extensive with the commands, or that, with the obedience of the servants, should go the presence of the Master: "And lo!" (on this condition, while you are doing this work,) "I am with you (there is your encouragement). But now, strange to say, whether from fear of pope or presbyter, whether from distrust of ordinance or church, it has been said that the age here intended was the Jewish age, and that, as its conclusion came with the destruction of Jerusalem, this commission had force only till A.D. 70. On the face of it this opinion carries the look of extreme improbability, and must we think be definitively rejected. If we had any precedentwhich we have not-for drawing a line between the Jewish age and the Christian age, we must still believe that Jesus was promising his spiritual presence to the end of the incoming Christian, and not merely to the end of the outgoing Jewish age; inasmuch as (a) THAT Would be offering his spiritual presence for the whole period of his bodily absence, which would certainly appear to be the natural and only adequate consolation; (b) THAT would be coupling his spiritual presence with the spiritual age he was then according to this hypothesis actually creating; (c) THAT would be stamping the work of discipling then commanded with an adequate permanence of authority, lacking which we should find ourselves in the present day in the very awkward dilemma of having no positive commission to make disciples among the nations at all; for, if this commission will not give us authority, it will be very difficult to find any other that will; and then we should be left to drift along through the remainder of this evil age with no task assigned, no Master's presence promised. We now go on to confirm these considerations by affirming boldly that no such application of the phrase sunteleia tou aionos to what is called the Jewish age is to be found in the Bible. The nearest approach to it is decisively against it. When the four disciples asked, Matt. xxiv. 3, "What shall be the sign of thy coming and of the conclusion of the age," they could only mean the conclusion of the age of Jerusalem's desolation; they knew that when their Lord did come it would be to heal and restore, not to destroy! The only "conclusion of the age" the New Testament knows aught about is that which is coupled with our Lord's return. Hence, if till then he promises his spiritual presence, what is that but to say, "Occupy till I come: there is your work, and there is your encouragement. I will be with you in spirit to help until I return in person to reward."

2. The CONJUNCTION of the ages. The word sun-teleia, literally "joint-ending," seems to be well enough rendered "conclusion, in Matt. xiii. 30, 40, 49; xxiv. 3, and xxviii. 20; and its implied reference to something in the plural, susceptible of joint-ending, may be easily wrought out by applying it to those streams of tendencies flowing simultaneously on through any age, those threads of historical events carried on side by side and giving to any age its complex character, which at the close may be regarded as knotted

and bound about ready for a new departure. But in Heb. ix. 26, we meet with something unique, inasmuch as we there find the "sunteleia of the ages," in the plural. It is true, indeed, that though new in form this may be nothing new in fact or substance. The previously named subdivision of the ages may satisfactorily account for it: "Now once in the conclusion of the bygone ages may be the meaning. There is, however, a better, because a bolder, more congenial, more adequate account of this plural to be given. A joint-ending may be witnessed when the last end of one line is made to overlap the first end of another; as, for example, when a person overlaps his own forefingers. Now we have already advanced the idea (p. 551) that, although the first advent did not end the old age of evil, yet it did bring the seed and pledge of the good age to come. There you have the conception of a joint-ending. The spiritual, but not less real beginnings of the eternal age took root while Christ was on earth. He, the Maker of the ages (Heb. i. 3), "the Father of Perpetuity" itself (Isa. ix. 6) sounded the deathknell of the old aion, and spoke living words that struck root, that grew, that are growing still, ready for a sudden outburst and display which shall astonish the universe when he bows the heavens and comes down. Here then, right in the essential midst of all ages past and to come, as the grand key and harmoniser of old and new, of time and eternity, was planted the cross on earth, appeared the High Priest in heaven:- now once in the CONJUNCTION of the

ages."

