infraction as a sin, and that love with its unspeakable delights will flood your soul more and more.
But pursue the opposite course—disregard the laws of the soul's higher life—violate the precepts of heavenly charity—trample on the rules of love and justice in your intercourse with your fellows, and your soul will become emptied of the Lord's life, and more and more insensible to its ineffable sweetness; your love of self will grow continually stronger, and your heart more and more like the nether mill-stone; your sympathies will become more contracted and deadened; your sense of justice will grow more and more benumbed; your moral perceptions more and more beclouded; your appreciation of, and your aspirations after, the gifts and graces of heaven, more and more feeble; and the angel life in you become more and more marred and crushed, and the demon life more vigorous and flourishing.
And thus will your soul, created with the capacity of endless progress in wisdom, holiness, and love, and with boundless capabilities of enjoyment, be lost and ruined. Yes—lost and ruined; because, through your voluntary neglect or infraction of the revealed and everlasting laws of love—the laws of your soul's higher life, that life is dwarfed and spoiled, or fails to become developed within you. Having chosen darkness rather than light, you cannot help missing the glorious boon which you were made capable of attaining—Heaven and its unutterable delights. Verily, saith the Lord:
