It will be proper here to meet an objection to the {97} doctrine that time will have an end which might be drawn from the expression, _eis tous aionas ton aionon_, which frequently occurs in Scripture, and seems to be indicative of an unlimited succession of ages. So far as time is under human cognizance, and has relation to human experience, Scripture speaks in express terms of only _two_ ages--the present one, which lasts to the end of the _generations_ of men in the existing order of things; and the age to come, which embraces the course of the judgment of all who lived in the first age, and terminates with the second death of those who had no part in the first resurrection. When it is said of the Creator of heaven and earth, that He is "from everlasting to everlasting" (_apo tou aionos meos tou aionos su ei_, Ps. xc. 2), and that "He liveth for ever and ever" (_ho zon eis tous aionas ton aionon_, Rev. x. 6), the word _aion_ is not used to signify, as in the instances of the two "ages" just mentioned, an interval having beginning and ending, but is to be taken in an abstract sense, derived from our ordinary perception of the existence and quality of time, and from the faculty which, as said before, we possess of thinking of time as indefinitely extended. The first of the cited passages affirms what in these days we should express by saying that God is necessarily and essentially self-existent, and the other, what we mean by saying that He is necessarily and essentially a _living_ God. But {98} Scripture uses no such terms as these, because it is written on the principle of employing in an abstract sense only such terms as are rendered intelligible by personal sensation and observation, and by experience drawn under actual conditions from the outer world. It is thus that the word "age" acquired its primary meaning, before it was susceptible of the abstract application just mentioned.