The revisers only in part understood their duty; but they certainly have swept away much of the harsh phraseology which disfigures the King James version, and have replaced it by terms which better represent the spirit of the Great Book. Some of these changes we shall consider as we proceed.

In discussing the subject of endless punishment from the Scriptural standpoint, several things must be borne in mind.

I do not assume that the Bible from beginning to end is an absolutely infallible book,- that every statement is to pass unchallenged.

The Bible was not manufactured at once, perfect and complete, and let down bodily from the skies. It is a growth and not a creation. It records the history and legends of the race that God trained to give the world religion, and the development of their ideas, from the crude and even savage notions of the earliest and rudest ages, up to the sublime conceptions of the prophets and of Jesus himself. Not all parts of the Bible, therefore, are of equal value and authority; and the worth of a proof-text depends.

Then, too, the individual passage must be looked upon in its relation to the great trend of thought. The eddies by the side of the stream, that seem to turn backward sometimes, must not be permitted to take our attention from the great

river that flows resistlessly to the sea. As Mr. Barnum says, in his recent pamphlet, "I have only contempt for a fusillade of texts, or a culling out one here and there regardless of contexts; or an exegesis which makes one text which is at statement of some old fighting Hebrew's conception of his God as 'angry endlessly,' outweight fifty texts stating his better conception that 'His mercy endureth forever.""

I do not assume that the object of the Bible is to teach systematic theology. It is not. It is the book of life. It is the noblest literature of the moral and spiritual nature.

God is in this book because he was, first of all, in the experiences that are here recorded. His life pulsated in the love, and joy, and hope, and aspiration, that are here expressed. The noblest passages of the Bible are written in the language of emotion and not in the language of precise and scientific thought. The difference between the Bible and systematic theology is the difference between a flower, in the meadow, by the brookside, where its roots drink moisture and its petals unfold in the sunlight, and the same flower after it has been plucked and dried and laid away in a book.

For this reason, I somewhat shrink from a discussion in which it may be necessary to pluck some of these flowers and subject them to botanical analysis.

But I now affirm, that notwithstanding the two statements I have just made, i. e. that there are some ideas of the earlier times that do not harmonize with those of the latest times; and that much of what is written is the language of strong emotion (so that in denouncing sin, one might expect emphatic and even exaggerated censure); notwithstanding all this, I affirm that the doctrine of endless punishment is not to be found in these pages!

It is not to be found in the records of the barbarous beginnings. The man of that day, indeed, imagined that God gave him command to despoil and even to slaughter his enemies; but the work of vengeance ended upon earth, and was not continued beyond the grave. So that the warlike Israelite of some milenniums past, was really in advance of the modern creeds that declare an eternity of torture. David invoked some terrible anathemas upon his foes; but he wanted the plagues rained upon them here, in a horrible tempest that he could see. It was present and instantaneous retribution for which he prayed; not future and endless. This spirit was far enough from the spirit of Christ and is not to be justified; but it was immeasurably better than the disposition which would add to the sin and misery of this life, the sin and misery of a world without end.

Let us now take in our hands the Revised Version of the New Testament. With the changes that the revisers have made either in the text or in the margin, it will not be necessary for any one to read Greek in order to appreciate the principles I shall lay down.

I WHEN THE WORD 66 ETERNAL IS APPLIED TO THE TERMS "LIFE" AND "DEATH," IT IS NOT PRIMARILY DURATION, BUT QUALITY, THAT IS MEANT. Eternal life is not life that stretches ceaselessly onward, but life that is worth prolongation. "THIS is life eternal, to KNOW thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent." John 7:3.

In what does this knowledge consist? John tells us what it is to know God: "Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God; and every one that loveth is begotten of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not, knoweth not God, for God is love." 1 John 4: 7.

What is it to know Christ? Let Peter give answer: "Add to your faith virtue, and to virtue knowledge, and to knowledge temperance, and to temperance patience, and to patience godliness, and to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness charity. For if these things be in you and abound, they make you that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowl

edge of our Lord Jesus Christ." 2 Pet. 1: 5-7

This character is life eternal. The opposite of it is death. This life and death are enjoyed or suffered here. So some are spoken of as having eternal life abiding in them now; others are abiding even now in death. How long these states may continue, or whether a man may pass from one into the other, these expressions themselves do not determine. They give us QUALITY and nothing else. "We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not breaths; in feelings, not in figures on a dial. He most lives who feels most, thinks the noblest, acts the best."

I may say right here that the Bible deals less with the future than we commonly suppose.' Its aim is not to map out the soul's condition hereafter; but to regenerate and purify and build up into righteousness the soul of man on this side of the horizon. "When I talked with an ardent missionary," says Emerson, "and pointed out to him that this creed found no support in my experience, he replied, 'It is not so in your experience, but it is so in the other world.' Other world!' I exclaimed, 'There is no other world; God is one and omnipresent; here or nowhere is the entire fact."""This world is the next world," says the Indian proverb. Omar Kayam sings:

"I sent my soul into the invisible,

Some letter of that after life to spell;
And by and by my soul returned to me,

And whispered, I myself am heaven or hell,"