I. The facts are these. In the New Testament the words κpivw, κρίσις, and κρίμα occur some 19o times; the words κατακρίνω, κατάKρiσis, Kатáкρiμa occur twenty-four times, and yet there are only fifteen places out of more than 200 in which our translation has deviated from the proper renderings of "judge and "condemn," into “damn” and its cognates. It is singular that they should have used "damnation" only for the milder words «plois and píμa.

This single fact ought to be decisive to every candid mind; but it is worth while to point out how disastrous-how more than disastrous, how fatal-in some passages that divergence has been.

a. 2. Pet. ii. I. "Damnable heresies" should be "heresies of destruction" (ảπwλeías), i.e. destructive heresies. The inaccurate rendering has done much to add fuel to the already too fierce fires of intolerance. The same remark applies to 2 Thess. ii. 12, where "all might be damned" is " may be judged ” (κριθῶσι).

B. Matt. xxiii. 13, Mark xii. 40, Luke xx. 47. "Ye (they) shall receive the greater damnation." Our Lord used no such words. He said περισσότερον κρίμα, “ a severer judgment.”

7. Matt. xxiii. 33. "How shall ye escape the damnation of hell?" What Christ said was something utterly different,—"the judgment of Gehenna."

8. Mark iii. 29. Is in danger of eternal damnation." What Christ said was "shall be liable to, shall incur the risk of―æonian sin ” (leg. ἁμαρτήματος).

e. Mark xvi. 16. "But he that believeth not shall be damned." What Christ said was "but, disbelieving, he shall be condemned." (Further, the passage is of dubious authenticity.)

S. John v. 29. "They that have done evil to the resurrection of judgment" (кpíσews, not even kaтaкplμaтos). The English version is here just as little justifiable as if in Matt. x. 15, &c., it had spoken. of "the day of damnation."

7. No less disastrous in their consequences are some of these

renderings in St. Paul's Epistles. In Rom. iii. 8 render "whose judgment (épíσis) is just." In Rom. xiii. 2 render “they shall receive to themselves judgment" (xpíσi).

to

0. In 1 Cor. xi. 29 who would imagine that St. Paul meant that every unworthy communicant eats and drinks "damnation" himself? How many have been utterly terrified from the blessings of the Holy Communion, and have therefore been robbed of the highest means of spiritual grace by the deplorable reproduction of this mistranslation in our Communicn Service? All that St. Paul said was that a man who eats and drinks unworthily, by not discriminating the Lord's body, eats and drinks judgment to himself (κρίμα). On the shipwreck of sense caused by obliterating the distinctions of κρίνω, διακρίνω, κατακρίνω in this passage, see Lightfoot On Revision, p. 85.

1. I. Tim. v. 12. Why are English readers left unprotected to the dreadful perversion involved in saying that young widows who marry again "have damnation," whereas in vs. 14 he recommends them to do so? St. Paul merely says "incurring judgment," which is perhaps explicable by 1 Cor. vii. 28, 40.

K. Rom. xiv. 23. "He that doubteth is damned if he eat"-i.e. damned for neglecting the mere scruple of a weak conscience! St. Paul says that if a man does not judge himself (ὁ μὴ κρίνων ἑαυτόν) in that which he alloweth he is happy; but if he eats in spite of a distinct scruple, he has been condemned (kaтakékpital),—obviously by his own conscience.

II. Of the renderings of Hades, Tartarus, and Gehenna, I have already spoken in the preface,1 and will here only repeat that "hell" has entirely changed its old harmless sense of "the dim underworld," 2 and that meaning as it now does to myriads of readers, "a

I See too Lightfoot On Revision, p. 79.

2" Helan" is "to cover." Archb.shop Usher says that in Ireland "to hell the head" is to cover the head, and a hellier is a slater. In Hudibras the word is used for the place where the tailor throws his shreds. The word must have

place of endless torment by material fire into which all impenitent souls pass for ever after death,"-it conveys meanings which are not to be found in any word of the Old or New Testament for which it is presented as an equivalent. In our Lord's language Capernaum was to be thrust down not "to hell," but to the silence and desolation of the grave (Hades); the promise that "the gates of Hades " should not prevail against the Church is perhaps a distinct implication of her triumph even beyond death in the souls of men for whom He died; Dives uplifts his eyes, not "in hell," but in the intermediate Hades, where he rests till the resurrection to a judgment, in which signs are not wanting that his soul may meanwhile have been ennobled and purified. The "damnation of hell" is the very different "judgment of Gehenna ;" and hell-fire is the "Gehenna of fire," an expression which on Jewish lips was never applied in our Lord's days to endless torment. Our translators are not, of course, responsible for the inferences drawn from words which have, since their day, changed their meaning; but our Revisers will be certain to bear in mind that "a good translator scrupulously abstains from introducing ideas of which the original contains no trace. "1 Of "everlasting" I have spoken in the next Excursus.

begun to assume its darkest sense in 1611, or the translators would not have altered "O Hell, where is thy victory?" I Cor. xv. 55.

