Future Retribution. By Rev. George S. Mott [pp. 532-554]

Futture Retribution.
the brutal priests of Ireland, are Christian men. Charity rather
clarifies the vision than causes us to confound things that differ.
We may admit that the Papacy is the Mystical Babylon, the
Scarlet Woman, the Antichrist drunk with the blood of the
Saints, "the great Whore which did corrupt the earth with her
fornication," and yet believe that God has a people in the
Church of Rome who live and die within her pale.
ART. III.-A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future
Life. By W. R. ALGER. Philadelphia, 1864.
lThe Verdict of Reason aupon the Question of the Future
Punishm?ent of tlhose who Die Impenitent. By HENRY M.
DEXTER. Boston, 1865.
Stutart on Future Plunishment. Republished by the Presby terian Publication Committee. 1867.
THESE are some of the books issued within a few years upon
the subject of Future Retribution. This is one of the questions
connected with Christianity which no amount of discussion in
the past suffices to settle for the present. Each generation
opens for itself the question of destiny. Infidelity and errorists
constantly revive the old and oft-refuted objections; and thus
impose upon the Church the necessity of rediscussing what has
been gone over an hundred times. The editor remarks in his
Introduction to the third book on our list: " There is no book
more imperatively demanded by the religious controversies of
the day than the one which we now reproduce. First issued
thirty-seven years since, it has gone out of print, and is little
known to the present generation: but the questions which it discusses and settles are among those which now most agitate the
Christian mind." That there is such an interest in the question
of destiny, appears in many ways. The large sale of" Gates
Ajar" and kindred books, the fact that two sermons on "The
Heavenly State" and "Future Retribution," by Henry Ward
Beecher, first published in the "Plymouth Pulpit," have been
specially called for in so marked and persistent a maniner as to
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