Νύκτα μὲν ἀέσαμεν, χαλεπὰ φρεσὶν ὁρμαίνοντες.

Odyssey, iii., 151.

'Aɛí, from this derivation, would present the idea of continuous being, of a going on, or succession; and as a particle of time, is ever used of that which is boundless or undefined; not so much that which cannot be bounded as that which is not bounded-which is not attempted to be defined, but is always considered as going on, on, on. 'Aɛí, therefore, alone, would not express the true idea of eternity, but only of endless or unbounded time. This flowing word must be connected with, and, as it were, anchored upon another of more stability; since stability and fixedness enter into the essential idea of eternity. This other word is the participle of that verb of existence which expresses, in its philosophical sense, the highest mode of being. One part of the compound, then, is boundless and unconfined; the other chains it to an eternal present, or, rather, since ☎v is of all tenses, altogether excludes the idea of time. It is thus that the Greek term approaches as near the true notion of eternity as it is in the power of language to bring us.

Although the human mind may fail to take in all that idea which alúv aims to express, still an apprehension of it may exist, sufficient, at least, to convince us that it contains nothing unreal, but has a solid foundation in the truth of things. We may approach it by negatives. Alúv is not time long or short, bounded or endless. It is not the opposite of time, but that of which xpóvos, or time, in our present state, is the moving image. (See remarks, page 223, and the comparison there referred to.) It may more properly be said to be the opposite of καιρός, οι πρόσκαιρος ; being thus used by the Apostle, 2 Corinthians, iv., 18, and in such a way as to exclude all cavil as to its extent, at least in that place. It is there the direct antithesis of temporal or temporary.

However difficult it may be for beings who can only

think in a series, to form a conception of that which necessarily excludes succession of thought, we are nevertheless driven, by the clearest decisions of that reason which often goes where the conceptive faculty cannot follow, to affirm that this is the state in which all things must be present to the Divine mind. If to this we apply the term aiúv, we have its perfect definition. We may be certain of its reality, although utterly unable to comprehend it. The idea of time is connected with an imperfection necessarily belonging to our present state, namely, an inability to entertain in the mind more than one thought at once. This gives rise to what is called the succession of ideas, constituting the measure of time; and this succession we apply even to those truths which, as reason plainly assures us, have no relation to time or the sequences of cause and effect. Nothing, on these abstruse points, could be more satisfactory than Plato's comparison and definition, to which we have before referred, and which may be found Timæus, 37, E.

Almost all our difficulties on the subject of endless being, and especially endless future punishment, arise from considering eternity, or alúv, as time infinitely prolonged, as endless succession or duration. This addresses itself to the imagination or conceptive power rather than to the reason, and hence this weak faculty of the soul faints and staggers under the attempt to realize what, as a conception of the sense, never can be realized. But the whole subject presents itself under quite a different aspect when we regard the future state not as the beginning of a prolonged period, having its own past and future, but as a transition into eternity as a condition differing not merely in degree, but in its very nature, from the present world of time. When the revolving mirror of Chronos, which now represents all things in motion, has ceased its revolutions, either in respect to the whole or each man individually, the landscape

66

years,

of eternity, with all its fearful states, becomes in experience, as it ever had been in reality, fixed and motionless—ȧkívητα, ἀμετάστατα, ἀεὶ κατὰ ταὐτὰ ἔχοντα. There will be no endless succession of years and periods, which, in every effort of the mind to grasp them, only present, over and over again, the same difficulties of comprehension, and, instead of a true idea, give rise only to a painful* and imperfect conception of the sense. "For days, and nights, and months, and and all other successions of time," says Plato, were not before the heaven existed. The past, the present, and the future are but temporal forms, which we ignorantly and incorrectly attribute to the eternal ovoía, or essence. For we say was, and is, and will be, when IS (OT) alone pertains to æonian being, while was and will be belong to that flowing yéveois, or generation, which exists in time. For they are motions (kɩvýσɛs), but the eternal is, in respect to these, immoveable; never younger, never older, having no past and no future”—Tò dè ảɛì KATÀ TAỶTÀ ἔχον ἀκινήτως, οὔτε πρεσβύτερον, οὔτε νεώτερον προσήκει γίγνεσθαί ποτε, οὐδὲ γεγονέναι, οὐδ ̓ εἰσαῦθις ἔσεσθαι. Timæus, 38, A.

