stood by the _theologians_.

But the principal help for understanding the Greek of the New
Testament, is the Greek version of the Old Testament, the Septuagint.
The words we are discussing are found in that version not far from
four hundred times, three fourths of them probably in a limited sense.
The Hebrew form, "the statutes of the age," are rendered into Greek,
everlasting or _ai[=o]nion_ statutes; "the covenant of the age," the
_ai[=o]nion_ covenant, etc. These terms have sixteen different
renderings. They are, _everlasting_, _forever_, _forevermore_,
_perpetual_, _ever_, _never_ (when joined with a negative particle),
_old_, _ancient_, _long_, _always_, _world_, _lasting_, _eternal_,
_continuance_, _at any time_, _Elam_. The last word stands for the
Hebrew _olam_, the word answering to _ai[=o]n_ in the Greek. With
these definitions in view (a number of them being limited terms), it
would be folly to claim that this word has an unlimited meaning when
applied to punishment. The punishment which God inflicts is limited.
Heb. 12.

Great stress is placed on the circumstance, that in Matt. xxv. 46,
the punishment and the life are spoken of near together, even in the
same verse. Tertullian, and later Augustine, urged this fact as proof
that both must be of the same duration. The late Albert Barns thought
the argument sound. Of course, no large man ever rode a large horse,
without being of the same size. Perhaps an illustration from Scripture
will be more satisfactory. "And the eternal mountains were scattered;
the everlasting hills did bow; his ways are everlasting." Hab. iii. 6.
For the last sentence, see the margin, Revised Edition. Are there to
be no ways of God, after the mountains and hills are gone? Besides,
this whole parable has its fulfilment, not in eternity, but in the
Christian dispensation. It began to be fulfilled at the coming of
Christ, when some were living, who had heard him, during his ministry,
nearly forty years before. Matt. xvi. 27, 28. No fixed rewards and
punishments are possible under the circumstances, for men are
changing. The rendering "pertaining to the age," has no objection of
this kind. If it be claimed that a man, "once a Christian, always a
Christian," no one can doubt, that a man, not a Christian, may become
one, and so change his condition--a proof that his condition is not
eternal.

I will close this article by a few words on the apocalypse. The
dramatic representation of Eichhor