ETERNAL PUNISHMENTS.

To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."

Sue,—The correspondence originated by my letter to you on this subject has already reached to so great an extent that you may wish know concluded. But before I withdraw from the contro- versy in your pages, I should be glad to be allowed the privilege of reply to a few of my commentators.

The expediency of discussing these sacred subjects in newspapers

is questioned by many. But if such discussion draws out the thoughts upon them of the more thoughtful among the laity much good may be done. I say the more thoughtful among them, because one can expect nothing but harm to follow from the flip- pant, ad captandum treatment of such subjects into which periodi- cal and professional writers who study the means of attracting a large number of readers are in danger of falling. Those who utterly disbelieve in any "magic power of interpretation "given to the clergy—(if this was meant of individual clergymen I hardly know who believes anything of the kind)—may, neverthe- less, think that the circumstance of their being habitually occupied with the study of sacred subjects with a practical view, and their being conversant with the stubborn and awful facts of the nature and results of human wickedness as manifested in this world, may. have a beneficial tendency in helping them to approach any such questions as are now raised upon theology in the right spirit. The sell-satisfied, hasty dogmatism of many, on the other hand, upon such questions, their unhesitating con- fidence in the truth of the suggestions of their own minds upon theology, appear to show not only that they are entirely free from any habits of reverent submission to the words of the Bible, but also that they have never learnt modesty of assertion by honestly facing the facts of existence. For after all the universe is not ordered exactly as we may think it ought to be, or as cheerful persons speculating at their ease in comfortable studies feel sure it must be ; and the tone of supercilious con- tempt, or at best of paternal patronage, with which one, at least, of the many personalities into which I presume your editorial unity is resolvable is in the habit of speaking of the whole tribe of bishops, archbishops, "divines," and clergy generally, would. scarcely be justified even by his own possession of confessedly far superior wisdom.

Now as to the arguments that have been urgedin this correspond- ence, I am anxious, in the interests of my own hopes and of their pro- pagation among Christians, to state the objections which I still feel to some of the stock arguments and interpretations of Scrip- ture by which such hopes are commonly defended, because I am persuaded that any stress being laid upon some of these will only prejudice the cause by " provoking " many far more authoritative persons than the present writer.

I am, then, perfectly awake to the fact that words may easily come to be used in senses very different from those to the expression .of which their etymology might seem to limit them. I know that as "the thoughts of man have widened with the process of the suns," the words which are handed down from one generation to that which succeeds it can only be made to serve the purpose of expressing these wider thoughts by a somewhat free and symbolical application of them ; and that, as Mr. Llewellyn Davies has said, they must often be made "stepping-stones" to help them to reach up to the higher views of truth which may now be accessible to us. And 1 am far from wishing to deny (as he supposes I should) that, though Sienzyk originally meant only the firmament, it may have come to he used, and indeed was, as I believe myself, often used by our

Lord Himself to express a state and a life altogether independent of place. But still Mr. Davies will allow it must always have some definite sense. As originally it meant a certain place defined, I suppose, by this,—that it was not the earth,--as it could never have been used to mean place in the abstract, so it must be with

it also when used in its secondary or metaphorical sense. Then, too, it must be meant to express a certain special kind of life, distin- guished by some definite characteristics from life of every other

kind. But what definite sense can be attributed to the word &No except that of an age in the abstract—any aget That which alone

differences the idea conveyed by that word from other ideas is

simply and only, as far as I can see, that it does refer to and express a certain amount of time. Deprive the word of that

sense, and deny, as I think every one would deny, that it can be used (without any epithet being attached to it to narrow its meaning) to mean one particular age, and what can it mean ?

Nothing definite whatever, so far as I can see. To use its adjective,

atansoc, as meaning anything which has no reference to duration, seems to me, therefore, to do violence to language. Oripoiyto; may

be used to signify metaphorically an idea which has no reference

to place, because the thing signified by its substantive, alpar4, has other attributes besides that of being a place, or any place ; it is a particular place, with which, therefore, other places may be con- trasted in many respects. But the case is different with afea, and

ato5vios.

Again, in answer to our assertion that the Bible means by "eternal" that which lasts for ever, we are continually met with passages of Scripture, in which we are told that it is possible to taste of "the eternal life," or of "the eternal condemnation," in this world. But this is no answer at all. If I see a brazen column, and am told that it has already lasted a thousand years, and will last another thousand in the future, that fact does not prevent my handling it and ascertaining of what material it con- sists, in the course of one single present minute. Having done so, I may then say, "This ancient, this durable column is made of brass," without my thereby giving any one the slightest ground whatever for the assertion that I must, therefore, believe that the words "brass" and "ancient," and "durable," are synonymous. So, in answer to Mr. Frank Hill's letter, suppose I grant him that St. Paul did once call the heavenly life the 66rcas Cais,

and in other places calls it the Cti'm atanuoc, it no more follows from that that he must have believed 'OUrcoc and att(oto; to refer to the

same class of ideas, than it wouldfollow from my calling a certain house sometimes "Mr. Smith's house," and sometimes "House No. 15," that I must therefore think that the words "Mr. Smith's" and "No. 15" refer to objects of identical or even at all similar nature.

