States evades the duty of ascertaining which of the two rival governments is the lawful one, and by the withdrawal of troops now protecting the State from domestic violence, abandons the lawful State government to a struggle with insurrectionary forces too powerful to be resisted. . . . I have hitherto been willing to ask you, republicans, to risk all dangers and endure all hardships until relief should come from the government of the United States. That relief will never come. . . . In my best judgment I can no longer serve you by further resistance to the impending calamity." Governor Chamberlain turned

over the seal of the State to General Hampton April 11, and soon after removed to New York City. With his resignation the period covered by Mr. Allen's volume closes.

At present there is undoubtedly great partisan misconception and misinformation in regard to the events of the succeeding administrations. But it is a noticeable fact, and one worth reflecting upon, that after the republican party had incorporated negro suffrage into the constitutions and laws of the southern States, they were still unable to secure the actual political equality of the black race, and that the States soon fell into the hands of the democrats, who from the first had been unwilling to grant political rights to the negro except under property and educational qualifications. Whether the democrats at the present time, in spite of, or perhaps by means of, a policy of fraud and intimidation, are going to work out the political equality of the negro on the lines which they proposed in the early stages of reconstruction does not yet appear. Such a result is not impossible in time.

But the short regime of republican reconstruction served to change the political condition of the South materially from what it was in 1867. Governor Chamberlain, though he was not allowed to solve the problem completely in South Carolina, believed that great results had been achieved. "I admit," he said, "that the State debt has been needlessly increased, and large sums of money raised by taxation have been expended in unnecessary amounts upon unnecessary objects, and that many ruthless, incompetent and dishonest persons have crept into public office. But still, over and above all these evils, we have this to show for republican rule in South Carolina: A free

and just constitution under which, so far as the organic law can effect it, the rights of all the people of South Carolina are secured; a just distribution of the political power of the State between both the races and among all the people; a system of taxation which is, in my judgment, as correct as has been devised in any State in the union; a system of local affairs and local administration which is simple, convenient, and as unexceptionable as can be devised; a system of public education which embraces and extends to all people of the State alike; and now, after the first eight years' experience under the constitution, a habit of self-government, and to the exercise of political powers on the part of all the people of the State, which would never have dawned upon the state except under republican rule."

Governor Chamberlain's estimate is probably not overdrawn; and the effects of the partial reconstruction of the republicans will long have an influence in the South, whether the negro shall eventually attain to political equality under democratic party government or whether the republicans are again able to take up their unfinished work and carry it to completion under more favorable auspices than attended their first attempt.

FREDERICK W. MOORE.

ART. II. THE SPIRITS IN PRISON-A NEGLECTED THEORY RECONSIDERED.*

WHAT the New Testament writers set out to say deliberately and as the main thing, they say, for the most part, with unmistakable clearness. It is the suggestions they drop by the way, their passing allusions, the things they take for granted, that give us trouble. About these, interest gathers. Their difficulty gains for them a prominence which is in many cases undue, since the reason for their obscurity is often not that the thought they contain is mysterious, but that we have lost some simple clue to their meaning. The common ideas and presuppositions upon which all such incidental allusions in speech depend, vary from place to place and from age to age, so that it is just these things that are hardest to understand in a foreign or ancient writer. The words of 1 Pet. iii. 19, read in their connection, impress one as furnishing an example of this fact. There is here no hint of mystery or of novelty. The apostle is exhorting his readers to patience amid undeserved sufferings at the hands of wicked men. He appeals, as he had done before (ii. 21 ff.), to the example of Christ as one who suffered, the righteous for the unrighteous. He refers to well-known facts of Christ's life to show that our ills are for good and that they will end in *Among recent writers on the subject, the following may be mentioned:

REV. A. C. KENDRICK, D.D. Preaching to the Spirits in Prison. Baptist Quarterly Review, April, 1888.

PROFESSOR HINCKS. The Teaching of the Apostle Peter concerning the Scope of Christianity. Andover Review, April, 1888.

