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

3 future tietribution.
or prophecy unexplained, or with some similar limnitation or
modification, expressed or obviously understood."
7. "We cannot expect to understand it all, or perhaps, indeed, little of it fully. God, eternity, heaven, hell, the soulthese are themes that run at once far out beyond any present
human power of complete comprehension. We cannot expect
to make everything which it contains consistent with everything else in the Bible-not because of its non-consistence, but
because our minds are not yet developed enough, our range of
study is not yet broad enough, to fit us to see that consistency."
8. " Where two interpretations are possible, that one is probably truest which has most conmmended itself to the Christian
experience of the past. That stands a very strong chance of being truest which can claim the coincident faith and love of the
church of Christ during all these ages: not necessarily of the
church in its hierarchical forms, as men are apt to look at it."
9. "Where two interpretations seem to be possible, that is often probably truest which we naturally like least. 1 do not
mean to intimate that the Bible is against our natural instincts,
or adverse to our innocent tastes; but that many of its doctrinal teachings, being medicine for our disease of sin, are apt to
seem bitter to our spiritual palate."
10. "Where two senses are possible, that must be most reasonable which is on the whole safest for man;" i.e., in which he
will run the least risk of woe. The book is a lucid treatise, full
of cogent argument, written for the region of Boston, where the
teachings of Theodore Parker and T. Starr KIing necessarily
tinge all theological discussions.
Concerning the future state of the soul, Evangelical Christians agree in what has been the unvarying doctrine of the
church, as expressed by Councils and Confessions. The soul
exists in another world; in that world there is a place of happiness and a place of misery; the manner of life on earth determines to which of those abodes men go, for there is no transfer from one to the other. Those who dissent from this doctrine may be divided into three classes. Universalists, who
claim that all punishment for sin is inflicted in this life. Restorationists, who contendthat after a period of punishment all
in hell shall be admitted into heaven. Annihilationists who
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