SALYATOE MTJNDI. SALVATOR MUNDI: OR, IS CHRIST THE SAVIOUR OF ALL MEN ? BY SAMUEL iCOX. But we trust in the living God, who is the Saviour of all men, specially of those that believe." SECOND EDITION. LONDON : C. KEGAN PAUL & Co., i PATERNOSTER SQUARE. 1878. The Rights of Translation and Reproduction are reserved. TO MY BIBLE-CLASS, WITH MY LOVE. M894384: When man at length his ideal height hath gained, So that the heavenly kingdom is attained, Will there be any room for tears and pain, For dim grey twilights, sobbing wind, and rain, Mist, wreaths, and flying clouds, the thunder's roar, Or the sea breaking on a lonely shore, With all the yearnings these things shadow forth ? Is the pathetic minor but for earth, And will the heavens resound with joy alone, Though sadness often makes a deeper tone ? Must all of life fall off that cannot show Some fruit that did to full perfection grow ? The tottering steps, the pause, even the fall, Will not eternal life have room for all ; And in the circle of Infinity Must not all moods of life unfolded lie, But all complete, the weak within the strong, And the one verse become a perfect song ; The bud, the blossom, the fruit-laden bough, Seen by the light of the eternal now ? May not all discords to one concord lead Whose every missing note would leave a need Deep, unimagined as a world untrod An infinite harmony whose name is God ? PREFACE. THE main object of this book is to encourage those who " faintly trust the larger hope " to commit them- selves to it wholly and fearlessly, by shewing them that they have ample warrant for it in the Scriptures of the New Testament. For more than twenty years I have held, and preached, the views advocated in these Lectures ; but, in their present form, they were delivered to my Bible-Class only last Winter. Now my Bible-Class is one of which any man might be proud. It consists of more than a hundred-and-fifty members, men and women. Three or four of them are good Biblical scholars, versed in Greek and Hebrew ; a large pro- portion of them, thanks to our Grammar Schools and High Schools, have some slender acquaintance with their Greek Testaments : and all, or nearly all, of them are accustomed to study the sacred Scriptures PREFACE. with intelligence and devotion. At the close of each Lecture I invited the frankest statement of difficulties and objections, an invitation which provoked a very frank and eager response. Some of the discussions which ensued were very instructive at least to me ; and I often learned from them " where the shoe pinched : " while, sometimes, I not only learned what were the real difficulties in the minds of those who listened to me, but also how they might be met. As far as I could I met them, both at the time and in subsequent additions to or modifications of my manu- script. I would fain hope, therefore, that those who read these Lectures will find that some at least of the difficulties which have obscured their hopes, whether for themselves or for the world at large, have been re- moved from their path, and that points of view have been opened up to them which they have not hereto- fore occupied. If that should be so, they will owe something to my Class as well as to myself. It would have been easy to recast these Lectures into a more bookish form, and thus to have avoided some of the brief recapitulations which will be found in them ; but, in the process, they might have lost some of their vivacity ; and it would not have been PREFACE. ix so clear, had these recapitulations been omitted, that the argument is a cumulative one, and needs to be considered as a whole, as well as in its separate parts. Of all branches of theology Eschatology is perhaps the least attractive to sober and thoughtful students of the Inspired Word, especially if they have dis- covered that the New Testament predictions of ages and things to come can only be safely approached through the long and winding avenue of Old Testa- ment prophecy. But that section of it which relates to the conditions of men after death is one which so profoundly affects our whole conception both of the character of God and of the salvation wrought by Christ, that even those who most shrink from the in- terpretation of prophecy are compelled to study it. Indeed I cannot but think it a binding duty on all preachers of the Word that they should not only come to some well-considered conclusion on this point, but that they should also publish and enforce that conclu- sion, whatever it may be. Few of the more thoughtful and cultivated preachers of the Gospel now hold the dogma of everlasting torment ; in a large circle of acquaintance I hardly know one : and yet how few seek to replace it, in the mind of the Church, with PREFACE. any doctrine which they hold to be more in accordance with " the mind of the Spirit." When they are com- pelled to speak on this point, many are content, not to interpret, but simply to repeat, the very words of Scripture. But, if it be an honest, it is surely an un- dignified and unteacherlike procedure, to use in one sense words which their hearers take, and which they know their hearers to take, in another and a very different sense. Many plead that they cannot speak out without giving a kind and degree of offence which would close the minds and hearts of most of those who listen to them against their influence, an influence which on the whole tells for good, and which therefore they are not at liberty to sacrifice. But do they not a little forget how much, and what grave, offence they are giving to their more intelligent and inquiring hearers, those who really give the spiritual tone to their Congregations, by their silence, or their equivo- cation, on a point of such grave importance ? Truth may be dangerous, both to him who utters it, and even to those who listen to it. But is it our function, as ministers of the Word, to avoid danger, or to pro- claim the truth ? and are we so very much wiser and better than our hearers that the truths which are PREFACE. good for us may be highly injurious to them ? If any man hold, or is convinced that he holds, any truth, in God's name let him utter his truth or conviction, and leave the consequences with the God who gave it him, and who is quite able both to rule and to save the world without our help, and is not in the least likely to be helped by any man's infidelity to his con- victions. The Church is not dying, nor likely to die, of too much truth ; but it is sure to languish if its teachers, even for the most amiable reasons, suppress the truth that is in them. And such a truth as this a truth which makes God a just God and a Saviour to us, and the Gospel veritable good news ; how can any reasonable man think to serve God by hiding it ! Of those teachers and preachers who honestly retain the dogma which attaches an endless torment to the sins of time no man can ask more than that, while they preach it with sincerity, they also keep their minds open to any more light which may break out upon them from God's holy Word ; but of those who have seen that light and yet will not suffer it to shine through their teaching, what can one say but that they are less worthy of their high calling than those who still walk in darkness 2 xii PREFACE. I have read most of the books on the theme dis- cussed in this Volume which have appeared during the last half century ; and no doubt am more indebted to some of them than I know. There are but three to which I consciously owe much : (1) A Volume pub- lished, I should think, nearly thirty years since, by my friend Mr Dobney of Maidstone, the very name of which I cannot now recall, though I read it eagerly at the time and learned much from it : (2) " The Second Death and the Restitution of All Things," by Andrew Jukes, a valuable and suggestive work which swept the last remnants of difficulty clean out of my mind : and (3) Dr Dewes's too brief remarks on one branch of the subject in his " Plea for a New Translation of the Scriptures." But, on the whole, I believe I may say quite simply and honestly that 'I have got my views from long study of the New Testament itself, and not from any comments on it. CONTENTS. PAGE I. THE QUESTION RAISED, .... 