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When Mr. Maurice, then, demands that eternity should be regarded, not as successive duration, but as a 'fixed state,' 'a state subject to no change or succession,' he is right; but why should he demand this characteristic, as he does, in opposition to the other? Why should the changelessness of the eternal state supersede its endlessness? He says, "The word alov, atas, specially serves this purpose. Like our own word "Period," it does not convey so much the impression of a line as of a 'circle; it does not suggest perpetual progress, but fixedness ' and completeness. The word aivios, or æternus, derived from 'this, seems to have been divinely contrived to raise us out of our time-notions-to suggest the thought of One who is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever.' All this may be so. But why should a particular mode in which infinite duration exists, exclude that duration's infinity; and the duration, because it is tota simul, not be interminabilis. It is evident that we can form no conception of such a state of being; but in the natural order of our thoughts, the idea of eternity as infinite comes first; the fixedness is only a characteristic of such infinity, to distinguish it from an infinity of earthly duration. Earthly time is in idea infinite, but it is an infinity of passing moments; this is unsuitable to the heavenly state, and therefore we pronounce the latter to be a fixed and permanent infinity; but it still is infinity. Mr. Maurice appeals to S. Augustine's description of eternity, as semper stans, and contrasted in that respect to the succession of past, present, and future in this life; but the semper stans of Augustine, like the tota simul of Boëtius, supposes the endlessness of eternity, and does not exclude it. He might, had he thought it worth while, have claimed, with greater right, the authority of Cudworth, who appears to deny the possibility of infinity in material things, and so to condemn the common idea of infinity altogether as spurious; though he nowhere pushes his extravagant principles, on this question, to a definite conclusion.

We have endeavoured to point out, and show the error of, the ground on which Mr. Maurice appears to have founded his interpretation of the word 'eternal." If we are wrong, however, in our conjecture as to what that ground is, we can onlyclaiming some indulgence for a misapprehension not unpardonable in a criticism upon a writer whose depth is certainly out of proportion with his perspicuity-fall back upon our first objection, that, upon whatever ground this interpretation may be raised, it is one which deprives the word eternal' of all meaning which the human mind can embrace or entertain. This is a fatal objection; but a simple negation of all meaning is, however bad a consequence in the case of a word evidently intended in Scripture to produce the most forcible impression

upon us-far from being the worst consequence of such an interpretation. Such a negation of meaning would, practically speaking, issue in a meaning but too definite and positive; and this interpretation would no sooner pass from the minds of philosophers and theologians, to those of common men, than it would become a simple doctrine of the limitation of future punishment. It has hardly escaped this further stage in Mr. Maurice's own hands; and still less would it do so, under the treatment which the mass would give it. Imagine a doctrine of eternal punishment pervading the world at large, which asserted that eternal did not mean endless,' or 'everlasting;' what is the immediate meaning which would be given to the word? The difficulty would be solved, you may depend upon it, with sufficient ease, and the popular mind would suffer no long suspense. Men would of course say,-If eternity is not infinite, it is finite. Nor would such a result be in our opinion less valid as logic, than it would be as plain common sense. Your very denial of endlessness is an appeal to our notions of time: but if you appeal to our notions of time, and reject time infinite, as applied to eternity, there can only remain time. finite.

Let those then who at all doubt the effects of such a doctrine in society, give Mr. Maurice the benefit of their doubt; but it would be doing great injustice to our own convictions, if we owned to any doubt at all on this subject. We can hardly dwell upon the effects of any general spread of such a doctrine, even in simple thought, without alarm. The release from the notion of eternal punishment would be felt by the great mass, as a relief from the sense of moral obligation, and, relying on the certainty that all would be sure to be right at last, men would run the risk of the intermediate punishment, whatever it might be, and plunge into self-indulgence without hesitation. It may be said, that men do this now under the belief in eternal punishments: they do-and there is no limit to the powers of imagination by which men can suppress the reasonable certainty of the future, and make the present everything. But the belief in eternal punishment is the true and rational concomitant of the sense of moral obligation. Destroy the punishment, and you destroy the sin: limit it, and you make sin a light thing. Moreover, the belief in eternal punishment, however suppressed, leaves a blank and dark ultimate prospect before the sinner's mind; but this prospect is removed by the limitation of punishment; and in the place of a cloudy termination of the view, which the sinner at any rate had rather have removed, and which therefore must so far operate as a stimulus to that change of life which alone can remove it, he has a bright

ultimate termination any how, whether he changes his way of life, or whether he does not: and, therefore, he loses a stimulus to change, which even the most careless must in some way feel. For even those, to whom eternal punishment is thus a mere negation and suppressed idea, had rather have a bright termination than this suppressed bad one before them. Conscious of his own religious convictions, and aspirations after holiness for its own sake, Mr. Maurice may not see these consequences involved in his doctrine; but the practical working of it, were it to gain ground, would soon force them upon his observation. A general relaxation of moral ties, a proclamation of liberty and security, the audacity of sins which had before been abashed, carelessness where there had been hesitation, obstinacy where there had been faltering, and defiance where there had been fear, would show a world in which the sanctions of morality and religion had been loosened, and in which vice had lost a controlling power, and got rid of an antagonist and a memento. Whether or not the form and manner of its act could have been improved, the Council of King's College has done a substantial duty to the Church and the nation, in suppressing at once a teaching that immediately interfered with the very foun dation of religion and morals. This is not a question of this or that particular doctrine, however important; but it is a question, whether we are to have religion at all amongst us, supported by its proper sanctions, and endowed with its legitimate stimulants and motives. To have stood by and done. nothing in such a case as this, would have been a betrayal of their trust, an abandonment of a charge which the Church has committed to them, and for the execution of which they are responsible to that Church. The religious feeling of the country at large would not have allowed such indifference, and just clamour would have compelled them at last to do what their own consciences had neglected.

