souls of the patriarchs and prophets before our blessed Lord’s resurrection.  It may, nevertheless, materially facilitate an inquiry into the soundness of the reasons alleged for the total absence of invocation to those souls, if we briefly contemplate some of the difficulties which surround this novel theory.  At all events, such a process will incline us to abstain from bold assumptions on a point upon which the Almighty has been pleased to throw so little light in his Holy Word, or at least avoid all severity of condemnation towards those who may differ from our views.

It is very easy to assert, that all the souls of the faithful departed were kept in the prison-house of Hades, and to allege in its behalf an obscure passage of St. Peter, to which many of the most learned and unprejudiced Christian teachers assign a meaning totally unconnected with the subject of departed spirits.  But surely the case of Enoch’s translation from this life to heaven, making, as it has been beautifully expressed, but one step from earth to glory, which St. Paul, in his Epistle to the Hebrews, cites with a most important comment of his own, requires to be well and patiently weighed.  He was taken from the earth by an immediate act of Providence, that he should not see death; and before his translation he had this testimony, that he pleased God.  Surely the case of Elijah too, when we would ascertain the soundness of this theory, must not be dismissed summarily from our thoughts, of whom the book of eternal truth declares, that Jehovah took him {30} in a whirlwind into heaven; his ascent being made visible to mortal eyes, as was afterwards the ascension of the blessed Saviour Himself.  Indeed the accounts of Elijah’s translation, and of our Lord’s ascension, whether in the Septuagint and Greek Testament, the Vulgate, or our own authorized version, present a similarity of expression very striking and remarkable.

On this subject we are strongly reminded, first, with what care and candour and patience the language of Holy Scripture should be weighed, which so positively declares, that Moses and Elijah, both in glory, appeared visibly to the Apostles at the transfiguration of our blessed Saviour, and conversed with Him on the holy mount:  “And behold there talked with Him two men, who were Moses and Elias, who appeared in glory (in majesty, as the Vulgate renders the word), and spake of his decease which He should accomplish at Jerusalem;” [Luke ix. 30.]—­and, secondly, how unwise it is to dogmatize on such subjects beyond the plain declaration of the sacred narrative.  Moreover, how very unsatisfactory is the theory which we are examining as to the state of the souls of the faithful who died before Christ, even the words of Jerome himself prove, who, commenting on the transfiguration of the blessed Jesus, is unhappily led to represent the Almighty as having summoned Elijah to descend from heaven, and Moses to ascend from Hades, to meet our Lord in the Mount[4].