attaches also to the noun for "destruction." Judas complained of the "waste" (åπwλeía), of the ointment which had been poured on his Master's feet. Peter, in his indignant repudiation of the sorcerer's proffered bribe, prayed that "his money might go with him to destruction," might fail to bring him any of the advantages which he counted on obtaining through it. The fact is that all systems built wholly or chiefly on the philological analysis of single words are, through the inevitable elasticity of human language, more or less precarious. As this is true of "destruction" and "perdition," so is it true also, in a yet greater measure, of the word "eternal" (aiúvios)* in which some have seen the pivot of the whole controversy. It cannot possibly exclude, as Mr. Maurice was led to think (Theological Essays, p. 436), the idea of duration, and connote only a state of being transcending that which is measured by the motion of the heavens, for the idea of duration is of the very essence of the noun, and men do not commonly use adjectives to deny that which is implied in the substantive from which they are derived.† It cannot necessarily involve the thought of endless duration, for it is used of things that were essentially temporary in their nature,-of the possession of Canaan by the seed of Abraham (Gen. xvii. 8), of the covenant which gave the throne of Israel to the house of David (2 Chron. xiii. 5). It cannot necessarily import a merely finite duration, for it is used also of the unchanging attributes of God (1 Tim. vi. 16). If we cannot hope that the word "Æonian" will be naturalized in our English speech as its only true representative, we must yet remember as we use it, that it carries with it, as a word, the sense of undefined, and not of infinite, duration, and that there is nothing self-contradictory in language like that of Gregory of Nyssa, when he expresses the hope that "after an eternal interval" (μerà aióvióv Ti diáσTηua) the discords of the earth may be harmonized in a divine concord.‡

In yet another point, Mr. White's argument seems to me to break down. He admits§ that the belief in the perpetuity of man's existence was part of the creed of the Pharisees, and that creed, so far as it was not formally set aside, passed into the belief of Christendom and formed the substratum of the thought of the Apostles. When St. Paul cried out, in one great crisis of his life, "I am a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee!" he deliberately identified himself with them in this belief of theirs, and so it entered into the first elements of Christian theology, as prayers for the dead entered, from the first, into the rudiments of Christian worship.

It may be worth while noting that the Latin æternus is not only a translation of alúvios, but absolutely a cognate form from the same root. Eternus is contracted from æviternus, and that is formed from avum, and avum is identical with aidv.

+ The language of patristic theology in speaking of the "Eternal Generation" of the Son may, I admit, be urged in favour of Mr. Maurice's view. That phrase, however, is not a Scriptural one and therefore can throw little or no light on the New Testament use of the word "eternal."

De Anima. Opp. ii. p. 689.

§ Life in Christ, p. 201.

I recognize, with thankfulness, what many of those who oppose Mr. White's teaching as the Gospel of Annihilation seem to ignore, that he too admits agencies leading to repentance and reformation, extending beyond the limits of the present life, a gospel preached to the spirits in prison, a work of conversion and therefore of probation, as carried on in Hades. But I do not see-though, in this respect, I may be in error, through an incomplete study of his book-that he attaches sufficient weight to the words which appear in Matt. xxv. 46, as the "everlasting punishment" reserved for the doers of evil. There were two words which the Evangelist might have used, kóλaois and rμwpía. Of these the first carries with it, by the definition of the greatest of Greek ethical writers, the idea of a reformatory process. It is inflicted "for the sake of him who suffers it." The second, on the other hand, describes a penalty purely vindictive or retributive. St. Matthew chose-if we believe that our Lord spoke Greek, He himself chose-the former word and not the latter.

