that hell is in one of the spots on the sun, and heaven in the
chromosphere are distasteful to the last degree to those who believe
that "God is a Spirit," and that "flesh and blood can not inherit the
kingdom of God." Such feel that heaven may be anywhere and everywhere;
that the gulf which separates the rich man and Lazarus may be only a
moral gulf, seeing that they talked across it. They see eternal
punishment in the perception of the sinner that he has forever stunted
his soul by his sinfullness and the grossness of his affections. Though
he should begin a progressive life from his present status, he could
never catch up with a soul which has a purer point of departure.

There is an awful penalty in the fact that this sense of loss may be
eternal. The consciousness of limited powers, the certainty that so much
is lost, never to be regained, is surely a fire that is not quenched; a
worm that dieth not!

[Sidenote: Limitation by Sin.]

[Sidenote: Illustrations.]

[Sidenote: Strength and Disuse.]

But how much more awful the thought that this limitation of the nature
by sin, whether of body or soul, may affect the soul through unending
life without fitness for any pleasure or delight possible to that
state! The company of good and refined men and women is here little less
than hell to a bad and coarse man, if he is compelled to stay in it.
There is nothing in the spirit, aim, and employments of such that he can
measure. He can understand the delights of eating and drinking. Even
then it is the coarse foods and the drunk-bringing drink that he most