the goat, and the ram, into their six halves, which he so places over against each other as to form a path for the living through the dead.

These preparations complete, nothing remains but for Abram to wait the appearance of the Divine Messenger who has heretofore manifested Himself, and at whose bidding these provisions have been made. Some time elapses, probably extending to several hours, and still the Glorious One delays. Thus, after the stir and care of the morning, Abram has leisure given him to collect his thoughts, to reaffirm his faith and willinghood, and to exercise afresh the patience for which he has already found much need. While standing thus in solemn readiness to enter into compact with God, birds of prey come down upon the carcases-an evil omen ! Even thus would irrational disorder, violence, voracity, and uncleanness, defile all holy things, mar all sacrifices, devour all feasts, and drag all honour and beauty in the dust. This must not be. Not so lightly does Abram regard Divine worship, not so careless is he as to the issue of this expected climax of all his fellowship heretofore with Deity, that he can stand by and witness such desecration. He drives off the birds of prey.

And still the Coming One cometh not; and by this time the shadows are lengthening, and night draws on apace. Soon will the sun withdraw into his chamber in the west, and leave those shadows to gather, beneath which the hungry vultures may work their obscene will, and the worshipper be powerless to hinder them. And, besides, what with his previous night's walk beneath the stars, and his morning's early rising and active work in preparing the sacrifices, and now the long watching protracted until nightfall, Abram has grown weary; and, unable longer to hold out, sinks helpless upon the green sward into a profound slumber. He may have feared such an issue, and dreaded to be caught sleeping at his post, and so gone off into an uneasy, apprehensive sleep, deep but not restful. The darkness of the outer night goes with him into his dreams. There is darkness within; a nameless, overmastering dread steals over him and more and more possesses him. As light is the symbol of God, darkness fitly serves to steep the soul in a sense of being forsaken, cut off, cast away from the Divine Parent of good. O Abram ! where is now thy God? Thou hast waited long for Him, and waited in vain! Not a ray of light is seen. The stars may be numberless, but every one of them is hid.

It does not at once appear what was the design for which this deep sleep and dark dread came upon Abram. But, whatever may have been the full purport of the singular visitation, there can be no doubt that it had the effect of preparing Abram for the evil tidings which were now disclosed to him, and which appear to have been conveyed to him while he was yet in the deep sleep. The information imparted was at once distressing and instructive. It must have caused him a sharp pang to learn that evil fortunes awaited the seed for which he had so much longed. His descendants, so far from taking early possession of Canaan, would become sojourners in some other land than this-a land of aliens, never destined like this good land to become their own. After a while those descendants would be enslaved and ill-used to such a degree as to bring down Divine judgment on the oppressors. Sad news, this!

And significant as sad. Thus rudely must be rocked the cradle of the

promised great and mighty nation. The seed that is to bring the blessing must itself first feel the curse; must be enslaved and then redeemed to qualify it for its mission. A Messiahnic colouring lies on the view. The seed that bruises the serpent's head must itself be bruised or bitten in the heel. "When Israel was a youth then I loved him, and out of Egypt I called My son (Hosea xi. 1; compare Exodus iv. 22, 23; Jer. xxxi. 9): words fulfilled in the nation Israel, and then also fulfilled in the Christ (Matt. ii. 15). It was painful to hear of, but it was divinely wise and according to a well-adjusted plan of action, that Abram's seed should go down into Egypt and suffer there. It was equally wise that, in the prospect, Abram himself should suffer at once, by anticipatory fellowship with those who were to spring from his loins. How must this noble man have been beloved of God, to be thought worthy of a discipline so sharp, so refined!

Abram is in good hands. "Sorrow may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning." A symbolic morning will not be long before it breaks in upon Abram's night of terror; and even now, before his night is ended, some solace is given, for he is told that his own life's day shall yet be well extended, and its lengthening shadows shall be mingled with the mellow light of an honourable, and prosperous, and blessed old age. He has leave given him to picture the happiness yet awaiting him of beholding his son and his son's sons ministering to his wants and hanging upon his words; until at length he shall be dismissed from his post, and be permitted to depart to the company of those who have gone before to await the Awakening Kinsman's advent.

So far, the Divine communication, made to Abram, as we conceive, while his wonderful sleep was still upon him. At length the sleeper awakes to discover that, so far is he from being forgotten and forsaken, on the contrary his sacrificial preparations are now to be honoured by a most solemn and striking covenanting ceremonial. While he has been involved in the toils of his dismal dreaming, his Divine Friend, Yehweh Himself in majestic manifestation, has come to the trysting-place; has, in fact, entered into the path of death; and there, midway, has taken His station to meet him, and enter with him into a covenant never to be forgotten. For, on opening his eyes, Abram beholds a significant spectacle, even a smoking furnace, giving light enough to make the surrounding darkness and its own smoke-wreaths visible; a smoking furnace, as if for the purpose of consuming and sending up to heaven the divine portion of the covenant sacrifices; a smoking furnace, telling the same solemn story of sin and its penalty, of divine holiness and its determination against sin, which has been told at all altars ever since the day when the cherubic throne was placed at the gate of paradise.

