seal of the preaching. Accordingly they went down with them into the water, and again they came up. In the Gospel of Peter it is related that a voice from the heavens was heard on the morning of the resurrection: "Hast thou preached to those that sleep?" And an answer was heard from the cross: "Yes." In his Religionsgeschichtliche Erklärung des Neuen Testaments, 1909, S. 153-56, Clemen discusses the alleged dependence of the belief in the descent of Christ to Hades upon non-Jewish sources, giving full reference to the literature. He combats the views of Bousset, Gardner, Pfleiderer, Gunkel, Zimmern, A. Meyer, Soltau, H. Holtzmann, and others, who think that there is more or less dependence, direct or indirect, upon Babylonian, Mandaic, or Greek religion. He is doubtless right in saying that there is no need for seeking such parallels, and that the special form in which the conception appears in First Peter is explicable throughout without resorting to foreign influences. But he seems to manifest too great zeal in entirely excluding such influences. In his commentary on the Apocalypse of John,26 Bousset, commenting on 1:18, refers to the "widespread myths" of the passage to Hades (Hadesfahrt), and says that they appear to be closely connected. In his Hauptprobleme (S. 255) he says that only such connection explains the fact that this speculation found so early a place in the Christian religion. The assurance with which it is presupposed and referred to in the New Testament is in his view explained only on the assumption that the idea existed before it was referred to the person of Jesus. H. Holtzmann' expresses more moderately the same view. The idea might have arisen spontaneously on Christian soil, he thinks, where the universe was thought of as constructed after the manner of a three-story building. Indeed, with their conception of the messiahship of Jesus, his death, and his resurrection on the third day, some such view was a logical necessity. Yet its concrete and clear form was due to the fact that the whole atmosphere of the time offered it both invitation and abundant means.28 26 Die Offenbarung Johannis, in the Meyer series, sechste Auflage, 1906, S. 198. 27 Höllenfahrt im Neuen Testament," Arch. f. rel. Wiss., 1908, S. 285 ff. 28 Clemen sees in this very temperate judgment "an unnecessary concession to the religionsgeschictliche Schule," but what objection can there be to making concession to a well-supported position? The words of Pfleiderer will show at least how congenial was the conception to the larger world into which Christianity was entering: For the solution of this pressing question (that of a blessed immortality) in the first instance ancient myths offered welcome starting-points. Above all there was the legend, recurring in different forms almost everywhere, of a divine or half-divine being who went down into the kingdom of the dead and tasted the terrors of hell, but by his own divine power or by a messenger of the gods sent to his help he was again brought back happily and victoriously to the world above of light and life. All these legends of the journey to hell of Istar, of the Mandaic Hibil Ziwa, of Hercules and Orpheus, of the robbery and return of Persephone, have this in common, that the power of death was once overcome by superior divine might and the prison of Hades was open.29 Commenting upon the first chapter of the Apocalypse of John, Pfleiderer says: Likewise a Christian use of an old myth we shall have to find in verse 18, where Christ says of himself that he was dead and is now living and possesses the keys of death and Hades. This power of the keys over death belongs in Jewish thought only to God; here it is ascribed to the Son of Man as to the very one who was dead and therefore in Hades, but was once more living and returned victorious. Herein we recall the Babylonian-Gnostic myths of the conquest over the powers of death through a divine hero who went down into the underworld, broke its gates, captured its keys, and as victor over death and hell returned to the world of life and light, to be redeemer and guarantee of life for his own.3° We see that belief in the descent of Christ into Sheol or Hades after death was natural and necessary in the light of the ancient view of the world, and that in one form or another it again and again emerges. We have found suggestions that in connection with his presence there divine power was exercised. We have discovered among Jews and Christians great concern for those who had died in their sins. A fundamental declaration of the Christian message was that salvation is possible only in Christ (Acts 4:12). So far as concerned the present generation Paul had applied to Christian preaching the words of Ps. 19:4: Their sound went forth into all lands, And their words into all the world" (Rom. 10:18). They had had and would have their chance. But to former generations had not been granted the opportunity of believing on Christ. 29 Das Urchristentum, II, S. 181. 