enough he admits that we have exactly the same authority for believing in the eternity of punishment as in the eternity of bliss; he brushes aside all significance in the apparent distinction indicated in Christ's own words, "These shall go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into life eternal" (Matt. xxv. 46), by showing that it is an arbitrary one created by the translators, the word in the original Greek-alúviov-being the same both for "everlasting" and "eternal"; and he discusses various authorities on both sides at considerable length. The Hon. Sir Charles Murray to the Dowager Lady Castletown. "THE GRANGE, Old Windsor, Nov. 1, 1885. "For myself, I shun all dogmatic utterances about a future state, even when they pretend to be founded on the book of Revelation, or other isolated texts of Scripture, as I think they come under the denomination of those curious questions which St Paul taught us to avoid. The holding of doctrines and dogmas has been the curse of Christianity since its foundation. Twothirds of the heresies that divided the primitive Church were founded on the contested acceptation of single texts. Not to mention scores of minor heresies (so-called), the two great Churches of the East and of the West, with many millions THE ATHANASIAN CREED. 373 of followers attached to them, were separated, and have remained ever since irreconcilably separated, upon the question whether the Holy Spirit proceeded from God alone, or from God and Jesus Christ. Surely angels might weep to see Christians - nominally the followers of the holy and sinless Jesus-not only wasting their time for centuries, but shedding each other's blood, in disputing over verbal differences such as this! . . . I am a member of the Church of England, having been baptised in it, and I hold to it in preference to any other Church, . . . although there are several things in its Liturgy which seem to me serious errors; among others-compelling its clergy to read in church the so-called Athanasian Creed on stated occasions. I have no objection to any man, lay or clerical, who approves it and thinks he understands it, reciting it for himself; but I do not think that any Church, calling itself a Reformed Church, has a right to order its clergy to read as a creed necessary to salvation, a document written by some French or Spanish bishop five or six hundred years after the Christian era, dubbing it by the name of St Athanasius, and ending by the monstrous declaration that whoever does not believe it faithfully cannot be saved-words that exclude from salvation three-fourths at least of the Christian community on earth." The Sir Charles Murray, than whom no man ever gave more earnest thought to problems of which the solution lies beyond the grave, declined to pronounce a definite opinion on them. Nevertheless, the tendency of his judgment is revealed in the following sentences from one of his notebooks: "It is remarkable that Bishop Thirlwall, the profoundest English thinker and theologian of this age, never made this question the subject of one of his sermons or charges to his clergy. But there is a short letter of his extant to Professor Plumptre, in which he thanks him for his admirable sermon on the Spirits in Prison,' and terms it one of the most valuable gifts the Church has received in this generation.'1 Now that sermon of Plumptre's was directed forcibly and specially against the doctrine of eternal punishment. If Thirlwall be mistaken-mallem cum Platone errare!" 1 Thirlwall's Letters, p. 334. Subscribers wishing to purchase Early are Second Hand copies of this work Arran, sport in, 49 et seq. Art of public speaking, Lord - Baden, Princess Mary of, romantic Byron, Lord, remarks by Rogers Cadzow Castle, occasion of Scott's Cairo, an incident of superstition Cannes, Murray's stay at, 354 et Beckford, William, anecdote of, 44 Castletown, Dowager Lady, letters |