Page:The Other Life.djvu/234

 in a state, where time and space have no fixed externeity, but change with the changes of the soul.

The inhabitants of hell are, therefore, plainly out of the reach of the saving influences of God, and of the Word of God either spiritual or literal, and of the angels and good spirits. They cannot receive truth; they cannot be drawn by love. They can only be controlled by fear, and by fear excited by terrible suffering.

Is this state to be eternal?

In the spiritual world there are no times and spaces such as in ours; no archives of government, no record of events, no historical evolutions. Spirits know nothing of time. The spiritual idea of eternity is not an idea of an interminable succession of events, but an idea of fixity or perpetuity of state. The question then resolves itself into this; can the state of evil spirits be changed so as to be brought into harmony with the laws of heaven?

In despair of such a result, seeing no causes at work likely to produce it, the benevolent mind, intolerant of an eternal hell, indulges the hope that the sufferings of the wicked will be terminated by a process of gradual annihilation. Swedenborg does not teach this doctrine, although some of his statements invest it with a little plausibility. He