the unbelievers either."[1] "No, we shall give you nothing, for God has prohibited you from having anything. Yesterday you were laughing at us, to-day we laugh at you: as God declares in his eternal word, 'If you mock at us, we will in our turn mock at you, as ye have mocked at us.'"[2]
This illustration of the enjoyments of Paradise has been made in very brief and comprehensive language, to serve as an example, but it is impossible by any similitude to give an idea of what it is to be separated from the contemplation of the beauty of the Lord. For whoever has but once experienced the delight of being near to God, and has enjoyed the vision of the beauty of the Lord, would perish if he should be for one moment separated from it. Even the last and least person who quits hell will receive a mansion from the Lord God which is equal to ten of these worlds. But we do not mean to say ten worlds in surface or in amount by number and weight, but ten worlds in value and in the beauty they display and the pleasure they afford.
Having now become acquainted with the three kinds of spiritual torment, know, student of the divine mysteries, that these spiritual fires of which we have been speaking, are more severe than the fires which burn the body. The body does not itself perceive pain, and until pain reaches from the body to the spirit, it does not make a trace or impression. If, then, the anguish that is occasioned to the spirit through the channel of the body is so agonizing, imagine how intense must burn the fire of that anguish which has its origin in the centre of the soul. The pain which any thing suffers is occasioned by the excess of something contrary to the nature and necessities of its constitution.
