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
nothing, and hear nothing, and experience nothing of the world, about me,
but should be absorbed in the vision of my own disobedience of God's good
law, think you that (setting aside the work of Christ) I should be happy?
On the contrary, should I not be the most wretched of mortals? Would not
this self-knowledge be pure living torment? And yet the misery springs
entirely out of the _sin_. There is nothing arbitrary or wanton in the
suffering. It is not brought in upon me from the outside. It comes out of
myself. And, while I was writhing under the sense and power of my
transgressions, would you mock me, by telling me that I was a poor
innocent struggling in the hands of omnipotent malice; that the suffering
was unjust, and that if there were any justice in the universe, I should
be delivered from it? No, we shall suffer in the future world only as we
are sinners, and because we are sinners. There will be weeping and
wailing and gnashing of teeth, only because the sinful creature will be
compelled to look at himself; to know his sin in the same manner that it
is known by the Infinite Intelligence. And is there any injustice in
this? If a sinful being cannot bear the sight of himself, would you have
the holy Deity step in between him and his sins, so that he should not
see them, and so that he might be happy in them? Away with such folly and