ws known to them, and
believing that the Messias would some day come to redeem them. When,
therefore, they died they could not go to Heaven, because it was closed
against them. They could not go to Hell, because they were good men.
Neither could they go to Purgatory, because they would have to suffer
there. Where could they go? God in His goodness provided a place for
them--Limbo--where they could stay without suffering till Our Lord
reopened Heaven. Therefore, while Our Lord's body lay in the sepulchre,
His soul went down into Limbo, to tell these good men that Heaven was
now opened for them, and that at His Ascension He would take them there
with Him.

"The third day." Not three full days, but the parts of three days, viz.,
Friday afternoon, Saturday, and Sunday morning.

"He arose" by His own power: and this was the greatest of all Our Lord's
miracles. Some others, like the prophets and Apostles, have, by the
power God gave them, raised the dead to life; but no dead person ever
raised himself. Our Lord is the first and only one to do this, and by so
doing, showed they could not take away His life unless He wished to give
it up; for since He could always take back His life, how could they
destroy it?

"He ascended" forty days after His Resurrection.

"Right hand of God." We know God is a pure spirit having no body; and if
He has no body He can have no hands. Why then do we say right hand? When
the President of the United States invites anyone to dine at his house,
he makes the invited guest sit at his right hand, and thus shows his
respect by giving him the place of highest honor.

When Our Lord ascended into Heaven, He went up in the human body He had
upon earth, and His Father placed Him as man, in His glorified body, in
the place, after His (the Father's) own, the highest in Heaven; but
remember, only as man, because as God He is equal to His Father in all
things.

"From thence"--that is, from the right hand of God.

"To judge." To examine them, to pronounce sentence upon them; to reward
them in Heaven or punish them in Hell.

"The living and the dead." We may take this in a double sense. As the
general judgment will come suddenly and when not expected, all will be
going on in the world as usual--some attending to business, others
taking their ease as they do now, or as they were doing when the deluge
came upon them. Just when the judgment is about to take place, God will
destroy the earth; and then all t