We need, I will venture to add in conclusion, in discussing this momentous question, compared with which all other controversies within the Church that are now raging round us sink into the category of the "infinitely little," the temper of calmness and moderation. We see but a little way into the great mystery of permitted evil and of the ultimate victory of good, and our words should be wary and few. We need to remember that each of our little systems has commended itself to men of truest faith in God, and deepest love, and holiest lives; that each has drawn souls from darkness. to light, and from the power of Satan unto God. If we are tempted to speak of those who preach the popular eschatology as placing a Moloch in the place of God, the names of Dante and St. Francis de Sales and Archbishop Leighton should rebuke the rash and ill-advised utterance. If we condemn those who proclaim the wider hope as subverting the sanctions of personal and social morality, and leading men to an antinomian indifference, the names of Origen and Gregory of Nyssa, of Maurice and of Erskine, should bid us hold our peace, lest we condemn the righteous whom God has not condemned. The want of formulated system on which second-rate critics have dwelt as the characteristic defect of Dr. Farrar's sermons is to me their chief charm, the witness to a calmness and sobriety of thought underlying all his passionate and glowing eloquence. He has given utterance to a protest against human exaggerations or distortions of a divine truth, and such a protest on behalf of our instinctive convictions in the righteousness and love of God, can, for the most part, only express itself in the language of indignant horror. So it is, indeed with other truths and other human inferences from them. We follow the sacramental teaching of Augustine and the mediæval Church until we find ourselves lodged in the conclusion that unbaptized infants are * Life in Christ, p. 344. + Aristotle, Rhet., i. 10.

We welcome the thought finds its practical outcome

excluded from salvation. We accept the truth that eternal life depends on our knowing God as He is, until we stand face to face with the dogma that "all who do not keep the Catholic faith," as man has formulated it, shall "perish everlastingly." We receive the thoughts of grace, election, predestination, until they land us in the horribile decretum. We believe that man is justified by faith in Christ, until men press the conclusion, on the one hand, that we may continue in sin that grace may abound, and on the other that the millions of the heathen world are shut out from hope. of a purifying discipline after death till it in the indulgences of Tetzel. Against these conclusions we feel that argument is at once needless and useless. The reason and conscience of mankind, in proportion as they are enlightened, protest against them. The teacher of a theology that shuns the falsehoods of extremes may well be content, in the question before us, to take refuge in that protest, and to echo St. Paul's cry-if you will, St. Paul's scream of horror. "God forbid!" Mý yévoro! may well be with us, as with him, the end of controversy! Commending what we have been led to think ourselves to the calm thought of others, we may rest, as the patriarch rested of old, in the question, "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?" E. H. PLUMPTRE.

X.

T is not easy exactly to define the place of oratorical rhetoric in the discussion of philosophical or theological questions. One shrinks somewhat from applications of it to questions such as that now under discussion. Pulpit declamation concerning Eternal Punishment, and vehement denunciations of opinions, on either side of the controversy, make one shudder; inasmuch as the very subject is one to be approached with only subdued feeling and measured words. Moreover, in popular address, neither can evidence be fully adduced nor judicial faculty maintained.

In all departments of thought indeed,-philosophical, scientific, and political, as well as theological, there are topics, the determination of which depends upon exact exegesis or testimony, and fine discrimination of argument or of principles; and one instinctively feels that such should be withheld from oratorical treatment. I must therefore say that I have recoiled with something like pain from the discussion of this question in popular sermons. And this is the preliminary difficulty that I feel in dealing with Canon Farrar's book-as with other like publications. The preacher and the critic necessarily proceed by different methods. It is not easy to apply formulæ of exact thought to strong explosive declamation. Those who differ from me may deserve my oratorical denunciation, but the denunciation does not prove that they do. Nor in this particular matter can the impulses of

moral sentiment be accepted as of themselves sufficient criteria of truth. So long as a question demands the processes of the witness-box and the function of the judge, it is difficult to conceive the good which rhetoric can effect. On all hands it will be admitted that this question has not yet advanced into such clear unencumbered view, as that there is room only for oratorical denunciation of the obstinately blind.

