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some detail. And as no proof would be quite satisfactory to you that did not explain how words have crept into our Authorized Version which are not to be found in the Greek Original, let me show you how our translators came to employ the words damnation and hell. They are not to blame, or not much to blame. Their own minds were tinctured, imbued, with the mediæval theology of the Roman Church, which Church, as you know, had greatly erred from "the simplicity that is in Christ." And, moreover, they were strictly charged to "retain the old ecclesiastical words," so far as possible, and to employ them in the sense in which they had been commonly used by the doctors of that Church. And still further, neither of these words had then quite stiffened and narrowed into the sense in which it is now understood. The word "hell" comes from an old English or Teutonic word, hel-an, which means "to cover," and, in the ancient use of it, it signified any covered place. In our early English literature it is used of any obscure dungeon or covered spot, even of the dark hole into which a tailor threw his shreds and clippings; nay, even of the retired and bosky shade to which the lads and lasses caught in a game called Barley-break were led to pay the forfeit of a kiss. And, in like manner, the verb "to damn" probably came from an old Teutonic verb, "deman," to deem. It is at least closely re

lated to the words "deem" and "doom." It meant to deem any one guilty of any kind of offence, and to doom him to its appropriate punishment. Thus, for example, a man might be damned to prison, i.e., deemed worthy of it, and doomed to it; or his goods might be damnified, i.e., injured or condemned; or a play might be damned, i.e., hissed off the stage, deemed too poor for farther representation, and doomed never to appear again.

When we meet the

Both these words, therefore, were innocent enough in themselves originally, and had many harmless uses. But Theology has put meanings into them which make them the most terrible words in our language; and for many years now they have been used almost exclusively in a theological sense. word "hell," it conveys no innocent and cheerful suggestions. In many minds it quickens only an image of some vast and burning prison, in which lost souls writhe and shriek for ever, tormented in a flame that will never be quenched. To those who reject the conception of a vast material hell, an endless physical torture, the word suggests a place or condition in which the souls of the wicked, kept in life for that end by the mighty power of God, are for ever consumed by pangs compared with which the horrors of a furnace would be a paradise. To be damned is, at least for us, to be adjudged to that intolerable torment, without

any hope of amendment or release.

The meaning of these words, therefore, has greatly and horribly changed; and whatever excuse we may make for the use of them by King James's translators, there is no shadow of excuse for those who now use them to translate the New Testament Greek.

That you may be convinced of this, let us examine the passages in which they occur. Take the verb "to damn," first. The word is so frequent in the mouth of Theology that it is with some surprise we ascertain that it only occurs twelve times in the New Testament; that in some of these cases it cannot possibly have the sense we put upon it: and that in no single instance is any equivalent word employed in the Original. Before we turn to these passages, and in order that you may understand them, let me give those of you who need it a little lesson in Greek. It shall be a very short and simple one, and any of you may master it in a minute or two. In the Greek, one of the verbs in the most common use is zpíves (krinein). Any Lexicon will tell you that xpive means "to part, to separate, to discriminate between good and bad," in short, "to judge." From this verb, zpívew, two nouns are formed, xpíos (krisis), which means the act of deciding or judging, and zpíva (krima), which means the sentence, or judgment, which has been reached. From this verb, zpívɛw, moreover, another verb has been

formed by prefixing a preposition to it, which intensifies its meaning, viz., nara-xpívem (kata-krinein), “to give judgment against, to condemn." And from this second verb, as from the first, two nouns are formed—xaráxpois (kata-krisis), the act of condemning, and naráxpipa (kata-krima), "the sentence of condemnation." All you need remember is, that in the Greek there is a verb, zpíve, which, with its derivatives, means "to judge," "the act of judging," and "the sentence of justice;" and another verb, xara-xpíver, which, with its derivatives, means "to condemn," "the act of condemning," and "the sentence of condemnation.” There are

hardly any words in the Greek language more common than these; and there is not, and never has been, any dispute as to their meaning.

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Now the former of these two verbs, xpive, with its derivatives, occurs more than a hundred and seventy times in the Greek Testament; more than a hundred and fifty times it is rendered in the English Version by our verb "to judge," so that our translators evidently knew its plain meaning and use. Seven times, very needlessly and misleadingly, it is rendered by "to condemn;" twice by "to accuse"; and only eight times by "to damn." That is to say, our own translators render the word in the sense of to damn, only eight times out of nearly a hundred and eighty! So, again, with the other Greek verb, xara-xpívewv, which

means to condemn. With its derivatives it is used twenty-four times in the New Testament, and only twice do they render it by "to damn;" in every other instance they abide by its true meaning-" to condemn."

You see how the case stands then. These two Greek verbs occur some two hundred times in the New Testament, and in only ten instances is this dreadful, this damnable, meaning foisted upon them! Is there anything in the intention and contexture of these ten passages to warrant so grave a departure from the common and admitted meanings of the words? Look at them for yourselves, and see.

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Turn to St Mark xii. 40. Our Lord is warning his hearers against the Scribes who "devour widows' houses, and for a pretence make long prayers. "These," he adds, according to our Authorized Translation at least, "shall receive greater damnation.” The Greek says simply, "These shall receive the severer judgment." And the plain meaning of the passage is, that the very hypocrisy under which the Scribes thought to cloak their crimes would only bring a heavier krima, or verdict, upon them. Both good

men and God would pass the sharper sentence on them for the semblance of piety behind which they veiled their impious and insatiable greed. It is a general truth which Christ here enunciates, a truth as applic

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