Thus in like manner should we see the true relations between God and
ourselves, the true meaning and worth of His beneficent presence, if we
could behold a lost soul at the moment of its final and judicial
reprobation, a few moments after its separation from the body and in all
the strength of its disembodied vigour and the fierceness of its penal
immortality.
No beast of the jungle, no chimera of heathen imagination, could be so
appalling. No sooner is the impassable bar placed between God and itself
than what theologians call the creature's radical love of the Creator
breaks out in a perfect tempest of undying efforts. It seeks its centre
and it cannot reach it. It bounds up towards God, and is dashed down
again. It thrusts and beats against the granite walls of its prison with
such incredible force, that the planet must be strong indeed whose
equilibrium is not disturbed by the weight of that spiritual violence.
Yet the great law of gravitation is stronger still, and the planet
swings smoothly through its beautiful ether. Nothing can madden the
reason of the disembodied soul, else the view of the desirableness of
God and the inefficacious attractions of the glorious Divinity would do
so.
Up and down its burning cage the many-facultied and mightily
intelligenced spirit wastes its excruciating immortality in varying and
ever varying still, always beginning and monotonously completing, like a
caged beast upon its iron tether, a threefold movement, which is not
three movements successively, but one triple movement all at once.
Pages:
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282
283
284
285