Page:Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures.djvu/284

272 step in Christianity; but its spiritual recompense is sure, lifting Life above mortal discord, and giving immortal harmony to being.

A personal or limited mind may be unjust, but the unlimited Divine Mind is the immortal law of justice as well as mercy. It is quite as impossible that mortals should receive their full punishment this side the grave, as that this world should bestow on them their full reward. The hand of Love is not satisfied with giving us only toils, sacrifices, cross-bearings, multiplied trials, and mockery of our motives. It is absurd to suppose that the wicked gloat over their offences up to the last moment, and are then suddenly pardoned, and pushed into heaven.

The design of Love is to reform the sinner. If his punishment here has been insufficient to reform him, the good man's heaven must be to him a hell. They who know not purity and Love by experience, can never find bliss in purity, Truth, and Love, simply by being translated into another sphere. Science reveals the necessity of sufficient suffering, either before or after death, to quench the love of sin. The remission of the penalty due for sin would be for Truth to pardon error. Escape from punishment is not in accordance with God's government, in which justice is the handmaid of mercy.

Who will stop sinning, so long as he believes in the pleasures of sin? When mortals admit that evil confers no pleasure, they turn from it. Remove error from thought, and you prevent the error.

History is full of records of suffering. “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.” The word martyr in the Greek meant witness; but those who testified for