Page:The New View of Hell.djvu/146

 But if this be really so, some will say, what is there, after all, to choose between heaven and hell? What great advantage has one over the other? The devils, you say, have their delights as well as the angels, though they are not delighted with precisely the same things. They have what is most agreeable to their nature. Their surroundings as well as their associates are such as they prefer. They go in freedom where they wish to go—into the society of congenial spirits; and there they feel quite at home. What great inducement is there, then, to strive for heaven, or to shun hell?

It is true that every kind of love has its delights. But the nature of the delight is according to the quality of the love. The purer the love, the more exalted the delight. The delights of the devils, therefore, as compared with those of the angels, are as the delights of bears and crocodiles compared with those of Christ-like men; yea, they are as the sweetness and tranquillity of love, compared with the bitterness and unrest of hatred.

Why is God so unspeakably happy—the happiest Being in the universe? Because He is the best. Because his love is the purest. It is the love of others out of Himself—the love of imparting happiness. And the more a man grows to be like God—the more he receives of His unselfish love, the more does he enjoy of that sweet peace which it is in the very nature of this love to bestow. While the less of this love he receives—the more selfish and un-like the Lord he is, the more does he experience