immortality of psuchean ghosts, with all the vile machinery which priesteraft, by its means, has kept grinding and whirling and whizzing in the ears of a credulous throng ever since the reign of the Egyptian Sphinxes.

It was Dr. Petavel of Geneva who invited the attention of the Editor of the RAINBOW to the above passage from Vinet. And here we are reminded that we have another voice from the land of Calvin, whose War Cry, if not so trumpet-tongued as that of the Salvation Army of England, has a silver tone of equal penetration and of truer harmony. The prominent position already assigned to Dr. Petavel in Continental ecclesiology was stated by himself in our February number; and we have not the smallest doubt that his influence will be one of everaugmenting expansion.

J. W.

CANON FARRAR AND THE DOCTRINE OF DESTRUCTION.

EVERY

VERY believer in conditional immortality who has read the very able treatise on " Mercy and Judgment" which Dr. Farrar has recently given to the world, must feel unspeakably thankful to him for the remarkably candid manner in which he has, again and again, referred to what he calls the doctrine of annihilation. Although he has emphatically and repeatedly declared himself to have no sympathy with it, he has scattered throughout the pages of his new work a great many statements which strongly support the destruction theory. The writer of these pages has endeavoured to gather together the scattered links, and to form them into a chain of evidence in favour of a doctrine which has chased away some of the mists which once hung over the surface of his life.

I. Canon Farrar expressly declares that a number of passages of Scripture, taken in their literal meaning, seem to point to the final annihilation of the wicked (p. 12). In proof of this statement he refers to Matt. iii. 12 ; v. 30; x. 28; Luke xiii. 1-5; xx. 18, 35; Acts iii. 23; Rom. vi. 23; viii. 13; Heb. x. 16-31; Rev. xx. 14; xxi. 8, &c.

With respect to certain passages in the Gospel of Matthew, he says (p. 446), "If these passages, and the figures of the burnt tares in the parable, the bad fish cast away, the dead branch burnt, the faithless servant cut asunder, are indeed to be taken literally and not as figures; and, if they are to be interpreted to imply future torments, not earthly ruin to the Jews to whom they were addressed, nothing can be clearer than that what they imply is not hopeless misery, but TOTAL DESTRUCTION."

"The same inference would naturally be drawn from Matt. x. 28, where the apostles are bidden to fear not those who kill the body, but Him who is able to destroy both body and soul in hell. It refers to the undoubted power of God to deprive man of the immortality which He bas Himself bestowed."

[Those who believe that God has not bestowed immortality upon every man, would use the word "life" rather than the word "immortality."]

Again, after criticising the orthodox interpretation of portions of the Apocalypse, Canon Farrar writes (p. 474), "The devout believers in conditional immortality are perfectly right in insisting that, if we bind ourselves by the literal meaning of the greatest number of Biblical expressions, there is ten times more in the Bible which points to extinction as the final doom of the wicked than there is which points to their future existence in everlasting agonies."

On page 423 the Canon writes: "Since many delight to press the most rigid and literal meaning of every expression of threatening, while they evaporate at a touch all the promises of infinite mercy, what do they make of the many passages for which the advocates of conditional immortality claim also a literal interpretation ?" I say unquestioningly and unhesitatingly that all the passages adduced and thus interpreted by Mr. White, Mr. Minton. Mr. R. W. Dale, and other able and thoughtful Christians, furnish a far stronger proof of the ultimate annihilation of the wicked than the upwards of a hundred texts of Bishop Horbery furnish of the mediaval and Calvinistic hell; based as most of Bishop Horbery's texts are, on an exploded and untenable mode of exegesis, and many of them as irrelevant to the subject as it is possible to conceive." The supporters of the doctrine of conditional immortality have, according to Dr. Farrar, "furnished an impregnable bulwark against the necessity for any man to believe in the hell of Tertullian, or Dante, or modern revivalists. If all these wise and faithful inquirers can offer such a mass of Scriptural phraseology in favour of the extinction of being of all hopeless sinners-[Psa. xxxvii. 10, 20, 36; xcii. 7; cxlv. 20; Obad. 16; Mal. iv. 1-3; Matt. xiii. 30, 48, 49; xxi. 41, 44; 1 Thess. v. 3; 2 Thess. i. 9; Heb. ii. 14; Rev. xx. 11-15; xxi. 4, 5, 8, &c.]-they, too, must be scripturally dealt with before any of us can be bidden to accept the belief of endless tortures in material flames. For the silence of annihilation is a very opposite thing and a thing infinitely preferable-to the interminableness of conscious anguish. . . . . . They defeat their opponents on their own premises, and absolutely demolish them with their own weapons."

Once more with reference to the numerous indications which Paul gives of the coming of a time in the far-off future when God will be all in all things, he asks, "If hell be still peopled to the end of all the mons with even half, or one-fourth of the human race, in what sense can it be true that God is either all or in all? For literalists I see no possible escape, except in the theories of either universalism or annihilationism. II. Such is the testimony which Dr. Farrar gives to the harmony which exists between the views of destructionists and the literal meaning of the Scriptures. Had he done no more than this, believers in conditional immortality would have to thank him for the great service which he has rendered to them. But he has done more than this. In the course of his investigations into the state of Jewish eschatology at the dawn of the Christian era, he has so clearly shown the idea of the extinction of the hopelessly impenitent to have been a familiar one to the Jews, that we feel constrained to ask whether the words of Christ could have been understood by them to refer to anything short of absolute destruction.