Change and succession may be said to form the predominating characteristics of the present flowing phenomenal world. In eternity, all is just the reverse. There, to use language derived from the old Ionic problem, all things will stand. The things which are seen are temporal, probationary, preparatory (πрóσкαιра). The things which are unseen are eternal (aiúvia), fixed, immutable, without succession.

The word alúv is undoubtedly used in the Greek

* In nothing is this more fully realized than in the efforts sometimes made by preachers and others to convey what they call an idea of eternity; as, for example, from an ocean of drops, or the space of the solar system filled with grains of sand, and those multiplied by myriads and millions of centuries. By such immensities of numbers the mind is wearied and exhausted, but never brought a hair's breadth nearer the object at which it aims.

poetry in the indefinite sense of life, existence, or state of being; and there are also some passages in the Scriptures where it is taken figuratively in a lower signification of age or dispensation, although even these are grounded on the higher and radical import; but this we affirm with confi dence, that the restorationist can derive no aid from these specimens of Platonic usage, and, in fact, nothing could be more utterly opposed to all his views of change, reformation, or restoration in the eternal state. We conclude with a definition of alúv, derived from the high authority of Aristotle. It contains more reference to succession than that of Plato, but yet is directly in the way of all attempts to limit the meaning of this illimitable word. He is speaking of the super-celestial, or extra-mundane state, and whatever we may think of its reality, there can be no doubt about the force of the Greek terms by which he attempts to set it forth. "Time," he says, "is the number of motion, but above the heaven it has been shown that time cannot exist. There, there is no growing old, neither is there any change, but all is immutable, all is impassible, and having the best and most satisfying life (ζωὴν ἀρίστην καὶ τὴν αὐτ ταρκεστάτην), continues for all eternity (τὸν ἅπαντα αἰῶva); and this its name is divinely declared to us from the ancients (θείως ἔφθεγκται παρὰ τῶν ἀρχαίων). For that end which contains the period of each existence is called its aiúv (ævum, age, or being). According to the same reason or definition-κατὰ τὸν αὐτὸν λόγον, καὶ τὸ τοῦ παντὸς οὐρανοῦ τέλος, καὶ τὸ τὸν πάντων ἄπειρον χρόνον καὶ τὴν ἀπειρίαν περιέχον τέλος, 'ΑΙΩΝ ἐστιν, ἀπὸ τοῦ 'ΑΕΙ ΕΙΝΑΙ εἰληφὼς τὴν ἐπωνυμίαν, ἀθάνατος καὶ θεῖος—that which constitutes the enclosing limit of the whole heaven or universe, that which embraces the infinite period, and the infinity of all things-that is alúv, ETERNITY, taking its hame from EVER BEING, immortal and divine." Arist., De Cœlo, lib. i., c. ix., 10. Compare, also, The Laws, iv.,

715, P., where Plato speaks of the Eternal Justice, which always follows as an avenger of crimes committed against the Divine law (тov dɛíov vóμov tiμwpós), and in commenting on which the scholiast thus defines the word πɛρiπορευόμενος, namely, τὸ αἰωνίως—το 'Αεὶ ὡσαύτως καὶ κατὰ τὰ αὐτά· ἡ γὰρ περιφορὰ τοῦτο ἔχει.

LVI.

Plato's Doctrine of the Freedom of the Will, viewed in Connexion with the Law of Cause and Effect in Nature.

PAGE 60, LINE 11. Μεμηχάνηται δὴ πρὸς πᾶν τοῦτο, κ. T. 2.-" He devises this in reference to the whole, namely, what kind of a situation everything which becomes of a certain quality must receive and inhabit." That is, the πolóTηs or quality which, in the course of generation, anything assumes, must determine the quality of its final habitation. The establishment and enforcement of this law God has reserved to himself as his peculiar prerogative, while, as we are told in the following sentence, he has left to our own wills, τὰς αἰτίας τῆς γενέσεως τοῦ ποιοῦ τινὸς—the causes of becoming such or such. (See note 10, page 60.) In other words, he has so ordered the course of nature, by a sort of pre-established harmony, that it constantly enforces this law, while the power of becoming the subjects of its rewards or penalties is left to the freedom of our own wills. The sentiment is about the same with that of Pope:

And binding nature fast in fate,

Left free the human will.

We cannot find much fault with this in the heathen Plato, and the doctrine is undoubtedly true of man viewed as unfallen, and in that primitive state when his will was truly free, because it was one with the will of God. The Christian theology, however, does require us to modify the prop