ugliness of sin

But remember, there is no middle place. How glad thousands would be if there were a place between heaven and hell! O! could they but find purgatory to be true, and have some medium spot! "They are not good enough," they say, "for heaven; but surely they are not bad enough for hell!" O, could they but find some place between the two! But there is none. There is a great gulf fixed (Luke xvi. 26) between Abraham and Dives--there is no intermediate spot. It is either a peculiar people ordained to eternal glory, or a people foreordained to everlasting perdition; it is either being interested in the love and blood of the Redeemer, or it is being under the tremendous wrath and curse of God to all eternity; it is either standing complete in Christ, wrapped up in His righteousness and washed in His blood, or it is to howl in torments through endless ages; it is either to be blessedly caught up into the bosom of God, or thrust down into the habitations of the damned.

And therefore, there being such a tremendous gulf between the one and the other, it will make the child of God quake at times, and fear, and tremble to the center, whether he has an evidence that God is his Father, that Christ is his Elder Brother and that the Holy Spirit is his Teacher. But he will never get any solid satisfaction until God Himself drops a testimony from His own mouth, gives him the spirit of adoption to cry Abba, Father, unveils His face in Christ Jesus, and seals blood and love in his conscience. Then he enters into his rest, and feels the peace of God which passes all understanding, (Phil. iv. 7); he is sealed as an heir of God and joint heir with Christ (Rom. viii. 17), and when he dies he will forever be with Him whom his soul loves.