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Powers, Dr. Farrar puts the question, "Where would be these popular teachings about hell... if we calmly and deliberately, by substituting the true translations, erased from our English Bibles, as being inadequate or erroneous or disputed renderings, the three words 'damnation,' 'hell,' and 'everlasting?"-it is very easy to reply, The popular teachings would remain where they were before. We complain that the most literal rendering is not in all cases extant in the English version. This defect has not helped, but damaged our cause. It has furnished the excuse of a necessity of appeal to the original, which has been sedulously worked as a most potent lever to move all those who, being themselves destitute of scholarship, are yet open to the delicate flattery of holding scholarly opinions. Perhaps no single feature of the recent advocacy of the various theories of Annihilation, &c., has caused them to loom with such portentous bulk before the public eye, as the appeal to the original. We fear not the labours of the Revisers; we have therefore no need to utter admonitions; we expect their impartiality will strip many current speculations of much of their adventitious importance.

One can hardly conceive why the word "damnation" should have been investigated with such painful minuteness, its precarious position in our version being well known, and having for a long time deprived it of all decisive weight in this controversy. Why slaughter the slain by producing the Bishop of Chester's recent Charge, when in the very earliest "pleas for revision"-and the earliest emanated, I believe, from the Evangelicals-this word has been again and again stigmatized? Why bring it up as if a fresh discovery had been made, throwing all the odium of its harsh grating dissonance upon men who have for years repudiated it?

In a similar way Canon Farrar's treatment of the word "hell" is misleading and defective. Is it indeed so universal a fact in our language as Dr. Farrar assumes that the English word "hell,"-cognate with the German "Hölle" and akin in meaning to the Hebrew "Sheôl" and the Greek "Hades,"-has been so much warped from its native signification as to be an utterly false name for the state and place of lost souls? Dr. Farrar's own usage proves the contrary. He retains the word. He tells us "hell is a temper" so far adopting the "popular teaching"-without the remotest fear of being suspected of saying, "Hell is an eternal temper." To press the matter no further, this one instance is sufficiently cogent to show that it is at least fairly open to debate whether the notion of duration of eternal duration-is embedded in the popular conception of the word "hell." Need it be urged in these days that as a translation is not made for scholars, but for readers of the "vulgar tongue," it is a fairer method in so momentous a matter to use a word which will convey the most approximate meaning of the original, rather than to transfer terms that are not English and can convey no definite meaning whatever, or a

meaning only appreciable by those skilled in Rabbinical and classical lore? The deficiencies of the word in a critical point of view, as an exact equivalent of Hades in some passages, have been long ago detected and pointed out. The language of Dr. Farrar on this head conveys the impression that those of his way of thinking were the only persons or the first Protestants to find fault with the vagueness of the rendering of Hades, Gehenna, and Tartarus by one word only. So far from this being the case, as far back as two centuries ago-to probe the matter no further-we find John Howe, certainly one of the Masters of English Theology, appending a remarkable note to his treatise of "The Redeemer's Dominion over the Invisible World," and uttering an indignant protest against "Hell" being confused in all instances with "Hades," the invisible world, and Christ "represented as the Jailer of Devils." Let every refinement be employed about "Hades," there are yet three undoubted passages, according to Dr. Farrar's enumeration, in which "Hades is used for a place of torment," and why not in these use the appropriate English word?

Equally successful is Canon Farrar in obscuring the position of alovios in the argument. His main strength is spent in proving what no intelligent exponent of "the popular view" denies, that air and its derivative alúvios are used again and again of limited periods. But Canon Farrar fails to add that in many of those cases-as with our own words ever and never-it is also undeniable that no idea of limitation is at the time present to the mind of the speaker or writer. While the words do not necessarily express, they do not necessarily exclude, unlimited duration. Such instances prepare aiúvios for its higher applications, in which Canon Farrar admits that it is used of what is essentially endless, though not of itself connoting endlessness. Without insisting upon the strong presumption in this admission, it is enough for conviction that it is beyond dispute that the word is employed when no end is in view. The whole burden of proof that there is an end ever attainable in the duration of the misery of lost souls, therefore, falls upon the Canon, and he must make his case good without this word, seeing it reveals no end.

