Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 13.djvu/463

 only for the soul of man, as after the private judgment, but both for the soul and the body,—for the full man. Complete: for it will not consist merely in an anticipation of happiness for the righteous and of torment for the sinners, as after the private judgment, but in complete happiness and torment, in accordance with the deserts of each. Decisive: for it will persist unchangeable for ever, and not for one of the sinners will it be possible ever to free himself from hell, though such a chance is open to some of the sinners after the private judgment.” (p. 649.)

269. Retribution for the sinners. (a) In what will the everlasting torments consist? The eternal torments of the sinners will consist: (1) in the separation from God and in the curse; (2) in the deprivation of the benefits of the kingdom of God; (3) they will be in hell with the devils, who will torture them; (4) they will experience internal torments; (5) they will experience external torments, of the undying worm and the unextinguished fire.

“When you hear of the fire, do not imagine that the fire of that place is like what it is upon earth: our fire will burn whatever it gets hold of, and changes it into something else; but that other fire will eternally burn the one it gets hold of, and will never stop,—and so it is called inextinguishable. For the sinners, too, have to be vested in immortality, not for their honour, but as an eternal requisite for the torment in hell. No mind is able to imagine how terrible it is, unless from the experience of small calamities one may get a small conception of those great, great torments: if you are ever in a bath-house which is heated more than is proper, you may imagine the fire of Gehenna; and if you ever burn in a high fever, you may mentally transfer yourself to that flame, and then you will be able properly to understand that distinction. For, if the bath-house and the fever torment and worry you so, what are you going to feel