Page:The New View of Hell.djvu/47

 and blessing others, he will be wise and righteous after, will find still greater delight in serving and blessing, and feel a more intense desire to serve and bless. But if he loved himself supremely—if his chief aim in life was to get gain for himself alone, to secure his own ease, comfort and advancement, and promote his own welfare, careless of the welfare and the rights of others, he will be in precisely the same state after death; he will be just as indifferent to the wants, the woes, the welfare and the rights of others as he was before. If he had no genuine love of the Lord and the neighbor before, he will have none after. If meanness, dishonesty, lust, tyranny, hatred, contempt of others in comparison with himself, and selfish greed of gain, were in his heart before, he will be full of these same unclean and hateful vermin after. As it is written: "He that is unjust, will be unjust still; and he that is filthy, will be filthy still; and he that is righteous, will be righteous still; and he that is holy, will be holy still."

Heaven is within the soul; so says the new doctrine. It is essentially a state of life, not a place;—a state of supreme love to the Lord and the neighbor. It consists in the reception and exercise of the Lord's own unselfish love, which for ever seeks not its own, but the welfare and happiness of others. The happiness of heaven results from the exercise of unselfish love. This love is the angels' breath of life; and the purer and more intense it is, the more exalted is their bliss.