3. The NON-ENDING of the Ages. That the ages in their utmost prospective extent are endless has come out in evidence again and again during the progress of this inquiry. Even in the Old Testament we met with "the ages of perpetuity." In the New Testament we again and again read of "the ages of ages" (e.g., Gal. i. 5; Rev. xxii. 5); as much as to say "ages onward indefinitely." In both Hebrew and Greek Scriptures we find the notion of an end negatived:" Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end” (Isa. ix. 7); "Of his kingdom there shall be no end” (Luke i. 33); "This mortal shall put on immortality" (1 Cor. xv. 53); "An inheritance, incorruptible, undefiled, unfading" (1 Pet. i. 4); "There shall be no more death (Rev. xxi. 4). The ages of the future, then, will be endless. (1.) We may regard this as a WARNING. The fig-tree under the aionion curse never bears fruit again; destruction from the presence of the Lord, being aionion, can never give place to restoration. The fig-tree may cease-its fruitlessness never; the man may cease-his destruction never. That which is truly aionion cannot be reversed. cease to reign: saints can never cease to live. ment will be mainly the punishment of loss,

Christ can never That the punishcould never seem

*As the late Dr. Thom, of Liverpool, once did to the writer in illustration of the force of this very word.

trivial if it were remembered that it will be the loss of life-the ageabiding loss of life, the loss of the blessed life which blooms to the ages of perpetuity, which never ends. (2.) We may regard it as a consolation. The reward will be age-abiding-that is the positive side of its durableness: it will be endless-that is the negative side of its perpetuity. Strange, humbling fact ;--my strongest assurance, it may be my sweetest solace, is a negative. Be it so: it is enough. "There shall be no more death." If this gives me no positive conception, it nevertheless gives me the strongest I can embrace. But the positive idea--age-abiding-is in its own way peculiarly blessed. I look forward to no infinite stagnation. I simply look forward from age to age-till I am lost; with the final and pleasing bewilderment implied in the phrase, "and yet more ages to come." Be it, that "age" is a word dating from creation and cleaving to it-the better so. By that "the fact very ages to come are, to the apprehension of my mind, filled with life. They image forth an active, a producing, an unexhausted God. They prophesy of boundless possibilities. They bespeak new things to spring forth into being; more to learn, more to enjoy, more to become-and (to conclude with the idea, almost the very word, of the Septuagint in Exod. xv. 18) kai eti-and yet--and further-and still more beyond! JOSEPH B. ROTHERHAM.

PEACE AND GOODWILL.

"On earth peace, goodwill toward men."-Luke ii. 14.

RUE, blessedly true, as millions have found,

TRUE,

As the years of this age have come and gone round.
Those millions have worshipped the Father above,
Who made himself known in the Son of his love.

But if the first advent has scattered abroad
Such mercy to men, and such honour to God,
Will not the second in glory excel

All that heart can conceive or eloquence tell?

Omnipotent strength can alone save the race

From its crimes, and its woes, and its grievous disgrace.
On the mercy of Jesus contempt it can shower,
But it must heed the rod in the day of his power.

The few are brought near by the "riches of grace,"
The multitude yield not till force takes its place;
To salvation through Christ the first find the path,
The last must submit in the day of his wrath.
But the end will be grand, when peace and goodwill,
Breathing balm from on high all nations shall fill,
And the Ruler Divine shall rejoice on his throne,
When he sees what his rule for creation has done.

556

UNDISGUISED SCEPTICISM.*

the principle that "there is nothing like a good beginning," Sir G. B. Airy here opens with a grand display of fireworks: Mount Sinai in a state of volcanic eruption! True, the weight of evidence proves that the locality was never volcanic-but what of that? It must have been volcanic, because, on no other hypothesis can occurrences described as supernatural by the record, be accounted for naturally. When, without your volcano, your argument would fall to the ground-sustain your argument by assuming your volcano.

Well, Hebrew history opens with Mount Sinai in a state of volcanic eruption. Looking along in the direction of its base--what is that gaseous exhalation on fire, issuing from the earth? Even with a good deal of "assistance from the imagination," we fear none of our readers would recognise in it," the burning bush in Horeb." Yet that is Sir G. B. Airy's "natural" explanation of what Moses saw, and so lamentably misdescribed.

Moses, excited by this sudden appearance, might have been persuaded that "the feelings then branded on his soul were really communications from the Deity himself, in a voice audible to human ears:" but then-he might not. Upon the genuineness, therefore, of the recorded conversation between Moses and his Maker, our author ventures no opinion.

