is an arbitrary comment rather than a translation, is
for the same reason excluded. (I have preferred _ouk estai eti_ to
_ouketi estai_, because the words occur in the former order in each of
the three instances in Rev. xxi.) There can be no question as to the
philological correctness of the translation, "time shall be no more."
The unwillingness to admit it appears to have arisen solely from a
fixed persuasion, gratuitously and very generally entertained, that
time {96} has a _necessary_ existence, and therefore cannot come to an
end. Some have affirmed that when time ends, eternity begins; which is
a self-contradictory dogma, because eternity (from _[oe]tas_) is
essentially time. The teaching of Scripture on this point is directly
opposed to these views; for the apostle Peter tells those for whose
sake he wrote his second Epistle, to bear in mind "this one thing, that
one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as
one day" (2 Epist. iii. 8). This is equivalent to saying that time is
not an independent entity, but that both its existence and its quality
are determined by the _will_ of the Creator of all things. It is in
virtue of our being made in His image, and partaking intellectually of
the divine nature, that we are capable _in thought_ of giving
indefinite and arbitrary extension to time, whether it be past time or
time to come. This faculty, as I have already argued in p. 80, is to
be placed in the category of the different conditions, whether
depending on experience of the course of time, or on affections of our
bodily and mental constitutions, under which the spirit of man is
formed for immortality. All such conditions are determined by the
purpose for which they are imposed, and when that purpose is fulfilled
in the perfection of humanity the conditions come to an end. It is
thus that the being conditioned by time eventually ceases.

It will be proper here to meet an objection to the {97} doctrine that
time will have an end which might be drawn from the expression, _eis
tous aionas ton aionon_, which frequently occurs in Scripture, and
seems to be indicative of an unlimited succession of ages. So far as
time is under human cognizance, and has relation to human experience,
Scripture speaks in express terms of only _two_ ages--the present one,
which lasts to the end of the _generations_ of men in the existing
order of things; and the age to come, which embraces the course of the