emn emphasis, that the punishment of sin is, in the strictest sense, a penalty pronounced by a sovereign judge. "The wicked shall go away into everlasting fire, PREPARED for the devil and his angels." Physical consequences, even when they are strictly such, may be regarded as but preappointed executioners, deriving their powers, and their connexion with the sin, from no inward necessities, but from the sovereign pre-arrangements of God; while the law of which they may thus form the penalty is anterior, both in the order of nature and of time, to all the laws of the natural world. The great absurdity of this scheme, when it thus stands alone, consists in this, that it is the penalty which creates the sin. It is wrong to eat too much, because it will be followed by a pain in the stomach; and men are punished with a pain in the stomach, because they have been guilty of a breach of its physical law. Remove the pain, and you remove the sin. Can any one bring him. self to feel that anything like this would be true in regard to a breach of the law of charity, or that malevolence would change its moral character, though it could be followed by an eternity of pleasure? If the violation of a physical law proceeds from a disposition to contemn a known arrange. ment of God, whatever may have been the object of that arrangement, it belongs to another department, and must be transferred to a tribunal higher than the natural.

It is by overlooking the nature of punishment as strictly retributive, notwithstanding the mode of its infliction, that this doctrine of consequential suffering strips the Divine law of all its majesty, and becomes such a favourite with infidels and neologists. There is no terror in it; and when employed, as it sometimes is even in the pulpit, without the qualifications to which we have adverted, its immediate effect is ease and stupefaction of the conscience, rather than alarm or true conviction of sin. There is, however, no inconsistency in the belief of both views. The punishment

any

inflicted by human government would be no less the retributive penalty of positive law, although its preordained arrangements were such, that the path of every transgressor was literally beset with snares, or that it finally brought him, without arrest or the aid of the executioner, directly to the prison or the gallows.

PAGE 59, LINE 7. πρÒç тò öλоv deì ßhéπwv—“Looking continually to the whole." There is implied here a negative assertion. It is equivalent to saying, "and having nothing else in view." The meaning seems to be, that the process here mentioned might perhaps be adopted, if no regard was had to the parts, as parts, or except in their relation to the whole. In that case, the Divine administration might perhaps proceed by these sudden transformations. But as in each act of Providence a vast number of purposes, direct and collateral, are to be kept in view, and no one to be effected by disturbing or displacing another, there is need of an arrangement that shall be carried on by media, so that one move on the great chess-board (see note 6, p. 59) may accomplish many ends, instead of requiring separate transpositions in every case.

The philosopher evidently perceives a great difficulty attending any explanation that can be given. We can never, perhaps, fully understand the harmonious connexion between a providence carried on by general laws, operating, in the main, with uninterrupted regularity, and a minute attention to those individual cases which may be made the subjects of special prayer and special judgments. It belongs to that same class of mysterious truths, and presents the same apparent contradictions, as the doctrine of the Divine foreknowledge or foreordination, when viewed in connexion with the freedom of the human will, or of the Divine goodness, when attempted to be reconciled with the existence of evil. Why should men be so clamorous for the rights of reason in religion, when, in so many cases, sho

herself declares her own insufficiency as the highest lesson she can teach us, and delivers us over, either to total skepticism, or to that faith by which we receive truths apparently opposed, or whose point of connexion is beyond our radius of mental vision; because, without this, we must give up other truths which our moral nature can only yield at the price of total darkness on all that most concerns us to know.

LIV.

The Word 'Ανώλεθρος as distinguished from Αἰώνιος. Remarkable Passage in the Timæus.

PAGE 60, LINE 3. ἀνώλεθρον δὲ ὂν γενόμενον ἀλλ ̓ οὐκ alúviov. There is intended here an important distinction between αἰώνιον and ἀνώλεθρον. The former means that which is in its very nature eternal, not subject, in any sense, to generation or decay, and, in fact, having no reference to Xpóvos, or time regarded as proceeding by succession. (See the definition of time as given in the Timæus, 37, E., and remarks upon it, page 223.) 'Aváλe@pov, on the other hand, suggests, from its etymology, the idea of something composite, although, when used without precision, it may be applied to that which is possessed of a higher nature. It signifies indestructible, not in itself, but because the thing of which it is predicated is upheld and maintained in being by the Supreme Power, and thus rendered capable of enduring through an endless succession, although never strictly αἰώνιον or eternal in its essence. Κατὰ νόμον θεοί, says Ast, has respect to αἰώνιον alone, and not to ἀνώλεθρον. He would read according to the following order and punc. tuation: ψυχὴν καὶ σῶμα, ἀνώλεθρον γενόμενον, αλλ' ού, καθάπερ οἱ κατὰ νόμον ὄντες θεοί, αἰώνιον—indestructible, yet not eternal as the Gods are. This contrast between

