Page:The New View of Hell.djvu/199



E have seen that hell, according to the New Theology, is not a place to which a certain class of people are at last sent against their will, as disorderly people in this world are sent to the lock-up, or criminals to the penitentiary; but that it is a state or quality of life which each one freely chooses, and which he strengthens or confirms by habit. It is a low condition of humanity—a disorderly or inverted condition—one in which the higher part of our nature is in absolute subjection to the lower, the human to the bestial, the angelic to the infernal. It is not a state of unmitigated misery; for every kind of love, as we have seen, has its delights. The more unselfish is the love that we develop and strengthen—the more it is like God's own love, so much the sweeter and more heavenly is the delight felt in its exercise, and so much the purer and more exalted our happiness; but the more unlike we are to God in character, feeling and purpose—the more supremely selfish we grow to be, and the more indifferent to the wants and woes and welfare of others, the lower is the form of