INTO HADES : A STUDY TN COMPARATIVE RELIGION. 



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Now the writer seems to have confused the term " Hades " with 



Hell," and this I believe is done also in " The Apostles' Creed." 

 Properly understood that Creed does not assert that our Lord went 

 into the place of torment. " Hades " is a comprehensive term 

 including the whole region of the departed like our word " Eternity." 

 When we say that a man has gone into Eternity we do not assert 

 whether he has passed to the multitude of the redeemed or into the 

 region of the lost. Dives and Lazarus both went into Hades, but 

 Dives into Gehenna — the place of torment. 



Let me refer for a moment to the crucial passage 1 Pet. iii, 18-2L 

 Here we read that our Lord was " put to death in the flesh, but 

 quickened by the Spirit by which " — the Greek has iv w. Here 

 evidently the " Spirit " is differentiated from the Christ who was 

 put to death so that it was by that Spirit that "He went and 

 preached unto the spirits in prison." But when did that preaching- 

 take place? During the interval between our Lord's death and 

 resurrection? By no means, for the next verse tells us, "which 

 sometime were disobedient." Now surely they were disobedient 

 when they heard the preaching. But when was that 1 " When 

 once the long-suifering of God waited in the days of Noah." That 

 seems to me to be a logical and grammatical interpretation of the 

 passage. In the first chapter of this same Epistle we are told that 

 it was the Spirit of Christ which centuries before " testified before- 

 hand the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should follow." 



With regard to the Gilgamesh Legend and the Deluge referred 

 to by the Archdeacon, these and similar fables may have corrupted 

 the faith of the early Christian Church, but I cannot see that there 

 <5an be any other connection between the two. Gilgamesh loses his 

 friend Ea-bani or Ea-du, and goes to his great ancestor Ut-napishtim 

 to discover if he can get him restored, and becomes healed of certain 

 diseases. But this like other Babylonian stories such as that of the 

 Creation, the Fall, and Cain and Abel, is probably based upon some 

 original which passing through Babylonian channels became corrupted 

 by Babylonian ignorance and superstition. 



The view that people who reject the Gospel on earth will have 

 smother opportunity after death I cannot find has any support in 

 Scripture, and appears to me to be a very dangerous doctrine. 

 People are now-a-days continually saying, " I never worry about 

 the Gospel or trouble myself with the Bible. I mean to live the 



