Christian Church. I have not read your sermons, and do not know how far I should accept your conclusions, or how far you adopt mine. But as this letter is to be printed with them, and as you tell me that you wish to connect my name with the volume-an honour which, on personal grounds, as having been once the master of a scholar from whom I have since been glad to learn, I have thankfully accepted-I think it may be well to make my own position clear by stating, without discussing, the conclusions to which I have been led. On the one hand, I have never been able, in spite of the appa rent sanction given to it by such passages as Rom. xi. 32, v. 19, 20, Isaiah liii. 11, to accept the theory of Universalism; (2) I have as little been able to accept the theory of Annihilation as the ultimate portion of all but the elect in Christ. It seems to me to have no grounds in Scripture, or reason, or the analogy of Nature, and to be at variance with our fundamental conceptions, as shown in the consensus of mankind, as to the soul's immortality; (3) I have never been able to attach any great importance to the discussions that have turned upon the meaning of the word alávios. I cannot, on philological grounds, agree with Mr. Maurice in thinking that our Lord's teaching in John xvii. 3, excludes from it the idea of duration, and the whole history of the word shows that it cannot, as a word, denote endlessness. (4) I do not hesitate, however, to accept the thought of the punishment of evil as being endless. If that punishment comes, as Butler teaches us, as the "natural consequence" of sin, if the enduring pain be "Memory of evil seen at last As evil, hateful, loathsome," then I cannot see how it can be otherwise than everlasting. Christian theology knows no water of Lethe to steep the soul in forgetfulness of its own past; and if the sin is not forgotten, then the remembrance of it must throughout the ages be an element of pain and sorrow. Experience, indeed, teaches that the penitent, in whom that sorrow is keenest, finds it not incompatible with peace and joy even now, and the extension of that experience beyond the veil suggests the thought that there may be a retributive element mingling with the blessedness of the highest saints; and, by parity of reason, as in the view maintained by Mr. Birks, Mr. E. H. Bickersteth, and substantially by Mr. Erskine of Linlathen, that the acceptance of the punishment, the admission that it is inseparable from the righteousness of God, may bring hereafter, as it brings with it now, a mitigation of the anguish. (5) While I reject the Romish, and even the Augustinian view of Purgatory, as not only without any certain warranty of Scripture, but as a "fond thing vainly invented," resting on the radically false conception that a quantitative amount of physical pain has in itself any power to purify the soul from a proportionate quantity of evil deeds or their results, I hold that it is at variance with our belief in the eternal love and righteousness of God to assume that any created will can be fixed in evil by a divine decree, coming at the close of a few months or years of an imperfect probation, and therefore that Scripture, and reason, and analogy alike lead to the belief that we must supplement the idea of probation by that of a discipline and education which is begun in this life, often with results that seem to us as failure and a hopeless waste, but to which, when we look before and after, we can assign no time-limits. The will, in the exercise of its imperishable gift of freedom, may frustrate that education hereafter, as it frustrates it here; but if it does so, it is because it "kicks against the pricks" of the long-suffering that is leading it to repentance; and there, as here, it may accept even an endless punishment, and find peace in the acceptance. Lastly, I will quote words which seem to me to go almost to the root of the whole matter, and which need only to be extended beyond the limits that the narrowing system to which the writer has bound himself attached to them, to be the last words that I need now write on this great question. 'And these two pains so counter and so keen, The longing for Him when thou seest Him not, J. H. NEWMAN, Dream of Gerontius. I am, Ever yours affectionately, E. H. PLUMPTRE EXCURSUS II. (p. 78). ON THE TRANSLATIONS OF κρίνειν AND "Αιδης, &c. Nothing that I have said seems to have excited stranger misapprehension and anger than the statement of this plain, indisputable fact, which no scholar in England will dream of denying, and to which one of our most learned prelates has referred in his last charge. "Such instances as the following," says Dr. Jacobson, Bishop of Chester,―in a charge delivered only last month, and which came into my hands after my sermon had been preached," must be allowed to go some way towards justifying a desire for further revision. "The confusion of Hades with Gehenna. "The modification which some words undergo by lapse of time, e.g. damnation." P. 30. A reviser may indeed choose to consider that кpívei and karaKpive mean the same as “damn," though then, as Mr. Ruskin has pointed out, he should render it by this word throughout, and we should have such verses as "Woman, where are those thine accusers? hath no man damned thee?" &c., and he may consider that "Hell "" connotes the same thing as γέεννα ; and that αἰώνιος is identical sometimes with never-ending; and, therefore, that these notions may be introduced in a few texts, though it is impossible to introduce them into all or most. But, even if he holds such entirely untenable views-and it is quite certain that the majority, at any rate, of our own Revisers are far too wise and too learned to do sohe would still have no right to obtrude his private opinion when by a confessedly faithful translation, which prejudges no controversy, he can render the Greek words by "judgment" and "condemnation;" by "Hades," "Gehenna," and, in one place, "Tartarus ;" and by "eternal." And this, if I mistake not, is what will actually be done. I. The facts are these. In the New Testament the words κpive, κρίσις, and κρίμα occur some 190 times; the words κατακρίνω, κατάKрiσis, катάкрiua occur twenty-four times, and yet there are only fifteen places out of more than 200 in which our translation has deviated from the proper renderings of "judge" and "condemn,” into “damn" and its cognates. It is singular that they should have used "damnation " only for the milder words pрíσis and кρíμα. This single fact ought to be decisive to every candid mind; but it is worth while to point out how disastrous-how more than disastrous, how fatal—in some passages that divergence has been. a. 2. Pet. ii. I. "Damnable heresies" should be "heresies of destruction" (åñwλeías), i.e. destructive heresies. The inaccurate rendering has done much to add fuel to the already too fierce fires of intolerance. The same remark applies to 2 Thess. ii. 12, where "all might be damned" is " may be judged ” (κριθῶσι). 6. Matt. xxiii. 14, Mark xii. 40, Luke xx. 47. "Ye (they) shall receive the greater damnation." Our Lord used no such words. He said Teploσórεроν крíμа, "a sеeverer judgment." 7. Matt. xxiii. 33. "How shall ye escape the damnation of hell?" What Christ said was something utterly different,—“the judgment of Gehenna." 8. Mark iii. 29. "Is in danger of eternal damnation." What Christ said was "shall be liable to, shall incur the risk of―æonian sin ” (leg. ἁμαρτήματος). e. Mark xvi. 16. "But he that believeth not shall be damned." What Christ said was "but, disbelieving, he shall be condemned." (Further, the passage is of dubious authenticity.) 66 C. John v. 29. 'They that have done evil to the resurrection of judgment" (kplσews, not even kaтакрlμатоs). The English version is here just as little justifiable as if in Matt. x. 15, &c., it had spoken of "the day of damnation.” No less disastrous in their consequences are some of these |