M." And Jesus said:
"TO-DAY THOU SHALT BE WITH ME IN PARADISE." Not in Heaven, but in
Paradise--the Jews' word for the resting place of good men after death.
Now, when one man says to another at such a tune, "To-day you shall be
with me," surely it suggests, "You and I will be living a full,
conscious life, and you will remember our acquaintance here upon the
earth; we shall know each other as the two who hung together this
morning on calvary." Does it not, at least suggest, recognition in the
Unseen Land?

CHAPTER IV

WHAT THE BIBLE AND THE CHURCH SAY ABOUT THE NEAR HEREAFTER

Only three hours later the Lord passed through into that Unseen Land.
"Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit, and having said this He
gave up the ghost," and departed on the mysterious journey. If we
could know anything about what He saw and did on that mysterious
journey surely it would give some hints about our dear ones departed.

Section 1

That journey of the Lord into the world of the dead has been made a
great article of the Christian faith. We all repeat it regularly in
the Apostles' Creed, "He descended into Hell." I need not translate
that clause. Every well taught Sunday-school child knows its meaning.
"He descended into Hades," into the world of the departed in the great
waiting life before the Judgment. But there is a great deal more than
this to be said about it.

Now, let us consider this statement. Clearly it deals with the three
days between our Lord's death and resurrection. Where did His spirit
go? "To heaven, of course," somebody says. "No," says the Lord
Himself after the resurrection, "I have not yet ascended to My Father."
Where, then, did His spirit go? "Nobody can tell," you say. Yes, one
person could tell, and only one--the Lord Himself. He only could have
told of His solitary temptation in the wilderness, and He evidently
told it. He only could have told of the solitary scene in Gethsemane,
it would seem that He told it. He only could have told of His visit to
the world of the dead, and I think that He told it. You remember that
after the resurrection He was with them "forty days teaching the things
concerning the Kingdom." I think He must have told them then of those
three days. Why? Because the knowledge of it was so wide-spread in
the early Church, and there was no one else to tell it. Some people
seem to think that there are only some obscure verses of St. Peter and
a few r