Page:The New View of Hell.djvu/193

 ance, benevolence, and willing self-sacrifice for the good of others; or they suggest ways and means whereby our pride, vanity, ambition, lust of dominion, love of ease or pleasure, or selfish greed of gain, may most surely be gratified.

Yes: one or the other of these two classes of spirits,—according as we are more willing to listen to the soft pleadings of the angels, or to be beguiled by the glazing flattery of devils,—one or the other of these classes are our intimate associates, our bosom companions. Of one or the other we take counsel day by day, however unconscious we may be of the fact. To one or the other we listen from hour to hour. With one or the other we think and feel and act in the ordinary intercourse of our every-day life. There is no escape from this. The laws of our spiritual being, and the arrangements and constitution of the moral universe, render it a necessity. Our spirits breathe, and must breathe, the atmosphere of heaven or of hell. They may—oftentimes they do—breathe that of each by turns.

But the Lord vouchsafes to every one the liberty of choice. We are as free to choose our invisible as we are our visible associates. Nay, we do choose them, whether we think of it or not. We have actually chosen them, though it may not be for eternity; for we have the power to change our invisible as well as our visible companions. Indeed, the whole work of regeneration—every inward change we experience—involves a change in our spiritual