Page:The New View of Hell.djvu/71

 is the cause of all activity, germination, expansion and growth in the moral or spiritual realm. Deprived of all love, a man would be like the earth deprived of all heat—unproductive and dead. While the more passionately he loves any object or being—it may be a woman, it may be wealth, it may be literary or scientific fame, it may be civil or military glory—the more alive and active he is. See how the lower kinds of love—the purely selfish and worldly—the love of gold or glory, incite men to days of toil and nights of watchfulness! And the higher and nobler kinds—loves purer and more angelic—are the springs of action in all men's higher and nobler achievements, in all deeds done to improve and bless mankind. Take away all love from human hearts, and what would men do then? And the less passionately one loves, the more sluggish he is in thought and action—the less is he alive. So obvious is it that love is the quickener and enlivener of the human soul, the very fire of every man's life. And the character of each one, therefore, or the quality of his life, is according to the nature of this fire.

The correspondence between natural and spiritual fire, or natural and spiritual heat, is placed beyond a doubt when we reflect upon the fact that the body grows warm in proportion as any kind of love is enkindled or intensified in the soul. The love may be impure and devilish, such as those feel who are full of anger or revenge; still it produces bodily heat; the face reddens and the