the doctrine, “Might makes Right;” according to which, I might unawares worship a devil.  Nay, nothing so much distinguished the spiritual truth of Judaism and Christianity from abominable heathenism, as this very discernment of God’s purity, justice, mercy, truth, goodness; while the Pagan worshipped mere power, and had no discernment of moral excellence; but laid down the principle, that cruelty, impurity, or caprice in a God was to be treated reverentially, and called by some more decorous name.  Hence, I said, it was undermining the very foundation of Christianity itself, to require belief of the validity of Rom. ix. 14-24, as my friend understood it.  I acknowledged the difficulty of the passage, and of the whole argument.  I was not prepared with an interpretation; but I revered St. Paul too much, to believe it possible that he could mean anything so obviously heathenish, as that first-sight meaning.—­My friend looked grave and anxious; but I did not suspect how deeply I had shocked him, until many weeks after.

At this very time, moreover, ground was broken in my mind on a new subject, by opening in a gentleman’s library a presentation-copy of a Unitarian treatise against the doctrine of Eternal Punishment.  It was the first Unitarian book of which I had even seen the outside, and I handled it with a timid curiosity, as if by stealth, I had only time to dip into it here and there, and I should have been ashamed to possess the book; but I carried off enough to suggest important inquiry.  The writer asserted that the Greek word [Greek:  aionios], (secular, or, belonging to the ages,) which we translate everlasting and eternal, is distinctly proved by the Greek translation of the Old Testament often to mean only distant time.  Thus in Psalm lxxvi. 5, “I have considered the years of ancient times:”  Isaiah lxiii 11, “He remembered the days of old, Moses and his people;” in which, and in many similar places, the LXX have [Greek:  aionios].  One striking passage is Exodus xv. 18; ("Jehovah shall reign for ever and ever;”) where the Greek has [Greek:  ton aiona kai ex aiona kai eti], which would mean “for eternity and still longer,” if the strict rendering eternity were enforced.  At the same time a suspicion as to the honesty of our translation presented itself in Micah v. 2, a controversial text, often used to prove the past eternity of the Son of God; where the translators give us,—­“whose goings forth have been from everlasting,” though the Hebrew is the same as they elsewhere render from days of old.

After I had at leisure searched through this new question, I found that it was impossible to make out any doctrine of a philosophical eternity in the whole Scriptures.  The true Greek word for eternal ([Greek:  aidios]) occurs twice only:  once in Rom. i. 20, as applied to the divine power, and once in Jude 6, of the fire which has been manifested against Sodom and Gomorrha.  The last instance showed that allowance