not a mark of death, but of life.
The fact that a soul can suffer proves its salvability beyond dispute.
An everlasting hell is in the nature of things a contradiction, for the
finite cannot eternally bar the way of the infinite reality whose
uprising is the cause of its pain; if it could, it would itself be
infinite, which is absurd. Sin is essentially the endeavour to live
for the finite, the separative, the divisive, as opposed to the
infinite, the whole-ward, the All. Which will win in this encounter?

+The real judge.+--And who, pray, is the Judge? Who but yourself? The
deeper self is the judge, the self who is eternally one with God. The
pain caused by sin arises from the soul, which is potentially infinite
and cannot have its true nature denied. If you go and live over a
sewer, you will be ill. Why? Because you were never meant to live
over a sewer. The evil therein attacks you, and the life within you
fights to overcome it, and in the process you have to suffer. It is
just the same with your spiritual nature. You _cannot_ continue to
live apart from the whole, for the real you _is_ the whole, and, do
what you will, it will overcome everything within you that makes for
separateness, and in the process you will have to suffer. This is what
the punishment of sin means. It is life battling with death, love
striving against selfishness, the deeper soul with the surface soul.
It is our own spiritual nature that compels us to suffer when we sin,
and there is no escaping the sentence; if we sin we must suffer, for we
are so constituted that what sin does, love with toil and pain must
undo. No eleventh-hour repentance can evade this issue; in fact, it
may be the beginning of it. If we have been treading a wrong road,
repentance is turning round and taking the way back. If we have been
living a false life, repentance is the beginning of the true, and just
in proportion as the false has been accepted, so will the true find it
difficult to destroy the lie. _You_ are the judge; you _in_ God. If
you have failed to achieve that for which you are here, you will have
to achieve it here or elsewhere, and the correction of your failure
will inevitably mean pain.

"The tissues of the life to be,
We weave with colours all our own;
And in the field of destiny
We reap as we have sown."

There is nothing horrific about this law of the spirit. In a true and
real sense it is our own law; _we_ make it. Be