1 IT. THE LIMITS WITHIN WHICH IT WILL BE ARGUED, . 19 III. DAMNATION, . . . . .36 IV. HELL, ...... 55 V. THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE ^EONS, . 96 VI.' THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE ^EONS, . 117 VII. THE TEST AND TESTIMONY OF PRINCIPLES, . 144 VIII. THE UNIVERSALITY OF CHRIST'S REDEMPTION, . 172 IX. WHAT WE SHALL BE, . . .198 SALVATOR MTJNDL I. THE QUESTION BAISED. ST MATTHEW xi. 20-24. " IF the mighty works which were done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have re- pented long ago in sackcloth and ashes." Then why were those mighty works not done ? Is it not the will of God that none should perish, but that all should come, through repentance, unto life ? Does not He Himself plead with men, saying, " Why will ye die ? " And yet the Lord Jesus, who knew what might have been as well as what had been, solemnly declares that even the guilty inhabitants of Sodom and of Tyre and Sidon would have been brought to repentance and life had they witnessed the mighty works wrought in the favoured cities of Galilee ! Why were they not permitted to witness them, then ? Can we blame them, will God condemn them, and condemn them to an eternal death or an eternal misery, because they did not see what they could not see, because they A SALVATOR MUNbl. i did not repent, when the very means which would in- fallibly have induced repentance were not vouchsafed them ? A momentous question this ! few questions are more momentous. It is a question which demands an answer, even though we cannot hope, as I suppose we cannot, to reach a full and complete answer to it while we are compassed about with the limitations and infirmities of this hindering mortality. The com- plete answer would imply a complete apprehension of the entire scheme of Providence, a complete knowledge not only of the whole story of time, but also of the Divine motives and purposes of which that story is a vast and manifold illustration. And such knowledge is too wonderful for us, too high for us to reach, too broad for us to grasp. But some answer we must have, some considerations which at least lighten the burden of this pressing and momentous problem. First of all, then, let us attempt to lay hold on the words which have raised this problem to trace out the order and sequence of thought in this suggestive but obscure saying of our Lord's. In Verse 20 we read, " Then began he to upbraid to reproach the cities wherein most of his mighty works were done, because they repented not." Then ! When ? When his mind was occupied with the thought (Verse 19) that the Divine. Wisdom would be THE QUESTION RAISED. justified of all her children. That Wisdom had sent forth many of her sons to turn the men of Galilee from their sins, heroes, statesmen, prophets, poets ; from the old-world patriarch to the modern rabbi, a long succession of holy men had spoken to them, all delivering the same Divine message, but delivering it in divers manners, Wisdom changing her modes and tones, and becoming all things to all men, that she might win the more. And last of all, and to crown all, the Baptist had come, and the Messias : John, solitary and austere, keen, incisive, stimulating as the frost of winter ; Jesus, sociable, friendly, bountiful, as sweet and genial as a summer's day. But whatever the form which Wisdom assumed, whatever the tone in which she spoke, the men of Galilee found some- what to allege against her. In her child John she was too austere, too exacting; he was a devil of a man, frowning on - all the sweet and kindly uses of life. In her child Jesus she was too sociable, too pliable, too ready to condone and to share the indul- gences of the worst and most despised of men. He had a devil, too, but a gluttonous and wine-bibbing devil, not a solitary and ascetic devil like John's. This was the attitude which they assumed towards the Divine Wisdom that so graciously strove and pleaded with them, an attitude of captious and yet inveterate hostility. And now Christ sees that men possessed by SALVATOR MUNW. so settled an hostility to every form of Wisdom and Righteousness as that they translate them into their very opposites, must be nearing the end of their course. As they will not repent and live, let Wisdom change her voice and note as she will, nothing remains but that she should vindicate the children whom they have rejected and condemned, by shewing that it was by her inspiration that they had spoken, and that all they had said on her behalf was true. Those who would not repent unto life when denounced by John and invited by Jesus, and held that they needed no repentance, must be left to die ; their very death in sin proving that they did need to repent before they could live. As they had left Wisdom no other way of justifying herself, of proving herself to be the true wisdom, and the course she indicated the only wise course, she must take this way of justifying both her children and herself. In Verses 21 and 23, three of the cities in which Wisdom had uttered her voice, and the mighty works of Christ had been done, are named as samples of the other cities of Galilee Chorazin, Bethsaida, Caper- naum. And all these are now mere names to us, and nothing more. So utterly has the prediction of Christ been fulfilled, at least on its lower earthlier side ; so intolerable was the judgment which fell on these wicked cities, and so completely were they destroyed THE QUESTION RAISED. by it, that it is impossible so much as to identify the very sites on which they once stood. The rocks of Tyre and the harbour of Sidon may still be seen ; the place of Sodom is defined by the Sea which destroyed it, the very name of which is, as it were, the epitaph of its inhabitants. But a more intolerable and obliterating judgment has fallen on the cities of Galilee. The place that once knew them knows them no more ; no indubitable vestige of them can be traced. We know that they were once busy and growing towns on the teeming north-western shore of Gennesaret ; and that is all we can say of them. Some geographers, indeed, have found Capernaum, i.e., the village of Nahum, in the heap of ruins which the Arabs call Tell Hum, and Chorazin in the modern Keraseh, and affirm that Beth- saida stood on both sides the river at the point where the Jordan runs into the lake. But there is no common or general assent to any of these identifications. These ancient cities were sentenced to destruction by the Divine Wisdom to which they had refused to listen ; and the sentence has been executed so rigorously, and so long ago, that all trace of them has been lost. And yet it was not without pain and regret, we may be sure, that Jesus pronounced so heavy a doom on " his own city," Capernaum, in which He had spent many tranquil and many laborious hours ; or on the neighbouring towns, which had yielded Him many SALVATOR MUNtil. disciples, and in which He had so often taught and healed. He was a man such as we are ; and that which was familiar was dear to Him, as it is to us. I dare say He could have better spared many a better city than either Capernaum or Bethsaida. And there is some trace of this natural pity and regret there is a sound of sighing in the very sentence He pronounced upon them ; for the Greek