science of being, will drink his cup, and be able to give the demonstration of healing the sick, casting out error, raising the dead, and triumphing over the grave, that our blessed Master gave for our example. But earth hath no recompense for such a life; personal sense can neither give nor receive this reward; the understanding of God is its only recompense that lifts being above mortal discord and gives it immortal harmony.
A person may reward unjustly, but Principle cannot. That we receive all deserved punishment on earth, is quite as false as that all our rewards are mundane; and who that toils and sacrifices unceasingly bearing the cross only to see their existence mocked, will say this is sufficient from the hand of Love? Or again, that those have suffered all they have to experience, who still gloating in sensuality and hypocrisy, or murder and rapine, succeeding in all villainies up to the time they pass suddenly from sight in this loathsomeness, are pardoned, and pushed straight into glory? Their punishment here was certainly insufficient to reform them, which is the design of Wisdom, and the good man's heaven would be to them a hell. How can they find bliss in purity and Truth, to whom these are the very opposites of themselves. There is nothing in mercy or Love, that can pardon the necessity in science for sinners to suffer after death. To destroy the penalty due to sin, would be for Truth to pardon error; in which case, the sinner is no wiser for what he has experienced; for if he escapes the punishment he deserves, it is not according to God's government, in which justice is the handmaid of mercy. For sin to produce suffering is the only way to destroy it to him who believes in the pleasures of sin.
