Page:The New View of Hell.djvu/121

 developed under the law of vegetable growth. Its formation everywhere implies the exercise of human volition, and never takes place without it. A vegetable germ unfolds into a plant or tree according to an implanted instinct or law of its nature, and without volition. But is there any human germ, hidden away in the inmosts or elsewhere of the human spirit,—can there be any—that will ever develop into true manhood or womanhood in like manner?—that is, without conscious volition on the part of the individual? And if the properly human or heavenly growth can never take place without volition, how can the needed volition spring up in the soul of one who has passed the ordeal of judgment, and become thoroughly and supremely selfish?

True, there is but one life; and all life in derivative forms, is one and the same in its origin. The same exhaustless Fountain that vitalizes the organism of the sheep, supplies the wolf also with life. The form into which the life flows, makes all the difference in its quality or manifestations. And we cannot conceive how a wolf could be changed into a sheep, without such a complete change in its entire organism, as would utterly destroy its identity. And this destroyed, where is the original wolf? Annihilated, beyond question.

Let us hear, now, the reasons which Swedenborg himself has given, showing why a man's ruling love cannot be changed after death. He says:

"I have also heard from the angels that no one's life