word (oia/), rendered " woe " in the exclamations, " Woe unto thee Chorazin ! woe unto thee Bethsaida ! " is elsewhere translated " Alas ! " and here also it is an expression of pity ; for by these exclamations our Lord means no- thing less, though He may mean much more, than this : " Unhappy and unblessed are ye, Chorazin and Bethsaida, and I am sad to tell you so ! " There is another slight but significant indication of this mood of ruth and pity in the verb with which the Evangelist introduces the " woe." " Then began He to reproach the cities," &c. ; for we only " reproach " those whom, in some sort, we have loved and trusted, of whom we had hoped better things. But, though his heart hung with tender com- passion over these doomed but familiar cities, Jesus does not hesitate to utter their doom ; for Love can be strong and severe even while it is sad and pitiful, and He who loved men much loved God more. And, indeed, it was not He who condemned these cities, THE QUESTION RAISED. nor God. They had condemned themselves. He does but utter the sentence which they had virtually passed on themselves that they were unworthy of eternal life. Life, in its true sense, was not in any of their thoughts. They did not aim at a life wisely and righteously ordered, but at a busy, money-getting, self-indulgent life a life which fits men neither for earth nor for heaven a life, therefore, which, though it may seem to soar into a very heaven of wealth, suc- cess, distinction, enjoyment for a time, is inevitably doomed, and self-doomed, to sink into a hades of ruin and oblivion. This was the condemnation of these cities, that light had come to them, the very Light which is the life of men ; and they had loved darkness better than light, because their deeds were evil. But in the mind of our Lord this condemnation took a special and instructive form. If we ask Him why He sighs forth sentence against the cities of Galilee, He replies that He condemns them for this, that in this they condemn themselves, that the mighty works done in them had not brought them, to repentance. But why should they ? What was there to induce repentance in the miracles of Christ ? Miracles naturally beget wonder, admiration, awe ; but what is the link of connection between miracles and penitence ? 1 apprehend it to be this. Miracles, mighty works^ SALVATOR MUNDI. disclose the Divine presence and activity. They shew that God is with men. They bring home to the thoughtful heart a sense of his abiding presence and activity. And how shall sinful men consciously stand in the immediate presence of God without becoming aware of the sins by which they are degraded and defiled ? And how should they become profoundly sensible of sin without also becoming profoundly sorry for it ? We cannot so much as wake up in the night under the impression that any invisible Presence is with us, but we tremble and are afraid, because we feel our unfitness to enter into the world in which our spirits lie open and naked to God and our fellows. And if, as we went about the daily business of life, God were suddenly to stand before us, to become visible to us in all the sweetness and glory of his goodness, yet not clothed in the robes of his eternal majesty, would not our first impulse be to fling our- selves at his feet and cry, " Unclean, unclean ! " Would not a goodness so pure call up an intolerable and crushing sense of our own impurity ? And if He were to lay his hand upon us, and to lift us from the dust of our self-abasement, and to go with us for a little while on our way, should we not walk with Him with a softened, penitent, and lowly heart ? That, then, was one of the functions perhaps the main function of the miracles wrought by Christ. THE QUESTION RAISED. They were capable of producing, they were designed to produce, so vivid and intense a consciousness of the Divine Presence as should convict men of sin and lead them to repentance. Just now the set of thought among students of the Bible is to underrate the value of miracles, as in the last century the tendency was to overrate them, or at least to apply them to evidential purposes which they were not intended to subserve. Then perhaps men made too much of them ; now we make too little of them. Science scorns miracles, though she herself has both discovered and wrought many mighty works, -and furnished us with many a sign and proof of the Divine presence and activity and goodness. And, to meet the changed attitude of the world around it, Theology is busily engaged in reducing both the evidential and moral force of miracles, in arguing that the unexampled character and the pure morality of Christ are the best proof of the miracles He claimed to^ have wrought, rather than in arguing that his .miracles prove Him to have been sent by God to teach men truth and win them to repentance and righteous- ness : while Biblical Criticism eagerly undertakes to .shew that in the addresses and letters of the Apostles little stress is laid on the miracles wrought by Christ, .and great stress on the still mightier truths He enunciated and enforced. io SALVATOR MUN^I. All this may be, I believe it is, in the true line of advance; but perhaps there has been something too much of it. And assuredly the change is not a wholesome one when it leads us to lay so much emphasis on the teaching of our Lord as that we come to forget, or question, or deny the force and value of those supernatural works which were a natural result of the Divine energies which dwelt in Him. To pitch the cargo overboard will, indeed, lighten any ship ^ but it may also make it ride so high as that it will endure no after storm ; and what if, when it does- reach the haven, we find that little or nothing of value is left in it ? Sceptics of a certain school are forward to compliment the morality of Christ at the expense of his miracles ; and, perhaps, with a view to conciliate them and to secure a hearing for Christian truth, we are somewhat too ready to put the question of miracles- out of our thoughts, and to insist mainly, if not solely, on the beauty and completeness and spirituality of his teaching and commandments. But have we duly considered what a Christ who wrought no miracle would be to us ? and what use those same sceptics- would be likely to make of the admission, should any considerable section of the Church ever admit, that the Christian miracles were a late and incredible addition to the New Testament records ? Would they not pounce on the admission with eager delight, and THE QUESTION RAISED 1 1 forthwith proceed to reduce Christ to the level of other wise men, or men of genius, or even below the highest level of manhood ? Might they not reason- ably reproach us with the worship we render Him ; or even demand how we can hope that any mere man, however gifted, should prove to be the Saviour and Lord of the entire race ? And we what should we not lose ? If Christ Him- self did not become a dubious historical figure to us, if even his moral teaching did not become uncertain and questionable, we must at least lose both our faith in Him as Son of God, and our hope in Him as Son of Man. For how should the Son of God be in the world, and never do any such creative or restorative work as the Father is ever doing ? And if the Son of Man had not power over the phenomenal world, the realm and sequences of Nature, how can we any longer hope that He will restore to us, and to the race at large, that dominion over all the works of God's hands which we feel to be our birthright, and which seems to be the inevitable pre-requisite of spiritual life in its highest and most permanent forms ? Let us remember, then, that Christ Himself saw a moral and spiritual value in the mighty works He wrought