There are several passages of scripture in which the same word, _aionios_, is unquestionably used in this sense. In Heb. 5:9, we read of “eternal salvation;” that is, a salvation which is eternal or everlasting in its results, not one which is forever going on, but never accomplished. In Heb. 6:2, Paul speaks of “eternal judgment;” not judgment which is eternally going forward, but one which, having once passed upon all men, Acts 17:31, is irreversible in its decisions, and eternal in its effects. In Heb. 9:12, he speaks in the same way of “eternal redemption,” not a redemption through which we are eternally approaching a redeemed state which we never reach, but a redemption which releases us for all eternity from the power of sin and death. It would be just as proper to speak of the saints as always redeeming, but never redeemed, as to to speak of the sinner as always consuming but never consumed, or always dying but never dead. This fire is prepared for the devil and his angels, and will be shared by all of the human race who choose to follow the devil in his accursed rebellion against the government of Heaven. It will be to them an everlasting fire; for once having plunged into its fiery vortex, there is no life, beyond. Other texts noticed in succeeding chapters. CHAPTER XXIX. EVERLASTING PUNISHMENT. Matt. 25:46: “And these shall go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into life eternal.” This text is very commonly urged as an objection against the view that the destiny of the reprobate is an utter and eternal extinction of being; and it is one which has great apparent force. But the secret of this apparent strength lies in the fact that the term punishment is almost invariably supposed to be confined to conscious suffering, and that when any affliction is no longer taken cognizance of by the senses, it ceases to be a punishment at all. But if it can be shown from sound reason, and from the analogy of human penalties, that punishment is estimated by the loss involved, and not merely by the amount of pain inflicted, the objection vanishes at once, and will cease to hold back many devout and holy minds from adopting the view we here advocate. On the duration of the punishment brought to view in the text, we take no issue. It is to be eternal; but what is to be its nature? The text says, Everlasting punishment; popular orthodoxy says, Unending misery; the Bible, we believe, says, Eternal death.