Much to be regretted are two things in our Authorised Version's rendering of the final words of our text. One is the order in which, following an inferior reading, it has placed the two things specified. And the other is that deplorable mistranslation, as it has come to be, of the word hades by the word hell.' The true original does not read hell and death,' but death and hades,' the dim unseen regions in which all the dead, whatsoever their condition may be, are gathered. The hades of the New Testament includes the paradise into which the penitent thief was promised entrance, as well as the Gehenna which threatened to open for the impenitent.
Here it is figured as being a great gloomy fortress, with bars and gates and locks, of which that shadow feared of man' is the warder, and keeps the portals. But he does not keep the keys. The kingly Christ has these in His own hand. So, brethren, He has authority to open and to shut; and death is not merely a terror nor is it altogether accounted for, when we say either that it is the fruit of sin, or that it is the result of physical laws. For behind the laws is the will--the will of the loving Christ. It is His hand that opens the dark door, and they who listen aright may hear Him say, when He does it,' Come! My people; enter thou into thy chamber until these calamities be overpast.' He openeth, and no man shutteth; He shutteth, and no man openeth.' So is not the terror gone; and the raven plumes of that darkness smoothed until it smiles'?
If we believe that He has the keys, how shall we dread when ourselves or our dear ones have to enter into the portal? There are two gates to the prison-house, and when the one that looks earthwards opens, the other, that gives on the heavens, opens too, and the prison becomes a thoroughfare, and the light shines through the short tunnel even to the hither side.
Because He has the keys, He will not leave His holy ones in the fetters. And for ourselves, and for our dearest, we have the right to think that the darkness is so short as to be but like an imperceptible wink of the eye; and ere we know that we have passed into it, we shall have passed out.
"This is the gate of the Lord, into which the righteous shall enter."And it may be with us as it was with the Apostle who was awakened out of his sleep by the angel--only we shall be awakened out of ours by the angel's Master--and who did not come to himself, and know that he had been delivered, until he had passed through the iron gate that opened to him of its own accord'; and then, bewildered, he recovered himself when he found that, with the morning breaking over his head, he stood, delivered, in the city.
