to that of heaven; the condition of the mind with all its powers inverted, immersed in the darkness of its own delusions, and preyed upon by its unclean and lurid passions. This is Gehenna, away down in the spiritual nadir, and these are the infernal fires. The visible universe, above and below, becomes the ever-present symbol to describe opposite spiritual states and their ultimations in a spiritual world hereafter; and so heaven and Gehenna are not localities in space, but representative images of things that transcend the senses. The style of speech which our Saviour adopts in describing his kingdom, his second coming, and the opposite results of receiving and rejecting him, is that of parable, or comparison, throughout; making all nature a vast analogue of the spirit, and a copying down of eternity into time. Thus he lifts us out of naturalism, and sets us face to face with the everlasting verities.

Well had it been if the Church could have been kept on the level of this lofty spiritualism, and could have ever seen the truths which, in his speech, shine through and transfigure the letter, like clouds made white and purpling with the sunlight. But always the natural mind relapses into literalism, like heavy bodies that fall to the earth. So the Christian Church began to relapse very early. His promised spiritual coming was

understood to be a literal and personal one, even in the times of the Apostles; and as early as the second and third centuries, if not before, we find the old Pharisaic doctrine of re-incarnation coupled with that of the resurrection, and even substituted for it; we find Heaven and Hades made localities again in space, to be reached by locomotion; we find, in fact, the Jewish pneumatology in its main features reproduced. Origen, and the Alexandrian school generally, kept out of this slough; but the Western Churches went down heavily into it, there to "grow the grimy color of the ground on which they are feeding."

CHAPTER VII.

THE ALLEGED NATURALISM OF ST. PAUL.

A MOST important question remains to us, and one which affects materially the authority of the great Apostle to the Gentiles. He affirms that he was caught up into the third or highest heavens, and he could not say whether in the body or out of it. He speaks of Hades as the underworld, ("things under the earth,") and of Christ as having descended into it. He describes the second coming of Christ from heaven as sudden and unexpected, "with a shout," and with "the trump of God." He affirms that, when the dead are to be raised out of Hades, those living at the time shall be caught up, and with them "meet the Lord in the air." These and similar allusions provoke the inquiry, Does Paul use this language as literal, or does he employ this imagery as representative? Did he still believe in the Jewish and Heathen topography of the universe, that the heavens are vertically over our

heads, into which the saints are to be "caught up" at the last day, and that Hades, or the abode of departed spirits, is underground? And when he says Christ will descend from heaven, and the archangel blow his trumpet, does he mean a descent through the air, and a blast to be blown. on the natural ear? In short, was St. Paul, notwithstanding his extraordinary illumination, still locked in naturalism, and is this what he has taught to the churches?

It has been supposed, and ably argued, that this is the case. * Paul had been a Pharisee, and his mind had become thoroughly imbued with Jewish lore; and it is inferred that he has imported the Jewish pneumatology into his scheme of Christian doctrine.

We have studied his writings with reference to this point, and our conviction is clear that this is not the case, and that no system of naturalism was ever taught by the Apostle. We will give our reasons in full, and then abide the judgment of the reader.

1. All the imagery which he employs is found also in the picture-language of the Saviour, wherein he describes the second coming, the last judgment, and the spiritual world. The

*See an article in the Christian Examiner for March, 1853, "Paul's Doctrine of the Last Things."

heavens (ovpavoi), and the descent of the Son of Man out of them with "a great sound of a trumpet," Gehenna, and Hades or the underworld, are terms, as we have just seen, employed by Christ in the way of parable; and if he committed these truths to his Apostle, would he not convey them under the same divinely-selected symbols? Paul introduces his description with the solemn averment, "Behold, I show you a mystery," and "This I declare unto you by the word of the Lord"; and it is some confirmation of his declaration, that he goes on to employ the very imagery drawn from the natural world which the Lord had selected before; as if, when these truths rushed in upon him from their Divine Source, they came in the same investiture, and thus claimed their utterance from his lips. That Paul saw the whole range of meaning as Christ had done in the language that came to him, were too much to affirm; for the long sweep of the centuries does not yet fulfil these high prophetic enunciations. That he perverted it or sunk it into a sense merely literal, we have no right to say, unless there is some collateral evidence, drawn from his language and experience elsewhere, that warrants the affirmation.

2. But the experience of the great Apostle shuts out the possibility that he could have been