Page:The New View of Hell.djvu/109

 haunts;—when spirits, I say, are brought into this state, can we see in any rational light how they are ever to be brought out of it? Can any one give us any rational or philosophical explanation of the modus operandi? To suppose that they may be brought out some time or other and in some way or other, is scarcely less absurd than to suppose that a wolf may be changed into a lamb or a serpent into a dove. The supposition has neither reason, philosophy, experience, nor historical fact to support it.

If heaven could be given by an act of immediate mercy, undoubtedly all would finally go there; and there would be no hell. But it cannot. It is an internal state which cannot be developed or reached without the individual's own volition and active co-operation. The heavenly character must be developed, the heavenly organism and tissues must be formed, else the light and warmth of that sweet realm would be as uncongenial as our atmosphere is to fishes, or as the light of the noon-day sun is to owls and bats. Agreeably to this Swedenborg says:—

"Many spirits entertain the opinion that heaven may be given to every one from immediate mercy; and on account of their belief they have been taken up into heaven; but when they came there, because their interior life was contrary to that of the angels, they grew blind as to their intellectual faculties till they became like idiots, and were tortured as to their will faculties so that they behaved like madmen; in a word, they who go to