Page:The Last Judgement and Second Coming of the Lord Illustrated.djvu/275

 But all who die are not fitted to pass immediately and directly to their eternal habitations: if they were, there would be no necessity for a judgment. There are, however, other reasons for their detention in the world of spirits. Heaven is a kingdom of the greatest purity: hell is a condition of the utmost depravity: nothing that is defiled can enter into the one, nothing that is virtuous can descend into the other. The virtues of none here are so separated from self as to attain the full standard of that excellence which fits the soul for heaven; nor are the vices of any one here so unchecked as to sink them at once into all the atrocities of hell. If, however, any do attain to either of these respective conditions during their lifetime in the world, they will, of course, at once become the subject of the judgment, and pass on to that destiny for which they are so thoroughly prepared. Such cases, however, are rare; they are not, they never have been, the general experience of our fallen race. All are, to some extent, a mixture of good and evil; in some, the good preponderates, in some the evil: the separation of these, and the attainment of a fulness of state by that which is predominant in every individual is the work of judgment. But every one, during his lifetime in the world, forms to himself a character which leans either to the world of woe or to the kingdom of bliss. The good which may adhere to those who are mainly evil, which is only an external good, will hinder them from sinking all at once into the miseries of the lost; and the evil which may cling to those who are mainly good, which is only an external evil, will prevent them from rising at once into all the beatitudes of the saved. These are the circumstances to which the Lord referred when He said, "Nothing is secret, that shall not be made manifest; neither anything hid, that shall not be