And now—­How is the earth shaken, and the heavens likewise, in that very sense in which the expression is used by him who wrote to the Hebrews?  Our conceptions of them are shaken.  How much of that mediaeval cosmogony do educated men believe, in the sense in which they believe that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles, or that if they steal their neighbour’s goods they commit a sin?

The earth has been shaken for us, more and more violently, as the years have rolled on.  It was shaken when Astronomy told us that the earth was not the centre of the universe, but a tiny planet revolving round a sun in a remote region thereof.

It was shaken when Geology told us that the earth had endured for countless ages, during which continents had become oceans, and oceans continents, again and again.  And even now, it is being shaken by researches into the antiquity of man, into the origin and permanence of species, which—­let the result be what it will—­must in the meanwhile shake for us theories and dogmas which have been undisputed for 1500 years.

And with the rest of our cosmogony, that conception of a physical Tartarus below the earth has been shaken likewise, till good men have been fain to find a fresh place for it in the sun, or in a comet; or to patronize the probable, but as yet unproved theory of a central fire within the earth; not on any scientific grounds, but simply if by any means they can assign a region in space, wherein material torment can be inflicted on the spirits of the lost.

And meanwhile the heavens, the spiritual world, is being shaken no less.  More and more frequently, more and more loudly, men are asking—­not sceptics merely, but pious men, men who wish to be, and who believe themselves to be, orthodox Christians—­more and more loudly are such men asking questions which demand an answer, with a learning and an eloquence, as well as with a devoutness and a reverence for Scripture, which—­whether rightly or wrongly employed—­is certain to command attention.

Rightly or wrongly, these men are asking, whether the actual and literal words of Scripture really involve the mediaeval theory of an endless Tartarus.

They are saying, “It is not we who deny, but you who assert, endless torments, who are playing fast and loose with the letter of Scripture.  You are reading into it conceptions borrowed from Virgil, Dante, Milton, when you translate into the formula ‘endless torment’ such phrases as ‘the outer darkness,’ ‘the fire of Gehenna,’ ‘the worm that dieth not;’ which, according to all just laws of interpretation, refer not to the next life, but to this life, and specially to the approaching catastrophe of the Jewish nation; or when you say that eternal death really means eternal life—­only life in torture.”

Rightly or wrongly, they are saying this; and then they add, “We do not yield to you in love and esteem for Scripture.  We demand not a looser, but a stricter; not a more metaphoric, but a more literal; not a more contemptuous, but a more reverent interpretation thereof.”