And will there not be with the amazing surprise at these revelations a strange and unaccountable gladness? But, no less, at the thought of the soul’s past blindness and persistence in ill-doing, will there not be an exquisite pain? And the soul’s pain can be even more oppressive than the pain of the body. “Pain,” it may be asked, “in the Presence of Christ?” Yes, indeed! pain, because in the Presence of Christ; pain in remembering, and in the consciousness, new to the soul, of its utter unworthiness before Christ. The soul cannot fully feel it now, but it
will feel it then. The fire of His love will kindle a fire of loving self-reproach. The weight of a heavy shame to think of the past, and to know now of His beauty, and His love, and His care, care for so careless a soul, love for a soul so loveless,—this will sting with an extreme severity the soul humbled before Him. And here we should do well to remember that, as the characters of each differ almost infinitely, whereby there are innumerable shades and degrees of every conceivable distinction of merit and of sin, so the proportion and depth of the pains which the souls will feel will vary equally. The pains of no two souls will be exactly the same. They will be measured out, in subtle and exact aptness to each, according to its guilt or goodness, precisely as the process of its purification shall require. There will be nothing unjust, nothing capricious in them.
And thus the pain will surely be a very wholesome pain. What could more deepen
penitence? The pain of self-reproach for unworthiness, and the pain of the sense of goodness in the Presence of Jesus Christ,—these two pains will purify the soul. No work of sanctification has ever been wrought in any soul without suffering. And none ever will. Even Christ Himself was not made perfect, as Man, without suffering. But the suffering in Paradise will be accompanied with an exquisite delight and joy. Do we not know, even here on earth, how near to each other very often are joy and sorrow? He whose spirit is swelling with a great gladness has often a sense of an undercurrent of great pain along with it. How often tears and laughter go together! So, in that home of the disembodied soul, the very process of purification will be marked by an intensity of joy and an intensity of pain. They will be simultaneous. Nay! increasingly, it may be, they will deepen in the soul. The nearer the soul reaches its perfection the more
abounding may be its gladness, and the more piercing its compunction. Thus its very anguish will be a delight, and its very delight will be an anguish, and these will proceed, and advance, and increase until the soul is ripe for the Blessed Vision of God in Heaven. For He Which began the good work in the soul, here, in life, will, we may be very confident, never abandon it, nor suspend it, but will continue it and perfect it all through the after life, even until the day of Jesus Christ.
VII.
“Being put to death in the flesh, but quickened in the spirit: in which also He went and preached unto the spirits in prison, which aforetime were disobedient, when the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing.”
—1 Peter iii. 18, 19, 20 (R.V.)
So far we have considered the case of those who die in the favour of God, and, though as yet unfit for the vision of God in Heaven itself, are nevertheless capable of becoming so in the course of the Intermediate Life.
What, however, must be said of those who in life had light and knowledge of God and of His will, and yet hardened themselves against God; who were free, and in the exercise of their freedom rejected God? Of these unhappy souls, if there is no yielding of their will to God in the Intermediate Life, if, and so far as,
they have absolutely made themselves by the fixedness of their choice incapable of yielding, if after death they still hate God and set the whole force of their determination against Him,—one can only fear that even God Himself cannot help them. On the supposition that the prerogative of free will, once for all given to man, must be respected by God, we are driven to the belief that God cannot force the will. It is not that God changes towards them. It is not necessary to suppose that He is even punishing them. He may still be in Himself all that He is to all, full of love towards them, full of pity, full of mercy. “His mercy is over all His works.” He can no more cease to be a Father to every man than He can cease to be God. He hates nothing that He has made. But if the very knowledge and thought of God’s longsuffering patience serves only to harden and to exasperate, if it only stirs in the lost soul deeper pangs of inexorable hatred,