the judgment their full punishment should begin, wicked men have no ground of hope that they will escape a similar fate.

There is no term in classical Greek, St. Peter could have employed to express future punishment that would have conveyed the thought with greater accuracy and force to the common mind than this word Tartarus. The connection in which it is used leaves no room to doubt the meaning he attached to it.

It is clear that these words of pagan origin, though not primarily referring to the place of future punishment, were used in a metaphorical sense by Christ and His apostles to express the truth they wished to teach on this subject. They had long been in popular use with this metaphorical meaning when Christ employed them, and He must have known how they would be understood by those to whom He spoke. The absence of any word of definition, or of limitation, is proof that He used them with the meaning commonly applied to them.

The strength of the argument for the doctrine of future punishment is not in terminology, but in the general drift, and in the clear and explicit statements of the Word of God. I have given so much space to the subject because the opponents of this doctrine have made a great point of the technical quibble that the words employed do not primarily mean what, in all

Christian ages, they have been employed to mean. We do not dispute this point, except with reference to the last term, Tartarus, but maintain that sacred and profane history, as well as the circumstances of the biblical use of these words, show that they were for many centuries employed with the metaphorical signification which we give them. General usage and the clear intention of an author in employing a word, and not its primary etymological meaning, must determine its signification. Upon this principle these words become powerful buttresses to the wall of evidence already built up in the last chapter, against which all the enemies of the truth of God may rage in vain.

Logical order might seem to require the treatment of aw and two at this point, but I prefer to consider them in connection with the question of the endlessness of future punishment in a subsequent chapter.

CHAPTER V.

NATURE AND EXTENT.

IF the fact of future punishment is fully established in our minds, we naturally desire to know something of its nature and extent, for the gravity of the question must turn upon these points. If it is light, and of short duration, the discussion is of small importance; if severe and eternal, it becomes the most stupendous and thrilling question of time.

It is not the purpose of revelation, and it certainly is not within the power of reason, to give a clear view of the details and circumstances of our future state. The broad outlines are given, a rough sketch is drawn, general principles are announced, light and shadow distinctly appear, but a definite and detailed description of the state of the righteous or of the wicked in the future world is wisely withheld. It is clear that the one are blessed, the other cursed; that the one dwell in light, the other in darkness; that the one abide in God's presence, the other are cast out from it. But beyond this we may know but little, as indeed it is not needful that we should. We may trace the out

lines of the continents, seas, mountains, and plains of the future world if we may not enter its cities, walk its streets, sit down in its homes, observe its occupations, nor comprehend its polity.

A few things, however, concerning future punishment are made very plain by the light of reason and revelation. It is clearly manifest that an essential and most terrible element in the doom of the wicked consists in banishment from God's presence. This is expressed in the passages of Scripture which represent condemned souls as excluded from "the kingdom of heaven," as "cast out into outer darkness," and as “excluded from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power.'

To be excluded from the "kingdom of heaven" is to be denied the presence of its King, the protection of its laws, the shelter of its government, the enjoyment of its society, and to wander aimlessly through the eternal darkness which lies beyond its utmost borders. What it is to be without God, without the glory of His personal presence, without the light of His smile, the expression of His love, the bounty of His hand, no tongue can tell and no imagination conceive. It is presented to us as something unutterably terrible. To be consciously cast out from the source of all goodness,

1 2 Thess. i. 9.

truth, beauty, and holiness, to be forever repelled from Him by a conscious antagonism of natures, must, as the soul in the light of eternity comes to a more lively appreciation of its moral and spiritual relations, overwhelm it with a sense of irretrievable loss and ruin.

To be without the protection and support of the laws of the "kingdom of heaven," can mean only that the soul is under their condemnation and penalty. Every law in the universe pierces him with the sting with which its author armed it, and lays on his back the lash with which it was commissioned to chastise all who insulted its majesty or disputed its authority. Terrible is the visitation of wrath upon the soul, when every law of the universe, outraged and insulted, takes up arms against it, to cast it out into the regions of night and chaos, where no ray of light enters, and no law of gracious help extends its friendly hand.

To be cast out of the society of the "children of the kingdom," to herd or roam in a lawless community with those who chose to be without law and rejected a merciful and gracious sovereign, will be a doom of such unutterable horror as to awaken eternal regret in the hardest heart.

In the language of Scripture, to be lost is to be "cast out into outer darkness," into a place never penetrated