Page:The New View of Hell.djvu/120

 without disturbing the entire system of which that truth makes a part.

The great Swede's doctrine on this subject, then, has the merit of perfect consistency; while any different doctrine is seen, upon slight examination, to be in direct conflict with other facts and laws announced by him, the obvious truth and rationality of which compel the assent of intelligent and candid minds.

But not only has Swedenborg declared the fact that a man's ruling love cannot be changed after death, but he has told us why it cannot. In proclaiming the endless duration of the hells, he has at the same time given us the philosophical reason. It is, that when the ruling love is fully unfolded, and everything that disagrees with it is rejected, hated, loathed, the individual is then precisely what this love makes him from centre to circumference. If it be the love of self, then he is selfish all through; just as a crocodile is a crocodile, a wolf a wolf, or a serpent a serpent all through. And he has no more desire to change that love, or to receive an unselfish, heavenly love in lieu of it, or to become any other than the supremely selfish being that he is, than a wolf has to become a sheep, or a serpent a dove. And without the desire to overcome the love of self, and to have the opposite heavenly love implanted or developed in the soul, can we conceive it possible that this change will ever take place? Human character in this world or in the world to come, is not, as I have before remarked,