and then, after contemplating the corruptions that everywhere threatened to overthrow the spiritual power of the church, advance to the age of Duns Scotus and Robert Grostete and Roger Bacon, it will be possible to appreciate the nature and the extent of the reform wrought by the mendicant Friars. That they were able to effect a permanent change in the direction of the ecclesiastical current would perhaps be too much to assert. But it cannot be successfully denied that in the days of their vigor and purity they did accomplish something to help a struggling humanity grope its way out of the darkness of the Middle Ages. In an age of irresponsible tyranny, they became the protectors of the weak and the vindicators of the innocent. In the midst of unbridled license, they were the advocates of domestic virtues, and the exemplars of ecclesiastical purity. Sworn to avoid every corruption, and to encourage every virtue, Francis and his followers went forth to convert a degenerate church and to reform a corrupted society. The Pulpit and the Mission have been well called the two most efficient means of regenerating humanity. Of these the Franciscans had almost exclusive control for three-fourths of a century, and the reformation which they were able to effect was the most thorough and wide spread known to the church before the advent of Martin Luther.

ARTICLE II.-IS THERE A PROBATION BETWEEN DEATH AND THE JUDGMENT?

THE adherents of this view are not so numerons, or so pronounced in their peculiar notions, as to have taken to themselves a specific name. They are rather, persons who mean to be orthodox Christians, who eschew the doctrine of universal recovery. They would relieve their minds of the severity of the orthodox tenet, which makes character formed in this life the arbiter of destiny for ever, while at the same time, they hold to the doctrine of eternal punishment for those who shall come to the Judgment unregenerate.

This theory does not set aside the reality of a Day of Judg ment when the future condition of all men will be irreversibly pronounced. It does not set aside the idea that Christ will then cease from his mediatorial work and assume his preroga tive of Kingship. It does not alter the condition of salvation, repentance, and faith. It claims that it does not interfere with the legitimate working of the atonement. It simply teaches that during the intermediate state between death and the judgment, while Christ is performing the work of redemption among those who are alive upon the earth, He may still be carrying on the same process among departed souls, and that persons dying impenitent may yet repent, believe on Christ, be forgiven, and be put in possession of eternal life.

This view differs from that of the Romanists as to the intermediate state, in this, that with them, whatever there is of purification and discipline in Purgatory is limited to those who have begun to be saints. Catholics would offer prayers and penances only for those who die within the pale of their Church; while those who hold the other doctrine would be encouraged to offer prayer and exercise hope in behalf of any who had died in their sins.

The literature of this theory is meagre. The sentiment is rather a floating one, expressed here and there as a hope or a conviction. Lady Byron announced it to Mrs. Stowe concern

ing Lord Byron. "Ever before her," says Mrs. Stowe, "during the remaining years of her widowhood, was the image of her husband, purified and ennobled, with the shadows of earth for ever dissipated, the stains of sin forever removed,—' the angel in him,' as she expressed it, 'made perfect according to its divine ideal.'" Mrs. Stowe echoes the same belief, when she suggests the reward that will meet her friend, "to see that spirit, once chained and defiled, set free and purified ;" and then declares: "Of one thing I always feel sure, probation does not end with this present life." An able work, "The Tripartite Nature of Man," by Rev. J. B. Heard, a clergyman of the English Church, advocates a secondary probation. Lange, Olshausen, and other German commentators adopt an interpretation which allows opportunity for forgiveness after death. Is there reason to believe that such a probation exists? Let us consider the arguments in favor of it.

I. The Scripture argument. "Whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, neither in the world to come." Olshausen claims that "this passage is not overstrained, if we infer that all other sins can be forgiven in the world to come, always supposing repent. ance and faith." But this is only inference. The Saviour did not say that any sin unpardoned here should be pardoned hereafter. Mark thus reports the idea: "hath never forgiveness but is in danger of eternal damnation." This fixes the meaning of the phrase. Christ, in cutting off the sin against the Holy Ghost from all hope of pardon, is not content simply to say, it shall never be forgiven, but intensifies his expression by adding, "neither in this world, neither in the world to come." Two parallel passages, used by Romanists to prove a Purgatory, are also relied upon in this case. "Agree with thine adversary quickly....lest thou be cast into prison. Verily, I say unto thee, thou shalt by no means come out thence till thou hast paid the uttermost farthing." "And his Lord was wroth, and delivered him to the tormentors, till he should pay all that was due unto him." These expressions, it is claimed, designate a limit beyond which punishment shall not be extended. But the passage thus interpreted proves rather a purga

