ll worth our attention, for it confirms what we have
already learned from the previous teaching of the Lord, that the life
of the departed is a clear, vivid, conscious life, since Christ could
teach them and they could learn.

And it suggests that the departed souls of the old world who had no
chance of knowing Him have not by death lost all capacity for repenting
and receiving Christ. Those men that St. Peter thinks of had perished
in God's great judgment, but it would seem in their terrible fate they
had not hardened themselves irrevocably against God. Those who do that
on earth seem to close the door for ever. That is the sin against the
Holy Ghost--the only sin which our Lord says hath never forgiveness
either in this world or in the world to come. These evidently had
still their capacity for repentance. And this gives one stirrings of
hope in the perplexities of God's awful judgments. Don't be afraid to
think this. There is not one word in Scripture to forbid our thinking
it. It merely means that in the terrible fate which they had brought
on themselves they had not utterly hardened their hearts--and Christ
had not forgotten them in their misery.

Section 6

Estimate fairly the value of this evidence for our Lord's visit to the
Unseen Life. Do not overestimate it. It is not all Scripture. But
all that is not Scripture is the wide-spread belief of the primitive
Church which was afterwards crystallized into an article of the Creed.
Surely it is enough to deepen our sense of the reality of that Unseen
Life. It strongly confirms what we have learned already--that that
life is a vivid, conscious life into which "I" go my "self," with my
full memory of the past. And do not misread it. It is not offering
any hope to wicked men who, with full knowledge of Christ, wilfully
reject Him. It tells of men who had never known Him, and has hope only
of those "who were capable of receiving Him." There is nothing here to
make light of the responsibility of this life.

But this message comes to us to comfort the hearts and strengthen the
faith of thinking men and women who are puzzled and perplexed and
estranged from Christ by the terrible perplexities of life and of God's
judgments as they understand or misunderstand them. You have often
thought of the difficulty of reconciling the righteous justice of God
with His Fatherly love. You have often thought, in wondering doubt,
"Why did Christ come so late in the