Page:A Defence of Revealed Religion.pdf/35

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ETERNAL SUFFERING.
35

part of man belong all his thoughts, delights, feelings, inclinations, desires, passions and loves. All these therefore he takes with him into the eternal world. "As the tree falls so must it lie," or as it is written in the Word, "he that is holy, let him be holy still; and he that is filthy, let him be filthy still." Every soul is governed by some ruling love, and whatever form it may assume, every love, when traced to its source, will be found to originate in the love of the Lord and the neighbour on the one hand, and the love of self and the world on the other.

The dwellers in the infernal kingdom are such as are principled in the love of self and the world; they aim at nothing but the acquisition of power, or gain, or self-indulgence, caring not at what cost to others. What must be the normal condition of a race of people all confirmed in these infernal loves—when all earthly restraints are taken away, when man becomes as it were the very form of his heart's love, when the guises of hypocrisy and the fear of reproach are cast off, and the wicked man is really himself! And all this too without the sanctifying presence of truth! Here we are often induced to curb and subdue our passions by the pleadings of truth; but as we are taught in the parable of the talents, a time comes when he who has failed to employ the truth entrusted to him must deliver it up: "to him that hath shall be given, and from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he seemeth to have." We may gather a faint, and