in the cities of Galilee ; that He even claimed to be believed, if not for his own sake or for the truths He taught, yet for his very works' sake. Let us en- I 12 SALVATOR MUNDI. deavour, for once, to achieve a feat very difficult to our mental weakness, that of holding two distinct but complementary thoughts in our minds at one and the same time. The modern set of opinion in the Church, the tendency to subordinate the miracles of Christ to his teaching, is a very healthy one if we do not so far yield to it as to doubt whether those miracles had any moral or religious value to the men who witnessed them, as also, in a lessened degree, for us who do but read of them. To them the mighty works brought that sense of the presence and activity of God which induces, or ought to induce, repentance ; and to us they are of value as shewing that God was once in the world, and that He who was once visibly in the world is always in it and always at work in it, to heal our diseases, to minister to our needs, to quicken us to life everlasting. They feelingly per- suade us that Christ was in very deed the Son of the Father ; they animate us with the hope that, through the perfect Son of Man, we shall become lords of our- selves and of this lower world, reigning together with Him by whom we have been redeemed. But behind this difficulty of the miracles, and of the way in which we are to regard them, and the value we are to set upon them, there rises a question still more difficult and perplexing. The man Christ Jesus obviously thought highly of his mighty works, THE QUESTION RAISED. 13 and of their power to open and impress the human heart. In his mind they were not only the great bell of the universe ringing in the world to listen to the sermon He had to preach, but also a part of the sermon itself, and even a very effectual part. He was quite sure that if they had been done in Sodom, and Tyre, and Sidon, these great cities would have repented and remained ; and yet Sodom was a synonym for the most utter and bestial corruption, while Tyre and Sidon were among the most flagrantly sensual and vicious communities of the ancient world. Now how those who hold that Christ possessed only human faculties interpret this claim of his to know what men who lived two thousand years before Him would have done had their conditions been other than they were ; how they explain the fact that He, the most sane, the most modest and unassuming of men, assumed to compare Sodom with Capernaum, Chorazin and Bethsaida with Tyre and Sidon, and to pronounce the wickedest races of heathen antiquity more sus- ceptible to the influences of the unseen spiritual world than the sons of the elect Israel, it is not for me to say ; but to me, I confess, this seems to be a monstrous and incredible assumption, at variance with all we know of Him, unless He were what He claimed to be, the Son of God. Son of God, or Son of Man, He claims to know that 14 SALVADOR MUNbl. the men of Sodom and of Tyre and Sidon would not have resisted the influences which failed to bring the men of Galilee to repentance and life ; and so the question returns upon us, and must no longer be evaded : If these ancient sinners would have repented unto life had the mighty works of Christ been done in their streets, why were they not done ? One answer to this grave question is a very obvious one, and is obviously true so far as it goes. For it is manifest that if God were to come and dwell with men, He could only come once in the history of the world. He could not be for ever coming. There could not be an advent, an incarnation, a life illus- trated by mighty works, in every generation, among every race, or the operations of law would have been superseded by a constant miracle or a miracle con- stantly repeated. And we know so little of the course and order of the world that we cannot venture to say what would have been the best and most fitting time for the manifestation of the Son of God ; we are com- pelled to assume that He, to whom the whole course of time is open and present, chose the fitting conjunc- ture, that it was, as the Bible affirms, in the very fulness of times that He sent his Son into the world. But if the time of Capernaum, and Chorazin, and Bethsaida was the due and fitting time for this supreme disclosure of the Divine Love and Grace, then obviously THE QUESTION RAISED. 15 it could not have been made two thousand years before. It would have been inconsistent with the scheme and purpose of God, with that economy in the use of miracles which characterizes his government and edu- cation of the world, that the mighty works of Jesus should have been done in the ancient cities of the Plain and in the ports and emporiums of the Phoenician coast. So much we can see, so much we admit. Never- theless it irks and saddens us to think that even for these ancient and sinful cities God should not have done the most and best that could be done to bring them to repentance. It seems hard and unjust that a man's salvation, a man's life, should hang on the age into which he is born ; that the sinners of Sodom, for example, should have had a worse chance than the still greater sinners of Capernaum. Shall we say then that, although the men of Sodom might have been saved by a gospel they never heard, they nevertheless had all that they needed for salva- tion had they cared to use the means of instruction and grace which they possessed ? I for one cannot say that. I am not unmindful of the fact that had they come into the world some two thousand years later than they did, and walked the streets of Caper- naum, and witnessed the works of Christ, they must have accepted all the conditions of that later age, adverse as well as propitious, and might very possibly 1 6 SALVA TOR MUNDl. have been so moulded and so hardened by them as that even then they would not have entered into life. And yet who dare say of any class of men, in any age, that nothing but their own will prevented their salvation ? There are thousands and tens of thousands in this Christian land to-day who have never had a fair chance of being quickened into life. Conceived in sin and shapen in iniquity, inheriting defects of will and taints of blood, cradled in ignorance and vice, they have hardly heard the name of Christ save as a word to curse by. And there are thousands and myriads more to whom the faith of Christ has been presented in forms so meagre and narrow, or in forms so fictitious and theatrical, that the only wonder is that so many of them care to worship Him at all. And with all these in our midst now that the Gospel has been preached among us for a thousand years, which of us will dare to affirm that those ancient sinners of Sodom, born in an age so dark, reared in "fulness of bread and abundance of idleness," enervated by a tropical climate and by the abominations amid which they were nurtured, had all that men needed in order that they might know the only true God and serve Him alone ? Assuredly Lot was no Jesus, no Jonah even, or they might have listened to him and repented ; if he " vexed his righteous soul from day to day " with their unlawful deeds, he did not hesitate to risk his THE QUESTION RAISED. 