forth as one of the essential articles of the faith, we find that it reposes almost entirely on the doubtful interpretation, in a single passage, of a single word, which in far the larger proportion of passages where it occurs in the Bible, cannot possibly bear the meaning commonly put upon it in this particular text. We must, we are told, believe in the endless punishment of the wicked, because in one verse in St. Matthew's Gospel, 'the punishment of the cursed equally with the life of the 'righteous is called everlasting.' We do not now dwell on the real meaning of the Greek and Hebrew words translated 'ever'lasting' in this or in any other passages. We do admit as the obvious fact that the true meaning of Our Lord's parable where this solemn warning occurs is not to determine the nature of the future state, but to recognise the just deserts of those who, however unconsciously, have served Him by serving His brethren, and of those who, amidst whatever professions, have neglected the practical duties of life. However this may be,

it is certain that the true Christian belief in the blessedness of the good rests not on the sense of any single word, or of any single text, but on the conviction pressed upon us alike by conscience and by the whole tenour of Scripture, that God's essential attributes are unchangeable-that of all His attributes none is more essential or more unchangeable than His love for those who love Him, and His desire to recover those who have gone astray from Him. It is the love of God and the fear of God, the love of goodness and the hatred of sin, not the hope of heaven or the fear of hell, that in the Bible are made the foundations of human action-the way to eternal life. The excellent men who put forward the Oxford Declaration could hardly have weighed the whole force of their expression when they entreated their younger brethren, 'for the love of God,' and 'in common with the whole Catholic Church,' to sign a statement which, if taken literally, was (as they were reminded in a remarkable letter from a High Churchman of no wavering faith), 'making private and heretical opinions the measure of 'the Church's faith-defining where neither the Catholic Church ' nor the Scriptures have defined.' 'You assert,' 9 he proceeds, 'that eternity

'must be understood in precisely the same sense of the creature as of the Creator, of evil as of good, of union to Satan as of union to God. Surely a very little thought might have taught you better. The words "eternal" and "everlasting," or phrases answering to

" Letter of the Rev. Archer Gurney to the Editor of the Daily News.

these, are constantly used in a relative sense in the Old Testament Scriptures with reference to Jewish ordinances designed to pass away, and they signify "indefinite and continuous," until superseded by a higher law or principle, never tending to come to an end of themselves. It is necessary to teach learned men like you that whatever begins in time may also know an end in time; that there is this essential and infinite difference between the eternity of good and of evil-that the one has never begun, but was from all eternity; that the other has begun, and may therefore end; that it is nothing less than blasphemous to draw comparisons between the eternity of the everlasting Son of God and the relative eternity of his sinful creatures; that evil having nothing Divine in it is essentially finite, not infinite; that it consists in rebellion to the will of God, and has no inherent endless vitality; that the happiness of the blessed rests not on a word or a syllable, but on their perfect union with God, who is infinite life and joy; that we have no "data" whatever on which to ground the assertion that the eternity of sin, of pain, and of evil, is equally unlimited, absolute, and infinite; that these are "the deep things of God" which really wise men will not seek to fathom or define too closely; that Catholics content themselves with using the language of Scripture and the creeds without attempting to do what the whole Catholic Church never has done, sound the limits and take the accurate measure of that love of Christ, concerning which an inspired Apostle prays for his brethren that they might be able to comprehend "what is the breadth, and length, "and depth, and height, and know that love of Christ which passeth "knowledge!"›

'All honour to the wise laymen, therefore, who, in our highest court of appeal, with the assistance of the three highest ecclesiastial assessors of the land, have delivered on these grave questions a sound and Catholic judgment, against which you are now urging an heretical, a disloyal, and a most unhappy movement; disturbing the hearts and minds of Christ's people, exciting the weak, practically, to the desertion of our communion, and driving all young, generous, and noble spirits into scepticism and open infidelity.'

It was no sceptical philosopher, no rationalist theologian, but the most devout and saintly of the 'most Christian kings,' to whom, as it was believed by his contemporaries, was vouchsafed the vision, in which his envoys met, by the shores of Palestine, a woman of stately form approaching them, with a brazier of burning coals in one hand, and a vase of water in the other. They asked her who she was, and what she bore in her hand. 'I am,' she answered, 'the Christian Religion-and I ( come with these burning coals to dry up the rivers of Paradise, ' and with these streams of water to quench the fires of hell, 'that henceforth mankind may serve me for myself alone-may 'hate sin and cleave to good, for the love of God and for the

'love of goodness.' A bold, perhaps too bold, conception, but representing a truth on which all Christian teachers would do well to meditate. It is not in the interests of philosophy, but in the interests of Religion herself, that we are bound to avoid exaggerated statements of the details of that future state, which transcends all human thought. It is from relying not on the dictates of a presumptuous reason, but on the revelations of the nature of God made in the Bible itself, that we shrink from closing for ever that door of hope which He in His infinite mercy, not in one passage only, but in many of the Sacred Scriptures, has appeared to some of the holiest and purest Christians to leave open. The Bible is either silent, or speaks with a voice which conveys to some the brighter, as to others the darker, conclusion. The Church in its formal documents is silent altogether. The Forty-second Article, affirming the harsher doctrine, has been long ago struck out of the Articles of the English Church. The clergy waver in their own teaching respecting it. Those (if any there be) who really hold it, and really teach it, can hold and teach it now more effectively, from the fact that they will be known to do so, not from any imaginary compulsion of the law, but from their own unbiassed convictions. Now that the liberty to teach and to think freely on this mysterious subject is openly allowed and avowed, we doubt not that the true Biblical doctrine, whatever it is, will, through the manifold fluctuations of human belief respecting it, be at last clearly and consistently set forth.

ness.

