able and as pertinent to the present life as to any other. It has no special bearing on the future life until we import that bearing into it by substituting the word "damnation" for the word "judgment." To warn men in general terms that, if they add the sin of hypocrisy to the sin of extortion, they will inevitably expose themselves to a keener censure, is one thing; but surely it is another and a very different thing to threaten them with being shut up in an interminable hell the very moment they die!

If any think that even to restore the true word "judgment" in this and similar passages makes very little difference in their meaning; if they take the "judgment" of God as equivalent to "damnation," that can only be because they conceive of the Divine judgments as though they were confined to the future life, whereas the Scriptures constantly affirm that God judges all men, good and bad, every day and all day long; and because they wholly misapprehend the character of the Divine Judge and Father. A man who is a magistrate judges many men whom he does not condemn, whom mere justice, to say nothing of compassion, will not allow him to condemn; he condemns even most of those whom he finds guilty to a limited punishment which is intended for their correction and what conception must they have formed of the Father of an infinite justice and mercy who assume

that He will never judge men save to condemn them, and never condemn them to any punishment short of an illimitable and degrading agony?

St Matthew xxiii. 33. According to our English Version our Lord demands of the same wicked and unhappy class of men, the Scribes, "How shall ye escape the damnation of hell?" The full explanation of this passage I defer till we reach that other class of texts in which the word "hell" is employed. For the present I ask you to mark only that in the Greek we read simply, "How shall ye escape the judgment,” not the damnation "of Gehenna?"

St Mark iii. 29. Our Lord is speaking of the sin against the Holy Ghost. He who commits that sin "can never be forgiven," or, literally, "cannot be forgiven in this age," and is "in danger of eternal damnation." So, at least, the Authorized Version affirms. But even the Greek Text from which our Version was made, only affirms that such a sinner is in danger of "eternal judgment;" and that Text is now admitted to be corrupt, the true reading being, "eternal sin." What our

Lord meant by a man's coming into the grip of an monial or eternal sin, we may inquire hereafter; all we now have to do is to discharge the word "damnation" from the passage; to affirm that it should never have been thrust into it, since the word before our translators only meant "judgment," and that

that word must now be replaced by one which means "sin."

St John v. 29. Our Lord affirms that all who are in their graves shall one day hear his voice and come forth, "they that have done good to the resurrection of life, and they that have done evil to the resurrection of damnation." Here again the word is krisis, and the phrase should read, "they that have done evil to the resurrection of judgment."

Romans iii. 8. The Apostle Paul, speaking of men who made it their maxim, "Let us do evil that good may come," affirms that "their damnation is just." The Greek word is krima, and means judgment; and I take the holy Apostle to assert that the instinctive verdict of the human heart against those who act on that detestable maxim is a true, a just, verdict. There is no reference whatever, or at least no necessary reference, either to the judgment of God or to the recompenses of a future state.

In Romans xiii. 2, the same Apostle is enforcing obedience to the public authorities. He asserts that there is no "power" which is not ordained of God; that to resist any such power is therefore to resist God's ordinance: and he adds, "they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation." Once more the word is krima; and the sentence means simply that those who resist the public authorities will expose

themselves to judgment, i.e., to the censure of their contemporaries, of the authorities, and perhaps also of God Himself. We too much forget that we all have, and shall have, to answer at the bar of God for all we do,—for our thoughts as well as for our words, for our motives as well as for our actions. And no doubt the more momentous and influential our thoughts, or words, or actions are, the more strict and searching will be the account to which we shall be called, both in this age and in the next, and in the next to that, and in all the ages through which we pass. And if St Paul intended any reference to the judgment of God here, he intended to warn men that even those who lead a revolt against an intolerable and degrading despotism will have to answer for it to God; that a special and heavy responsibility rests on those who stir up men's hearts to sudden mutiny, to a desperate resistance of even the most abused public authority. That is very wholesome doctrine, whether St Paul intended to teach it or not. Men should weigh well what they do when they think to follow in the steps of the great patriots and martyrs. Rebellion, like matrimony, "is not by any to be enterprised, nor taken in hand unadvisedly, lightly or wantonly, but reverently, advisedly, soberly, and in the fear of God." But can any sane man take the words of St Paul to mean that the patriots who won the freedom of ancient Greece or Rome, or of

modern England and America, by resisting the powers set over them, have been damned for resisting them? Yet that, you see, is what our Authorized Version affirms or implies; so that, in this case at least, mere common sense teaches us that it must be faulty and misleading.

There is another and a somewhat similar instance in that very curious passage, 1 Timothy v. 12. It would seem that in some of the Apostolic Churches there arose a class of women devoted to a single life, who gave themselves to works of hospitality and mercy. Their names were entered on an official roll. And on this roll Timothy was advised not to enter the names of any young widows, nor indeed of any woman under sixty years of age, lest the younger women should repent of their vows. 'They will marry again," says St Paul, "having damnation, because they have cast off their first faith." Is it, then, so great a crime for a young widow, even though she has vowed she would never marry again, to contract a second marriage, that she must needs be damned for it? What more, or worse, could befall her had she violated every commandment in the Decalogue? Is a sister of mercy, or a nunsuch an one as Luther's wife, for example-to be adjudged to an everlasting torment, should she swerve from her single estate? Surely not; for once more the Greek word is krima, and means no more than

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