Page:The Judgment Day.pdf/149

 bond that unites man to heaven, and constitutes him an heir of eternal life.—thus leading to the dangerous conclusion, that eternal happiness is the gift of immediate mercy, and has no necessaay connection with a man's life. And here too originate such blasphemies as the "Divine Revelations of Nature," and other similar things. With this hell, are connected, more or less intimately, all those who love a disorderly life, because they love the false principles that lead to such a life.

Intimately connected with these two great divisions of the infernal state, there is also that immense host of spirits and men, who without being in the immediate love of evil and falsity, are nevertheless willing to be under the spiritual dominion of those who are ruled by these loves, and whose delight it is to rule over others in return. To this class belong those who practice false doctrines, because they love to gratify those who preach them. They think and act wrong, because they have not enough moral courage to think and act right. They call men their masters, and obey them as such, instead of having but one master, Christ, who is the Lord himself as divine truth. The full development of this love fills up the outer regions of the infernal world. It furnishes slaves and servants in abundance, to those spirits whose delight is the lust of dominion.

But we may again remark, that these are only general distinctions. Every variety of selfish and sensual affections, when confirmed as the spirit's ruling love, forms his own peculiar as well as permanent state, and leads him to his final place in that world of death and endless misery; while those who are in the love of similar evils, are thereby drawn more closely together, and constitute the various societies of hell.

But it will perhaps be asked—How can societies exist among those who being under the dominion of selfish affections, have no real love for each other? That they do exist among such persons in the natural world, is unquestionably