17 soul and the souls of his children by " standing in the way of sinners " to secure a fat inheritance. No ; to say, " Doubtless God gave these poor men all that was necessary to life and virtue," and to make a merit of saying it as though it were a mark of piety, is simply to offer Him that insincere flattery, to shew Him that respect of persons, which even Job could see He Himself would be the first to rebuke, and rebuke the more heavily precisely because it was shewn to Him. 1 What shall we say then ? For myself I can only say that I see no way out of the difficulty, no single loop- hole of escape, so long as we assume what the Bible does not teach, that there is no probation beyond the grave, that no moral change is possible in that world towards which all the children of time are travelling. I, at least, am so sure that the Father of all men will do the most and best whicu can be done for every man's salvation as to entertain no doubt that long ere this the men of Sodom and of Tyre and Sidon have heard the words of Christ and seen his mighty works seen and heard Him, perchance, when He stood and shone among the spirits in the Hadean prison, and preached the gospel to ' them that were dead, in order that, while still judged according to men in the flesh, they mignt live according to God in the spirit. 2 1 Job xiii. 7-11. 2 1 Peter iii. 19, 20 ; and iv. 6. B 1 8 SALVATOR MUND}. And what else, or less, do our Lord's own words imply : " It shall be more tolerable for them at the day of judgment than for you ?" Lives there the man with soul so dead and brain so narrow that he can take these solemn words to mean nothing more than that the men of Tyre and Sidon will not be condemned to quite so hot a fire as the men of Chorazin and Bethsaida ! Must they not mean at least that in the future, as in the present, there will be diversities of moral condition, and a discipline nicely adapted to those diversities ? May they not mean that those who have sinned against a little light will, after having been chastened for their sins with a " few stripes," receive more light, and be free to walk in it if they will ? We are often chastened in this world that we may not be condemned with the world, often judged and condemned and punished that we may be aroused to repentance and saved unto life everlasting. Why, then, should we always take the chastenings of the world to come to mean judgments, and the judg- ments to mean condemnations, and the condem- nations to mean nothing short of a final and irre- versible doom ? On the contrary, we ought rather to hope that, while during the brief hours of time our lives describe but "broken arcs," in eternity, and through whatever chastening and discipline may be requisite for us, they will reach " the perfect round." II THE LIMITS WITHIN WHICH THE QUESTION WILL BE ARGUED. MIRACLES naturally strike men with astonishment ; but what is there in them to win men to repentance ? There is this : miracles are signs of the Divine pre- sence and activity. They feelingly persuade men that the God of whom they too habitually conceive as dis- tant and quiescent is near them and with them, that He is at work in their midst. And how shall men become conscious of the immediate presence of God without at the same moment becoming conscious of the sins which have alienated them from Him ? And how shall any man become profoundly conscious of sin without also becoming profoundly sorry for it ? Miracles, then, are a great means of grace ; they tend to bring, and they are designed to bring, men to- repentance, and through repentance to life. Now this great means of grace was vouchsafed, our Lord tells us, to the men of Capernaum, Bethsaida, and Chorazin, although it failed to produce its proper effect upon them ; and it was denied to the men of Sodom, and Tyre and Sidon, although it would not have failed to produce its proper effect on them. 20 SALVATOR MUN. 2*7. Oould any words well quicken in us deeper perplexity and distress of spirit ? They seem to charge the Divine Providence with a double blunder. What would have sufficed to save one set of men was with- held from them ; it was granted to another set of men, whom it did not suffice to save ! Why was this waste this double waste ? Why were the works of Christ not done in the streets of those cities which would have repented had they witnessed them, instead of being thrown away on men to whom, since they did not bring them to repentance, they only brought a severer judgment ? The usual answer to that question is true so far as it goes ; but does it go far enough to relieve our minds of the perplexity and distress in which the question inevitably involves them ? It is reasonable to believe that, since men can only live as they come to know God and yet cannot find Him out for themselves, He should come and dwell with them, that He should disclose Himself to those who were groping after Him, if haply they might find Him. It is equally reasonable to believe that, if He came, He would come but once, once for all ; that He would not be for ever breaking through that veil of natural forces and se- quences behind which He at once hides and reveals Himself; that He would not become incarnate in every race and in every generation, but that once, in LIMITS OF THE ARGUMENT. 21 the fulness of the times, He would manifest forth his glory. But if that fit and selected time fell when Chorazin, and Bethsaida, and Capernaum were full of busy life, obviously there was no room for a Divine advent in that earlier period in which Sodom, and Tyre and Sidon were filling up the cup of their iniquities. They could not see the mighty works of Christ, even though they would long ago have repented had they seen them. , So much we admit, or may admit ; and yet, does the admission satisfy us ? Is it just that a man's sal- vation should depend on the age, or on the moral conditions of the age, into which he is born, and which he has done nothing to determine ? If, for example, the citizens of ancient Tyre would have been quick- ened to eternal life by the presence and works of Christ, are they never to see Him ? are they to be damned for not having seen Him ? If Socrates, and Plato, and Aristotle, if Cicero, and Marcus Aurelius, and Epictetus, would have fallen at the feet of the Son of Man, and joyfully have taken Him for their Master and Friend, are they never to hear the gracious words that proceeded out of his mouth ? Are they to be damned for not having heard them ? And if many a Hindoo would have been saved by that very Gospel to which we turn so cold and indifferent an ear, will that Gospel never be preached to them ? will they be 22 SALVATOR MUNDI. damned for not having received it ? And if they are, shall we say, "It is just"? Many do say so. They argue that every race and generation of men has light enough if only they will walk by it, even though the great Light should not have risen upon them. It may be doubted whether such an argument would carry much weight even with those who most insist on it, if they themselves had been born in one of the dark ages or dark places of the earth, instead of standing, as they assume, in the full blaze of the Sun of Righteousness. For those who are content with this argument are commonly those who defer most to the current opinions of their time and set ; in all probability they would have re- mained whatever they were born Jews or Mohamme- dans, Parsees or Buddhists, and would have been no truer to the light that was in them than they are now. That any man who thinks for himself, and ponders the facts of human life in a sympathetic heart, and is cap- able of coming to a conclusion for himself, should main- tain that every man born into the world has an equal or even a fair chance of getting to heaven, nay, that he should affirm that vast myriads of men have had any chance at all, is simply incredible. There are multitudes here in England, among the neglected and criminal classes, who have never had any real oppor- tunity of knowing God or Christ, or even the blessed- LIMITS OF THE ARGUMENT. 