25. What is God? No less the punishment of the perverse than the glory of the humble. We may say He is reason and sweet reasonableness directing itself with fixed unchanging aim, and everywhere operative. Any perversity in collision with that must of necessity be confounded. Of course, all swelling pride and unseemliness which dashes itself against that must be broken to shivers. Woe to all creation if it chance to get in the way of unbending righteousness! for that righteousness is strength. There is no more deadly foe of wills wickedly disposed than to be for ever attempting, ever in conflict, and all in vain. Woe to wills opposed! Surely they only bring upon themselves the penalty of their own reluctance. What penalty is so severe as to be ever choosing what shall never be, ever refusing what shall never cease to be? Is there any hell like a will under this necessity of choosing and refusing, so that whichever way it moves misery must be as constant an attendant as perversity? As long as eternity shall last it will not get its choice; and what it refuses it shall no less through eternity endure. And such a will meets with its due deserts; he who is never disposed for what becomes him, should never attain to what delights him. Who doth this? The righteous Lord our God, who with the perverse also shows Himself perverse. Straight and crooked can never agree, for these are contrary one to the other, though they do not injure one another. One of the two is injured; it cannot be God. ‘It is hard for thee’, He says, ‘to kick against the goad’: 1 that is, not hard for the goad, but hard for him who kicks. God is also the punishment of the base, for He is light; and what is so hateful to filthy and degraded minds? Surely, ‘Every one that doeth evil hateth the light.’ 2 But I say, will they not be able to shun the light? Not in the least. It shines everywhere, though not to all. In a word, it shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehends it not. 3 The light sees the darkness, for with it seeing and shining are the same thing; but it is not in turn seen by the darkness, because the darkness comprehends it not. They, then, are seen that they may be confounded; and they do not see that they may not be consoled. Nor are they seen only by the light ; they are also seen in the light. By what person or persons ? By every one who sees, so that the greater the number of beholders the greater may be their confusion. But out of the whole multitude of the spectators there is no eye more troublesome to a man than his own. There is no glance, whether in heaven or on earth, which a benighted conscience would rather escape, or is less capable of escaping. The darkness is not hidden even from itself ; though it sees naught else, it sees itself. The works of darkness follow it, and there is no hiding-place from it, not even in the darkness. This is ‘the worm that dieth not’4—the memory of the past. Once it gets within, or rather is born within through sin, there it stays, and never by any means can be plucked out. It never ceases to gnaw the conscience ; feeding on it as on food that never can be consumed it prolongs the life of misery. I shudder as I contemplate this biting worm, this never-dying death. I shudder at the thought of being the victim of this living death, this dying life.
26. This is the second death, which never kills, but is always killing. Will no one grant them to die once for all that they may not evermore be dying ? They who say to the mountains, ‘Fall on us, and to the hills, cover us,’5 what do they desire but to put an end to death by the kindness of death, or to escape from it ? In short, they will call upon death, and death will not come.6 I would have you see this clearly. It is certain that the soul is immortal, and so long as it has life it must have memory ; for otherwise it might some day cease to be the soul. So then, while the soul lasts, memory also lasts. But what is memory like ? It is burdened with foul disgrace, horrid crimes, swelling vanity ; through scorning (the better part) it is like a field rough and neglected. These former things have passed away, and have not passed away. They are out of hand, but not out of mind. What has been done cannot be undone ; the doing was in time, but the effect of the doing will be eternal. That does not pass with time which passes all times. The wrong-doing that you remember for ever must therefore for ever be a torment. This will be to realize the truth of the words, ‘I will reprove thee and set before thine eyes what thou hast done.’7 It is the Lord who thus spoke ; all that opposes Him must of necessity oppose itself ; so that at last there will be the complaint, ‘O thou watcher of men, why hast thou set me as a mark for thee, so that I am a burden to myself?’8 These are the facts, Eugenius. Nothing can contradict God and be consistent with itself ; on the contrary, whosoever shall be reproved by God shall be reproved also by himself. When the soul is torn from the body, and stands self-centred, it will be no longer possible for reason to disguise the truth, or for the soul to shun the searching insight of reason. How can it do so when the senses, by means of which, as we know, it was wont to sally forth to gratify its curiosity, and, leaving itself, would find a home in that fashion of the world which passeth away, are sealed up in the slumber of death ? Do you see that nothing is wanting to complete the confusion of the filthy when they shall be brought forth as a spectacle to God, to angels, to men, to themselves ? How lamentable is the lot of all bad men, who must undoubtedly face this torrent of simple equity, and stand exposed to the light of unveiled truth ! Is not this to be for ever beaten, and to be for ever confounded? ‘Break them with a double breach, O Lord our God’,9 saith the prophet.