A lamp of fire is also seen, probably not as a distinct symbol; for the original text resolves the furnace and the lamp into a grammatical unit (literally: "which—it has passed between these pieces "), and thereby the statement naturally lends itself to the striking conception that the same object is both furnace and lamp; that is, the same fire is now lurid with smoke, and then becomes clear and bright; in other words, is first the dismaying, destroying, refining, and sublimating fire of holiness, and then the cheering and guiding, the friendly and festive light of love. Even as, in later times, though in separate symbols, there were the altar

of sacrifice and the lamp of service and hospitality, from which and by which the priest passed into the most holy place; as also, when there, he found the altar and the lamp united in one, after a higher fashion in the glory which rested upon the mercy-seat, and from which He who dwelt between the cherubim did, on the basis of accepted propitiation and with beaming brightness breaking through the rifts of the clouds of incense, shine forth. Which Divine displays of holy love in the Temple we can readily believe to have been so characteristic and sacred as that nothing could be more natural to a Hebrew prophet than to describe the Almighty One as "Yehweh, whose fire is in Zion, and His furnace in Jerusalem" (Isa. xxxi. 9; compare Ezek. i. 13).

If this be something like the meaning of the furnace-lamp, set down here in the midst of sacrifices; and if it was given to Abram to lay hold of its significance-and if it was not, its appearance to him was superfluous-then the whole occasion becomes luminous with a concentration of truth and grace which makes it a panorama of redemption. The whole course of holy mercy through sacrificial sin-bearing is laid open to Abram's view. He has, in a manner, been through the bitterness of death, and been raised again with a great awakening. He has also seen how the divine fire has burned to consume, and then beamed forth to cheer and bless. He has thus, in both ways, been shown the path of life through death, up into the divine presence where are fulness of joy and pleasures for evermore. The shadows of death have encompassed him; the light of resurrection has dawned. What he has not now he shall have hereafter. He may go to his fathers in due course; but the deep sleep of death will not last for ever, whereas The Covenant will be not only ordered in all things and sure, but it will be abiding; as witness the uplifted right hand of Him who, because He can swear by no greater, swears by Himself, saying, "As I LIVE!"

And this brings us to say that, though the narrative does not record the covenant-oath as at this time uttered, yet must we understand that it was not really lacking. We have seen (1) that the words "covenant" and "oath" are synonymous; (2) that the ceremonial of dividing victims in twain was understood to lead up to the consummating act of swearingin the covenant; and now (3) we may give references which formally attest that the land was conveyed by oath: Gen. xxiv. 7; 1. 24; Exod. vi. 8; xxxiii. 1; Deut. i. 8; to which several others might be added.

Thus, then, is the promise of the land confirmed by solemn compact to Abram for his seed, as an everlasting possession. Thus is the seed itself still more assured; and with the land and seed, the outspreading of the Divine blessing is provided for; a channel is marked out through which Yehweh can put Himself into the bond, and bind a privileged seed and a ransomed world to Himself for ever. Abram asked how he was to understand his possessing the land. Here is the answer.

JOSEPH B. ROTHERHAM.

133

CONCERNING MATT. XXV. 46.

"These shall go away into everlasting punishment; but the righteous into life eternal."

THI

THIS is often taken as a "ruling" passage in support of the doctrine of eternal suffering, and therefore demands our special attention. At the outset we remark several objections against the inference. 1. The passage in 1 Thess. i. 7-9 is parallel, describing the same judgment scene; and the "destruction" there named will as naturally define the "punishment" named here, as it will be defined by it. And more naturally, if rare words should be explained by words more common. 2. Granting, for argument's sake, that "punishment" implies conscious suffering, it may be called "everlasting" with reference to its irreparable effect. Thus Psa. xxxiii. 17: "Let them be confounded and troubled for ever; let them be put to shame and perish." 3. The phrase "everlasting fire," used in verse 41, as already shown, denotes the eternity of effect. Whether the expression in verse 46 be taken in the same sense or not, it should not disagree with it. 4. The life which is contrasted suggests that the punishment may be strictly death. Whereas the common view deduces immortality from that which is opposed to "life eternal." 5. Various orthodox writers allow that final extinction would be an eternal punishment. 6. Besides these facts, which are more or less obvious, we hope to show that the word rendered "punishment" (kolasis) does not require the sense of conscious suffering.

