very severe, but having a fixed meaning, and that pretty nearly equivalent to our English, Oh vain man!*

And as ascending degrees of guilt are involved in those different outcomings of anger, so also degrees of penalty are expressed by the "judgment," the "council," and the "hell-fire" or Gehenna; but all of them penalties divine, not human with the deeper guilt there goes along the deeper damnation. For it is a strange marring and misunderstanding of our Lord's words on the part of some,one from which Augustine, as will be seen by the next quotation, is altogether free,-to make the two first, the "judgment" and the "council," expressions of penalties inflicted by earthly tribunals; and only the third, the

Gehenna," that which comes directly from the sentence of God. On the contrary, they are all earthly forms under which the different degrees of loss and injury for the spirit of man, reaching at last to its total loss and

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* Racha av◊pwπɛ kɛvé, Jam. ii. 20. The use by St. James of this very term, and of the forbidden μwpós by our Lord himself, (Matt. xxiii. 17,) are alone proofs, if any were needed, that these terms are instanced but as signs of inward states of enmity and scorn: else might a new Pharisaism develop itself out of this very teaching of Christ's; such as, avoiding certain expressly forbidden utterances of outrage and ill will, should count itself free to use any other. But even as these, where love is, may be righteously and holily used, and Christ and his servants spake the keenest things in love, (De Civ. Dei, 1. 21. c. 27: Non dicit fratri suo, Fatue, qui cum hoc dicit, non ipsi fraternitati, sed peccato ejus infensus est,) so where love is not, the guilt of "Racha," and "Thou fool," will be incurred not merely where these words are exchanged for others, but where no word at all finds utterance from the lips.

perdition, set forth by the casting out into the place appointed for the burning of the offal of Jerusalem,—are described. It is scarcely possible to imagine a greater missing of the meaning, a more complete perplexing of the whole passage, than is theirs, who find here any allusion to earthly judgment-seats or human councils, save as the shadows under which the things heavenly, in themselves unutterable, are portrayed.* Therefore our translation "hell-fire" is not happy, as somewhat countenancing the confusion; not that the eternal loss is not by our Lord indicated, but since that has twice before been mentioned under forms of things earthly, so should it still have been here. The valley of Hinnom, profaned by the idolatrous worship of Moloch, (2 Kin. xxiii. 10; Jer. vii. 31,) and thereafter the place where every abomination was flung forth, the offal and the carcases, to be gnawed by the worm, and from time to time to be consumed by the fire, is the "Gehenna" here. And our Lord is saying exactly the contrary to that which they who so interpret will then be making Him to say: He is saying; Moses gave you a law for the outer man; he told you that if you killed, you should die. That is well; but there is another region which that precept could not reach, which nothing that Moses had to impart could reach, a region with which earthly tribunals do not meddle, but over which I am

* De Serm. Dom. in Mon. 1. 1. c. 9: Videntur ergo aliqui gradus in peccatis et in reatu, sed quibus modis invisibiliter exhibeantur meritis animarum, quis potest dicere?

Lord; and I tell you that you must learn to look at the least germs of evil will to your brother, the faintest rudiments of hate, as having in them the nature of deadliest sin, as implicit murder,* to be checked in the very outset; since each growth of this indulged evil will bring you under greater and greater condemnation, till at last it will bring on a total and final separation of your souls from the fountain of grace and love; so that, being entirely reprobate, ye shall be cast out to that fearful place, of which the valley of Hinnom, with its worm and its fire, is the nearest, though indeed only the faint, earthly repre

sentation.

