Page:The New View of Hell.djvu/160

 evil spirits in hell—his disobedient and rebellious children. He permits them to suffer punishment from time to time, but never without an end of use;—never, but for their own or others' good. As Swedenborg says: "The Lord turns all punishment and torment [in the other life] to some good use. It would be impossible that there should be any such thing as punishment, unless use were the end aimed at by the Lord; for the Lord's kingdom is a kingdom of ends and uses." (Arcana Cœlestia 696.)

And this is the use intended by punishment in the hells, and the use which it actually accomplishes: It excites fear and dread by the pain it produces; and thus the devils are constrained, through fear of punishment, to moderate their insanities, and restrain in some measure their evil inclinations. And although the lust of doing evil forever remains, yet the condition of the devils is rendered vastly more tolerable when they have been reduced to a state in which they dare not do the evil to which they are inclined; and are kept in this state through fear of punishment.

Under a government of fear and force, therefore—the only kind of government suited to the states of the infernals—and through the instrumentality of punishments administered by divine permission, a change in the condition of the hells is perpetually going on, though not such an internal reformation as will result in obliterating