ner. notion was probably very wide from the truth, it is greatly misrepresented when explained in this manWhat he really said is, that Christ underwent the death which is inflicted by God upon the wicked; and that having taken upon himself the sins of the world, he suffered all the agonies and horrors which a sinner suffers by death. He conceived this to be the meaning of Christ descending into hell, which opinion, though we may censure it for being figurative and metaphorical, and unsupported by Scripture, is not to be identified with the notion, that the pure and spotless soul of Jesus descended to the spirits of the wicked, and suffered with them. Luther also has been charged by his opponents with saying, that the souls of men, when separated from the body, exist in a state of stupor; but I cannot see from the passages which are alleged, that Luther entertained any such doctrine: he certainly said, that the soul in that intermediate state exists in a kind of sleep, by which he may only have meant to adopt the expression which is so often used by St. Paul; and his own notion seems to have been (which indeed it would be very difficult to disprove), that disembodied spirits are not acquainted with what is passing upon earth. Whether we look to the sentiments of these two great reformers, or to the liability which they incur of being misrepresented and abused, we shall find no encouragement to indulge in similar speculations; and we may well admire the prudence and moderation of our own Church, which requires her members to believe in general terms that Christ descended into hell, or that his soul was in the place appointed for departed spirits. What is the nature of that place, or what circumstances attended his admission thither, she has not attempted to define; neither has she stated any thing concerning the souls of all men when separated from the body. That we shall not all sleep', or, as the words should rather be translated, that none of us shall sleep, i. e. for ever, we know upon the declaration of an inspired apostle. The awful and tremendous scene which he is there describing, is indeed enough to employ our thoughts, without speculating upon what is to befal us between our deaths and the resurrection. Whether that intermediate state shall last a few years or many thousands, the period is as nothing, when compared with that eternity of happiness or misery, to which all men will be consigned at the last day. But he who looks back upon a life of carelessness and sin, who looks forward and sees only an Almighty and offended Judge, he may do well sometimes to consider, that the punishment of the wicked begins at the moment when the soul is separated from the body. The thoughtless and habitual sinner, the man of pleasure, as he is called, whose life is passed in selfish and sensual indulgence, would perhaps be satisfied, or even glad, to persuade himself that the soul dies with the body, and that there is no existence beyond the grave. But there is that within him which says that this cannot be. The sinner may silence conscience for awhile, and never think of his soul till death stares him in the face; but unless he is cut off in the midst of his sins, he will think, and he will tremble to think, that there will be a day of judgment, and that he is not prepared to meet it. To some, perhaps, this awful day would be divested of part of its terrors, if they could think that as soon as they were dead they should fall into insensibility, and that ages would roll away before they were called to account for their past lives. They would say, Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die', not as deluding themselves with the notion that death is an eternal sleep, but as thinking that the day of judgment is so far removed, that it need not occupy their thoughts. But the day of punishment for the wicked is not so far removed. If there be any truth in the inferences which I have drawn from Scripture (and I have endeavoured not to go beyond the letter of Scripture), the soul of the wicked man is in a state of suffering from the moment of its separation from the body. He passes from a state of pleasure and enjoyment (for such he calls a life of sensuality and sin), to a state of which we perhaps know little, but which our blessed Lord himself has described as a state of torment. Thus much, at least, we know, that there is no repentance in the grave: to the good man the intermediate state is a state of rest, 1 to the bad man it is a state of suffering; and to those only who can be said in the language of Scripture to sleep in Christ, i. e. to have died with a firm faith and sincere repentance, to those only will that far greater happiness be revealed, when they shall hear it said, Awake, thou that sleepest, and rise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee life. SERMON VII. BELIEF OF THE APOSTLES IN THE ATONEMENT. ACTS x. 40, 41. Him God raised up the third day, and shewed him openly, not to all the people, but unto witnesses chosen before of God. In the interval which happened between the crucifixion and ascension of our Lord, the minds of the inhabitants of Jerusalem were agitated in a very different manner. The priests and rulers of the Jews would exult in thinking, that they had silenced him whom they could not refute, and that he, who exposed their hypocrisy and condemned their vices, had paid for his temerity by a public and ignominious death. Some, perhaps, there were, who still cherished the feelings of affection, with which they had smitten their breasts and returned from the scene of the crucifixion: persons, who had witnessed, perhaps experienced, the beneficence of his miracles, and who sorrowed to think that their companion and instructor was removed from them for ever by death. But to the immediate disciples, who had forsaken |