23 ness of a pure and honest life ; and there are multi- tudes more' from whom the Light of Life has been concealed by the superstition, or the bigotry, or the immorality of the very Church itself. And who that knows the moral and spiritual conditions of these English multitudes will venture to affirm that in ancient Sodom, when Abraham himself was but stumbling through the first rudiments of religion, men had such means of knowing and loving God that they deserved to be damned for their neglect of them? The conclusion to which we are driven when we really consider these words is, as I said in my last Lecture, that if the men of Sodom would have repented at the ministry of Christ, then this germ of life must, under the rule of that kind just God who suffers no vital germ of goodness to be destroyed, have been long since developed ; they must long ago have seen the works of Christ, and have been brought by them to that life of which He Himself pronounced them cap- able. But as this conclusion runs right in the teeth of more than one popular dogma, we must proceed to examine a little in detail the ground on which it rests. These dogmas, which happily are losing force daily, and daily moving through a lessening circle, are, that there is no probation beyond the grave, that 24 SAL VA TOR MUNDI. when men leave this world their fate is fixed beyond all hope of change ; that if, when they die, they have not repented of their sins, so far from finding any place of repentance open to them in the life to come, they will be condemned to an eternal torment, or, at best, to a destructive torment which will annihilate them. And as these dogmas claim to be formulated interpretations of Scripture, it would be of little avail to shew that they are contrary to reason, that they offend against the plainest dictates of justice, that they distort and debase the very character of God. The appeal is to the Bible as the supreme authority as the only clear and indubitable revelation of the will of God ; and to the Bible we must therefore go for any satisfactory and authoritative refutation of them. I, for one, however, cannot take this course without entering my protest against the assumption that Reason and Conscience are to have no voice in the determination of this, or of any other, theological question. Doubtless we hear the voice of God in Scripture, and in Scripture hear it most distinctly ; but that voice also speaks within us, in our reason and in our moral sense. And he who has drawn a con- clusion from Scripture which Reason and Conscience imperatively condemn should need no other proof that he has misinterpreted the Word of God. Still, as the appeal is to the Bible, we will go to the Bible, LIMITS OF THE ARGUMENT. 25 reserving our right, however, of interpreting it by our reason and conscience. But here, at the very outset, the question presents itself: To what parts of the Bible may we fairly look for clear and authoritative teaching on the secrets or mysteries of the life to come ? And obviously, if we know anything of the structure, history, and design of this great collection of Scrip- tures, we shall not for a moment assume that every book of the Bible speaks on all themes with equal distinctness and authority; that, wherever we find words that will serve our turn, we may detach them from their context, and attribute as much weight to them as though they fell from the lips of our Lord and his apostles. On the contrary, in selecting those Scriptures which will really aid us in our search, we shall have to lay aside by far the larger part of the Bible, not that we may induce it to speak our thought, but simply that we may argue the question fairly. The Old Testament, for example, except in so far as we can find large general principles in it which bear on our question, will be of no avail to us ; for it is as certainly true as any such wide proposition can be, that the psalmists and prophets of old time never got more than momentary and partial glimpses of the life to come. We are expressly told that Christ "brought life and immortality to light ;" and if that be true, 26 SALVATOR MUNDL clearly " life and immortality " were more or less hidden in darkness before He came: and we must not go to the darkness for light. But if, for our present purpose, we must lay aside the Old Testament, it is equally obvious that we must also lay aside the last book of the New Testament, though for a very different reason. Possibly the Apocalypse would throw a clearer light on the mysteries of the life to come than any other Scrip- ture, if only we had the key to it and could read it " with the understanding." But, confessedly, we have not the key to it ; it is variously interpreted, inter- preted on principles wholly incompatible with each other, by the most learned and devout students of the Bible, the best scholars, the soundest divines ; and till some certain interpretation of it is reached, or at least some interpretation of it which shall command a wide and general assent, it would be unwise and unsafe for us to build any conclusion on our private interpretation of it. These are very large deductions to be made the whole Old Testament on the one hand, and on the other the Book of the Revelation ; but unless we are to "fall out by the way," to wrangle over disputed interpretations of doubtful Scriptures, I do not see how we can refuse to make them. If we cannot, we have only the Gospels and the Epistles left. Our LIMITS OF THE ARGUMENT. 27 field of research, if much more limited, is also much more manageable. But even from this limited field there remains one deduction to be made, or rather, perhaps, I should say, that over the entrance to this lessened field a certain " Beware " must be inscribed. Many of our Lord's most familiar allusions to the future conditions of men are couched in parables ; and to say that the details of parables must not be insisted on, that we must be cautious how we use them lest we should be landed in false conclusions, is, after all, only to repeat a maxim on which all Commentators are -agreed, although it is also the plain dictates of common .sense a quality for which Commentators get even less credit than they deserve. Let us bear in mind, then, that if the parables of Christ are to be used in this argument, they must be used with modesty and discretion, since parables are but pictures of truth, comparisons of things not in the world of sense with things which are in that world, and such comparisons seldom run on all fours. And be sure of this or why should you listen to me at all ? or how could we hope to travel to any conclusion together in peace ? that in asking you to exclude these Scriptures from the list of authorities to which we make our common appeal, I am not trying covertly to bring the Bible round to my view, or indeed to any view whatever. The Scriptures which 1 28 SALVATOR MUNDI. we thus exclude are at least as favourable to the view to which my study of the Word of God long since led me, as to the more common and accepted view. If any man thinks that the Old Testament teaches the irrevocable condemnation of the vast majority of men at the moment they pass out of our sight, for every text he can adduce from it in support of that view, I will undertake to produce another which asserts the universality of the Divine Redemption, and implies the salvation of all men. 1 And so with the Apocalypse, and so with the Parables. Indeed, no one who has not given many years to the study of the Bible can so much as imagine how numerous and weighty are the passages, even in these excluded portions of the Inspired Volume, in favour of the conclusion that human life beyond the separating line of death is as varied, as flexible, as capable of change as it is on this side; and how many intimations they contain of the ulti- mate restitution of all souls. The fact is, that through- out the Bible there are two main lines of thought on this subject, though hitherto the Church has been too apt to recognize only one of them. The first affirms or implies that to sin, to be in sins, is to be damned both in this and in all other worlds; that so long as men are shut up in sin the wrath of God abides, and must abide, on them, whatever the sphere in which Some of these passages are cited in Lecture viii. LIMITS OF THE ARGUMENT. 