ingness of God is
evident all over the Bible quite apart from this. The words here
simply tell that the one shall go into the aeonian life and the other
into aeonian punishment, _i. e._, that the one shall go into the life
of the future age and the other into the punishment of the future age
without exactly specifying the duration of either.

I quite feel that the close connection of the words suggests at least
the probability that one is as lasting as the other. Yet even that
consideration is weakened by asking if people are willing to apply it
to St. Paul's statement, "As in Adam _all_ die even so in Christ shall
_all_ be made alive" (the context suggests eternal life). I would
point out, too, that a somewhat similar verse is in the Septuagint
Bible of our Lord's day in Hab. iii. 6, where the (aeonian) everlasting
mountains were scattered before God, whose ways are (aeonian)
everlasting. Yet it does not prove that the one is as endless as the
other. And in Rom. xvi. 25-26 the mystery hid in the (aeonian) times
"before the world began" is now manifested according to the command of
the (aeonian) eternal God. But the age "before the world began" is
ended.

At any rate I must leave the matter here. I have no space for fuller
statement. If any man feels that a world of increasing sin and awful
torment growing no nearer to its end after millions and millions of
ages does not disturb his conscience or the thoughts of God which he
has learned from the whole trend of Scripture this text will probably
weigh strongly with him in spite of all that I have said. But to him
who is tortured by such a thought of God and yet feels that Scripture
binds him to it, it must surely be some relief to feel that even in
this great bulwark text of Everlasting Torment our Lord only asserts
that these shall go away into the aeonian punishment or chastisement[3]
whatever that may mean.

Reluctantly, impelled by a sense of duty, I have dealt with this theory
more fully than with the others. Should any godly people fear that I
am lightening an awful deterrent to sin let me say what long experience
has taught me of the danger of this common theory.

It is making sad loving hearts whom God has not made sad and making
earnest Christians, who feel forced to believe it, perplexed about the
love and justice of God and the prophecies of the final victory of good.

It is forcing into the background the true and awfully solemn teaching
about