I take occasion to observe here, parenthetically, that whereas, according to the above argument, the { 81} word "eternal" (from _[oe]etas_) is applicable to punishment because we can think of eternal punishment by thinking of time, the word "endless" is not in the same manner applicable, simply because it does not explicitly indicate relation to _time_. The Greek equivalent of the English word "everlasting," and of the Latin word "_sempiternus_," namely _aidios_ from _aei_, is used in Rom. i. 20, and in Jude 6, in the sense of _aiônios_, and, as involving like the latter the conception of time, is similarly applicable to future punishment. But besides "_eternal_ life," we have in Scripture "_indissoluble_ life" (_xôn akatalytos_, Heb. vii. 16), the remarkable epithet _akatalytos_ not being etymologically expressive of time, and therefore not wrongly, although not strictly, translated by "endless" in the Authorized Version. No such epithet is applied in Scripture to "punishment" or "torment." (See more on this question in an Appendix to the Essay.)
Reasoning analogous to that employed above relative to the assertion in Matt. xxv. 46, that the wicked "go away into eternal punishment," is applicable to other declarations of like tenor in various portions of Scripture. One of these, recorded in Matt. xxvi. 24 as having been spoken by the Lord to the "_twelve_," demands special notice. Translated literally according to the tenses of the Greek, this passage is, "Woe to that man through whom the Son of man has been betrayed! good was it for him, if that man was not { 82} born." The translation in the Authorized Version, "it had been good for that man if he had not been born," may be taken to convey, regard being had to difference of idiom, the true sense of the original. Exactly the same passage occurs in Mark xiv. 21, where our translators have given, "good were it for that man if he had never been born." Although this translation, as containing the word "never," deviates still more than the other from the literal rendering, it may be justified on the principle that the declaration, in whatever form it be made, is one in which _time_ enters as a necessary element, whereby alone it is within the reach of thought. Accordingly, this saying of our Lord, regarded as having relation to experience in the world to come, is in the same category as his assertion of the eternity of future punishment, and would appear, by applying the argument already expounded (p. 80) with respect to that doctrine, to be in like manner contributory towards generating in the spirit of man an incapability of sinning. It is farther to be taken into account that these words were addressed by the Lord to his _apostles_--to the elect of the elect--with particular reference to the sin of _betraying_ the Son of man, which was exemplified by the outward act of Judas, who also by his self-destruction exhibited the damnatory power of the inward consciousness of such guilt. The exceeding sinfulness of such apostasy as that which Judas, chosen to be { 83} an apostle, was guilty of, may be assigned as the reason that it was denounced by our Lord in terms which do not appear to have been applied to any other kind of "transgression" (compare Acts i. 17, 25).