The rod changed into a serpent "does not deserve attention ;" whilst "its association with the sign of the leprous hand destroys the credit of the latter." God, therefore, did not perform that miracle: and the juggler Moses, pretending he did, first before Pharaoh and afterwards in writing, deliberately lied to serve ulterior ends. But neither does this lower him, apparently, in the estimation of his admirer. Wilful falsehoods to serve patriotic purposes-are these, in Sir G. B. Airy's view, commendable? His manner, in reference to them, certainly leaves us to infer this; but we should have been better satisfied if, upon this point, he had spoken out. The morals of Christianity are before the world; the morals of that "natural religion" which would supersede it have never been officially explained. The Rev. Edward White hints that the ethics of infidelity "match its creed;" if so, how are the natural religionists going to carry out their programme for the gradual ennobling of man and the final sublimation of virtue ? We fail to see. Infidelity's creed comprising those views of the Sabbath and marriage already referred to and its practice being, as it would seem, not to condemn preposterous and extortionate territorial claims which end in possession, nor untruths told for the furtherance of "a policy:" the morals and creed of infidelity, so far as these are known to us, do correspond with Mr. White's suggestion, they do match; consequently, when infidelity has superseded Christianity, we very much fear that its liberally promised apotheosis of man will be found to have been a steady exaltation downwards, a progress all backwards, a sublimation of the virtues which has merely converted those solids into vapour, and then allowed it to escape. "Modern travellers have stated that the rise of the Nile begins (that

*Notes on the Earlier Hebrew Scriptures, by Sir G. B. Airy, K.C.B. Long

mans.

is, we suppose, always begins) with a remarkable redness, in the water;" this redness, "exaggerated, is clearly the (miraculous) turning into blood.""

Moses, having pre-arranged to meet Pharaoh by the river bank, there exaggerated and vaunted as a miracle this ordinary periodical occurrence! The real marvel, however, is the astounding credulity of the Astronomer Royal. That Pharaoh could really have been taken in by so ridiculous a pretence as this, surely none but himself can be simple enough to believe.

At this period, our author opines, "the Nile was teeming with vitality:" boiled by the subterranean fires of Sinai, its fish died: then, in regular and natural sequence, followed an enormous amount of putrefaction, frogs, lice, flies, and diseases (murrain and boils) of man and beast: and last of all came that periodical visitor of Egypt-the plague; resulting in the death of the first-born. As to that, "the destruction of the first-born in one night," is simply an exaggerated description of what actually took place. "We have merely to deprive the statement of a little of its apparent precision, and we see clearly what is meant-the destruction of a great number of persons in a short time." But what right has any one to deprive the statement of one iota of its precision, if it be true? The question is--Was this the fact? Without even attempting to show it was not, our author coolly takes the intolerable liberty of scoring it out, and writing his theory in its place. And so throughout his notes, he picks out and labels "True" every morsel of history that squares with his notions: he throws aside as worthless the remainder.

Sir G. B. Airy has commenced at the wrong end. Because he has detected a number of inaccuracies (fewer, far fewer, however, than he claims), he refuses belief in the Scriptures as inspired of God. As reasonably might he deny the genuineness of a guinea whose gold, promiscuously circulated, has suffered outwardly from dirty hands. Confining himself to a surface examination, he has been taken up—not with the Book, but wholly with the specs upon it. He has found, or thinks he has, so much dross, so much that is clearly worthless, that, without going deeper, he gives up the earlier Hebrew Scriptures as, upon the face of them, not what they profess to be: as, in fact, counterfeit inspiration. The histories, during their protracted voyage down the stream of time, have been fastened upon by so many parasitic falsities, that, therefore, they are throughout of the like character: and, therefore again, they cannot be inspired. Absurd conclusions ! Had our author first taken the trouble as he easily could and should have done-to have assured himself of the fact (for it is a fact impossible to displace) of their inspiration: then he would have seen that the histories, most of whose literal records ho refuses, notwithstanding the spots and stains upon them, must, because inspired, be true-yes, to the letter.

But to proceed. The plague of hail, mingled with fire, was an unusually severe thunder-storm. Moses appears to have been able to foretell it because, like Samuel, he " accurately understood the signs of the weather." The plague of darkness was a Nile fog: denser than usual because the invaluable volcano, just at the right moment, warmed and evaporated the waters.

Instead of 600,000 being the number of the Israelites at their depar