30 Urchristentum, II, S. 288. Now as Christ was once in Hades, he must have preached to them there.31 In the First Epistle of Peter the end in view is not instruction in doctrine, but a certain kind of conduct. Yet place cannot be given in this article to a consideration of the practical and ethical bearings of the christological doctrine introduced.32 31 So Clemen, Niedergefahren zu den Toten, 1900. 32 A briefer treatment of the Christology, setting forth however its genetic relationships and place in the thought-movement, is presented in the author's Outline of New Testament Christology: a Study of Genetic Relationships within the Christology of the New Testament Period (The University of Chicago Press, 1909). SOME WHOLESOME HUMILIATIONS OF THE MODERN CHURCH REV. CHARLES H. DICKINSON, D.D. Wholesomeness of humiliation the church shares with every other beneficent institution of a progressive age. Progress connotes dissatisfaction with every attainment. Progress moves by experiments, most of which fail; and by the vexatious process of elimination the discovery is lit upon. Progress means disillusions unto the hope that cannot be put to shame, ambitions thwarted unto ends sufficient to the soul. The greater part of advance is to retrace impracticable paths in penitence and tears, so regaining the road to the Celestial City. Wholesome humiliations mark an age of progress, and the church in an age of progress. They Proud science has learned her wholesome humiliations. are recalled by the centenary of the chief man of science. His announcement of natural selection delivered the all-interpretative principle of evolution from formless speculation and undefined hypothesis into scientific definiteness, replaced the static by the dynamic universe of thought and things. Yet Darwin's principle is confessed to be but one element among others, mostly unknown, in biological evolution, which it can neither demonstrate nor explain. With chastened humility science has set herself to experiment afresh, and will hardly believe that she is progressing toward an interpretation of life except by disclosing the inadequacy of every interpretation submitted. Such blended advance and failure have long antiquated the attempt of science to solve or to dismiss the ultimate mysteries; she is grateful to bring her humble contributions of material toward their partial solution. Science has reached the stage of humiliation, therefore of sure progress. The same wholesomeness of humiliation is in modern industry, which exulted in its manifolding of productive and distributive powers. At once followed the consternation of new forms of material and moral misery. The Manchester School's pomp of yesterday is one with Nineveh and Tyre. To the moles and the bats has been cast its arrogance of unmodified-I do not say unrestricted-competition. Humbly the world of commerce and industry confesses its discredited dogmatism, accepts a new spirit and method, with lowly docility sits at the feet of things as they are, seeks its goal not in the existing social organization which it confesses to be no more final than the feudal system, and sets its face not in the direction of any fantasticalness, but toward the economics which can be won only by chastened experiment. So in art, in politics, national and international, in education, in reform, in all our life and thought, we have reached that potentiality of achievement which is marked by humility. The wholesome humiliations of the church also are her brightest augury. We may turn without regret from exaggerated reminiscences of the fabled ecclesiastical Paradise, when the multitude sought the place of dogmatic ignorance without regard to the quality of edification received, and departed with an inspiration to righteousness and happiness demonstrably less than that which the church gives society today; when the parson was parish pope, ruling in the fear of hell and by the authority of pretense; when the church spire dominated home and shop, as sky-scraper and factory chimney now dwarf the church spire, but not the heaven it points to; when the rivals of the church's beneficence and mischief were not full grown. It is better to live in a humbled church than in an arrogant church, notwithstanding all the failures and contempts that have been slippery steps down into her valley of humiliation. Better than to lord it over the world is the church's office of a servant to wash the dusty feet of the servants of humanity. In the church's abasement is more dignity than in the self-exaltation of former days, and steady progress toward the allsubduing influence of the Lowliest, in whose name she serves. The humiliation of sectarian divisions is wholesome in forcing them to an end. But to what end? Sects were historically necessary to save religion from corruption and to bring to light neglected essentials of Christianity. It is the humiliation of the church that the offense of sectarianism must needs come, but it were a deeper humiliation if the offense should pass away without accomplishing the design which |