ich is between, the mere transition from life to
life, from one mode of life to another.

The soul, therefore, after death begins just where it left off, just as
life left it, no better, no worse. It passes into the unseen world,
pardoned, it may be, by GOD'S mercy, but yet no other than it was before
it left the body. Even GOD'S pardon does not change the character, nor
yet remove the tendency to sin. That still remains, alas! even in the
penitent. The consequences of our acts follow upon our acts, and form
our character. As there is uniformity in the law of cause and effect in
the realm of nature, so, in morals, is it the case with what we do. Let
a man yield to a temptation:--is he as strong against that temptation
after he has yielded to it as he would have been if he had not yielded to
it? We know that he is not. We know, by our own experience, that it
needs a far greater and more strenuous effort to withstand the same
temptation after previous yielding, than it did before. A man may repent
and be pardoned, but he is what his sin has made him, weak and frail and
prone to sin again. GOD'S pardon has cancelled his guilt, but it has not
removed his tendency, nor the moral consequences, which sin has wrought
upon his character.

This then is what is meant when it is said that the soul, which has
received the gracious pardon of GOD before it left the body, is still,
when it is launched into the Intermediate Life, clouded and disfigured
with the stains and imperfections which it had contracted in this life.
But GOD, Who has begun the good work of cleansing in this life, will
carry it on in the life unseen, until the soul be made perfect in the day
of Jesus Christ.

Who of us, the best of us, does not feel within him the bitterness of the
lingering poison, which sin has deposited in his heart? The holier a man
is, the more he is conscious of his sinfulness. To the end of life this
must be so; for there is no reaching perfection here. Those, chiefly,
who have made most progress in the struggle against sin here, know how
hateful it is. The higher men rise here in the divine life, the more
they discern their imperfections, because they can better measure them by
the measure of GOD'S perfections. Each loftier level is but a new
standpoint from which to lift the eyes, and view the peaks which soar
upward towards infinite elevations. For GOD is holiness itself; and
holiness is infinite, because GOD is infinite