through the after life, even
until the day of Jesus Christ.

VII.

"Being put to death in the flesh, but quickened in the spirit: in
which also He went and preached unto the spirits in prison, which
aforetime were disobedient, when the longsuffering of GOD waited in
the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing."

--1 PETER III. 18, 19, 20 (_R.V._)

So far we have considered the case of those who die in the favour of GOD,
and, though as yet unfit for the vision of GOD in Heaven itself, are
nevertheless capable of becoming so in the course of the Intermediate
Life.

What, however, must be said of those who in life had light and knowledge
of GOD and of His will, and yet hardened themselves against GOD; who were
free, and in the exercise of their freedom rejected GOD? Of these
unhappy souls, if there is no yielding of their will to GOD in the
Intermediate Life, if, and so far as, they have absolutely made
themselves by the fixedness of their choice incapable of yielding, if
after death they still hate GOD and set the whole force of their
determination against Him,--one can only fear that even GOD Himself
cannot help them. On the supposition that the prerogative of free will,
once for all given to man, must be respected by GOD, we are driven to the
belief that GOD cannot force the will. It is not that GOD changes
towards them. It is not necessary to suppose that He is even punishing
them. He may still be in Himself all that He is to all, full of love
towards them, full of pity, full of mercy. "His mercy is over all His
works." He can no more cease to be a Father to every man than He can
cease to be GOD. He hates nothing that He has made. But if the very
knowledge and thought of GOD'S longsuffering patience serves only to
harden and to exasperate, if it only stirs in the lost soul deeper pangs
of inexorable hatred, then,--man being man and GOD being GOD,--what can
GOD do? It is they who reject GOD, not GOD Who is rejecting them. It is
they who spurn Him, not He Who chastises them. He does not banish them
from His Presence: it is they who banish Him from their presence. And if
this defiance against GOD survives and lasts, if, as ages pass, it
becomes more resolutely inveterate and set, what power can stop it, what
love can soften it? And if it is never to be pacified, and never yields,
what shall hinder it from going on up to and beyond the Day of Judgment?
It may be said that suc