The use of rhetoric in controversy is to explode assumptions, and to give expression to moral instincts. So far, sermons in relation to theology, like popular lectures in relation to physical science, and speeches in relation to politics, have their use, and under certain conditions a great use. Both in social and in religious history oratory has done much to further the settlement of thought. It has assailed traditional assumptions, it has created a favourable atmosphere, and favourable sympathies, in which evidential and argumentative treatment has become living and practical. It has sometimes been like the destruction of old fortifications by explosive power, clearing the ground for new foundations. If the treatment in the pulpit of the question of the eternal issues of sin could be restricted to this, it would be unobjectionable. But the question is hardly in a state for this process; the first essential requisite for its settlement seems to me to be a patient and comprehensive examination of evidence. Who are competent witnesses, and what is their testimony? In one sense evidence is always being taken concerning every great question; but there come crises-and this seems to be one-when the case is specially brought into court for a rehearing.

Whatever may be the authority of the verifying faculty of our moral nature, clearly the question under consideration, viz.,-the nature and duration of the punitive consequences of sin in the life to come, cannot be determined by the subjective consciousness alone; although this may and must pass a verdict upon the external evidence adduced. It is primarily a question of fact, and not of mere moral feeling.

Some theories of the nature and condition of the future punishment of sin may be so incongruous and gross,-they may so contradict moral processes, and revolt the moral nature,-that we may be justified in saying à priori they cannot be true. Such theories may, therefore, justify vigorous denunciation like Canon Farrar's. Accretions of imagination and circumstance may gather round a root-idea,—not in ignorant and vulgar conception only, but in the constructions of religious faith by highly intelligent men,-which to the unsophisticated moral sense may make it repulsive and impossible. Such, for instance, are some of the accretions which in the Church of Rome and in other sacerdotal Churches have gathered round the root-idea of sacrifice, and have been accepted by the religious faith of men so transcendently able as those whose names are almost representative of their systems.

But it does not follow, because the accretions are illicit, that the root-idea is false. It is at any rate conceivable that the entire structure

of sacerdotalism may be overthrown, and the fundamental doctrine of sacrifice remain not only unimpaired by the process but more firmly established. It is possible that the repulsive sequences of logical Calvinism may be traversed, and the supreme idea of God's immanence in human life and salvation be held fast, as indeed they are in many Churches. In both instances the accretions may fitly be denounced in popular oratory. In like manner the accretions which ignorant literalism, poets and painters, and above all, perhaps, priestcraft, have clustered round the root-idea of the retribution of sin in the future life, may be pulverized by a more spiritual conception; and yet it may remain true that the retributive sequences of sin are irreversible, and even unending. The argument which is to decide the question must deal not so much with the ignorant and popular perversion, nor with the imaginative forms of the painter, the poet, and the rhetor, nor with the metaphorical forms of Scripture representation even, but with the root-idea of retribution, and with the exact evidence that revelation, the moral sense, philosophy, and experience may furnish.

Thus reduced, it will hardly be maintained that the subjective consciousness of a man, however elevated and refined by pure religious feeling, is competent to demonstrate-(1) Whether the sequences of sin will in the future life be reversible? (2) Whether, if they are not, they are terminable? For all our information concerning the facts and the characteristics of the life hereafter, whether affecting the saved or the lost, we are necessarily dependent upon the testimony of revelation, whatever the verifying functions of our own reason and moral faculty. Naturally, therefore, our first inquiry is concerning the testimony of Christ, who hath "brought life and immortality to light.” Distinctively and transcendently He reveals to us our highest, and indeed all our certain knowledge concerning the life hereafter. It is His special mission to reveal these things. Necessarily, therefore, He has much to say concerning them; although it may be admitted that much of His teaching was not fully understood until the light of His own death and resurrection was thrown upon it.

It is in harmony with an obvious moral law, that the most terrible of all judgments concerning sin come from the lips of Him who in infinite compassion came to save us from our sin: and the most unqualified and appalling words concerning the retribution of sin come from Him who "opened the Kingdom of Heaven to all believers." The measure of love is the power of hate, the measure of holiness is antagonism to sin.

It is not possible to attempt here any examination of our Lord's testimony concerning the future condition of unrepentant sinners. And nothing could be more misleading or unsatisfactory than to adduce any portion of His affirmations without an exhaustive examination of the whole. Our Lord's testimony is very ample, and it is very strong. It demands minute exegesis, not of words only, but of aims and circumstances. What in each instance was the relation of His assertion to its