is, no deeds of love, proved that they had no feelings of love towards their neighbor in their hearts, for "out of the heart are the issues of life." And he that has no love in his heart towards his fellow-men, has nothing of heaven in him; for heaven, like God, is love. And he that has not heaven in his heart, cannot come into heaven. Thus were they rejected.
But what, now, was their sentence?—let us examine the picture farther, and we shall by and by get at the exact truth. "Depart, ye cursed," were the awful words, "into everlasting fire." What fire is that? No one can suppose that there is any material fire in the spiritual world. It must, then, be spiritual fire. And what is spiritual fire? The Scripture answers that question: "Wickedness burneth as a fire."[1] Spiritual fire, then, the everlasting fire into which the evil are to go,—is wickedness: and they are described as going into that fire, because that fire is already in their own hearts: for just as "the kingdom of heaven is within" us, as the Scripture declares, so the opposite kingdom of hell is properly within us: it is essentially a state of the mind, rather than a place;—though, after death, the state of mind becomes a place, or forms to itself a place.
But, again, what is the nature of that wickedness, that fire in the bosom, which is sufficient to cause this fearful doom? As already remarked, it is declared by the Divine Judge Himself what that state of evil is, namely, not so much being guilty of any heinous crime, as the fact of not having done any good,—which proves that there is no love to the neighbor in the heart; or, in other words, it is a state of utter