1 Origen tells us (c. Cels. vi. 25) that finding the word "Gehenna " in the Gospels for the place of punishment, he made a special search into its meaning and histcry; and after mentioning (1) the valley of Hinnom, and (2) a purificatory fire (εἰς τὴν μετὰ βασάνων κάθαρσιν), he mysteriously adds that he thinks it unwise to speak without reserve about his discoveries. No one reading the passage can doubt that he means to imply the use of the word "Gehenna" among the Jews to indicate a terminable, and not an endless punishment. And he says in round terms that Celsus and others talked of Gehenna" in total ignorance of its real meaning; in which they have had many followers.

EXCURSUS III. (p. 79).

ON THE WORD αἰώνιος.

The word "æonian," though sanctioned by Mr. Tennyson in the lines

"Draw down æonian hills, and sow
The dust of continents to be,"

and though rendered very desirable by the sad confusion of eternity with the mere negative conception of endlessness, can perhaps hardly be naturalised. It is not worth while once more to discuss its meaning when it has been so ably proved by so many writers that there is no authority whatever for rendering it "everlasting," and when even those who, like Dr. Pusey, are such earnest defenders of the doctrine of an endless hell, yet admit that the word only means "endless within the sphere of its own existence," so that on their own showing the word does not prove their point, and is, for instance, powerless against those who hold the doctrine of Conditional Immortality.

It may be worth while, however, to point out once more to less educated readers that alwv, alúvios, and their Hebrew equivalents in all combinations are repeatedly used of things which have come and shall come to an end. Even Augustine admits (what, indeed, no one can deny) that in Scripture aiwv, alúvios must in many instances mean "having an end ;" and St. Gregory of Nyssa, who at least knew Greek, uses alúvios as the epithet of “an interval."

לְעוֹלָם pressions like

Thus in the Old Testament αἰών, αἰώνιος, and many such varieties of expression as eis alŵva aiŵvos, &c., which with the Hebrew exor Ty) Dhiy? (èπ aiŵva kal étɩ, in sæculum et ultra, "for ever and beyond!") are in our version rendered "for ever," or "for ever and ever ; but so far from necessarily implying endlessness, they are used of many Jewish ordinances which ceased centuries ago, such as the sprinkling of the lintel at the Passover (Ex. xii. 24), the Aaronic priesthood and its institutions (xxix. 9 ; xl. 15; Lev. iii. 17; Numb. xviii. 19); the inheritance given to Caleb (Josh. xiv. 9); Solomon's temple (1. Kings viii. 12, 13); the period of a slave's life (Deut. xv. 17, Job xli. 4); the burning of the fire upon the altar ("The fire shall ever be burning upon the altar; it shall never go out," Lev. vi. 13, &c.); and the leprosy of Gehazi (2 Kings v. 27). How purely figurative these phrases are may be seen by such passages as the following :-" The land thereof shall become burning pitch. It shall not be quenched night or day; the smoke thereof shall go up for ever" (Is. xxxiv. 9, 10). And so fully is this a recognised idiom that in Deut. xxiii. 3, 6, we find "for ever" put side by side with "till the tenth generation;" and though it is added "thou shalt not seek their peace and prosperity for ever," yet of the very Moabites and Ammonites of whom this is spoken we find a prophesy of peace and comfort in Jer. xlviii. 47 ; xlix. 6.

That the adjective alúvios is applied to some things which are "endless" does not of course for one moment prove that the word itself meant "endless;" and to introduce this rendering into many passages would be utterly impossible and absurd. To translate it in a few passages by "everlasting," when in the large majority of passages it is rendered "eternal," is a purely wanton and arbitrary variation, which unhappily occurs in one and the same verse (Matt. Xxxv. 46).

Our translators have naturally shrunk from such a phrase as "the