This accounts for the whereabouts of the Savior during the interval between his death on the cross and His resurrection from the sepulchre in the rock. At His appearance to Mary in the garden, after He had risen, He said, "I am not yet ascended to my father." During the three days of His body's sleep in the tomb He was continuing the work the Father had given Him to do. He was preaching "deliverance to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that were bound." That these spirits in prison had been in the flesh, Peter makes clear by stating that they were "disobedient * * in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing." The gospel was thus preached also to the dead, that they might have the same opportunities and be judged by the same gospel as the living. The exercise of faith is an operation of the spirit of man, and so is repentance. These lead to obedience and obedience to acceptance with God. The body without the spirit is dead and can neither believe, repent nor obey, but the spirit without the body is active, sentient and capable of exercising all of its powers that are adapted to a spiritual sphere. It is only through the medium of the body, however, that the spirit can handle, experience and fully control or be subjected to corporeal things. That part of the gospel which pertains to earthly ordinances and observances is, therefore, unapproachable to the disembodied. But they can learn and submit to all its spiritual laws and influences and "live according to God in the spirit." They can hear the gospel, for Christ preached it to many of them; they can obey, for He not only proclaimed liberty to them but "He led captivity captive," and they must therefore have repented and become acceptable to God. As one of the early fathers of the Church said of the slain Redeemer, "He went into hades alone, but he came forth with a multitude." The Jews of Christ's day believed that there were two divisions of the spirit world--Paradise and Tartarus. The good went to the former, the bad to the latter. Jesus promised the repentant thief on the cross: "To-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise." This is not the abode of the Eternal Father but of departed spirits, where they wait until the resurrection. A place of instruction and preparation, of peace and rest, of joy and serenity, of progress toward perfection. And into this abode of the just, Christ led from Tartarus the spirits purified and chastened through their captivity, who were disobedient in the flesh in the days of Noah, but had suffered for their rebellion, and in the spirit had gladly received the gospel through His ministrations.