What we affirm is that, whatever other attributes may attach to the "life in God," this quality is the one, and the only one, which is predicated of it by calling it "eternal," namely, that it will last for ever, and is imperishable. It is indeed true, as Mr Forbes has urged, that a particular person may be only temporarily in a state, or under the action of a wrath, which itself is eternal ;

—that may, as he and others have suggested, be the true meaning of passages which declare sinners to be cast into the eternal fire ; —they may only mean that they are, for a longer or shorter time,

exposed to the terrible wrath of God which must for ever burn against sin, so long and so far as sin exists. But that particular thing which is called eternal must last for ever.

In answer to your correspondent "7i," for whose letter and its tone, so worthy of its subject, I am thankful to him, I wish to explain that when I referred to our Lord's tears I was thinking mainly not of the particular occasion or cause which drew them forth (though I did carelessly borrow from the common expression which

speaks of "the Redeemer's tears over lost souls "), but rather of the fact that some things did stir that amount of grief and pain in Him, and that intensity of wish that they did not exist, which such tears indicated ; and yet that He did not, and in some sense could.

not, put an end to them, And yet we believe that He was GOD as well as man. For though it is in some senses true that

"with God all things are possible," this must not be understood without any limitation ; and it cannot, for instance, mean that God can sin, or do anything inconsistent with His own Eternal Holiness ; nor do we believe that He could now make that which has been not to have been,—there are things actually impossible,— contrary, if you like so to express it, to the Nature of God. Who

can tell whether it may not be among such impossible things to create beings free and yet incapable of arriving at a state of hope- less wickedness and consequent misery ? If so, the tears of God incarnate may be the awful manifestation of the sorrow in God at the sight of such lost sinners.

As to the case of Judas, the remarks of "Z." are striking. But will he maintain that the wickedness of Judas was of a kind that never existed in any other man ? Are there not now, and have there not been in all ages, many men who, in Judas's circumstances, would have fallen into Judas's sin ? Will God then punish these less awfully than Judas, because, though their wickedness was as great, they did not, simply from lack of opportunity, manifest it in the same way ? If so, the principles of the Divine judgment are different from those indicated by that remarkable sentence which declares that "it shall be more toler- able in the judgment for Tyre and Sidon" than for the Jews of our Lord's time,—not because of anything that Tyre and Slat actually did, but because of something which they would hatti done if they had had the opportunity,—in other words, because of the spirit which the All-seeing eye of the Divine Judge discerned in them, though it never manifested itself outwardly to man. If this view is true, then Christ says of the whole class of Judases, and of all who, though not now so bad as he, yet are on the down- ward road which will one day, whether in this life or the next, bring them to it, that "it had been better for them if they had never been born." "But Christ used rhetorical language,—He speaks loosely, or He teaches 'regulation' truths—things which, though not strictly true, it is good for us to think are so." I shrink from all such assertion—I cannot, as one of your *Titers has done, "because I am convinced of Christ's divinity," therefore denounce the clognil which the great majority of mankind have thought, and which He must have known they would think, that He Himself taught— that of the everlasting condemnation of some—I may seek some other explanation of His words. I do believe and humbly trust that they will bear a different one from that commonly received. But in the face of the general understanding of the words, and in face, also, of some of the facts of human sin, its nature and conse- quences in this life, I cannot " denounce " or ridicule the Fathers and mighty writers and thinkers who have held the common opinion. I trust they were wrong. I think the arguments, to show that they may have been so used in the able pamphlet to which "Z." alludes in his postscript are, most of them, strong and weighty ; but I cannot dogmatize, and would fain protest against any man presuming to dogmatize, upon the subject. "What hope of answer or redress? Behind the veil, behind the veil." Great are those words of "In Memoriam," and these others with

which I conclude:— •

" The wish that of the living whole No life may fail beyond the grave ; Derives it not from what we have The likest God within the soul ?"

But, considering other things, I can only say :— "1 falter where I firmly trod,

And falling with my weight of cares Upon the great world's altar-stairs, That slope through darkness up to God, "I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope, And gather dust and chaff, and call To what I feel id Lord of all, Audit:dully trust the larger hope."

I am, Sir, yours faithfully, W. if. Lyrrerrox.

Hagley Rectory, March 30, 1864.