might fill all things." Hades and Heaven had alike felt the glory of His presence. And then immediately after the Apostles' days I find the knowledge wide-spread in the Church. I read the writings of the ancient bishops and teachers of the Church, beginning at the death of St. John, the very men to whom we refer for information as to the Baptism and Holy Communion and the authenticity of the four Gospels, and there I find prominently in their preaching the gospel of our Lord's visit to the world of the departed. § 2 The earliest is known as Justin Martyr. He was born about the time of St. John's death, and he feels so strongly about the Descent into Hades that he actually charges the Jews with mutilating a prophecy of Jeremiah foretelling it. Irenaeus, the great Bishop of Lyons in France, a little while later tells how the Lord descended {59} into the world of the dead, preaching to the departed, and all who had hopes in Him, and submitted to His dispensations, received remission of sins. Then away in Egypt comes St. Clement of Alexandria, born about fifty years after St. John's death. I have been greatly interested in some little touches in his chapter on the descent into the world of the dead. He asserts as the direct teaching of Scripture that our Lord preached the Gospel to the dead, but he thinks that the souls of the Apostles must have taken up the same task when they died, and that it was not merely to Jews and saints, but to heathen as well--as was only fair, he says, since they had no chance of knowing. Don't you like that honest appeal of his "as was only fair"? St. Clement's great disciple, Origen, comes next. His evidence comes in curiously. A famous infidel named Celsus, knowing of this wide-spread creed of the Church about the preaching in Hades, laughs at the Christians. "I suppose your Master when He failed to persuade the living had to try and persuade the dead?" Origen meets the question {60} straight out: "Whether it please Celsus or no, we of the Church assert that the soul of our Lord, stript of its body, held converse with other souls that He might convert those capable of instruction." Then away in Western Africa, the Church's belief is represented by another great teacher, Tertullian. In Jerusalem, Cyril the Bishop, teaches the people in his catechetical lectures this faith of the Church with a ring of gladness and triumph. He sees Christ not only amid the souls who had once been disobedient, but also in blessed intercourse with the strugglers after right who had never seen His face on earth. He pictures how the holy prophets ran to our Lord, how Moses, and Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and David, and Samuel, and John the Baptist, ran to Him with the cry, "Oh, Death, where is thy sting? Oh, Grave, where is thy victory, for the Conqueror has redeemed us."