ally understood_ by its possessor, in that Presence.
The thoughtless man may never know while upon earth, even "in part," the
depth and the bitterness of this fountain,--he may go through this life
for the most part self-ignorant and undistressed,--but he must know in
that other, final, world the immense fulness of its woe, as it
unceasingly wells up into everlasting death. One theory of future
punishment is, that our globe will become a penal orb of fire, and the
wicked with material bodies, miraculously preserved by Omnipotence, will
burn forever in it. But what is this compared with the suffering soul?
The spirit itself, thus alienated from God's purity and _conscious_ that
it is, wicked, and _knowing_ that it is wicked, becomes an "orb of fire."
"It is,"--says John Howe, who was no fanatic, but one of the most
thoughtful and philosophic of Christians,--"it is a throwing hell into
hell, when a wicked man comes to hell; for he was his own hell
before."[3]

It must ever be borne in mind, that the principal source and seat of
future torment will be the sinner's _sin_. We must never harbor the
thought, or fall into the notion, that the retributions of eternity are a
wanton and arbitrary infliction upon the part of God. Some men seem to
suppose, or at any rate they represent, that the woes of hell are a
species of undeserved suffering; that God, having certain helpless and
innocent creatures in His power, visits them with wrath, in the exercise
of an arbitrary sovereignty. But this is not Christ's doctrine of endless
punishment. There is no suffering inflicted, here or hereafter, upon any
thing but _sin,_--unrepented, incorrigible sin,--and if you will show
me a sinless creature, I will show you one who will never feel the least
twinge or pang through all eternity. Death is the wages of _sin_. The
substance of the wretchedness of the lost will issue right out of their
own character. They will see their own wickedness steadily and clearly,
and this will make them miserable. It will be the carrying out of the
same principle that operates here in time, and in our own daily
experience. Suppose that by some method, all the sin of my heart, and all
the sins of my outward conduct, were made clear to my own view; suppose
that for four-and-twenty hours continuously I were compelled to look at
my wickedness intently, just as I would look intently into a burning
furnace of fire; suppose that for this length of time I should see
noth