Page:A Defence of Revealed Religion.pdf/37

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ETERNAL SUFFERING.
37

perish, living only in the plane of the senses. But there is another class which is even worse than this, and it is composed of those that have sinned against the light, who, when children, knelt in prayer by the mother's knee, who were instructed in the principles of religion and morality, and yet in their manhood have chosen the company of the rake, the drunkard, and the blackleg, and descending little by little are now steeped in sin, pests to society and blasphemers of God. Oh, how terrible must this life be—no love, no rest, no peace, no security. The home of fierce and unchecked lust and passion, the scene of perpetual quarrel and discontent, the abode of fear of the world outside and of distrust of one another. Oh! "the wicked are like a troubled sea when it cannot rest. There is no peace, saith our God, to the wicked."

If we would have an idea of the misery of hell, let us strive to conceive the misery of a number of places like these. A vast host of beings congregated together, all actuated by sordid and sensual motives, the lust of dominion or the love of vile and filthy pleasures. Such a home must be miserable indeed of itself with out the intervention of the wrath of God to make it more intense—it is only the holy love that ever and anon towers above the mass of corruption and depravity that makes life pleasant here, and in the infernal world all pure loves are perverted into hatreds. The mere fact of wicked men taking their evil desires and bad passions with them, and connecting themselves