349 
129. If He is to regulate tlie issues of Moral Agency 
according to justice, or the true-always, we are really acting 
in reference to that adjudication and not for the present 
moment alone. And let any one consider in himself, whether 
in our anticipations of final justice for the individual, in 
the great moral system of which he forms part, there are, or 
are not, the elements of the idea of future Retribution for 
wrong ? and, though perhaps more faintly, future vindication 
of right ? It is a fact of our nature, that wrong- 
doing such as stirs our own disapproval, is haunted ia^^Eetri! 
by the belief of Retribution. Then, a Religion Ration in ^ our 
that gives knowledge concerning this, may supply sciousness. 
a need. We may, at this point, await the message. 
To such a fact of our nature, however undefined, we cannot 
refuse recognition, even if it be confessed to be beyond 
analysis. If it be undeniable, — then a Revelation as to future 
Judgment, arising out of our relation to the true-always, to the 
phenomenal, and to the Supreme, has clearly nothing against 
it, but everything to make it probable, in the facts of the 
moral system, so far as we know them ; nor are we yet in a 
position to dogmatize confidently even as to the nature or extent 
of that Retribution ; they must be pure questions of Deonto- 
logy. (See The Bible and its Interpreters , p. 94, &c., where the 
Duration of Retribution is morally treated.) 
1 30. Close to this sense of Retribution for wrong lies another 
fact. Certain kinds of wrong are accompanied, or quickly 
followed, by a Compunction which we are accustomed to call 
“ Repentance.” There are occasions when Repent- 
ance marks so great a change in the character of E J t 5f b ®®f 0 8 ® 
the Repentant that the work of his Probation has associated with 
evidently advanced; the man himself has become a Eepent^ace. ot 
better man. Yet the limits within which repent- 
ance can justly expect forgiveness, and moral restitution, are 
but narrow, if we closely examine them. The social system of 
the world does not often identify repentance with acquittal. 
The political system scarcely recognizes it at all — perhaps 
from inability to examine it exactly. Ho philosophy can regard 
it as the undoing of wrong, even though it may be a guarantee 
at times against the repetition of wrong. Yet the individual 
is always too prone to set some value on his own repentance, 
even while he wavers in his estimate of it. On the one hand, 
he finds that however true his repentance, his sense of retri- 
bution is stronger, and hinders his relying on going unscathed; 
and that all the more, as he contemplates a Supreme Judge; 
yet, on the other hand, he feels that his repentance is a real 
plea, to which he morally clings. Repentance rids him not 