Gods and men seems plausible, and yet we are satisfied that Ast is wrong. Our opinion is founded upon that pas. sage of the Timæus, in which the Eternal Father thus addresses the inferior deities to whom he had given being: Θεοὶ θεῶν, ὧν ἐγὼ δημιουργὸς, πατήρ τε ἔργων, ἃ δι' ἐμοῦ γενόμενα, ἄλυτα, ἐμοῦ γε θέλοντος. τὸ μὲν οὖν δὴ δεθὲν πᾶν, λυτόν. τό γε μὴν καλῶς ἁρμοσθὲν καὶ ἔχον εν λύειν ἐθέλειν, κακοῦ. δι' ἃ καὶ ἐπείπερ γεγένησθε, 'ΑΘΑΝΑΤΟΙ μὲν οὐκ ἐστὲ, οὐδ ̓ ἄλυτοι τὸ πάμπαν. οὔτε μὲν δὴ λυθήσεσθέ γε, οὐδὲ τεύξεσθε θανάτου μοίρας, ΤΗΣ ΕΜΗΣ ΒΟΥΛΗΣΕΩΣ μείζονος ἔτι δεσμοῦ καὶ κυριωτέρου λαχόντες, ἐκείνων οἷς ὅτε ἐγίγνεσθε συνεδεῖσθε — Ye Gods of Gods, of whom I am the Maker and the Father, as of works which, deriving their existence from me, are indis ́soluble as long as I will it. Everything bound (or composite) is capable of dissolution: nevertheless, to choose to dissolve that which is well harmonized, and works well, is the part of an evil being. For which reasons, and since ye were made (or had a beginning of your existence), ye are not immortal (in yourselves), nor in every respect indissoluble. Still, ye shall not be dissolved, nor shall ye experience the doom of death, partaking, IN MY WILL, of a bond of life stronger and more powerful than those things by which ye were bound (or of which ye were composed) when ye received your being." Timæus, 41, A. That is, the permanence of all created things, from the highest to the lowest, rests on the moral attributes of the Deity. In his goodness they have a stronger bond than in all the laws or necessities of nature and of things. On this depends the continued existence not only of man, but of Gods, or, in the more sublime language of Scripture, of Thrones, Dominions, Principalities, and Powers.

Κατὰ νόμον ὄντες Θεοί : According to the decree or fate (fatum) on which their existence depended. Compare, also, the similar expression, page 61, line 7: katà Tǹv Tñs eiμap

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μένης τάξιν καὶ νόμον. This confrms the view we have taken above in respect to veoí. They were dependent on this law, and not on any innate immortality. Nóuos here has about the same meaning with μoipa, which, according to the more ancient creed of the Greeks, meant simply the Divine decree. This, we are prepared to show, is its signification in Homer, and not a physical fate, as many contend. The words yvxǹv kaì oŵua are to be taken collectively for all animated beings thus constituted. The continued existence of soul and body, severally or united, whether in the present state or in any one to come, is dependent on the Eternal Father, who is thus represented as speaking in this sublime passage from the Timæus-who alone is strictly alúvios in the highest sense of that epithet, or, as the Apostle declares, 1 Timothy, vi., 16, ó μóvos ěxwv ȧoavaoíav-who alone hath immortality.

LV.

The Greek Words for Eternity, Αιών and Αἰώνιος.

Alúv is compounded of åɛì ☎v (see Aristotle, De Cœlo, lib. i., c. ix., 10). 'Aɛí, ever, is from aw, déw, or ǎnue, signifying, primarily, to blow, to breathe, secondly, to live, to pass or spend time. "Aw seems also related to ȧtw, to feel life, to be conscious; from whence some would derive alúv in the general sense of existence. Homer uses ǎw or ȧéw in the second of the above meanings, as in the Odyssey, iii., 151, and 490: "Ev0a dề vÚKT' άeoav. Because this verb is thus used, in several places in the Odyssey, in connexion with výš, some lexicographers absurdly render it to sleep. It is, however, only thus employed, because by night the flow or succession of time becomes a matter of distinct observation and consciousness more than by day. Hence, as the context shows, it is generally used of wakeful and anxious nights: