An Inquiry Concerning the Relation of Death to Probation (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1882. Excerpt: ... made of a distinction between the words eternal and everlasting. Eternal and its correlative words in other languages are said not to be time-words when used of punishment in the Bible, but to be expressive of quality rather than continuance. Under ordinary circumstances, it would not be worth while seriously to discuss so obvious a matter. But when authors with the reputation of F. D. Maurice, Canon Farrar, and Rev. Drs. Whiton and Smyth, get the public ear in defence of the proposition that there is a vast difference between eternal punishment and everlasting punishment, we are forced to pause and inquire what new considerations they are able to bring forward bearing upon this subject, and what resetting they are able to give to the familiar objections urged against the doctrine of everlasting punishment. We do not propose to enter into a personal controversy with these writers; but perhaps there is no better method of getting the questions at issue before us than to consider and weigh at the outset the arguments which they have put forth with so much zeal in proof of their propositions. Maurice affirms that our Lord "has deliberately excluded ." the "notion of duration" from the word eternal; and that life eternal is simply to know God, and death eternal simply to be Essays, p. 436. without God. Canon Farrar, speaking of the word in the Bible ordinarily translated "eternal," tells us that in the phrases "eternal life" and "eternal punishment" we mean by it "something above and beyond time, time being simply a mode of thought necessary only to our finite condition,7' and that "the utter dearth of metaphysical knowledge renders most people incapable of realizing a condition which is independent of time, --a condition which crushes eternity into an hour, ...