Canon Farrar therefore must show, for instance, that at the final scene in the last act of Earth's tearful tragedy,-when, according to his own statement, the Angel shall with uplifted hand have sworn that time shall have ceased to be, and the wicked shall from the face of the Judge of All go away into banishment from bliss, the duration of which is unmarked by time's pauses,-that then aivios, which is applied to that banishment beyond the cycles of time, must necessarily contain a hope of release and of return. Until this be done, and the tremendous doubt lifted from that scene, does not every instinct of tenderness, of philanthropy, demand that men should be warned of the overwhelming peril of an irreversible exclusion from the "face of God and of the Lamb ?"

That Canon Farrar has not, even to his own satisfaction, mastered every doubt is very broadly written upon his volume. He is timid. about putting his views into the articles of his Creed, contenting himself with calling them allowable "opinions." It is true something more is intended by the glittering legend-Eternal Hope-being inscribed on every leaf of the book. Yet I must confess that, as I perceive too on almost every page surmises, guesses, questionable postulates, "most lame and impotent conclusions," and ever and anon glance up at the firm and stable superscription, it seems to me that a certain subtle irony runs through the production and awakens in the soul something more of the nature of chagrin than of "eternal hope." Surely if there be an "eternal hope," it must have a better basis.

Some grains of consolation are scattered to "willing" and "wilful” sinners by Canon Farrar's eloquent scorn of the dogma that probation is bounded by the grave, but who dare venture to pick up these grains while he is at the same time told that it may "be awfully true that our millenniums depend upon our moments?" A fitful gleam is thrown across the dread apprehensions of present rejecters of God by the assurance that "the path of repentance may never be closed to us;" but in what a "horror of darkness" does it die away when there is set upon every sinner's track a "Sacred Nemesis," "with leaden footstep, and gathering form, and towering over you," which "smites you at last with the iron hand of its own revenge!" Timorous souls may perchance heave a sigh of relief as Canon Farrar buries beneath the heavy adjectives of his scathing invectives the whole imagery of the "terrible and the awful," as orthodox divines were wont to set it in array against impenitent sinners; but in a moment he himself fills to the brim the cup of trembling by his own "terrible and awful" picture of "the heavy wrath of God." "It is," says he, "but as if I plucked one leaf and showed it you as a specimen of the boundless forest; it is but as if I showed you one little wave and told you that a whole ocean was behind." In vain Canon Farrar practises metaphysical refinements and asserts that the Lawgiver is all mercy and love, while His just Law utters the apocalyptic cry, "Woe to the inhabitants of the earth!" The conscience of mankind will evermore apprehend the Lawgiver in His Law. When at last Canon Farrar conducts us to his haven of "Eternal Hope,”—the limbo upon which he has happened on the wormeaten charts which some of the early Fathers drew of the unseen world, -his words of cheer are by no means those of Dante's guide:

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"Fear not,' my master cried,

'Assured we are at happy point. Thy strength
Shrink not, but rise dilated. Thou art come
To purgatory now."

Shrinking" considerably on arriving at purgatory, instead of dilating," as Canon Farrar elsewhere in many passages does, upon the æonian fire of God's love into which sinners shall be plunged at

death, he is obliged to confess, "I see nothing to prove the distinctive belief attached to the word Purgatory; I cannot accept the spreading doctrine of Conditional Immortality; I cannot preach the certainty of Universalism." Even the fond dream of Purgatory, then, with its hither side of æonian fire, its yonder side of refined purity, here joined to earth, there bordering upon heaven and issuing in its bliss, must pass away as the baseless fabric of a vision. The one dread certainty remains, which the honesty of Canon Farrar will not dissemble, from which his quick tenderness of soul recoils, which his faithfulness yet obliges him to shadow forth as a hell so dark, so deep, that from thence the miserable inmates never catch a glimpse of the golden pinions of hope even fitfully fluttering over the abyss.

