ing, and hear nothing, and experience nothing of the world, about me,
but should be absorbed in the vision of my own disobedience of God's good
law, think you that (setting aside the work of Christ) I should be happy?
On the contrary, should I not be the most wretched of mortals? Would not
this self-knowledge be pure living torment? And yet the misery springs
entirely out of the _sin_. There is nothing arbitrary or wanton in the
suffering. It is not brought in upon me from the outside. It comes out of
myself. And, while I was writhing under the sense and power of my
transgressions, would you mock me, by telling me that I was a poor
innocent struggling in the hands of omnipotent malice; that the suffering
was unjust, and that if there were any justice in the universe, I should
be delivered from it? No, we shall suffer in the future world only as we
are sinners, and because we are sinners. There will be weeping and
wailing and gnashing of teeth, only because the sinful creature will be
compelled to look at himself; to know his sin in the same manner that it
is known by the Infinite Intelligence. And is there any injustice in
this? If a sinful being cannot bear the sight of himself, would you have
the holy Deity step in between him and his sins, so that he should not
see them, and so that he might be happy in them? Away with such folly and
such wickedness. For it is the height of wickedness to desire that some
method should be invented, and introduced into the universe of God,
whereby the wages of sin shall be life and joy; whereby a sinner can look
into his own wicked heart and be happy.

III. A third characteristic of the knowledge which every man will possess
in eternity will be a clear understanding of _the nature and wants of the
soul._ Man has that in his constitution, which needs God, and which
cannot be at rest except in God. A state of sin is a state of alienation
and separation from the Creator. It is, consequently, in its intrinsic
nature, a state of restlessness and dissatisfaction. "There is no peace
saith my God to the wicked; the wicked are like the troubled sea." In
order to know this, it is only necessary to bring an apostate creature,
like man, to a consciousness of the original requirements and necessities
of his being. But upon this subject, man while upon earth most certainly
knows only "in part." Most men are wholly ignorant of the constitutional
needs of a rational spirit, and are not aware that it is