We shall not at all insist on the acknowledged fact that the word eternal (aionois) is often used in a limited sense. Yet we might show a strong or even satisfactory argument for such a limitation, if the passage were not better explained otherwise. The common remark that the word is used in the absolute sense in the same verse, and that therefore the endless life of the righteous and the endless punishment of the wicked must stand or fall together, is not valid; for the general sense of "lifelong," or "during the continuance of the subject," which the word aionois doubtless bears, would admit a corresponding distinction in the future of those who "live for ever" and those who "perish." Indeed, if kolasis means suffering, the limited sense, or else the "eternity of effect," would be fairly suggested by verse 41, as already shown. Moreover, the same phrase precisely is used by Philo in speaking of a very limited duration. He says, "It is better not to promise at all than not to render prompt assistance. For in the former case no blame follows: but in the latter there is dissatisfaction from the weaker class, and a deep hatred and lasting punishment (kolasis aionios-mortal resentment?) from such as are powerful." (Fragm. Opp. ii. 667, ed. Mangey.)

Nor shall we raise any question of the genuineness of the text. Yet if any one would rest an infinitely appalling doctrine on a word, one or two things should be said. Christ spoke not in Greek, but SyroChaldaic. And, granting the inspiration of the evangelist, no one can disprove-what many believe-that he wrote in Hebrew, and that the Greek of his gospel is an uninspired translation. And for kolasis the Ethiopic gives "judgment" (judicium-Walton); the old Latin version gives ignis (fire); and Augustine and others frequently read ambustionem or combustionem (burning); which shows how little the original term

was then relied on. We submit, therefore, that the conjecture of Dr. Mangey, that katalusis (annihilation) is the true reading, was not "impious," though kausis (burning), kolasis (cutting off), or krisis (judgment), would be more plausible as a conjecture. But we would not seem to dislike the received text. Nor shall we detain the reader with various senses of the word kolasis, such as “ chastisement," ""restraint," "abscission," which have been proposed. (See Debt and Grace, pp. 189, 190.) But we may express our surprise that so wary a writer as Mr. Laudis should give such countenance to the sense last named as he does, saying, "The final state of the lost is here designated by the singularly appropriate term kolasis; punishment by rejection, or cutting of from or by deprivation of that happiness which the saved enjoy." (Immort. of Soul, p. 480.) If for "happiness" Mr. L. had used Christ's own word " life," all that he adds about " 'going away into" such "deprivation" would not at all even suggest the immortality of these thus "cut off." The sentence "depart" is solemn, dramatic, and contemplates not an abode in God's universe for the wicked, but an execution.

That suffering is here implied is strongly asserted by the writer in the New Englander, May, 1856, p. 171, who says kolasis is a verbal noun denoting action, and not result, a noun of infliction. And this is argued from 1 John iv. 18, when it occurs in the phrase "fear hath torment ;" and from the Syriac, which gives in our passage a word rendered "torment" by Dr. Murdock.

But the Syriac will not prove the common view, even if it were an inspired version. For the word rendered" torment" has also the more general sense of "punishment;" and the verb also means to suppress, submerge, suffocate, strangle. It is rendered "punish" by Dr. Murdock in Acts iv. 21. And in 1 John iv. 18 the Syriac uses another word, rendered "existeth in peril." The Arabic also seems to have read kolousin, "constraint," which is preferred by Grotius and Schleusner. Hammond conjectures a similar word kolusin, "hindrance." Beausobre and L'Enfant explain the received reading thus: "Fear hath punishment ever before its eyes." The Vulgate gives simply paenam, "punishment." The translation of kolasis in 1 John iv. 18 by " torment" is nearly if not wholly without parallel, and is unsupported by the lexicographers. In Acts iv. 21 the verb kolazo occurs, and the context favours the sense of punishment with a view to "restraint" and prohibition. The work is used in one other place only in the New Testament, 2 Peter ii. 9. Here it occurs as a participle in the present tense (kolazomenous), rendered as future in our vorsion: "The Lord knoweth how to reserve the unjust unto the day of judgment to be punished." But the future tense is no more required by the context than by the word. The fourth verse is plainly parallel; the participle "to be reserved" (teroumenous, kept) there used is also in the present tense; and the same verb is in the past tense in the similar passage, Jude verse 6. If then the verb kolazo has at all the sense of to repress or restrain, the obvious and grammatical rendering here would be, "to reserve the unjust confined or restrained, unto the day of judgment." Yet ye shall not insist either on the sense of restraint, or on the present tense. We remark, however, that if the future tense be insisted on, that would indicate that the