I. Although the sacred Scriptures teach us to think nothing of temporal death but merely as a sleep, while they would beyond all things impress on our minds a sense of the day of judgment and that which is to follow it, yet the little that is told us of the state of our souls before the day of the judgment, and immediately when they depart from the body, is of itself very deeply affecting, and awful. We know "the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and there shall no torment touch them, neither shall any man pluck them out of My hand," saith the Lord. They live unto God; they are in the place where the soul of Christ has been; they are with Christ; they are blessed beyond all earthly blessedness. And the unfaithful and disobedient also, they are immediately in a place from whence they cannot get forth, and a place of woe far more miserable than any suffering in this world.
II. Since therefore there are two states so important to us, in one of which we shall continue to be until the great day of final retribution, we know not how much of mercy and goodness and how much benefit to us may be contained in this one article of the Creed, that Christ descended into the place of the dead. By His descent into hell He has sanctified and blessed the place of our souls; every trial in this world He has sanctified by His own example and by His presence upon earth, showing the bright light of His footsteps going before, nor does He leave us when we depart into that unknown and dark world of spirits; but when earth is departing from beneath our feet, then we feel His hand and hear His voice, saying, "It is I: be not afraid."
Plain Sermons by Contributors to "Tracts for the Times," vol. ix., p. 120,