Page:The New View of Hell.djvu/165

 and kept in some degree of external order; but theft and murder (or the spirit that prompts them) still remain in their hearts; and will break forth into outward act as soon as the police are out of the way, or there is no longer any fear of punishment. You cannot drive love—pure, unselfish love—into human hearts with bullets or bludgeons, by infantry or artillery, by cavalry or police.

Our state prisons furnish a good illustration of the hells as described by Swedenborg; and the external improvement which has been going on in many of these for the last thirty years, through a wise administration and a firm government, will give us some idea of the nature and extent of the improvement that is going on in the hells. And while this is not such as will result in finally changing their essential character or ruling love, let us hope that it may, however, be carried so far as to render the condition of the devils quite tolerable if not happy. Let us hope that, ultimately, they may be reduced to such a state of external order, that life—even the low and selfish kind of life which they have chosen and made their own—will be esteemed by them a blessing and not a curse.

In a community here on earth, where a great majority of the people have a conscience and are actuated by principle, the sphere of law and order, of justice and right, is usually so strong that there is rarely any outbreak of the hells through the minority. These latter are kept in subjection and order by purely selfish and