In the text, {72} we are told that Christ was put to death upon the Cross in the flesh, but was quickened in His human Spirit, that is to say, that after His human Spirit left His Body it was still quick or alive. We know, from the Gospel of S. Luke, whither His human Spirit went. It went to Paradise. S. Peter now tells us what His Spirit did there. He tells us that it preached unto other spirits, and he names the spirits of those who for 120 years, while Noah was building the ark, were disobedient. They had rejected Noah, "the preacher of righteousness" {73} as S. Peter calls him; and now a greater Preacher went to preach to them. Further, we are told, that they were "in prison." The word should rather be rendered "in safe keeping," that is to say, still waiting, under GOD'S care, for this visit of Christ's human Spirit, when He should preach to them. Why the spirits of these men, who lived before the flood, are singled out for special mention, is a question that does not really bear upon the point which we have in hand. And we had better keep to that point, and not be tempted to digress. What then follows from this? Two things are clear,--first, that from as far back as the days before the flood, that is to say, from the very beginning of human life on earth, souls in the Intermediate State had been waiting in safe keeping all these many thousand years; and, secondly, that the disembodied soul of our Lord Jesus Christ visited them there and preached to them. Assuming that these souls had repented, however late, before they died, still we learn that something more than repentance was needful to them. In this case, it is clear that instruction was given to them. It would not have been given if it had not been necessary. And what instruction? Christ "proclaimed," we are told, to them. What did He proclaim? Surely the good news of the Gospel, {74} which He had been proclaiming on earth by the voice of the Apostles. What else did He make known than the mystery of His Incarnation and the Atonement which He had wrought out upon the Cross, in bearing the sins of men, and their sins, too, who had so long been waiting in the Intermediate State, to hear it to their salvation? S. Peter, therefore, in another place, says, "For this cause," that is, because Christ will Himself be the Judge of the living and the dead,--"for this cause was _the Gospel_ preached even to the dead." {75}