the soul with a more daring recklessness and wilder
desperation. And arguing from this experience, to which men appeal, as
if it was truer than the Word of God, what more special virtue will
punishment have in the next world than in this? What tendency will
there be in that long night of misery to inspire a man with the love
of God, whose very character, and whose holy and righteous will, have
annexed the suffering to the sin? If the sinner's character is not
thereby reformed, and all the while he retains his responsibility,--as
he must do on the assumption that reformation is possible,--and if he
continues to choose sin with more diabolical hatred to the good, is it
imagined that such a process as this, of continued sin accompanied by
continued mental suffering, will at any period render him mere meet
to enjoy the holiness of heaven than when he first departed from the
world to enter upon his new and strange probation? Oh, the more we
think of it, the darker does the history grow,--the faster does the
descent of the evil spirit become, clown that pit which, from its very
nature, seems to be bottomless! If means are discoverable there more
suited to gain the end of moral regeneration than any which exist
here, let them be pointed out. We have searched in vain to find them
in the Word of God, or in the mind and history of man.

Making every allowance for the real difficulties which beset this
question, and for the peculiar feelings, partly allowable, and largely
the reverse, with which it is entertained, we have no doubt that many
have been driven to the extreme of utter disbelief in the existence of
any punishment by the bold and presumptuous manner in which they may
have heard men consign all the heathen, and all Christendom, with the
exception of a very few, to this awful doom. Infants even have not
escaped the condemnation of some who, professing to have more orthodox
faith than their neighbours, have really little or any faith at all
in God, but utter mere words to which--in this case, fortunately for
themselves--they attach no meaning. For if they did, what would life
be to them, believing that it was possible for their babe, because of
Adam's sin, to be cast for all eternity into literal fire? But while
we have perfect confidence in the salvation of infants, and of many
more, we dare not condemn any. The living God, who alone knows each
man, may be dealing in ways beyond our comprehension with the most
lonely sava