tle to sustain it, and it is loaded with fatal difficulties. A
change of faith so important and so bright in its view as this
must have seemed under the circumstances would have been clearly
and fully stated. Attention would have been earnestly invited to
so great a favor and comfort; exultation and gratitude would have
been expressed over so unheard of a boon. Moreover, what had
occurred to effect the alleged new belief? The unexpected delay of
Christ's coming might make the apostle wish that his departed
friends were tarrying above the sky instead of beneath the
sepulchre; but it could furnish no ground to warrant a sudden
faith in that wish as a fulfilled fact. Besides, the truth is that
Paul never ceased, even to the last, to expect the speedy arrival
of the Lord and to regard the interval as a comparative trifle. In
this very epistle he says, "The Lord is at hand: be careful for
nothing." Secondly, we may imagine that he expected himself, as a
divinely chosen and specially favored servant, to go to Christ in
heaven as soon as he died, if that should happen before the Lord's
appearance, while the great multitude of believers would abide in
the under world until the general resurrection. The death he was
in peril of and is referring to was that of martyrdom for the
gospel at the hands of Nero. And many of the Fathers maintained
that in the case of every worthy Christian martyr there was an
exception to the general doom, and that he was permitted to enter
heaven at once. Still, to argue such a thought in the text before
us requires an hypothesis far fetched and unsupported by a single
clear declaration of the apostle himself. Thirdly, we may assume
and it seems to us by far the least encumbered and the most
plausible theory that attempts to meet the case that Paul believed
there would be vouchsafed to the faithful Christian during his
transient abode in the under world a more intimate and blessed
spiritual fellowship with his Master than he could experience
while in the flesh. "For I am persuaded that neither death
[separation from the body] nor depth [the under world] shall be
able to separate us from God's love, which he has manifested
through Christ." He may refer, therefore, by his hopes of being
straightway with Christ on leaving the body, to a spiritual
communion with him in the disembodied state below, and not to his
physical presence in the supernal realm, the latter not being
attainable previous to the resur