Hell is the deliberately chosen home of the wicked, and to escape from it they must leave themselves. If an act of immediate mercy would translate men to heaven; and enable them to be happy, none would ever go to hell for a moment. It is only the class who have trampled upon the good, and rejected it with their eyes open, that inherit the kingdom of darkness. We cannot for one moment imagine that God could permit men to go there for venial or involuntary sins, for errors of judgment, or for single deeds done in moments of deep temptation; the Lord can read the hearts of men and discern the ruling motive in the lives that seem mixed to us. When men have perverted the love of God and spurned the offices of His Holy Spirit from vicious motives, they have confirmed themselves in evil ere they leave this world. They are in the state in which they say—
"Evil, be thou my good;"
or as Milton more fully describes it—
Pleasures about me, so much more I feel
Torments within me, as from the hateful siege
Of contraries.All good to me becomes
Bane, and in heaven much worse would be my state;
For only in destroying find I ease
To my relentless mind."
And in hell there is nothing to change their internal character; the divine love cannot do it, for in such a sphere its influences must be even less powerful upon them than during their life in the world: punishment