There remains the question, perhaps in itself the most thorny of all—and that which appeared most directly to inLiberty on fringe on the language of the Articles-the doctrine the question of 'transfer by merit;' or as it is sometimes called, of Imputed Righteous of substitution,' or of 'imputed righteousness.' Unlike the questions of Inspiration, and of Future Punishment-on which subjects no one has pretended that any Article has expressly spoken, and on which all the allegations in the recent controversies were drawn only by way of remote inference-here was a doctrine, to which one Article at least distinctly and exclusively refers. There is no Article on Inspiration. There is no Article on Hell Fire. But there is an Article on the doctrine of Justification by Faith only. In this great Article, however, the Judgment has ruled that we must not, or we need not, interpret its language beyond the exact letter of what it lays down. It asserts, so say all the Judges, that we are justified 'for the merits,' it does not assert that we are justified by the transfer of the merits of Christ.'

H

We might have thought that no part of the Judgment would have provoked a more determined resistance from the whole Puritanical party in the Church, than this announcement that no theory of transferred or imputed righteousness is involved in the Article of a falling or standing Church.' But here came in the advantage of the union between the two contending parties. To High Churchmen as to Roman Catholics, imputed righteousness is a heresy. Their co-operation could be secured by their ancient enemies only at the cost of not raising once more this ancient feud. Not entirely without a struggle, but with a struggle so faint as to have left no traces behind, every protest on this point was abandoned. This part, perhaps the most important part of the whole Judgment, has been received without a murmur; and the voice, or the silence, of the whole English clergy has acquiesced in the clearance of these entangling and vexatious theories from the great doctrine of the Redemption of man. We will not dwell on the lasting benefits of this particular result of the Judgment; but we are satisfied that they will, in a few years, be acknowledged even by that party, or, more properly speaking, that class of mind, which has hitherto most eagerly caught at such theories, as though they were the very bulwarks of the Faith. Firmly compacted as the popular theology seemed to be on this special point, on none, we are convinced, is it more entirely (to use the sacred phrase) 'decaying and waxing old, and ready to vanish away;' and we are, therefore, proportionably thankful that nothing has occurred in the recent Judgment to stand in the way of this peaceful and gradual disappearance of scholastic forms, which only commended themselves to the truly devout mind because of the Eternal Truth they represented, a truth which will shine out more clearly than ever, now that it is disencumbered, in law as well as in fact, from the theories which disfigured and concealed it.

That on each of these three questions, the conclusions of the clergy, at present so fluctuating and unsettled, should thus be left free to form themselves, is in itself an immense boon. As our great historian describes the unconscious benefits of the Peace of Ryswick, so we doubt not that when the immediate pressure and panic of the moment have passed away, every English clergyman, even in the most secluded parish, or amidst the most arduous pastoral work, will find his course easier, and be made aware, without knowing the cause, that the atmosphere has become lighter and the heavens brighter. He will find weapons of attack against his neighbours not so ready at hand 1 Macaulay's Hist. of England, vol. iv. p. 810.

as they used to be; he will find the means of agreement and mutual co-operation increased tenfold. Controversy perhaps will still roll on, but it will not be embittered by the taunts of dishonesty and unfaithfulness to a Church which has now proclaimed itself able and willing to bear the shock of free inquiry. It will be recognised that the Articles which would have admitted the doubts of Calvin, and the difficulties of Luther, on the Sacred Books, and the Prayer-book which was read with a safe conscience by Archbishop Tillotson, have not closed the doors against their spiritual descendants. We shall have lost the expensive luxury of prosecutions, but we shall have gained the blessings of truth and peace. 'And the land had rest 'forty years.'

No Judgment of the ancient Church on Biblical

There is a yet wider benefit conferred by this decision than anything which merely affects the interests of a single Church. Had the Privy Council stereotyped the theory of Literal Inspiration, of Endless Punishment, and of Merit by Transfer, it would have done more to separate the English Church from universal Christendom Criticism. than any act of our Church since the Reformation. Down to this time, these questions have been, by God's good providence, kept open in all the great and ancient Churches of the world. Take them in order. Look first at the subject of Biblical Inspiration and Interpretation. There is not a word respecting it in the ancient creeds. There has not been a decree respecting it in any single Council, ancient or modern. The question of what was or what was not to be a part of Scripture clamoured for solution in the first four centuries even more imperatively than it does now. Not merely individual against individual, but Church against Church, maintained a different Canon of Scripture. Books received by the Church of Rome were rejected by the Church of Alexandria, and books received by the Church of Alexandria were rejected by the Church of Rome. Interpretations resolving nearly the whole of the Old Testament history into allegory, obtained a predominance and authority such as they have never obtained since, even in Germany. During this crisis were convened the first, second, third, and fourth General Councils, the only authorities external to itself in any way recognised by the Church of England, as competent to determine what is and what is not heresy. By them not a decree was framed, not a word was uttered, on this urgent question. From the question even of defining the limits of the Canon, those august authorities seem to have shrunk almost as if in terror. A legend, which ascribes such a deter