tory than a probation, a deliverance by works rather than a salvation by faith in Christ. These seem to be only proverbial phrases, signifying that the offender shall be dealt with according to the extreme rigor of the law. As man can never pay his "debt" this is the strongest possible way of expressing the eternity of punishment. But the main scripture relied upon is that in 1st Pet. iii. 18-20: "For Christ hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us unto God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit; by which also he went 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 preparing, wherein few, that is eight souls, were saved by water." The common view of this passage is that Christ, by his Spirit in Noah, "a preacher of righteousness," before the flood, preached salvation to the disobedient, who dying incorrigible, are now spirits shut up in prison, the hell of the lost. The other is that Christ, while his body was in the grave, made his way in spirit to Hades and there preached. On this side two special points are made, (1.)" He," лорeυlεic, "going, preached." Here is the act of going, and the redundancy of the phrase, "he went," if he did not go. This depends upon where he went from. Paul writes that Christ" came and preached peace." Here is the same construction,-220v, coming, preached. And this the apostle said to the Ephesians, who had never seen Christ in the flesh. Then it is said, "The Lord came down." So Christ came from heaven to preach to the people of Noah's day. (2.) The parity of the construction, "put to death as to the flesh," "made alive as to the spirit.' There being no preposition used in either case, it is claimed that the parallelism must be observed, and so, as he was also put to death in his flesh, he was also quickened or kept alive, in his spirit, in which spirit-state of existence he went and preached to the spirits in prison. But the participle, woлоŋoeìs, “made alive," can refer in fairness only to the resurrection of Christ. In the twelve places in which the New Testament uses it, once, in 1st Timothy, vii. 13, it refers to God as giving life to all creatures; thrice, Jno. vi. 33; 2 Cor. iii. 6; Gal. iii., 21, it refers to the life-giving power of the gospel;

and seven times, Jno. v., 21; Rom. iv., 17; viii., 11; 1 Cor. xv. 22, 36, 45, it is used with direct reference to the raising of the dead. Now in this, the twelfth case, to put upon the word a meaning entirely different is mere assumption. Then the parallelism applies equally well to the other interpretation, for it was by his own spirit, or in his divine nature, that he preached to the antedeluvians. He "was before Abraham," before Noah. It was the Spirit of Christ "which was in the prophets," as Peter says; and Enoch, before Noah, was one of those prophets. Then the time when Christ preached is indicated "when once in the days of Noah," etc. This idea, it appears, was prominently in the mind of Peter, for he alone of all the writers of the Bible informs us that Noah was a preacher at all, “a preacher of righteousness;" so that it was quite natural that he should refer, by way of illustration, to the preaching of Christ through Noah.

Why was it that this alleged mission of Christ was never even hinted at by any other of the New Testament writers; while Peter is so obscure that his remark upon his beloved brother Paul may be turned upon himself: "In whose epistles are some things hard to be understood, and which the unlearned and the unstable wrest to their own destruction." Why, then, was there never any prophecy of this important mission?

But admitting the literal preaching in Hades, this does not prove a second probation. Dean Alford, who assents to the literal descent, but denies the theory that sin may be forgiven in the future world.upon repentance, says, "In the entire silence of Scripture on any such doctrine, every principle of sound interpretation requires that we should resist the introduction of it merely on the strength of two difficult passages, in neither of which does the plain construction of the words require it." Those who hold to this visit to the spirits in prison are much divided as to the time and the object of the mission. Some believe that he went while his body was in the grave; others, that he went after his body had been raised. Dr. Bartle, Pesident of Walton College, Liverpool, in his work, "Hades and the Atonement," tries to prove that Christ went there to complete the atonement, that he did not preach there at all, but