in heaven nor in hell. Eternity is a spiritual region, and all its
objects, and all its provisions, will have reference solely to the
original capacities and destination of a spiritual creature. They will,
therefore, all be terribly reminiscent of apostasy; only serving to
remind the soul of what it was originally designed to be, and of what it
has now lost by worshipping and loving the creature more than the
Creator. How wretched then must man be, when, with the awakening of this
restlessness and dissatisfaction of an immortal spirit, and with the
bright pattern of what he ought to be continually before his eye, there
is united an intensity of self-love and enmity toward God, that drives
him anywhere and everywhere but to his Maker, for peace and comfort. How
full of woe must the lost creature be, when his immortal necessities are
awakened and demand their proper food, but cannot obtain it, because of
the aversion of the heart toward the only Being who can satisfy them.
For, the same hatred of holiness, and disinclination toward spiritual
things, which prevents a man from choosing God for his portion here,
will prevent him hereafter. It is the bold fancy of an imaginative
thinker,[4] that the material forces which lie beneath external nature
are conscious of being bound down and confined under the crust of the
earth, like the giant Enceladus under Mt. Etna, and that there are times
when they roar from the depths where they are in bondage, and call aloud
for freedom; when they rise in their might, and manifest themselves in
the earthquake and the volcano. It will be a more fearful and terrific
struggle, when the powers of an apostate being are roused in eternity;
when the then eternal sin and guilt has its hour of triumph, and the
eternal reason and conscience have their hour of judgment and remorse;
when the inner world of man's spirit, by this schism and antagonism
within it, has a devastation and a ruin spread over it more awful than
that of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.