QUES. 1-In the City Mission which I have attended, the preacher spoke well on Abraham offering his son as a picture of how Christ took our place and suffered for our sins. Then he went on to say that our Lord went down into hell, took our place there, and set free a multitude of captives when He rose triumphantly from the dead on the third day. When I spoke to him of this afterwards, he said the Bible teaches it-in Eph. 4:8-10 ; Ps. 71:20 ; Matt. 12 :40 ; and many other passages.

Many in the Mission believe this. They get it apparently from a pamphlet, with a chart, by C. J. Baker, which is distributed there. I send you a copy. Will yon give a word in help and food on this subject ?

ANS.-This is an ancient heresy ; and the mistranslation of the Greek word Hades by "hell" in the English Bible perhaps gives some countenance to it. The so-called "Apostle's Creed," which is repeated in Protestant churches every Lord's day, also says, " I believe in God the Father . , . and in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord . . . who was crucified, dead, and buried ; he descended into hell, … he ascended into heaven, . . . from whence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead," etc. But C. J. Baker knows that the Greek word Hades and the Hebrew Sheol refer not to Hell (Gehenna, in Greek), but to the place and state of the soul after death. His error is in applying to the soul passages which apply to the body. Quoting Matt. 12 :40, " For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale's belly, so shall the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth," he asserts that Hades is in the center of the earth ; that the soul of our Lord went down there at death, and led out a multitude of captive souls when He arose triumphant on the third day. All this is misinterpretation of Eph. 4 :8 and 1 Pet. 3 :19, 20, as establishing his own ideas.

1. It was the Lord's body, not His soul, that went down in the earth at death. His soul and spirit went to "paradise," as He said to the repentant, believing thief:'' Verily I say unto thee, To-day shalt thou be with Me in paradise" (Luke 23 :43). Mr. Baker knowing this, and also that the apostle in 2 Cor. 12 :3, 4, identifies paradise with the third heaven, makes the extraordinary and unreasonable statement that "the location of paradise was changed to the third heaven" when our Saviour arose from the dead ; whilst prior to that it must have been in the center of the earth (!), where He descended at His death (!), and liberated a "multitude of captives."

2. As to leading out "a multitude of captives" (for which he quotes a marginal note at Eph. 4 :8), it is not what the Greek original says. The noun aixmaloosian is in the singular number, and must be rendered "captivity"-"Having ascended up on high, He (Christ) led captivity captive;" 1:e., as Heb. 2:14, 15 expresses it, "That through death, He (Christ) might destroy him that had the power of death-that is, the devil ; and deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage." The power which Satan exercised over us, which had kept us in bondage and fear, is now broken for us by Christ who died for us and is risen again. Satan, who held men captive, is now the Lord's captive, as Col. 2 :15 expresses it:" Having spoiled principalities and powers, He made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it" (in the Cross).

3. As to 1 Pet. 3 :19, 20, it teaches no such thing as Christ having gone after His death to preach to the spirits in prison. But the passage distinctly says, "When once the long-suffering of God waited in the day of Noah, while the ark was preparing." In 2 Pet. 2:5, Noah is called "a preacher of righteousness;" by which we justly infer that it was through Noah's testimony that Christ, by the Spirit, preached, "whilst the ark was preparing," to those who, not having heeded the message, are now "spirits in prison," awaiting judgment at the great white throne.

4. Mr. Baker also entirely misapprehends the meaning of the Lord's words to Mary on the morning of His resurrection. She had come to embalm the body of Jesus ; but Jesus shows Himself to her alive. Her joy is boundless at having her Lord again, but the Lord wants her to realize He is not to be with them in the flesh as formerly. He is going back to the Father; His work here being finished. So He says to her, " Touch me not"-lay not hold on Me . . . " but go to my brethren (the first time the disciples are called "brethren," as united to Him in resurrection) and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God." There is where Mary and the disciples, and we also, henceforth are to know Him. He had already intimated this to them when He said, " Let not your heart be troubled :ye believe in God, believe also in Me . . . I go to prepare a place for you " (Jno. 14 :1, 2). The supposition that the Lord had to go up to heaven and come back here before any one could touch Him, seems rather absurd, and is disproved by the other women "taking Him by the feet" immediately after, perhaps even before this (Matt. 28 :9). Mary is a representative of the Jewish disciples who expected the Lord to establish His kingdom and reign then; they understood not that the Cross, the sufferings of Christ, must take place first, and that a new dispensation with Christ in heaven was to take place before He comes to Israel again, when He will be again bodily present.