, as God decrees,
never returning to be reinvested with the vanished charnel houses
of clay they once inhabited.

Secondly, the thought that Christ after his death descended into
the under world to ransom mankind, or a part of mankind, from the
doom there, is in the foundation of the apostolic theology. It was
a central element in the belief of the Fathers, and of the Church
for fourteen hundred years. None of the prominent Protestant
reformers thought of denying it. Calvin lays great stress on it.18
Apinus and others, at Hamburg, maintained that Christ's descent
was a part of his humiliation, and that in it he suffered
unutterable pains for us. On the other hand, Melancthon and the
Wittenbergers held that the descent was a part of Christ's
triumph, since by it he won a glorious victory over the powers of
hell.19 But gradually the importance and the redeeming effects
attached to Christ's descent into hell were transferred to his
death on the cross. Slowly the primitive dogma dwindled away, and
finally sunk out of sight, through an ever encroaching disbelief
in the physical conditions on which it rested and in the pictorial
environments by which it was recommended. And now it is scarcely
ever heard of, save when brought out from old scholastic tomes by
some theological delver. Baumgarten Crusius has learnedly
illustrated the important place long held by this notion, and well
shown its gradual retreat into the unnoticed background.20

17 Confession of Faith of the Church of Scotland, ch. xxxii.
Calvin, Institutes, lib. iii. cap. xxv.; and his Psychopannychia.
Quenstedt also affirms it. Likewise the Confession of Faith of the
Westminster Divines, art. xxxii., says, "Souls neither die nor
sleep, but go immediately to heaven or hell."

18 Institutes, lib. ii. cap. 16, sects. 16, 19.

19 Ledderhose, Life of Melancthon, Eng. trans. by Krotel, ch. xxx.

20 Compendium der Christliche Dogmengeschichte, thl. ii. sects.
100-109.

The other particular doctrine which we said had undergone
remarkable change is in regard to the number of the saved. A
blessed improvement has come over the popular Christian feeling
and teaching in respect to this momentous subject. The Jews
excluded from salvation all but their own strict ritualists. The
apostles, it is true, excluded none but the stubbornly wicked. But
the majority of the Fathers virtually allowed the possibility of
salvation to few indeed. Chrysostom doubted if out of the hu