29 they move ; that the only way to escape damnation, whether in this or in any other world, is to turn from sin, to come out of it, to exchange the " death in sin " for the "-life in righteousness:" while the other line of thought affirms or implies that the wrath of God, the condemnation of sin, the punishments which are the natural and inevitable consequences of unrighteousness, are designed to correct men, to convict them of sin, to make them hate it and abandon it, that they may love righteousness and pursue it. For the present, however, I must not dwell on this point ; we shall recur to it again further on : but take just one illustration of it. You know what use has been made of such parables as those of Dives and Lazarus, the Wise and Foolish Virgins, the Sheep and the Goats. You know, too, how those who lay great stress on such details of these parables as " the great gulf," the shut door, the left and the right hand of the Judge as if the left hand were not the next best place to the right hand, or a door once shut could never again be opened, or a gulf once impassable could never be bridged: you know, I say, how apt those who lay stress on such points would be to suspect that the Parables were excluded from our field of view because they told against the conclusion to which I am trying to lead you. But do they tell against it ? Suppose we also cared to violate an accepted canon of criticism ; 30 SALVATOR MUND2. by laying stress on the details of parables, what bright and happy inferences might we not draw from such parables as these ? " The kingdom of heaven is like unfco leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal, till the, whole was leavened ; " or again, " What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he lose one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is lost until lie find it?" Would it not be quite easy to interpret these weighty and emphatic phrases as signi- fying that the whole mass of mankind is to be leavened and quickened by the truth of Christ, and that the great Bishop of our souls will never cease from his quest of any poor lost sinner until he find him and restore him to the fold ? Might we not even insist on reading that " pearl of parables," the Prodigal Son, in a very novel and surprising light ? Might we not take the righteous, and self-righteous, brother as a type of those good people who, with Luther, think it " the highest degree of faith to believe that God is merciful who saves so few and damns so many," and imagine, with St Thomas Aquinas, that in the world to come their bliss " may please them the more because they are permitted to gaze on the punishment of the wicked " ? Might we not take the younger son as a type of those whom they call " the lost," and the " far country " as hell, and the return to the Father as the LIMITS OF THE ARGUMENT. 31 recovery of the self-doomed sinner from the error of his ways ? It is very certain that in so reading these parables we should depart no farther from the dictates of common sense and the canons of sound criticism than do those who pile up so great a weight of dogma on similar phrases and analogies in other parables. But if in answer to the question, To what parts of the Bible may we look for clear and authentic light on the mysteries of the life to come ? we have determined to confine ourselves to the plain teaching of our Lord and his apostles, i.e., to the very cream of Scripture ; if we have gone so far as to select our materials, another question forthwith meets us, viz., What sort of structure may we hope to rear with them ? May we hope to frame a clear, full, and coherent theory of the life that is both spiritual and eternal ? to determine with precision what the fate, whether of the good or of the bad, will be when they put off the tabernacle of the flesh ? No reflective man will for a moment suppose that, while we are compassed about with the limits and crippling infirmities of the flesh, we can hope to com- prehend what the purely spiritual life will be ; or that in this, the first stage of our being, we are able so much as to conceive what the final stage of our course will be like. Christ descended into Hades ; yet when He came back to earth He disclosed none of the secrets 32 SALVATOR of the prison-house. Paul was caught up into Para- dise, and saw some faint shadow of its glory ; yet he maintained to the last that it was impossible for him to utter what he had seen and heard, albeit he was a great master of the most subtle and flexible language spoken among men. And a little reflection will con- vince us that that which is eternal cannot be fairly, or, if fairly, cannot be fully, comprehended by those whose thoughts are governed and conditioned by the sequences of time ; that so long as we are to be approached from without only through avenues of sense, that which is purely spiritual can only be set before us in pictures, in similitudes and analogies, which, like all analogies and comparisons, have their inevitable defects, and conceal almost as much as they disclose, in some cases even more. All deep knowledge presupposes not only the proper faculties for acquiring it, but that those faculties should have been highly trained and developed. It is of no use to talk the higher mathematics, to pick holes, for instance, in the differential calculus, as our friend James Hinton was so fond of doing, to one who has not even mastered the elements of arithmetic and geometry. Nay, a knowledge beyond our reach may be simply injurious and misleading to us. We know very well, for example, that we should only injure young children were we to discuss with them some of LIMITS OF THE ARGUMENT. 33 the commonest facts of our own mature life, that we should awaken a morbid and prurient curiosity in them, and that our words would only mislead them because they would take other shapes and relations, quicken other trains of association in their minds, to those which they assume and quicken in our own. In short, we are aware that by trying to communicate a knowledge for which they are necessarily unprepared, we should simply impose an intolerable and degrading burden on them. How is it then that we do not see, if indeed we do not, that we ourselves are too imma- ture and untrained to grasp the mysteries of eternity, of an absolute and unconditioned existence, or of an existence whose conditions are utterly different from our own ? We ought to be aware, when we reflect upon it we are aware, that if, while we are still babes in the spiritual life, clothed with flesh, conditioned by time, the secrets of the unclothed, unconditioned, spiritual world could be put into any words with which we are familiar, they would only mislead and oppress us. What faith can apprehend and realize, what the intuitions of love can grasp, this indeed lies open to us, and is helpful to us, as we see in the case of children ; but the points with which speculation would busy itself and a merely intellectual curiosity, these are mercifully hidden from our eyes. What, then, may we hope to learn from these c J 34 SAL VA TOR MUNDI. selected Scriptures concerning the life to come ? We may hope, I think, to see, on the one hand, that the Scriptures, when fairly interpreted, do not sustain that theory of the future state which has long found general acceptance, and