And

æonial punishment, but the righteous into life aonial.” Well, we may say this. Take the phrase "æonial life" to mean here, as elsewhere, life in Christ, the spiritual life distinctive of the Christian æons, and "æonial punishment" to mean here, as elsewhere, the discipline, the punishment distinctive of the Christian æons, the punishment which those inflict on themselves who adjudge themselves unworthy of that life, and the words make a very good and reasonable sense, a sense so reasonable that we need search for no other. mark, in this case at least, we cannot put a darker sense into the words of Christ except by trifling with them, and implying that we know what He meant better than He did Himself. For the word here rendered "punishment" (xóλaos) is a very peculiar one. In its primary use, when it is applied to natural processes, it means "pruning," i.e., pruning bushes and trees in order that they may bring forth more fruit. When it is used figuratively, when it is applied to moral processes, it means corrective discipline, discipline by which character is pruned and made more fruitful in good works. The Greek has two words for "punishment;" xóλaois, the word used by our Lord, and riuwpía, a word also used in the New Testament (Heb. x. 29): and the distinctive meanings of these two words are defined by Aristotle himself.1

1 Rhet. I., 10, 17.

The one word, that used by Christ, denotes, he says, that kind of punishment which is intended for the improvement of the offender; while the other denotes that kind of punishment which is intended for the vindication of law and justice. And even the advocates of endless torment admit that the word selected by Christ means, according to the Greek usage, remedial discipline, punishment designed to reform and improve men, to prune away their defects and sins. Archbishop Trench, for example, after adverting to the well-known distinction between the two words xóλa015 and ruwpía, confesses that while the latter is used to indicate "the vindicative character of punishment, the former indicates punishment as it has reference to the correction and bettering of the offender." And I do not know where we shall find a sadder instance of the way in which good men suffer their theories and traditions to warp their judgment than may be found in the fact that, after thus defining the original and proper sense of the word used by Christ, this good and learned man proceeds to say that it would however be a very serious error to take the word in its proper sense here. We, on the contrary, maintain that it would be something worse than an error to take it in any but its usual and proper sense. And, therefore, we conclude that our Lord meant precisely what He

1 Synonyms of the New Testament, pp. 23, 24.

said; viz., that the wicked should go away from his bar to be pruned, go away into an age-long discipline by which they should be castigated for their sins, yea, and saved from their sins by the corrective discipline of his loving wrath. For that would not be a corrective discipline which left men unimproved for ever; that would be a strange sort of "pruning," which was not at least designed to produce fruit.

“O, but," say some, who little think what they are saying, "the same word is here used of the life promised to the righteous which is used of the punishment of the unrighteous; each is called æonial: and if the punishment of the wicked is not to last for ever, what guarantee have we that the felicity of the good, our felicity, will last for ever?" To that question I reply by another. Would you, then, have the vast majority of men damned to an everlasting torture in order that you may feel quite sure that your timid soul will " "sit and sing itself away in everlasting bliss?" If your soul is capable of no higher flight than that, is it worth saving? is it capable of everlasting bliss? Moses could wish himself blotted from the book of life, St Paul could wish himself "anathema" from Christ, so that Israel, their brethren according to the flesh, might be saved. And Christ both could and did far more than wish; He, who knew no sin, became sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of

God in Him. And He Himself has taught us that he who would save his soul must be willing to lose his soul. How much of his spirit can we have, then, if, instead of wishing ourselves damned for the sake of the world, we are willing that the world should be damned for the sake of our timorous and foreboding souls ?

My friends, if we love Christ, we need have no fear for our souls. In sundry places and in terms not to be mistaken, all who trust in Him are assured of an eternal salvation, a life that can never die. But if we truly love Him, we are willing even to die in order that the world may be saved for did not He die to take away the sin of the world? and must not we be made partakers of his death, if we are to be glorified together with Him? Unless I can believe that God will deign to use me for the good of others, what is my life worth to me? Not to be capable of living and suffering for others, that is the true hell; but to be capable of, to be allowed to serve and suffer for others, is the true heaven: for this is the very life of God Himself, and of Christ Jesus his Son, and of the ever-blessed ever-quickening Spirit.

VII. THE TEST AND THE TESTIMONY OF PRINCIPLES.

It is not reasonable to expect that, while we are in this chrysalis and initial stage of our being, we should be able to comprehend what the final stage of our career will be like, if indeed there can be a final condition to finite creatures who are to live, and to grow, for ever, and who must therefore, one should think, be ever reaching forth to that which is before and above them. And accordingly, as we have seen, Holy Scripture does not profess or attempt to disclose the secrets of the remote future, but only to give us some general indications of what our several conditions will be in the stages and æons which immediately succeed to the present life. Nay, more, however deeply we may long for it, and however full and varied the Scripture revelation concerning it may be, or may seem to be, it is not possible that we, who reach even our most immaterial conception through the gates and avenues of sense, should be able to formulate any complete and accurate theory of the life to come, the life which is independent of the senses, even though it be still within the compass of time. But we may hope, by a careful examination of those scriptures