ing, that of thinking and speaking of time (and
space also) as indefinitely extended. (The mathematician knows that
without the supposition, whether as to greatness or smallness, of _ad
libitum_ extent of space and time, he is unable to conduct his
reasoning.) On this principle Scripture speaks of duration through
'ages, and ages,' because by such emphatic reference to our capacity
for thinking of unlimited duration, the anterior necessity of certain
abstract truths, as especially the being and attributes of Deity, and
the characters of divine judgment, is expressed in terms drawn from
common thought and experience.

"But the omnipotent Creator, who, for purposes towards us, made time
and space to be what we perceive them to be, has also the power to
change or _unmake_ them. If it were not so, there would be a power
above that of the Creator, which is impossible. The difficulty
concerning the duration of future punishment appears to be attributable
to a preconception tacitly, perhaps unconsciously, entertained by most
persons that time and space have an independent existence, although the
teaching of Scripture is directly opposed to this view. St. Paul
speaks of 'height' and 'depth' as of things _created_ (Rom. viii. 39);
St. Peter has, 'One day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a
thousand years as one day' (2 Epist. iii. 8); and in {128} Rev. x. 6 it
is expressly said that when the scheme of redemption is finished 'time
shall be no more.' The foregoing argument suffices, I think, to show
that 'endless' and eternal are not convertible terms, for the special
reason that the latter is significant of time as being derived from
_[oe]tas_, whereas the other has _per se_ no necessary relation to
time. (For the same etymological reason I consider 'eternal' to be
preferable to 'ever-lasting.') I cannot forbear adverting here to a
serious misstatement, as it seems to me, in Mr. Churton's letter in the
Guardian of December 12 (p. 1714). He says that the teaching of Holy
Scripture as to the matter of _duration_, is precisely the same with
respect to eternal life and eternal death, having apparently overlooked
the remarkable expression in Heb. vii. 16, 'indissoluble life' (_zoes
akatalytou_), in which endlessness is signified by an epithet not
explicitly indicative of time. No such epithet is applied in Scripture
to future punishment. This difference is of great importance when
taken with reference to the declara