such teaching.

The Jews in our Lord's time believed in a waiting life of departed
souls before the Judgment. Owing to vagueness and contradictions in
the Rabbinical teaching it is impossible to state their notions about
it with definiteness. But in the main it may be said that when they
speak of that life as a whole without distinguishing between the states
of the good and the evil they call this whole by the general name of
HADES, _i. e._, "the Unseen" (the Hebrew word was Sheol), but they also
distinguished in it the abode or state of the Blest as PARADISE, or the
"Garden of Eden," or "ABRAHAM'S BOSOM," or "UNDER THE THRONE," _e. g._,
"Abraham whom God planted in the Garden of Paradise," "our master Moses
departed into the Garden of Eden." The holy Judah rests this day in
"Abraham's Bosom."

Their teaching is of course not authoritative for us. Doubtless many
of their notions on the subject needed much correction. But our Lord
gives His sanction in the main to their belief and uses their very
phrases in speaking of the new life, _e. g._, Dives "in HADES (not
Hell, see R. V.), lift up his eyes being in torment"--Lazarus "was
carried by the angels into ABRAHAM'S BOSOM." "To-day thou shalt be
with Me in PARADISE" is His promise to the dying thief. And it is
clear that He did not mean the final Heaven for He says, "No man hath
ascended into Heaven only the Son of Man who is in Heaven." Even He
Himself did not go to Heaven when He died, for this is His statement
after the Resurrection, "I have not yet ascended unto My Father."
Where, then, did His Spirit go? The whole Church throughout the world
repeats every Sunday, in the creed, "He was dead and buried, and
descended into HADES"--the life of the waiting souls. St. Peter tells
us in his first Epistle that in those three days Christ's living Spirit
went and preached to the spirits in safe keeping who had been
disobedient in the old world. For which cause he says, "was the Gospel
preached to them that are dead." The same thought was evidently in his
mind in his first sermon (Acts ii. 31). "David," he says, "prophesied
of the resurrection of Christ that His soul was not left in Hades."

Section 4

And this is the point of view of all the New Testament Scriptures.
Heaven and Hell are always spoken of as states _after the Judgment_ and
the Judgment is to be in the "end of the world" or the "end of this
age."

The great crisis of expectation set before me