Page:The New View of Hell.djvu/65

 organs of vision are preserved in a healthy condition, we shall be able to see when the light comes. But the darkness produced by the second cause is, indeed, deplorable. However brightly the light may shine, it is (if the eye-sight be gone) as if the sun were blotted out. The brightness of noon-day is as midnight darkness to us.

So, likewise, there are two corresponding causes of spiritual darkness. One is, the absence of truth, or spiritual light. But this kind of darkness may soon be dispersed. For a person may be ignorant, and therefore in spiritual darkness yet he may preserve his mind in such an honest and healthy condition, that he will be able to understand and receive the truth so soon as it is presented to him. But there is another and far more deplorable kind of spiritual darkness. It is that which results from disobedience to the known laws of the heavenly life. It is the darkness into which those fall, who, under the influence of selfish and evil loves, confirm themselves in various false ideas contrary to the revealed Word of the Lord. For everywhere and always is it true, that "he who doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light lest his deeds should be reproved." Persons who, under the prompting influence of infernal loves, disregard and trample on the laws of their inner life, and so obscure their moral perceptions, come at last to hate the light of truth, and shun it as owls and bats shun the light of day. Their understanding becomes