"Oh! where is this mysterious bourne
By which our path is crossed?
Beyond which God himself hath sworn
That he who goes is lost.

"How far may we go on in sin?

How long will God forbear?

Where does hope end and where begin
The confines of despair?

"An answer from the skies is sent
-Ye that from God depart
While it is said "To-day-repent
And harden not your heart.'"

CHAPTER V.

PENAL RESULTS (NATURE).

Being shut up to punishment for sin without any hope of escape then the question of its nature assumes deep interest. Whether it may or may not be of such a character as to justify the intensest apprehension-this will have a determining effect on your attitude towards sin here and its results in the hereafter. If, in your estimation, there be not much to fear, then the "pleasures of sin" though they be but "for a season" may secure your devotion. If, on the other hand, it be revealed to you as appalling beyond present conception, then sin's fascination may be broken and your otherwise indifference under declared condemnation, may be turned into the keenest solicitude.

That it is of such a nature as to justify your alarmed interest and arouse your deepest and continued fear, will, I trust, be readily seen and appreciated when you soberly consider some of its elements.

You are to regard these as embracing not only

penal results which are the natural and inevitable outgrowth of sin, but also, in addition, others which are to be positively or immediately inflicted.

Then, too, you are not to be unmindful that, while your soul is the chief factor in your personality you are yet the possessor of a body which, in some form, will continue to be a part of you in your future existence. This will be a sharer, after its kind, in the deplorable issues of your present life as a sinner. All of those, then, you must not, by any means, overlook, when you estimate the nature and possibilities of future suffering in view of sin. Any one of them would be appalling enough, but, taken in combination, their effect should be to lead you with irrepressible and undying earnestness to inquire, "What must I do?"

It is said of Judas that he went to "his own place." And he is called the "Son of perdition." There is a place, then, where sinners gravitate in harmony with their nature. Their repulsions and affinities are such that they determine of themselves what the future destiny is to be. So long as these remain, that destiny could not be other than it is. No mere arbitrary change of place would work a reversal of condition. On the contrary it might the rather intensify the pain

ful elements of the untoward estate. In a city you find houses of an immoral character gravitating to their kind in certain quarters and streets. And the inner degradation tends more and more to be reflected in their material and visible surroundings. Over all is written "Unclean, unclean." Now it would make no difference to arbitrarily change their location. Put them amid the pure and palatial and the blight of their presence would soon be seen in externally degraded and degrading transformations. Take one such and plant it amid influences and associations, righteous and holy and true, and the consequent restraint would become irksome and lead to shiftings where the sorry comfort of a common wretchedness might be realized amid more congenial surroundings and companions. It was their own place.

And, as here, so in the life beyond. The morally polluted, the souls alienated from God by sin, will, in the very nature of things, and by choice, gravitate away from fellowships which are holy. They will each go, by a selection according to natural law, to "their own place." In the future were such souls arbitrarily placed amid holy associations, their moral repulsions would only. intensify their pain by the ever present and wretched consciousness of being "out of place." While there are places called hell and heaven,

yet the elements of pain characteristic of the one and of pleasure as to the other would measurably companion souls independently of location. They could not deny themselves nor flee from their `fixed nature, so that, in a measure, hell and heaven would be wherever they were.

But look now at some of the penal elements naturally making up this inner hell which will torture you in your lost future estate. They will, of course, be mainly of a mental or spiritual

nature.

One of the most painful, we may believe, will be the working of an accusing conscience. It sits in judgment on our appetites, lusts, passions, choices, all our inner as well as manifested life -and, in the light of an immutable standard of righteousness, declares them to be sinful or holy. There results the consciousness of guilt or innocence, condemnation or approval, along with varying emotions of pleasure or pain. These emotions will be more or less lively and effective in their results according to the vigor with which the conscience works as well as the clearness of the revelation made to the soul of that standard according to which the decisions of conscience are rendered.

There may, it is true, be a dimness for a time on all the glory of this vicegerent of God in your