PRESIDENT DWIGHT. Additional Notes to the American Edition of Huther's Commentary on Peter, Meyer's Series. 1887, pp. 747-757. J. M. USTERI. [I.] Hinabgefahren zur Hölle. Eine Wiedererwägung der Schriftstellen: 1 Pet. iii. 18-22, u. Kap. iv: 6. 1886.

[II.] Wissenschaftlicher und pracktischer Commentar über den 1. Petrusbrief. 1887.

DR. E. KÜHL. Meyer's Kritisch Exegetisches Handbuch über die Briefe Petri und Judae. 5 Aufl. 1887.

C. H. H. WRIGHT. Biblical Essays. 1886, pp. 138-197.

blessedness.

Christ's going to the spirits in prison stands with his suffering and death, his resurrection and glory, as one of the things that make his life for us in part an example and in part a hope. The reference must have been easy to understand. A writer would not touch in this incidental way, for the sake of illustration and the enforcement of duty, upon something unfamiliar to his readers, something which would excite curiosity and set their thoughts wandering.

This supposition is confirmed by the general character of Peter's letter. It is a practical exhortation throughout. It does not aim to instruct its readers, but it appeals to what they know, in order to encourage them in what they have to do. It was occasioned by outward distress, not by theoretical doubts or vagaries, by persecution, not by heresy, thus differing from 2 Peter. It has a decided character of its own, yet in the literary aspect it is not marked by originality. It has more references to the Old Testament, in proportion to its length, than any other New Testament writing. It stays so closely by the thought and language of certain other N. T. books (especially Rom., Eph., and James) that the hypothesis of the writer's acquaintance with these books is widely held.* In such a letter we should be surprised to find anything new or strange, and we are the more inclined to think that in the passage before us nothing new or strange is intended.

These considerations may guide us as we turn to the passage itself:

1 Pet. iii. 17-20. "For it is better, if the will of God should so will, that ye suffer for well-doing than for evil-doing. Because Christ also suffered for sins once, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God; being put to death in the flesh, but quickened in the spirit; in which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison, which aforetime were disobedient, when the long-suffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls, were saved through water."

The difficulty here is apparently not so much in language as in the character and connection of the thought. How came the writer to speak of Noah's contemporaries? What is the connection of the idea here expressed with what goes before and

* Some, however, reverse this relation. (Weiss. Kühl.)

after? and what is its relation with other New Testament teachings? These are the main problems, and after all the ingenuity and persistence with which they have been investigated, it cannot be said that they have been satisfactorily solved.

Apart from differences of detail, two interpretations of the passage have been maintained, between which, as is supposed, we are bound to choose. One makes the words refer to a preaching of Christ after his death to the spirits of men in Hades who lived before the flood. The other finds reference to a preaching of Christ before the flood to men whose spirits are now in Hades.

The most obvious and perhaps the most obstinate difficulty with the first view is the mention of Noah and the men of his day. With this its advocates never know what to do. There are two general ways of regarding the matter. Some hold that Christ preached in Hades to none but those who lived before the flood. Others say that Peter mentioned these by way of example, but that Christ preached to all the dead, appealing to iv. 6. But in either case, whether the choice was made by Christ or by Peter, for real reasons or for literary reasons, it is a hard matter to account for it.

If Christ preached to these only among the countless dead, why were these taken and others left? What was their peculiar merit, that they should be so favored? for the language compels us to think of a preaching of salvation, not of doom. These men are painted in black colors in the Bible. They are not pitied nor excused. It is a bold thing to enter upon their defense, yet men have been driven to attempt it. Dr. Kendrick finds in the deluge an extraordinary judgment, typical of the last, but "not individually discriminating, fleshly not spiritual, temporal not necessarily eternal," destroying some perhaps who were not corrupt, so that there would be reason for giving them the offer of salvation in the underworld (p. 219).* In iv. 6, the preaching is not, he thinks, extended beyond those already definitely named, but its purpose and results in their case are described. Usteri ([II.] p. 150 f., 161 ff.) is still bolder and thinks that the reason for Christ's * Similarly Mr. Row, Future Retribution. 1887. p. 378 f.