A. CLEAR discrimination is to be made between everlasting punishment and everlasting torment. We endorse the former, because it is scriptural; we discard the latter, because it is thoroughly unscriptural. A thing may be conceived of as either endless in its process, or endless in its effects. If the doctrine of eternal misery were true, the process of the sinner's suffering would be unending. If the doctrine of the second death should prove true, the effects of the sinner's punishment would be unending. In the former case, justice would be forever satisfying, but would never be satisfied. In the latter case, God's law could be perfectly and eternally satisfied. President Edwards acknowledged that the utter extermination of the wicked, if it should please God to inflict that penalty, would constitute an everlasting punishment. His conclusion was very sensible, for such an infliction would involve the loss of eternal life, and sink the sinner into such fathomless depths of darkness and death as to preclude all possibility of future deliverance. If the possession of unending existence in God's kingdom would be an endless gain, then a failure to obtain that existence would constitute an endless loss. On the one side there is eternal life—on the other side, eternal death. If the one is everlasting reward, the other is everlasting punishment. This simple and sensible view will help to harmonize various scriptural statements of the sinner's doom, which appear to antagonize each other. It is proper to remark that more than one hundred passages, taking the terms employed in a plain and natural sense, teach the utter destruction of the wicked as conscious personalities. There are about half a dozen passages—including parables and symbolic scripture—that are frequently quoted to prove the dogma of endless woe. Concerning this seeming conflict of testimony we wish to remark:— 1. If the two classes of scripture statement just referred to could not well be reconciled, it would certainly be safer and more sensible to make the few passages bend to the many, than to make the many bend to the few. A candid inquirer after truth would not be so likely to mistake the meaning of a hundred texts bearing on a given subject, as he would that of five or six that seem to bear against the general tide. 2. If the Bible is God's own revelation— which we believe—there can be no real conflict of testimony. The inspired Word of God could not possibly teach both the destruction of the wicked, and the eternal preservation of the wicked. If there is any such apparent collision, there must be some just method of interpretation that shall produce harmony. 3. The Bible certainly teaches both the everlasting punishment and the everlasting destruction of the wicked. There is no necessity for interpreting the endless punishment of sinners to mean their endless torment. The moment you do this you make the Bible contradict itself, because the threatened death of the wicked can never be reconciled with their eternal life in pain. On the other hand, we have shown that there is no antagonism between punishment and destruction. The one involves the other. Now let us examine a passage which has been relied upon more than any other one to prove the doctrine of endless torment: “These shall go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into life eternal.” Matt. 25:46. It has been urged with great gravity that the original term (aionion) used in one member of the sentence to describe the duration of the saint's reward, is also used in the other member to describe the duration of the sinner's punishment. Most freely granted. Nor are we disposed to attach any special sense or limited meaning to the term. Take it in its absolute and unlimited sense. Make it mean unmeasured duration, reaching into the eternal ages, and running parallel with God's own existence. What then? We have a simple and solemn declaration of Christ, that the rewards of virtue and vice are both eternal. Does the passage throw any light on the nature of human destiny? Let us see. It is plainly revealed that the reward of righteousness is “eternal life.” What would be the natural antithesis of this? Eternal death. Does the text itself favor this thought? It certainly does. The word rendered “punishment” (kolasis) is derived directly from the verb koladzo, one of the primary meanings of which is “to cut off.” It would therefore be entirely proper to render the passage: “These shall go away into an eternal excision.” The present rendering may be more elegant, but the original strongly favors the idea of the sinner's extermination. Let us compare scripture with scripture. It is safe to suppose that Paul would be in harmony with Jesus. Both lay great stress upon the second coming of Christ to judge the world and mete out appropriate rewards. If Jesus says the wicked “shall go away into everlasting punishment,” Paul says they “shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord.” 2 Thess. 1:9. The nature of the sinner's “punishment” is here very clearly brought to view. But the difficulty is insurmountable the moment Christ's declaration is interpreted to mean eternal torment, for it would be an abuse of language to attach such a meaning as this to Paul's statement of “everlasting destruction.”—Bible Banner.