The thoughtful advocates of Everlasting Torment are of course aware of all this. But they honestly feel that in spite of the indefiniteness of the adjective, our Lord has fixed His meaning beyond question in the one passage that has become so famous as the great proof text in this controversy, "These shall go away into _aeonian_ punishment, but the righteous into _aeonian_ life" (Matt. xxv. 46). Very reasonably they say, "If the word asserts everlastingness in the one case it must also in the other." The answer is that the word _of itself_ cannot assert everlastingness in either case. If this word were our only proof of everlasting life then everlasting life would be a doubtful matter. But the everlastingness of that life like the everlastingness of God is evident all over the Bible quite apart from this. The words here simply tell that the one shall go into the aeonian life and the other into aeonian punishment, _i. e._, that the one shall go into the life of the future age and the other into the punishment of the future age without exactly specifying the duration of either. I quite feel that the close connection of the words suggests at least the probability that one is as lasting as the other. Yet even that consideration is weakened by asking if people are willing to apply it to St. Paul's statement, "As in Adam _all_ die even so in Christ shall _all_ be made alive" (the context suggests eternal life). I would point out, too, that a somewhat similar verse is in the Septuagint Bible of our Lord's day in Hab. iii. 6, where the (aeonian) everlasting mountains were scattered before God, whose ways are (aeonian) everlasting. Yet it does not prove that the one is as endless as the other. And in Rom. xvi. 25-26 the mystery hid in the (aeonian) times "before the world began" is now manifested according to the command of the (aeonian) eternal God. But the age "before the world began" is ended. At any rate I must leave the matter here. I have no space for fuller statement. If any man feels that a world of increasing sin and awful torment growing no nearer to its end after millions and millions of ages does not disturb his conscience or the thoughts of God which he has learned from the whole trend of Scripture this text will probably weigh strongly with him in spite of all that I have said. But to him who is tortured by such a thought of God and yet feels that Scripture binds him to it, it must surely be some relief to feel that even in this great bulwark text of Everlasting Torment our Lord only asserts that these shall go away into the aeonian punishment or chastisement[3] whatever that may mean. Reluctantly, impelled by a sense of duty, I have dealt with this theory more fully than with the others. Should any godly people fear that I am lightening an awful deterrent to sin let me say what long experience has taught me of the danger of this common theory.