acteristic rightly related to the immortal
realities to which death is the introduction of the soul. An evil
soul is not thrust into a physical and fiery hell, fenced in and
roofed over from the universal common; but it is revealed to
itself, and consciously enters on retributive relations. In the
spiritual world, whither all go at death, we suppose that like
perceives like, and thus are they saved or damned, having, by the
natural attraction and elective seeing of their virtues or vices,
the beatific vision of God, or the horrid vision of iniquity and
terror.

It cannot be supposed that God is a bounded shape so vast as to
fill the entire circuits of the creation. Spirit transcends the
categories of body, and it is absurd to apply the language of
finite things to the illimitable One, except symbolically. When we
die, we do not sink or soar to the realm of spirits, but are in
it, at once, everywhere; and the resulting experience will depend
on the prevailing elements of our moral being. If we are bad, our
badness is our banishment from God; if we are good, our goodness
is our union with God. In every world the true nature and law of
retribution lie in the recoil of conduct on character, and the
assimilated results ensuing. Take a soul that is saturated with
the rottenness of depravity into the core of heaven, and it is in
the heart of hell still. Take a soul that is compacted of divine

12 Sermons, 3d Series. Sermon XIV., Thoughts on the Last Battle.

realities to the very bottom of hell, and heaven is with it there.

We are treading on eternity, and infinitude is all around us. Now,
as well as hereafter, to us, the universe is action, the soul is
reaction, experience is the resultant. Death but unveils the
facts. Pass that great crisis, in the passage becoming conscious
of universal realities and of individual relations to them, and
the Father will say to the discordant soul, "Alienated one,
incapable of my embrace, change and come to me;" to the harmonious
soul, "Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine."

Having thus considered the question as to the nature of future
punishments, it now remains to discuss the question concerning
their duration. The fact of a just and varied punishment for souls
we firmly believe in. The particulars of it in the future, or the
degrees of its continuance, we think, are concealed from the
present knowledge of man. These details we do not profess to be
able to se