'Rabbi Akiba's ground for making Gehenna to the Jews a Purgatory of twelve months is after his usual fashion. He, too (Rabbi Akiba), was in the habit of saying five things lasted for twelve months: the judgment of the generation of the Deluge twelve months; the judgment of Job twelve months; the judgment of the Egyptians twelve months; the judgment of Gog and Magog in the time to come, twelve months; the judg ment of the wicked in Gehenna twelve months; as it is said, "And from one new moon to another." The passage has Rabbi Akiba's characteristic fancifulness, stringing together things with a certain likeness upon a text, which gives no support to what he builds upon it. The Flood, moreover, prevailed upon the earth one hundred and ninety days; of the length of Job's suffering there is no term assigned; nor of the plagues of Egypt; nor of the destruction of Gog and Magog; only that the burial of the corpses was to last seven months. Nor is there any visible connection between the period of twelve months and the text: "from one new moon to another." But this was Rabbi Akiba's way of founding his new system.'

But even Akiba speaks of his twelve months' purgatory as the destiny of the wicked of Israel' and 'the righteous of the nations of the world.' He is silent about the doom of the unrighteous of the world, at least, saying nothing about their deliverance from Gehenna.

Hitherto the line of investigation has gone to show that Dr. Farrar has overrated the authority of the Talmud, and that his principal witness (Rabbi Akiba) does not speak as clearly and definitely as we were led to expect. But the Talmud unmistakably threatens eternal punishment to certain classes of sinners, of whom Christians and apostate Jews are the chief. Of them it is written: 'Hell may come to an end, but not their punishment; Gehenna faileth, and they fail not.' Dr. Pusey gives abundant citations that accord thoroughly with these two pregnant sentences. He tracks the New Testament

in the Koran to denominate the place of eternal doom; and concludes with some fearful extracts which paint the lot of the Saviour of all men in the world to come as one-horribile dictu!-of unutterable, revolting and everlasting torment.

Neither the quotations, nor the reasoning based upon them, is altogether novel; but so complete a summary of the evidence of Jewish eschatology, and so clear an indication of its bearing, and so sensible an estimate of its worth, have never before been placed at the service of the purely English reader. At the very lowest estimate, they make it manifest that the idea of eternal punishment was not unfamiliar to the Jewish contemporaries of our Lord, and they demonstrate that Dr. Farrar's' palmary argument' is utterly unsound. Whatever other doctrines on the subject of future punishment may have been held by Rabbins, the eternity of perdition was not the unheard-of monstrosity it must have been if Canon Farrar's most trusted contention were of any weight at all.

Greatly as he disapproves of the general tone of Eternal Hope; futile as he deems its arguments, incorrect as he considers its statements, and faulty as he pronounces its scholarship, Dr. Pusey nevertheless thinks the book 'may, unintentionally, render good service to the Church and to souls by forcing attention to the intermediate state.' (P. 102.) The Canon of Christchurch rejects the Romish doctrine of Purgatory, but he declares that 'pain after this life for many at least in the Day of [whether particular or general] Judgement is so laid down by St. Paul, that it is strange that any overlook it.' (P. 104.) The reference, of course, is to 1 Corinthians iii. 13-15: 'Every man's work shall be made manifest, ....because it shall be revealed by

fire; and the fire shall try every man's work.....If any man's work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire.' The theory erected upon this passage, and buttressed by quotations from the Fathers, is-that suffering is a necessary accessory of the Day of Judgment, 'probably the particular judgement upon the individual soul upon its departing from the body.' Judgment, it is argued, must be a process; the giving account of every work, every idle word may, almost must, occupy a protracted period, during which it is not unlikely that the soul will be left in suspense as to the ultimate issue of the trial. Such a detailed recollection of sins must cause shame and pain; the more clearly seen goodness of God in contrast with ingratitude and rebellion and natural corruption cannot but induce intense agony. Possibly, continues Dr. Pusey, some souls may be kept in privation of God till they grow fit for His sight and presence. Nevertheless, the intermediate state has its unspeakable joy for those who are consciously pardoned and know that they are being prepared for heaven.

Most of the ideas we have just outlined are purely speculative, and as such will commend themselves more or less to some minds. It is impossible, however, to allow that the Christian can remain in doubt as to the verdict of acquittal that must be pronounced for him, since our ultimate as our present acceptance with God depends upon our relation to Christ. Of this it seems incredible that the Christian can be unaware after death.

It is altogether another question how far Dr. Pusey and the Fathers he cites with approval have made a justifiable use of the passage from the Epistle to the Corinthians. It is one hard to be understood,' not so much from the difficulty of find

ing an exegetically satisfactory explanation, as with reference to the doctrine to be deduced from it. Nevertheless, the general lines of interpretation are, I think, tolerably clear. (1) The day' must be 'the day of the Lord,' the day of His coming. The trial, therefore, whether or no the work endures, cannot be that wherewith the mere lapse of time tests all human achievements. The primary reference, too, cannot well be to the intermediate state; our thoughts are necessarily carried to the Final Assize. (2) It is impossible to restrict the application to teachers and doctrines. Even if these alone had been in the Apostle's thought, analogy would compel us to extend his words to the taught; for all men accomplish a life-work, which must be judged. (3) The text speaks of trial and declaration, but not of purging or purifying. It affords no warrant for the modified form of Purgatory which Dr. Pusey affects, and some of the Fathers held. (4) The trial by fire relates to the man's work.' The teaching which subjects the man himself to the action of the fire is a distinct misinterpretation. But to see his work perish must be painful to the worker. There is no reason for giving to the term 'saved' any other sense than that which it generally bears in Holy Writ; he will be saved from the second death, and admitted to the joys of God's kingdom. (6) The phrase, yet so as by fire,' might appear to lend some little countenance to the notion, that it means with the utmost hazard, as equivalent to our English by the skin of his teeth'; and in support of this view many great names might be adduced. St. Paul does not make the fire the means of salvation, but rather the danger from which the man was delivered. The same fire surely cannot destroy the work and save the worker. From all which it follows that theo

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logians are right in proclaiming the salvation of the workman who builds on the one foundation, even though his work perishes; but they are not justified in ascribing any purifying effect to the fire, nor in locating the fire in the intermediate state.

