Page:The Other Life.djvu/208

 and charity, produce heaven. Infernal media, organized forms of hatred and falsity, produce hell.

Love is the life of heaven; hatred, the life of hell. The hatred of hell is the outward manifestation of a life which has been changed into its opposite by its passage through an utterly selfish form. The common spirit of all the hells, their connecting bond, is hatred to God and the neighbor. This hatred is the legitimate result of the love of self, when it rises from the place it was designed to occupy—the last and lowest—and absorbs and governs the whole soul.

The madness, the insanity of self-love cannot be seen in this world, while the subject of it, the selfish, avaricious or ambitious man, is surrounded by external restraints, such as the fear of the law or of the loss of life or reputation. After death, when the spirit acts from the ruling love alone without such external bonds, it rushes headlong into the wildest excesses, desires to possess all things, to rule over all things, even heaven and God himself, and burns with hatred and revenge against every object which stands or seems to stand in the way of its inordinate lusts.

The hatred of evil spirits against the angels, against little children, against the good and the