impartially
weighed, it seems a sudden rhetorical expression, of indefinite
force, used to heighten the impressiveness of a sublime dramatic
representation, rather than a cautious philosophical term employed
to convey an abstract conception. There is no reason whatever for
supposing that Christ's mind was particularly directed to the
metaphysical idea of endlessness, or to the much more metaphysical
idea of timelessness. The presumptive evidence is that he spoke
popularly. Had he been charged to reveal a doctrine so tremendous,
so awful, so unutterably momentous in its practical relations, as
that of the endless close of all probation at death, is it
conceivable that he would merely have couched it in a few
figurative expressions and left it as a matter of obscure
inference and uncertainty? No: in that case, he would have
iterated and reiterated it, defined, guarded, illustrated it, and
have left no possibility of honest mistake or doubt of it.

The Greek word [non-ASCII characters], and the same is true of the
corresponding Hebrew word, translated "everlasting" in the English
Bible, has not in its popular usage the rigid force of eternal
duration, but varies, is now applied to objects as evanescent as
man's earthly life, now to objects as lasting as eternity.3
Its power in any given case is to be sought from the context and
the reason of the thing.

Isaiah, having threatened the unrighteous nations that they
"should conceive chaff and bring forth stubble, that their own
breath should be fire to devour them, and that they should be
burnt like lime, like thorns cut up in the fire," makes the
terror smitten sinners and hypocrites cry, "Who among us can dwell
in devouring fire? Who among us can dwell in everlasting
burnings?" Yet his reference is solely to an outward, temporal
judgment in this world. The Greek adjective rendered "everlasting"
is etymologically, and by universal usage, a term of duration, but
indefinite, its extent of meaning depending on the subjects of
which it is predicated. Therefore, when Christ connects this word
with the punishment of the wicked, it is impossible to say with
any certainty, judging from the language itself, whether he
implies that those who die in their sins are hopelessly lost,
perfectly irredeemable forever, or not, though the probabilities
are very strongly in the latter direction. "Everlasting
punishment" may mean, in philosophical strictness, a punishment
absolutely eternal