Dr. Pusey appeals to the ancient (but post-Apostolic) practice of prayers for the dead in evidence of the purifying processes of the state between death and judgment, and he exhibits some samples of such prayers. A determined effort is now being made among High Anglicans to inculcate the practice of prayers for the dead. Canon Luckock's recently-published book*

on the subject has rapidly passed into a second edition, and contains everything that can honestly be advanced in favour of the practice. He writes temperately and with scrupulous fairness, and acknowledges that he has proved very little. The Methodist reader probably takes too scanty an interest in the matter to care for any lengthy discussion of it, nor would our present space suffice for it. The Canon of Ely does not pretend that the Bible actually sanctions the practice. Only three passages are quoted from the Scriptures as tending in that direction, and they have scarcely any bearing upon the question. That there is a sin that hath never forgiveness neither in this world nor in that which is to come,' may be believed without holding that some sins not pardoned in this world may be pardoned in the next. If baptism for the dead meant baptism instead of the unbaptized dead-which is more than doubtful— it is a long step from baptism in the lieu of one who accidentally died unbaptized to prayer on his behalf. The case of Onesiphorus everybody

acknowledges to be utterly inconclusive. The silence of our Lord about intercession on behalf of those who have departed this life, the Canon of Ely adroitly turns to his own advantage by arguing that the custom was established in Christ's time, and that the absence of condemnation must be deemed equivalent to approval. But the Canon does not prove that praying for the dead was so general that it must necessarily have come under our Lord's notice; and he would hardly reason that because Christ was silent with regard to the Essenes, He therefore sanctioned all their doctrines and prac tices. The testimony of the Catacombs as to the custom is slight, vague, not perfectly trustworthy, and altogether a most insecure basis for reasoning. But Dr. Luckock does show what Bingham had shown before him-that at a somewhat early period the practice of praying for the dead had become well-nigh universal in the Christian Church.

Among modern authorities arrayed by Dr. Luckock in favour of intercession for the faithful dead, the name of John Wesley figures prominently. Wesley's confession of faith in this matter is contained in the 'Second Letter to Bishop Lavington.' He avows that he interprets of 'the faithful departed' the petition in the Burial Service, that we, with all those that are departed in the true faith of Thy holy name, may have our perfect consummation and bliss, both in body and soul.' He finds the same thought in the petition : Thy kingdom come'; 'for,' he says, 'I mean both the kingdom of grace and glory.' He adds: 'In this kind of general prayer, therefore, "for the

faithful departed," I conceive myself to be clearly justified, both by the earliest antiquity, by the Church of England, and by the Lord's Prayer.' It will be seen at a glance that 'this kind of general prayer' differs toto cœlo from specific requests for particular persons. Nay, more, it warrants no prayer for the dead separate from the living. When the whole Church of Christ must share a benefit and the fulness of the benefit cannot be bestowed till the whole Church is gathered to receive it, supplication for any part of the Church necessarily becomes supplication for the entire body in heaven and earth. But this is not what is generally meant by prayers for the dead. The viciousness of the High Church contention is that it too frequently ignores so obvious a distinction.

It is to Dr. Luckock's credit that he honestly recognises the failure of the attempt to justify invocation of the saints; here he is nearly at one with the Evangelical Protestant, in both his grounds and his conclusions. There is no objection to the 'pious opinion' that our sainted loved ones, who prayed for us on this side death, continue their intercessions.

To two recently-published works on Eschatology, we can devote but a few lines. Dean Goulbourn's sermons on Everlasting Punishment* treat of the moral difficulties of the doctrine, that eternal punishment is inconsistent with God's Love, Justice, Purpose in Creation, etc. The main argument amounts to this: that the selfsame objections might be urged against God's known course of government as manifested in this

world. A mild Calvinism rather detracts from the force of the Dean's reasoning, which nevertheless is not without its value, though scarcely as strong and compact as one might wish. The last Sermon, on Scriptural Modifications of the Difficulty, may bring relief to some minds; while Lessons of the Story of the Crucified Malefactors is fresh and suggestive.

What can be said of Professor Challis's Scriptural Doctrine of Immortality + Only, that it is a wonder how such an accomplished man could have written such a farrago, and how so elegant a style could be wedded to an argument at once so futile and so incomprehensible. The Professor has collected the fallacies of Universalism, Conditional Immortality, Calvinism and the Mauricean view of the Atonement, and welded them together by the heat of a supposed hermeneutical discovery, which he more than hints is one of those revelations we must expect as preliminary to the Second Advent. In some inexplicable way the second death is to render the non-elect 'perfectly righteous' and 'immortal.' And this is said to be the result of applying the methods of scientific research to the Scriptures! Professor Challis ought to know what the methods of scientific research are; but if he is right about them, no one need wonder at the conflict between Science and the Bible, or that the dogmas of Science do not meet with universal acceptance.

The most recent contributions to the controversy concerning the state of souls after death certainly strengthen the orthodox position.