Page:The New View of Hell.djvu/70

 a luxurious repast upon the remains of the rubbish which the fire failed to consume.

Here we have the primary, literal signification of the Gehenna of fire, which our translators have rendered hell-fire. It means the fire that burned in that loathsome valley of Hinnom. And as the last punishment and disgrace of condemned criminals was, to cast their dead bodies into that valley or that fire, the place came to be used as an appropriate symbol of the condition of those in the other world, who had violated, and persisted in violating, the laws of eternal love and justice revealed in the Divine Word.

But what is the precise spiritual meaning of this hell-fire, or Gehenna of fire, as elicited by Swedenborg's grand Key—the rule of Correspondence?' And we must never forget that the spiritual meaning of Scripture, if we can ascertain what that really is, is its true meaning. For the Lord has himself declared that his words "are spirit and life."

What, then, is the spiritual correspondent of fire? Swedenborg answers, "Love." Love, he says, is spiritual fire or heat. Love is life; and every man, therefore, has some kind of love, because he has life. To wholly deprive him of love, would be to extinguish the vital spark—yes, to annihilate him. Love is the motive power in whatever a man thinks, wills, says or does. As heat is the proximate cause of all activity, germination, expansion and growth in the natural world, so love