anthropomorphic
visions of future Blessedness, the details of which are either of
unseizable dimness or of questionable joy, we are at least delivered
from quibbling discussions of the meaning of [Greek: aionios], and our
eternal hope is unclouded by the doubt whether mankind is to be tortured
in hell for ever and a day, or for a day without the ever. At the end of
life there may be no definite vista of a Heaven glowing with the light
of apocalyptic imagination, but neither will there be the unutterable
horror of a Purgatory or a Hell lurid with flames for the helpless
victims of an unjust but omnipotent Creator. To entertain such libellous
representations at all as part of the contents of "Divine Revelation,"
it was necessary to assert that man was incompetent to judge of the ways
of the God of Revelation, and must not suppose him endowed with the
perfection of human conceptions of justice and mercy, but submit to call
wrong right and right wrong at the foot of an almighty Despot. But now
the reproach of such reasoning is shaken from our shoulders, and returns
to the Jewish superstition from which it sprang.

As myths lose their might and their influence when discovered to be
baseless, the power of supernatural Christianity will doubtless pass
away, but the effect of the revolution must not be exaggerated, although
it cannot here be fully discussed. If the pictures which have filled for
so long the horizon of the Future must vanish, no hideous blank can
rightly be maintained in their place. We should clearly distinguish
between what we know and know not, but as carefully abstain from
characterising that which we know not as if it were really known to us.
That mysterious Unknown or Unknowable is no cruel darkness, but simply
an impenetrable distance into which we are impotent to glance, but which
excludes no legitimate speculation and forbids no reasonable hope.

[ENDNOTES]

[1:1] Originally published in the _Fortnightly Review_, January 1, 1875.

[4:1] _On the Canon_, p. 65.

[4:2] _Ibid._ p. 61, note 2.

[4:3] At the end of this note Dr. Westcott adds, "Indeed, from the
similar mode of introducing the story of the vine, which is afterwards
referred to Papias, it is reasonable to conjecture that this
interpretation is one from Papias' _Exposition_."

[4:4] _Reliq. Sacrae_, i. p. 10 f.

[4:5] _Lehre Pers. Christ_, i. p. 217 f., Anm. 56, p. 218, Anm, 62.

[5:1] _Theol. Jahrb. _1845, p. 593, Anm. 2; c