Nor does the fact of God's _foreknowledge_ as to how each man will act alter the case or cause any injustice, since, as said in Chapter II., it does not interfere with man's freedom. God merely foreknows the use man will make of his freedom. Therefore His knowing beforehand that a man will commit a murder does not make it unjust to punish him for doing so. And the same rule applies universally; so that although God foreknows that the wicked will be lost, they will not be lost _because_ God foreknows it. They will be lost because of their own wilful abuse of their own free will; and God foreknows both this, and its consequences. The third objection refers to God's _mercy_. Surely, it is said, God would never punish men unless there were a chance of improving them; so it is incredible that He should go on punishing them for ever. But perhaps the future misery of the wicked may not be a punishment at all, in the sense of being inflicted by God; it may be the necessary result of their own acts,--the _consequence_ rather than the punishment of sin. Or if we still use the word punishment, we may say that they will be punished, not so much for doing what they have done, as by being what they have become. It will be _according to_ their works rather than _because_ of them.[476] [Footnote 476: Matt. 16. 27; Rom. 2. 6.] And there is much to be said in favour of this view, since it is the way in which God punishes men in this world. Suppose, for instance, a man repeatedly gives way to drink, he will have the natural punishment (which is really God's punishment, Who is the Author of Nature) of being what he has become, an habitual drunkard, and very possibly miserable for the rest of his life. It is the necessary consequence of his sin; and the extent of his misery will, as a rule, be in exact proportion to the extent of his sin. Therefore, if a man is to suffer hereafter for other sins, we should expect this suffering to come in the same way; and to be the natural, and perhaps unavoidable, consequence of the sin itself. Nor is it difficult to suggest how this may be. For the endless misery of the wicked may be to a great extent mental, rather than bodily--_shame and everlasting contempt_, as Daniel calls it. They may be tormented by remorse and regret at having made themselves unfit to share in the joys of heaven. And until we know the greatness of those joys, we cannot know the greatness of this suffering. But if the joys of heaven are endless, and if the existence of the wicked outside heaven is also endless, it must plainly be an _endless_ source of misery. While, in conclusion, the fact that it is the same Christ who has taught us (more than anyone else) the mercy and love of God, who has also taught us the endless misery of the wicked, is an additional reason for thinking that the two cannot really be inconsistent.