"As sun, or moon, or varying star[19], appears Each heir of glory in those endless spheres: Sun-like the souls that live celestial laws, 2190 And moon-like they who at terrestrial pause-- Who honor not the Saviour in the flesh, But after, in the spirit realm, refresh Their fainting, fettered lives at mercy's fount, And, far as merit buoys them, upward mount; Saved, glorified, by faith and penitence, Made valid, through vicarious ordinance[20], For all who Him believe, who Him obey, And own in other worlds His sovereign sway. Nor lost forever souls unsaved today: 2200 Telestial they who taste the pangs of hell, And pay guilt's debt ere they in glory dwell, Twinkling as stars whose numbers none can tell. "Souls that to high celestial realms have won, Dwell with the gods, beholding Sire and Son; While bounds are set that bar terrestrial heirs (With whom the Gracious One his presence shares), And dwellers in the far telestial spheres, To whom the Holy Spirit ministers. God's servants these, but to His glorious home-- 2210 The loftiest heights of heaven--they cannot come. "Justice and Mercy each shall have its own, Nor one thrust other from the dual throne; Each shoal and deep a final fullness see, And like clasp like through all eternity. "But who shall sound the bottomless despair Of one condemned the second death to share? If, re-ensnared in Satan's subtle mesh, A soul redeemed its Saviour pierce afresh, Spurning the Spirit, scorning proffered ruth, 2220 A traitor utterly to light and truth, Then flames perdition's gulf, death's last abyss, The lake of fire, all life's antithesis. All power then powerless to change its plight; For what avails the burnt-out lamp to light? Justice can lay no blame on blameless shelves, Nor mercy save when souls will damn themselves. "Twofold is death, but life has threefold sway; What ne'er created was, endures alway. The organized disorganized may be, 2230 But not the life that lives undyingly. Nothing bides nothing: that which is shall be; Though form, not essence, change unceasingly. Space, spirit, matter, all eternal are, And death but on creation wages war. Whate'er beginning had may have an end, But life eternal doth itself defend. "Man's inmost spark, his being's primal fire, As birthless and as deathless as its Sire,-- No more the maker of that unmade germ 2240 Than man the framer of the spirit form, Born and begotten in the first estate, God's creature, whom God's power can uncreate. Spirit to spirit, dust to dust returns, But bright intelligence forever burns, Though banished from the presence of the light, Exiled and wandering in the outer night, Remembering past, and mourning present blight, The end whereof, a mystery to man, Unsolved while bending 'neath the mortal ban, 2250 None but the doomed partaker e'er shall scan.