This is another conjecture framed to escape the difficulties of the former two. It would be consistent both with retribution for evil and also with the final victory of good. That in the mysterious nature of things when the malignity of sin becomes incurable, a soul rotted through with sin might ultimately die out of existence; this opinion is at least allowable as a conjecture to escape from the theory of Endless Torment and Sin. It would in a real sense be an everlasting punishment, being an everlasting loss of Heaven and God. But it too is founded only on part of the evidence, on such texts as "The gift of God is eternal life," "He that hath the Son hath life," implying that immortality is a conditional thing granted only to those who are saved, and such texts as "eternal _destruction_ from the presence of God," and the idea of utter annihilation in such passages as "burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire." There is much in favor of it but there is much in Scripture which makes it difficult to accept it. And it contradicts straight out the wide-spread Christian belief in the essential immortality of the soul (though that belief also needs to be examined). At any rate it cannot claim authority as a theory of future punishment. IV These are the only conjectures offered us to solve the difficulties connected with Final Retribution. We find them all unsatisfactory. We have reached no definite doctrine of Hell. With the evidence at our disposal it seems impossible to do so. The failure of all attempts at reconciling the seeming contradictions of Scripture must suggest to us that the solution of this problem is beyond the range of our present powers. At any rate it is beyond the range of our present knowledge. Surely it is wise and reverent to think that this points to _some dealing of God beyond our human ken_ which will one day reconcile all the difficulties.[5] Our little guesses do not exhaust God's possibilities. Some day we shall find the answer in that land where we shall know even as we are known. And when we find it we know it will be consistent with our highest thoughts of God. I like to think that it is those who have grown closest to Christ in sympathy for sorrow and pain and who unlike us, know all the facts of the case, who are represented as joining in that glad shout hereafter, "Hallelujah! salvation and glory and power belong to our God, FOR TRUE AND RIGHTEOUS ARE HIS JUDGMENTS." Leave the manifestation of this to God. A wise old man once said, "God has a good deal of time to do things between this and the other side of eternity."