This is not the darkness that is scattered by striking a match and lighting a candle. And each man's own, and only, darkness is from his own sin. My sin is myself. And my darkness lies so thick and so deadly on my soul because self towers up so high and so dark in my soul. That is the reason why they gnaw their tongues with pain, and, that is the reason that the smoke of their torment goes up for ever.
Self is the very valley of the shadow of death.
It is the land of deserts and pits. It is that land of drought through which no man passes. It is that land where all men who pass through it stumble and are broken upon its dark mountains. Hell is hell, because self fills it full, down and out, to all its awful bottomlessness. And heaven is heaven, because there is no self there.