true, that the wicked shall be turned into hell and all the nations that forget God, it will be benevolent to warn every man of his exposure and to persuade every man by these terrors of the Lord, to renounce his sins and to attach himself to the cross of Christ.

LECTURE VI.

THE DURATION OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT.

2. PETER ii. 17.

These are wells without water, clouds that are carried with a tempest; to whom the mist of darkness is reserved forever.

THAT lost men will never be restored to happiness is apparent from passages which declare their punishment to be forever, forever and ever, eternal and everlasting. The corresponding words in the original Greek, are aion and aionios. It will be best to acquaint ourselves with their general use and import, before we examine their particular application to future punishment.

I. Aion occurs in one hundred and four passages in the New Testament. Of these instances of its use, fifty-nine relate to God or to his kingdom, in such a manner that an absolute eternity must be intended. In six ofthe

remaining passages, it is applied to future punishment. There are only thirty-nine, in which it can be pretended, without begging the question, that it signifies a limited duration. If then, the most common use of the word is to decide its meaning when applied to future punishment, that punishment is proved to be eternal. But a just estimation of the argument to be derived from the applications of this word, depends upon understanding a peculiar sense in which the Jews were accustomed to employ it. They divided duration into two periods. The former comprehended the time anterior to the establishment of the Messiah's kingdom, the latter embraced all succeeding ages. The first of these periods, called the present aion, was distinguished by weakness, vice and misery; the second, called the aion to come, they supposed, would be a time of uncommon prosperity and peace. In one or the other of these senses, it is used in nearly all the thirty-nine passages mentioned above. The following are fair examples. "But he shall receive an hundred fold, now in this time, houses and brethren and sisters and mothers and children and lands with persecutions; and in the world to

come, (the aion to come) eternal life." "Who shall receive manifold more in the present time, and in the world to come, (that age which succeeds the judgment) life everlasting." "The enemy that sowed them is the devil, the harvest is the end of the world, (of the present aion) and the reapers are the angels." "For Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this present world," or the vain and transitory things of the aion which precedes the judgment day and the complete establishment of the Messiah's kingdom. "Now all

these things happened unto them for examples, and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world, (of this aion or order of things) are come."

It is natural and important to inquire, how the Jews came to attach this signification to a word, which properly denotes unlimited duration. The answer is easy. By dividing duration into two periods, calling one the present age and the other the age to come, they do not necessarily restrict either to the limitations of measurable time. The former age comprehends the present with all past periods, the latter age extends through all which are to come. One extends from ever

lasting, the other to everlasting each is a proper eternity. As, however, aion is the name of periods antecedent to the happy reign of the Messiah, it often assumes a more limited sense, being sometimes employed without reference to the successions of time for the things of this world, and sometimes for the period of human life. When this use of the word and its origin are considered, it appears that the exceptions to its literal import are very rare. In the instances cited above of its limited signification and in every other in which duration is expressed, it might be translated eternity. "Who shall not receive manifold more in the present time, and in the world to come (in the eternity to come) life everlasting." Here, then, I may again demand, if the common use of a word is to decide its meaning in its particular applications, whether eternal punishment is not taught in the following and similar passages. "These are wells without water, clouds that are carried with a tempest, to whom the mist of darkness is reserved forever." The evidence on which the question is to be decided, is this;-Aion is used two or three times for the universe and several times for the things of this world. In