Ver. 23, 24.-In this way Augustine traces the connexion with what precedes: If thou mayest not be angry with thy brother, much less mayest thou retain in thine heart a deep-seated and lasting alienation from him: or elsewhere, with a slight difference: Thou hast heard the awful consequences of a sin against thy brother, how it separates thee not merely from him, but from God: hear

* Augustine quotes, exactly to the point, 1 John iii. 15. And Serm. 58. c. 7: Gladium non eduxisti, non vulnus in carne fecisti, non corpus plagâ aliquâ trucidâsti. Cogitatio sola odii in corde tuo est, et teneris homicida. . . . Quantum ad te pertinet, occidisti quem odisti. Emenda te, corrige te. Si in domibus vestris scorpiones essent aut aspides, quantum laboraretis, ut domus vestras purgaretis, et securi habitare possetis? Irascimini, et inveterantur iræ in cordibus vestris, fiunt tot odia, tot trabes, tot scorpii, tot serpentes; et domum Dei, cor vestrum, purgare non vultis?

now also the remedy,* how thou mayest restore thy disturbed relations with thy God; for thy present condition unfits thee for communion with Him, deprives thee of the privilege of offering to Him any gift, since thou must thyself be an offering, before any meaner thing which thou bringest can be welcome as such.†

But how obey the command to "go," to our brother? The half completed sacrifice will hardly endure so great a delay. It may be that we are ignorant where now to seek him, or, if we know, that lands and seas lie between him and us. This going then must be most often a going in heart, an hastening with the swift affection of love, not with the tardy motion of the feet. And the altar and the offering, in like manner, must be spiritually understood. We offer our gift, when we bring any sacrifice of praise or prayer; we offer it on God's altar when we bring it aright: heretics, as Augustine observes, offer not on the altar, they rather cast their unaccepted gifts on the ground. From all this it is plain that he does not see any imme

* Serm. 82. c. 3: Ecce ille reatus gehennæ quam cito solutus est. Nondum reconciliatus, eras gehennæ reus: reconciliatus, securus offers munus tuum ad altare.

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+ Serm. 82. c. 3: Offers munus tuum, et tu non es munus Dei. De Serm. Dom. in Mon. 1. 1. c. 10: Pergendum est ergo non pedibus corporis, sed motibus animi, ut te humili affectu prosternas fratri ad quem carâ cogitatione cucurreris, in conspectu ejus, cui munus oblaturus es. Ita enim etiamsi præsens sit, poteris eum non simulato animo lenire, atque in gratiam revocare, veniam postulando; si hoc prius coram Deo feceris, pergens ad eum non pigro motu corporis, sed celerrimo dilectionis affectu.

diate nor any direct reference here to the Holy Eucharist; though, indeed, in that, as being the culminating act of self-oblation unto God, there must be on the part of the offerer a perfect charity, if his highest gift, to wit, that of himself, is to be graciously received. Speaking while the Jewish temple service was yet in existence, our Lord clothes an eternal truth in language borrowed from that temporary institution; and to find direct allusion to anything else in these terms "altar" and "gift" is highly unnatural ;* and certainly, as far as any passage I am myself acquainted with, Augustine does not do so.†

But there still remains to consider what these words, "have ought against thee" may mean. Is the offerer of the gift to be considered as the injured or injurious person? is he to hasten and bestow forgiveness for a wrong that has

* The most important passage in Augustine on the spiritual sacrifices which the faithful are evermore to offer unto God, and the relation in which they stand to the abrogated sacrifices of the law, is to be found De Civ. Dei, 1. 10. c. 3-6. Thus, c. 3: Cum ad illum sursum est, ejus est altare cor nostrum: ejus Unigenito eum sacerdote placamus: ei cruentas victimas cædimus, quando usque ad sanguinem pro ejus veritate certamus: ei suavissimum adolemus incensum, cum in ejus conspectu pio sanctoque amore flagramus: ei dona ejus in nobis, nosque ipsos vovemus, et reddimus ei beneficiorum ejus solemnitatibus festis et diebus statutis dicamus sacramusque memoriam, ne volumine temporum ingrata subrepat oblivio: ei sacrificamus hostiam humilitatis et laudis in arâ cordis igne fervidæ caritatis.

No doubt there is some passage of the kind, as Johnson, in his Unbloody Sacrifice, numbers St. Augustine among those who have so interpreted the "altar" here, but he does not give any especial reference.