are concerned, the living have no advantage over the dead.

What, then, do all these things teach us? Evidently not only the great doctrine of the soul's immortality, but also that its intermediate state, during the time that intervenes between death and the resurrection, is one of conscious being-one of thought, of feeling, and of action. To have attained this position only, to have established only this single truth, brings to us a most glorious deliverance from that cold and cheerless hypothesis, which would crush our hearts as we look down into the grave as a place where all conscious being became extinct, and the soul, as the body, enters upon either utter extinction or upon a long and dreamless sleep, to be broken only at the resurrection.

IV. IN THE INTERMEDIATE STATE THE RIGHTEOUS DEAD ARE WITH CHRIST.

The Scripture authentication of an intermediate state of conscious being is too full and too explicit to leave any room for apprehension on the part of the serious and inquiring mind, or for cavil on the part of the skeptic.

"the

With some, however, not only an intermediate state but an intermediate place is maintained. It is contended that while Gehenna is used in the Bible to denote the place of final misery, Sheol in the Old Testament, and Hades in the New, is used to express the place of departed spirits. With such Hades is regarded as a general term, embracing both Elysium, or Paradise, and Tartarus-the separate abodes of the good and the bad. But whence the necessity of supposing them to indicate a place distinct from either heaven or hell? The etymology of Sheol and Hades clearly indicates that they are designed to de"note general and indefinite ideas. Sheol signifies place and state of those who are out of sight, out of the way, and to be sought for." Hades is compounded of two Greek words, which together signify "an indistinct, dark, and invisible region;" and among the Greeks it was used as comprehending the dead without any reference to their moral character here or to their state there. Thus it is evident that these two words are used not to designate a third place, as distinct from heaven or hell, but rather as general terms, comprehending the state, condition, or place of the dead, whatever or wherever they might be.* Just so do we say of the dead, that they have gone to the invisible world, the world to come, the world of spirits, or to eternity. We indicate nothing of their peculiar conditionwhether happy or miserable-and least of all do we indicate that they are in any third place, as being distinct from

Professor Vail, one of the best Hebrew scholars of the age, says: "Our position is, after a careful investigation of every passage in the Old Testament in which the word occurs, and after a careful consideration of opinions advanced by others, besides referring to almost every original source deemed worthy of reference, that Sheol, in its generic signification, refers to the state of the dead, without necessarily specifying that state, whether it be in happiness or in misery, and hence the kingdom or world of the dead; and, aside from this generic signification, it is applied specifically, (1,) to the place of torment of the wicked, and, (2,) to the grave or sepulcher, as the resting-place of the inanimate body." (Meth. Quar. Review.)

either hell or heaven. It is really astonishing, when we consider how widely this doctrine of a separate abode has spread, and how long it has prevailed in the Christian Church, that, after all, it is found to have so little authority from Revelation.

It is unquestionably sustained by a feeling to which we have already adverted; namely, that man has wandered very far away from a just and holy God, and that to be restored. to him he must travel a great way, and suffer great penance and purgation. Take this sentiment, which is deeply wrought into our nature-take it in connection with a failure to apprehend that it is by the blood of Christ we are "brought nigh," and you have the true basis upon which this pernicious error rests. This sentiment is thus developed by an Episcopal clergyman, in the form of an argument: "The great majority of those who die in the Lord are very far from being eminent saints. They leave the world pardoned and free from sin, indeed, but very imperfect, ignorant, feeble, and unfit for the ineffable blaze of heavenly effulgence, and the society and employments of the ancient and glorious inhabitants of heaven. But paradise is an intermediate resting-place, where the soul becomes unfolded, invigorated, and instructed for a superior state and world. The spirit, disinthralled and emancipated from its earthly prison and vehicle, passes into this place of abode, perfectly adapted to its disembodied state, and the design of that state. There, under genial and sanative influences, it repairs its losses and injuries, recovers its balance and tone, becomes thoroughly developed, and fully prepared for another and still higher state of being."* The question is well presented and forcibly reasoned; but, after all, it is only one of the superstitious dreams of the world's children, without Scriptural warrant or authority;

The Dead in Christ, by Rev. J. W. M'Cullough,