VI.
THE DURATION OF HELL.
HAVING shown where and what hell really is, and having exhibited the sharp contrast between the Old and the New doctrine in respect to reasonableness;—having shown, also, that the law according to which all spirits, the evil as well as the good, associate in the great Hereafter, is unquestionably a law of the human soul, and must therefore be as enduring in its operations as the, soul itself, I proceed next to consider the momentous question:—
Is the condition of the wicked in the other world, as Swedenborg was permitted to see and commissioned to reveal it, to continue substantially the same throughout the ages of eternity? In other words, will those who pass into that world in a hellish state of life, remain for ever in that state? Or can men repent, and their ruling loves be changed from evil to good, after death? Can the great work of spiritual renewal be commenced in the other world (with those who have died in a state of confirmed evil), if it has not been begun in this? Or, as some believe and confidently affirm, are "the inverted forms of the natural degree which constitute the external