Thus, while Canon Farrar casts down the theological structure of his opponents, he re-erects their scaffolding. While pleading with men to keep in the middle way of piety, he shows that the avenues of virtue are all fenced by an endless contiguity of shade. Is his "Eternal Hope" but the changing of the names of unchangeable certainties? What avails it that "damnation," "hell," and "everlasting," are expunged from the Bible, if while these umbræ nominum are gone the dire realities remain? What boots it that where once I read "Hell," I am now to read Gehenna, Tartarus, or Hades, if there still may lurk darkling under any of these terms, in the working out of sin's bitter course, a deep, a still lower deep, a fire that never may be quenched, and a condition never amended? And is it with this message that Ministers of consolation are to be furnished in repairing to the home of the bereaved, or to the bedside of the dying, as a balm for every wound, and a cordial for every fear, of sin? The very question lays bare to every thoughtful man the keen mockery of such a ministry to "a mind diseased" with sin's hot fever, the ghastly travesty and revolting burlesque so enacted of the glad tidings of salvation through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. More consonant by far, surely, with the whole consensus of the Gospel, is the message of those who hold the "popular teachings," which tones not down the "terrors of the Lord," nor abridges nor postpones His mercies, but, with the tender pity of the Word of God, puts the question," How can we escape if we neglect so great a salvation?" yet affirms, that ere we leave this world, "the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin," that "he that believeth is not condemned," and cries even to the would-be suicide and murderer, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved." Here is "strong consolation." But the hope whose flickering rays dimly fall upon us from the incalculable distance of millenniums, which can be realized only after passing through æons of agonizing fire, is not of a nature to support a life of chequered suffering, or to soothe a dying pillow.

DAVID GRACEY.

CONTEMPORARY ESSAYS AND COMMENTS.

[In this Section the Contributors to the CONTEMPORARY REVIEW are understood to express themselves with less restraint (as to their individual views) than might be thought desirable in formal articles.]

WE

On the

E have already made an attempt, in a discussion on the Nature and Scope of Patriotism, at an appreciation of the true sense of the corporate unity of a nation. We propose now to say a few words on a subject involved during the last few years in much the same series of Binding Force perplexities, and one which, according to the point of view, of Treaties. appears either a part of the first question, or of which the first question appears a part. To inquire into the binding force of a treaty is to enter on an important illustration of national unity; to inquire into the binding force of a promise is to deal with a wider question than national unity. Either view of our object is correct. Our main interest in it belongs to the region of politics, but the principles lying at its root are, we believe, best exhibited in their individual application. Nobody will say that the obligation of a treaty can rise higher than the obligation of a solemn promise between man and man. Very few, we should think, would say it can rise quite so high. If, then, we consider the meaning of a promise, we have the outside value of a treaty. And not only is the analysis surer in individual than national cases, it is also far easier. The only censure which qualifies the warm eulogium pronounced by Sir James Mackintosh on the great work of Grotius is that he has inverted the natural order in which his subject (the rights and duties of nations) ought to be treated, the natural order dictating "that we should first search for the principles of the science in human nature, then apply them to the conduct of individuals, and lastly for the decision of those difficult and complicated questions that arise with respect to the intercourse of nations." The statement, although the very fact that it forms the isolated criticism of a classic shows it not to be obvious, is surely unquestionable, and its application to our subject-matter leads us to occupy almost the whole of our space by an attempt to set forth our view of the binding force of a promise.

The ordinary view, we presume-the view on which men ordinarily theorize, not the view on which they ordinarily act-is that any one who has pledged himself for or against a particular line of action, is by that fact shut out from any possibility of reconsidering it. What a man has promised to do, or refrain from doing, he is bound to do or refrain from doing, even if he comes to see that there were many more reasons for the opposite course than for the one to which he has pledged himself. A promise to a man of honour is an impassable barrier, whatever may lie on the other side. This we take to be the common view. Our own is that the only motive which is absolutely put out of court by a promise, is the interest of the person who makes it. A promise, however solemnly expressed, and fenced with whatever sanction of awful import, can do no more, we believe, than add to all the reasons already existing for a present line of action, the anticipation created by the announcement of a present intention, and by the renunciation of all right to reconsider the question by the light of one's own convenience, or personal desires of any kind.

* See CONTEMPORARY REVIEW for Feb., 1878.

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