ousness, 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