fire" and "the Gehenna of fire," are equivalents, you see; they both point to the same terrible doom. But we have ascertained what one of them means. We have seen that "the Gehenna of fire," so far from indicating the final and endless condition of the wicked, indicates only an intermediate and temporary condition; their condition in that dim Hadean world in which the wicked are afflicted, tormented, and perchance led to repentance and life, before the great and terrible day of the Lord come. And as "æonial fire" is equivalent to, as it is only another way of saying, "Gehenna of fire," we have in this passage a clear proof that æonial means, not everlasting, but age-long, one such clear and convincing proof outweighing, remember, any number of dubious hints or probable arguments. Just as in this great Christian epoch there is a life which is proper to it and distinctive of it, so also are there a death, a fire, a judgment, a destruction, a punishment which are also proper to it and distinctive of it and these, like the "life," are called aonial to mark the fact that they belong to the Christian age and are peculiar to it.

This passage of St Matthew's is reported at still greater length by St Mark (ix. 42-50); and in this form it is one of the most solemn and terrible utterances of our Lord. The iterations and reiterations in

it are simply appalling. The æonial fire of Gehenna, that doleful region of the nether-world, "where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched,” is brought before us again and again. No passage is more frequently cited by those who believe in what Shakspeare calls "th' everlasting bonfire." And therefore, though I must go a little out of the way to do it, let me say a few words on its ruling conceptions and images. I have already explained its technical phrases. I have shewn you that the Jewish prophets and apostles, even our Lord Himself, took the imagery of the passage the undying worm and the unquenchable fire from that detestable valley of Ge-hinnom outside the walls of Jerusalem where the fire and the worm were for ever at work on the refuse of the city. I have told you in what sense the Jews of our Lord's time understood these figures when they were used as figures of speech; how they believed that the incorrigibly wicked would be subjected to searching torments for a brief space of time, and then either be reclaimed by the mercy of God or destroyed by his mighty power. And now I have only to ask you to put out of your thoughts for a moment all the interpretations put upon the passage by those fathers and inquisitors of the Church who did not hesitate to consign the bodies of men to the torments of a slow fire, and who naturally enough created a God after their own image, a God who,

as we read in Boston's Fourfold State, would "hold up the wicked in hell-fire with the one hand, and torment them with the other.” Put all these morbid horrors clean out of your minds; if you will, put all true, as well as these untrue, historical interpretations out of your minds; and then come to these terrible words with the wind of healthy common sense blowing about you, and look at them for yourselves.

Perhaps the very first thing that strikes you is, that even the bold cruel men who adopted, and formulated, and to whom we are mainly indebted for the current libel on God, have played fast and loose with their own favourite scriptures. Our Lord speaks of the worm that dieth not, as well as of the fire that is not quenched. But they, though they are sure the fire is a real fire, are not so sure that the worm is a real worm. They have not scrupled to depict the future world of the wicked as an enormous furnace, in which the souls of men writhe in intolerable and hopeless agonies for ever and for ever; but even they have not dared to paint a world all worm, a world in which the souls of men are exposed to the various and sickening horrors of corruption. Why? Simply, I believe, because they felt that superstition itself would have recoiled before such horrors as these, and have refused to believe that such a world as that could possibly have been the handiwork of God; or because even they themselves

consciously or unconsciously revolted from a conception so coarse and horrible. Yet our Lord speaks of the worm just as emphatically as He speaks of the fire. And if men cannot believe in a world all worm, why should they believe in a world all fire?

But consider again: when our Lord speaks of the worm and the fire, we must take Him to mean either the actual worm and the actual fire of the Gehenna valley, or some spiritual analogue of these, some discipline, some torment, which effects in the spiritual world what the real worm and the real fire do in the natural world. Go to the natural world, then, and ask what are the functions of the worm and the fire. The function of worms in the natural world is to prevent, though they seem to promote, putrefaction. They feed on the noxious matter which would else breed infection; they transmute the refuse of decay into their own living and healthy organisms. Fire, again, consumes dead and noxious matter, leaving only the ash, which is the best manure of a new crop, transmuting all else into higher and invisible forms.

Το

rid the earth of that which is noxious and infectious, to transmute it into vital and wholesome forms-this is the proper function of both worm and fire in the natural world. What then can the moral analogue of them be but a discipline so searching, so severe, as that it shall destroy that which is corrupt and corrupting,

render innoxious that which is noxious, and evolve life itself from the very jaws of death ?1

Does not Nature itself, then, teach us all, and more than all, that we have learned from language and history of the true meaning of our Lord's words?

If even the voice of Nature does not suffice, let Christ be his own interpreter. As this solemn passage draws to a close, He utters words (verse 49) which clearly indicate what He meant by threatening the corruptions bred in us by self-indulgence with æonial fire: "For everyone shall be salted with fire." The allusion is of course to the sacrifices offered in the Jewish Temple. These were salted with salt-the salt being an emblem of the life and purification wrought in the conscience of the offerer when they were duly presented. In like manner, our Lord teaches, every soul of man, who is to become an acceptable offering unto God, will and must be salted with fire, i.e., exposed to a still more searching, purify

1 "When Christ says, Better life with self-mortification than selfindulgence with Gehenna, Gehenna on his tongue must needs stand for corruption, since corruption is the antithesis of life, and the literal Gehenna, as we have seen, was emphatically the place of corruption. For what were the fires of Gehenna lighted? To inflict pain and anguish? No; but to get rid of the city's impurity. All its various filth was there; and for what purpose? That by the action of fire it might be licked up and purged away. The flame of the valley of Hinnom cannot be made to represent the awful suffering in store for sin; it can only fitly represent the certain consumption of sin, to be effected through the sharpness of fire."-Echoes of Spoken Words. By S. A. Tipple.