1. Of the Apocryphal Book of Enoch, he writes (p. 187): "Inter

preted by itself, the book explains its own threats to mean annihilation." (See Enoch xc. 13; xcii. 16).

2. Of the Book of Esdras Dr. Farrar says, "The writer seems unequivocally to teach" the doctrine of "annihilation" (p. 190).

3. Passages from the Psalms of Solomon are referred to as implying rather than excluding "the common Jewish notion of annihilation." 4. Respecting the Targums, Canon Farrar says: "To me it is perfectly obvious that by the second death they meant annihilation." 3. The quotations from more recent Jewish writers include the following:

Avoda Lara-" Gehenna is nothing but a day in which the impious. will be burned."

Abarbanel in Miphaloth Elohim viii. 6, "The soul will only be punished in Gehenna for a time proportionate to the extent of its faults and then annihilated."

III. In no part of his treatise does Canon Farrar write with greater candour than in that which has reference to the teaching of the earliest fathers. This, he shows, cannot be proved to be out of harmony with the doctrine of the Destructionists.

1. When Hermas says that "non-repentance involves death," and that as many as do not repent but abide in their deeds shall UTTERLY PERISH," he is using language which (as a matter of literary criticism) surely cannot be proved to exclude the interpretation which is put upon it by those whom, for brevity's sake, we may sometimes call annihilationists.

2. When Justin Martyr quotes the words of the aged man who was the means of his conversion to Christianity :-" Such as are worthy to see God die no more, but others shall undergo punishment as long as it pleases Him that they shall exist and be punished," it seems to Dr. Farrar that he held an opinion that at the end of a certain time, defined by the will of God, the punishment of souls shall cease either by the cessation of their existence or by the removal of their punishment."

3. Irenæus is represented as teaching "That immortality is not an inherent quality of souls but the gift of God; and he therefore clearly held that He who gives could also take away." Referring to passages from his writings, and those of Justin, quoted by Dr. Pusey, Canon Farrar says, "Though I have never leaned to the theory of annihilation, that does not make me at all sure that no such thought lies in these passages of St. Justin and St. Irenæus."

4. Arnobius is referred to thus (p. 248):-" Can there be any reasonable doubt as to the opinions of Arnobius? Was it not that these souls" (which have not known the God of life) "would be annihilated ?"

Such statements as the above coming from the pen of one who is an avowed unbeliever in the doctrines which spring out of a belief in conditional immortality are very remarkable. The perusal of them cannot fail to strengthen our convictions or to enlarge our hopes of the ultimate victory of these doctrines over those which are opposed to them.

A. J. L. G.

'BECAUSE I LIVE, YE SHALL LIVE ALSO."

THE APOSTOLIC MINISTRY.

THE HE general departure from the apostolic standard of the Christian ministry is indicated by many things. A writer in Scribner's Monthly thus gives utterance, in a bantering way, to some things which are subjects for serious thought:

"My Dear

Oh !-by the way, if you learn of any one with

energy, tearful interest in the conversion of souls, attractive in preaching, great-hearted, unselfish, merry, in fact, holy-let me know. Paul was much the kind of man we need. We want a man who knows all about the enemy, has some capacity for working miracles, is ready to be stoned, can teach the women, interest the children, make princes tremble, confound the Jews, convert kings, pick up sticks, earn his own living, go through fire and water for the good of others, with no expectation that they will interest themselves in him-and, in general, lead a forlorn hope of despondent followers."

There were some such ministers as those in former days, and there are probably some such at the present time, but they are none too common, and furthermore they are not to be obtained at call. They do not come for the clink of money; and the wailing cry of the man of Macedonia, "Come over and help us," has more weight in their minds than all the offers which men can make them. While it is true that God hath ordained that they that preach the Gospel should live of the Gospel, it is also true that the gift of God cannot be purchased with money. As the richest families sometimes live on the poorest food, being dependent on ignorant hirelings to prepare it, so the wealthiest churches frequently have the poorest provision for their spiritual needs. They indicate their own apostasy in bargaining for preachers and putting money in the foreground as a controlling consideration, and disclaim to a great extent their moral responsibility in the case. Thus they would starve labourers who refuse to bind themselves to serve them, while they feast hirelings who make shrewd bargains for themselves, and think only of their own advantage.

“What kind of a minister do you want?" said one who was supposed to have controlling influence in such matters. "Do you want a $2000 minister, or a $1000 minister, or a $500 minister ?" It had come to be a question of price, and the spirit of the church was very candidly expressed by the officials, who said: "We want a smart man for a small salary; a salmon for the price of a herring." This mutual meanness of worldly-minded preachers and covetous congregations, is a disgrace to all concerned in it. If a preacher is not a servant of God let him go to his own place; and if the members of a church are not stewards of God let them take their proper position; but if he is God's servant, and they are God's stewards, what business have they to scrimp and hinder him about his Master's work? What business have these two parties Jewing and trafficking with each other when the great concerns of truth and righteousness are involved?

Let those whom God has called to His work learn the true dignity of their position, and then let them go forward where God sends and calls, and they will surely be sustained and provided for. Though they may stretch forth the foot in mists and darkness, yet it shall rest upon the solid rock, the promise of Him who hath said: "I will never leave you nor forsake you." They may be poor, and so were the prophets and apostles and the Lord Himself; but they need not be beggars, they need not disgrace their Master nor dishonour their faith.