which, like so much else in the Roman Church from which we have derived it seems to be a survival of ancient heathen beliefs shewing through the thin Christian varnish with which Papal theo- logians have sought to disguise it ; and, on the other hand, we may hope to find that there are great prin- ciples, principles that run through the Bible from end to end, which point conclusively to a very different theory a theory consistent at once with our highest conceptions of the character of God and with the dic- tates of reason and conscience. In fine, I would advise any of you who wish to know what the Bible really teaches of the future life, first, to study attentively all those passages in the Gospels and Epistles which are commonly adduced in favour of the endless punishment of the impenitent, for you will find that they are at least patient of another than the current interpretation ; and then, refusing to pin your faith to any theory built on isolated texts and passages, to inquire what large, general, pervading truths, what spacious and controlling principles, are woven into the very stuff and substance of Scripture which bear on this question, and what are the conclusions to which they point. LIMITS OF THE ARGUMENT. 35 That surely is the reasonable method to pursue ; and if you care to pursue it, I will try in my succeed- ing Lectures to shew you how to use it and to what conclusion it leads. III. DAMNATION. IN the two previous and preliminary Lectures we have arrived at the following conclusions : (1.) That we must look for what the Bible has to teach on the life to come only to the Gospels and the Epistles, since the Old Testament Scriptures were written before life and immortality had been brought to light, while the Apocalypse is written in a cipher of which we do not possess the key. (2.) That, even with the Gospels and Epistles in our hands, we must not hope to frame a full, exact, and coherent theory of that life, since it is by no means likely that the sacred and august realities of the spiritual and eternal world can be revealed to us with any fulness and precision so long as we are the children of sense and time. (3.) But that we may hope, by a patient study of the passages commonly adduced in favour of the endless punishment of the impenitent, (a) to shew that they do not sustain the interpretation put upon them ; and (/S) to find in these Scriptures, nay, in the whole Bible, certain large and controlling principles which point in an entirely opposite direction. DAMNATION. 37 So that what we have yet to do is to examine the texts which seem to imply that, when the wicked die out of this world, there is no longer any prospect of their being recovered unto life, since they are instantly damned to an interminable and unremedial torment ; and then to look for those great ruling principles which render any such conclusion impossible. I need hardly say, I suppose, that of those two branches of inquiry the second is by far the more attrac- tive and conclusive. To build up a doctrine on isolated texts is always hazardous and unsatisfactory. Before we can rely on our doctrine we must assure ourselves that it is in harmony with the ruling thoughts which pervade the Scripture from end to end, that it accords with the mind of the Spirit rather than with the letter of the Word. But, on the other hand, it would be of little use to discuss these large ruling thoughts or principles, and to draw logical conclusions from them, if, all the while we were thus occupied, we were fretted and harassed by the recollection of a considerable num- ber of passages which would perk up their heads and open their lips to question, if not to contradict, the conclusions to which we were travelling. We must, therefore, clear these passages out of our way, must determine what they really teach, if we are to frame our conclusion with an undisturbed mind, and to rest in it. To this task, then, a careful and honest exami- 38 SALVATOR MUNDL nation of the Scriptures which, favour, or appear to favour, the accepted view, let us at once address our- selves. Now, if we ask on what, and what kind of passages in the Gospels and Epistles the popular view is based, I think we shall find that they are of two classes. (1) We have all those passages in which the words "hell" and "damnation" occur; then (2) we have a still larger class, in which the words " eternal " and "everlasting" occur; and in this class, a subordinate series in which precisely the same epithets are applied to the reward of the good and the punishment of the wicked, from which therefore the inference is drawn that the one will endure as long as the other. Under these two heads we may gather up, I think, all that is of real value and importance in the New Testament, in so far, at least, as it bears on the question we hav.e in hand. To examine these passages at all carefully, or even to examine the leading examples of each class, is a work that will necessarily consume some time ; but I hope three or four Lectures will suffice to take us through them ; and then we shall be free to turn to the study of those spacious and controlling principles by which, after all, the question must be finally determined. The first class of Scriptures we have to examine are those in which the words " hell " and " damnation " occur, for it is on these passages mainly that the popu- DAMNATION. 39 lar misconception is based. If these two words were expunged from the Bible, I doubt whether most of those who read it would not feel that the whole dogma of future and endless torment had vanished with them. No doubt, therefore, many of you will be surprised perhaps even astonished and indignant to hear, that neither of these words is to be found in any part of the New Testament, or, indeed, in any part of the whole Bible ; nor even any word which at all answers to the conception which they quicken in our minds. " Not to be found in the New Testament ! " you say ; " why I can shew you a dozen, or a score of places in which these words are to be found." But are you quite sure that it is the New Testament in which you find them ? It is a version, a translation of the New Testament, of course ; but does it necessarily follow that the transla- tion is an accurate one ? I am sorry to say, that in so far as it uses the words " hell" and " damnation," it is demonstrably an inaccurate and misleading one. No such words are to be found in the Greek, that is, in the real, the original Testament, nor any words which convey, as they now do, the conception of a final and ever-during place of torment, and of a Divine sen- tence which adjudges men to that place of torment. Now, as that is a very grave assertion to make, as it must seem so strange to many of you as to be almost incredible, I must proceed to prove and vindicate it in 40 5 'ALVA TOR MUNl)l. some detail. And as no proof would be quite satis- factory 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 mediaeval theology of the Koman 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 an- cient use of it, it signified any covered place. In our early English literature it is used of any obscure dun- geon 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- DAMNATION. 41 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. 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. When we meet the word " hell," it conveys no innocent and cheerful sug- gestions. 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 1 42 SAL VA TOR MUNDI. 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 xp'miv (krineiri). Any Lexicon will tell you that xpiveiv means " to part, to separate, to discriminate between good and bad," in short, " to judge." From this verb, xpfouv, two nouns are formed, xp