The Gospel of the Hereafter

by J. Paterson Smyth

Only three hours later the Lord passed through into that Unseen Land. "Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit, and having said this He gave up the ghost," and departed on the mysterious journey. If we could know anything about what He saw and did on that mysterious journey surely it would give some hints about our dear ones departed.

§ 1

That journey of the Lord into the world of the dead has been made a great article of the Christian faith. We all repeat it regularly in the Apostles' Creed, "He descended into Hell." I need not translate that clause. Every well taught Sunday-school child knows its meaning. "He descended into Hades," into the world of the departed in the great waiting life before the Judgment. But there is a great deal more than this to be said about it.

Now, let us consider this statement. Clearly it deals with the three days between our Lord's death and resurrection. Where did His spirit go? "To heaven, of course," somebody says. "No," says the Lord Himself after the resurrection, "I have not yet ascended to My Father." Where, then, did His spirit go? "Nobody can tell," you say. Yes, one person could tell, and only one—the Lord Himself. He only could have told of His solitary temptation in the wilderness, and He evidently told it. He only could have told of the solitary scene in Gethsemane, it would seem that He told it. He only could have told of His visit to the world of the dead, and I think that He told it. You remember that after the resurrection He was with them "forty days teaching the things concerning the Kingdom." I think He must have told them then of those three days. Why? Because the knowledge of it was so wide-spread in the early Church, and there was no one else to tell it. Some people seem to think that there are only some obscure verses of St. Peter and a few references of St. Paul in favour of such teaching. Not at all. It was the belief of the whole Church. St. Peter and St. Paul were only two in a crowd of teachers of early days who proclaimed triumphantly the visit of the Lord into the world of the dead. St. Peter seems to be thinking of it in his first sermon when he quotes: "His soul was not left in Hades" (Acts ii. 31). Therefore St. Peter knew that it was into that intermediate life—not into that final Heaven—that our Lord went at death. This statement by itself would not prove much, but when I find the same St. Peter long afterwards telling so circumstantially in his first epistle (iii. 18) that when his Master was put to death in the flesh He was made more alive in the spirit, in which spirit He went and preached to the spirits in prison who had been disobedient at the flood. "For which cause (chap. iv. 6) was the gospel—the glad news—preached to them that are dead," I think it is a fair inference that St. Peter had some definite information. And then I find St. Paul, in Eph. iv. 9, when he is writing of the gifts bestowed on the Church by her ascended Lord. The word "ascended" causes him to pause abruptly. Men must not think that His work in the unseen was limited to that work for us in Heaven after His ascension. "Now that He ascended, what is it but that He descended first into the lower parts of the earth (i. e., the world of the departed) that He might fill all things." Hades and Heaven had alike felt the glory of His presence.

And then immediately after the Apostles' days I find the knowledge wide-spread in the Church. I read the writings of the ancient bishops and teachers of the Church, beginning at the death of St. John, the very men to whom we refer for information as to the Baptism and Holy Communion and the authenticity of the four Gospels, and there I find prominently in their preaching the gospel of our Lord's visit to the world of the departed.

§ 2

The earliest is known as Justin Martyr. He was born about the time of
St. John's death, and he feels so strongly about the Descent into Hades
that he actually charges the Jews with mutilating a prophecy of
Jeremiah foretelling it.

Irenaeus, the great Bishop of Lyons in France, a little while later tells how the Lord descended {59} into the world of the dead, preaching to the departed, and all who had hopes in Him, and submitted to His dispensations, received remission of sins.

Then away in Egypt comes St. Clement of Alexandria, born about fifty years after St. John's death. I have been greatly interested in some little touches in his chapter on the descent into the world of the dead. He asserts as the direct teaching of Scripture that our Lord preached the Gospel to the dead, but he thinks that the souls of the Apostles must have taken up the same task when they died, and that it was not merely to Jews and saints, but to heathen as well—as was only fair, he says, since they had no chance of knowing. Don't you like that honest appeal of his "as was only fair"?

St. Clement's great disciple, Origen, comes next. His evidence comes in curiously. A famous infidel named Celsus, knowing of this wide-spread creed of the Church about the preaching in Hades, laughs at the Christians. "I suppose your Master when He failed to persuade the living had to try and persuade the dead?" Origen meets the question {60} straight out: "Whether it please Celsus or no, we of the Church assert that the soul of our Lord, stript of its body, held converse with other souls that He might convert those capable of instruction."