Suffering

1003. Is the duration of the sufferings of the guilty, in the future life, arbitrary or subordinate to a low?

Spirit: "God never acts from caprice; everything in the universe is ruled by laws which reveal His wisdom and His goodness."
1004. What decides the duration of the sufferings of the guilty?

Spirit: "The length of time required for his amelioration. A spirit's state of suffering or of happiness being proportioned to tile degree of his purification, the duration of his sufferings, as well as their nature, depends on the time it takes him to become better. In proportion as he progresses, and his sentiments become purified, his sufferings diminish and change their nature."
1005. Does time appear, to the suffering spirit, longer or shorter than in the earthly life?

Spirit: "It appears longer; sleep does not exist for him. It is only for spirits arrived at a certain degree of purification that time is merged, so to say with infinity." ([[|240]])
1006. Could a spirit suffer eternally?

Spirit: "Undoubtedly, if he remained eternally wicked; that is to say, if he were never to repent nor to amend, he would suffer eternally. But God has not created beings to let them remain for ever a prey to evil; He created them only in a state of simplicity and ignorance, and all of them must progress, in a longer or shorter time, according to the action of their will. The determination to advance may be awakened more or less tardily, as the development of children is more or less precocious; but it will he stimulated, sooner or later, by the irresistible desire of the spirit himself to escape from his state of inferiority, and to be happy. The law which regulates the duration of a spirit's sufferings is, therefore, eminently wise and beneficent, since it makes that duration to depend on his own efforts; he is never deprived of his free-will, but, if he makes a bad use of it, he will have to bear the consequences of his errors."
1007. Are there spirits who never repent?

Spirit: "There are some whose repentance is delayed for a very long time; but to suppose that they will never improve would be to deny the law of progress, and to assert that the child will never become a man."
1008. Does the duration of a spirit's punishment always depend on his own will, and is it never imposed on him for a given time?

Spirit: "Yes; punishment may be imposed on him for a fixed time, but God, who wills only the good of His creatures, always welcomes his repentance, and the desire to amend never remains sterile."
1009. According to that, the penalties imposed on spirits are never eternal?

Spirit: "Interrogate your common sense, your reason, and ask yourself whether an eternal condemnation for a few moments of error would not be the negation of the goodness of God? What, in fact, is the duration of a human life, even though prolonged to a hundred years, in comparison with eternity? ETERNITY! Do you rightly comprehend the word? sufferings, tortures, without end, without hope, for a few faults! Does not your judgement reject such an idea? That the ancients should have seen, in the Master of the Universe, a terrible, jealous, vindictive God, is conceivable, for, in their ignorance, they attributed to the Divinity the passions of men; but such is not the God of the Christians, who places love, charity, pity, the forgetfulness of offences, in the foremost rank of virtues, and who could not lack the qualities which He has made it the duty of His creatures to possess. Is it not a contradiction to attribute to Him infinite love and infinite vengeance? You say that God's justice is infinite, transcending the limited understanding of mankind; but justice does not exclude kindness, and God would not be kind if He condemned the greater number of His creatures to horrible and unending punishment. Could He make it obligatory on His children to be just, if His own action towards them did not give them the most perfect standard of justice? And is it not the very sublimity of justice and of kindness to make the duration of punishment to depend on the efforts of the guilty one to amend, and to mete out the appropriate recompense, both for good and for evil, 'to each, according to his works'?"