Page:The New View of Hell.djvu/204

 and the good. The time of the warfare is the time of the Lord's operation; therefore a regenerate person is called by the prophets, the work of God's fingers. And he does not rest until love becomes his ruling principle; then the conflict ceases. When the work has so far progressed that faith is united to love, it is then called very good; for the Lord then treats him as a likeness of himself. At the end of the sixth day the evil spirits depart, and the good ones draw near."—Arcana Cœlestia, 59-63.

Then comes the sabbath of the soul;—that state of inward peace and rest which resembles the sweet and serene peace of heaven—a state in which the natural man yields a perfect and cheerful submission to the spiritual, or what is the same, to the will of the Heavenly Father. Of this state. Swedenborg speaks thus:

"What the tranquillity of peace of the external man is, on the cessation of conflict, or when he is no longer disturbed by evil desires and false persuasions, can be known only to one who is acquainted with the state of peace. So delightful is this state as to exceed every conception of delight. Not only is it a cessation of conflict, but life proceeding from an interior peace, and affecting the external man in a manner that cannot be described."—Ibid. 92.

What it is, according to the New Theology, to escape hell, must by this time be obvious. It is to escape, or rise out of, that low state in which the selfish propensities of the natural man—pride, avarice, ambition, love