Page:The Other Life.djvu/225

 cific corruption or perversion. When the hells are in great fermentation they react against the governing powers in heaven so forcibly that the light and peace of the angels would be sensibly diminished, and their influences upon men in the world vastly weakened, if the evil spirits were not reduced to submission and a kind of dormant state by intense suffering and fear. This is meant by "the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence." The punishment is effected by the mere approach of the angelic spheres.

The miseries of hell are therefore threefold. First, the self-inflicted miseries which flow from the organic state of the soul itself, so that its surroundings are necessarily wretched and loathsome, by the spiritual law of correspondential creation. Second, the miseries inflicted by some upon others in a thousand subtile and astonishing ways. Third, the miseries inflicted by the visitation of angelic spheres when it becomes necessary to maintain that degree of order and equilibrium upon which the stability of the universe depends.

Observe that these are not the punishments of the sins committed in the flesh, but the punishment of sins continually being committed on account of the organically evil state of the soul. No spirit is