Meantime, we are not judging Mr. Maurice himself, but only his teaching. We know this teaching has a very different character to his mind, from that which it has to ours; and that he regards himself simply as in possession of a very deep truth of religious philosophy, viz. that eternity is pure existence, or some such truth as that. He disowns these consequences, and pictures to himself all the developments which we have given to his principle, as so much irrelevant alarmist misapprehension. We are glad he does so we should be sorry to think that he thought all these consequences true. So far as he is personally concerned, we are content to think of his truth exactly in the light in which he regards it, separating it from all the consequences which we have attached to it. But in this case, he will allow

us to say, that it is not without real pain that we see a sincere, zealous, and able man losing his just influence and destroying his usefulness out of deference to a mere subtlety and a crotchet as impalpable as the air. We know immediately he will tell us, it is not a subtlety, but a vital truth—a truth intimately connected with practice; that he could not live for a day as a Christian without it; and that his whole moral and religious convictions would collapse, if he had not this truth about pure existence or whatever it may be-supporting him. We know he will maintain the urgent necessity of preaching this great practical truth to peasants and labourers, to ploughmen and artisans, to men, women and children, in towns and villages, in fields and market-places; that he is convinced that these masses of uninformed and inperfect minds are crying out for this especial truth, are hungry and desperate for it, and that woe to him if he does not go forth to satisfy this forlorn, desolate and consuming void within them. We know he will say all this, with the most entire sincerity. But will he take it ill if we remind him, that many men of sincerity, equal to his own, have thought particular truths of great importance at one part of their lives, which they have not at another; and that what once rested on an all-absorbing necessity, has come down to the rank of very secondary, if not very ambiguous truth? In the excitement of philosophical thought, we mistake the proportions of the great scheme of truth; we are led on by a favourite idea which becomes at every moment more necessary, more dominant, more fundamental, till it gains a complete throne and mastery. And such ideas often become stereotyped, and their dominion lasts for some time. But time, experience, fresh reading, new acquaintances, and other things, introduce us to new aspects of truth; the deep lines of a favourite idea wear insensibly away. We become aware that we can do without it: and the large and true foundations of religion take gradual hold of our minds, to the subordination of what was narrow, partial, and fictitious. It is possible that Mr. Maurice may some day not think the deep and subtle truth which he cherishes at present of such overwhelming consequence and weight. He may one day come to reflect, that the great idea of time, with which the Author of nature has endowed us, is, after all, our intended and proper guide to a notion of eternity; and that, however reason may demand its qualification, we shall not gain by endeavouring to get entirely out of its reach, in picturing to ourselves the life beyond the grave. He may come to consider, that in this life. we must be content with such helps as are provided for us, in forming our conceptions of spiritual things; and that it is better to have a lower representation of truth, than none at all. If

such thoughts as these should ever at any future day approve themselves to him, we shall rejoice at the recovery of a person to utility and just influence, who could only have lost them by the pardonable causes of a mistaken zeal, and an unmanageable profundity.

We cannot, however, conclude this article without a slight notice of one particular claim put forward by Mr. Maurice in this controversy. For the truth of the interpretation of the word 'eternal' which he has put forward, Mr. Maurice appeals to certain grounds of metaphysics, and to Scripture thus metaphysically interpreted; but his liberty as a Church of England teacher, to inculcate this doctrine, he rests upon the ground that the formularies of the English Church nowhere condemn that sense of the word 'eternal' which he adopts, or impose that sense of the word which he opposes; that they use the word without marking the particular sense which is to be given to it, and therefore are to be understood as leaving it open to any person to attach this or the other meaning to it as he pleases, and to teach the doctrine of an 'eternal" state of reward and punishment in his own sense of that word.

'I therefore pledged myself implicitly in my Essays, I pledge myself explicitly now, that I will not, God being my helper, give up my liberty as a member of the Church of England by accepting any new Formulary on this subject, or new explanation of the Formularies which I have accepted. To these I adhere, in what I believe to be their literal natural sense.'Letter of Mr. Maurice in Dr. Jelf's Pamphlet, p. 21.

The general notion which you encourage-that the King's College Council may demand of its professors an assent to a number of et cæteras not included in the Formularies to which, as churchmen and clergymen, they have set their hand-is one for which I own I was not prepared. It will alarm, I believe, many persons who differ very widely with me. I do not see how it can fail to alarm every man who attaches any sacredness to his oaths or his subscriptions.

On this point I must insist very strongly. I said in a former letter that I accepted the words of our Formularies and of the Scriptures in what seemed to me their literal and simple sense, but that I would accept no new interpretation of them. In noticing this remark, you have availed yourself, of course unintentionally, of the equivocal force of the adjective "new." You say, "I wish for no new Articles nor any new interpretations of our Formularies," meaning that your interpretation is the old one. But I submit that everything is new to the subscriber of a Formulary which is not contained in that Formulary at the time he subscribes it, however old or familiar it may be.'-Mr. Maurice's Answer to Dr. Jelf, p. 3.

The ground advanced here is a general ground, that whatever the formularies of the Church do not expressly and by word enjoin, is to be considered as open; and that a man is bound by nothing but that which has been nominatim and specifically put before him for his assent.