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 body of the infernal in the hells," to be finally destroyed through "the unrestrained ultimation given to the ruling infernal loves"?—so that the man (when these forms are destroyed), "freed from his prison-house in the hells," will be "restored to his original infant state of conscious existence,"?—will "at once ascend to the plane of the New Heaven—his eternal Home—and there, from this new point of departure, advance in and to Eternal Life"?
These interrogatories, it will be seen, are only different ways of presenting one and the same question, which is commonly stated in this form: "Are the hells to be unending in their duration?"—or this: "Will those who go to hell after death, always remain there? Will they always continue in an infernal state?"
This inquiry is not only natural, but it is one which cannot be kept down. It rises spontaneously to the thought, however its utterance by the lips or pen may be suppressed.
And where shall we look for an answer to this question? To the intuitions of the natural reason? or to the unequivocal teachings of Revelation? Is the verdict of natural reason worthy of implicit reliance in questions of this nature?—perverted, distorted, beclouded as all will admit this reason to be. Were reason alone sufficient to assure us of our continued and conscious existence after the body dies? Reason may have nothing to urge against the doctrine of the soul's immortality—nay, it may have much to urge in favor of it; but could it prove it in such a manner as to give us anything like a comforting assurance of its truth?
And if unaided reason could not discern or clearly demonstrate even the soul's existence apart from the material body, what could it tell us about the nature, facts or laws of that realm which it is to inhabit after the body dies? What assurance could reason alone give us of any hell or heaven after the death of the body, or what could it tell us of the nature of either?—to say nothing of the more profound and subtle questions like that now before us. What need was there of any revelation concerning the life after death, if human reason of itself could have learned all about it?
Obviously the Lord saw the inadequacy of reason to such sublime discoveries; and therefore, in tender compassion and love toward us, He supplements the deficiencies of reason by the clearer light of revelation. He opens the eyes of chosen seers and prophets, and through them reveals truth concerning man's immortality and the life after death, which no one's reason without such revelation could ever have found out.
Plainly, then, the question before us narrows itself down to this: What is the teaching of revelation on the subject? Has the infinitely wise and gracious Lord—aiming to instruct and bless mankind through his own chosen and gifted seers—deigned to tell us anything in regard to the duration of the hells? If so, what is it? Any one may reject the revelation, or refuse to believe it if he chooses; but in that case he either denies that any divinely authorized revelation has been made on the subject, or he sets his reason above that revelation; he assumes "to be wise above what is written," yea, wiser than the Lord himself. He plants himself outside of or above revelation, on precisely the ground occupied by the Deistic and rationalistic schools. I cheerfully concede every one's right to do this; but doing it, he has no right to complain of the logical consequence. He has no right to find fault with others for casting him into the ranks of those whose fundamental idea he deliberately accepts.
Have we, then, a divinely authorized revelation on this subject? And is that revelation clear and unmistakable? This is the question for those to consider who believe in revelation; and my argument is addressed exclusively to such. And it is a question which should be approached with judicial calmness, and with as much freedom as possible from the biasing or blinding influence of our own private judgments, feelings, or wishes in the case. The question is: Has the Lord spoken on this subject? And if so, what has He said?
Nowhere but in its literal sense, does the Scripture tell us anything about the duration of hell; for in the higher or spiritual sense of the Word, no idea is anywhere conveyed of time or duration in the sense commonly understood by these words. And it cannot be denied that, so far as the Bible in its literal sense teaches anything about the duration of hell, it teaches that it will be unending. The same terms to indicate endless duration, that are applied to heaven, are also applied to hell. Its punishment is said to be "everlasting," and its fire "the fire that never shall be quenched." "And these [the wicked] shall go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into everlasting life."
And the great majority of the First Christian Church have believed, according to the plain teaching of the letter, that the hell of which the Bible speaks is to be unending in duration, and that those who go there after death will remain there for ever. It is plain that the Lord intended that those who received his Word (as Christians have hitherto for the most part) in its literal sense, should believe in the eternity of hell. Otherwise, we may be sure that very different language would have been employed from what we find wherever the duration of hell is spoken of. And if it be argued, as it sometimes is, that the words "eternal" and "everlasting" are occasionally applied in Scripture to things known to be of temporary duration, and if the force of the argument be admitted, what follows? Why, simply that the Bible teaches nothing in regard to the duration of hell, and that no argument can be drawn from its language either for or against its eternity.
Let us turn, then, to that more recent revelation which the Lord has been pleased to make for the establishment and upbuilding of a New Christian Church;—a revelation wherein are disclosed many things concerning the life after death, which the First Christian Church was not able to bear. Upon no one subject, perhaps, has the Lord's servant been more explicit, than upon the duration of the hells. The following are some of his clear and emphatic statements:
"Every man's ruling affection or love remains with him after death, nor is it extirpated to eternity; since the spirit of man is altogether such as his love is; and (what is an arcanum) the body of every spirit and angel is the external form of his love, perfectly corresponding to the internal form [i. e. to the quality of his love]. It is therefore manifest that man remains to eternity of the same character as his ruling affection or love is. It has been granted me to converse with some who lived seventeen hundred years ago, and whose lives are well known from the writings of that period; and it was found that every one was still influenced by the love which ruled him when he lived in the world." (Heaven and Hell, n. 363.)
"Man, as to his entire life [or character], remains for ever such as he is at the time of his death." (Ap. Ex., n. 174.) "As man is when he dies, such he remains to eternity." (Ibid. 125.)
"It is man's will-faculty that lives after death, and not his thinking-faculty except so far as this has been in agreement with his will-faculty. . . . It may be imagined by those who are not instructed concerning the life after death, that they can then easily receive faith when they see that the Lord governs the universal heaven, and when they hear that heaven consists in loving Him and their neighbor. But they who are principled in evil, are as far from being able to receive faith after death, that is, from being able to believe from a ground in the will-faculty, as hell is from heaven. . . . If it were possible for spirits to believe and become good from mere instruction in the other life, there would not be a single individual in hell; for the Lord is desirous of elevating all, how many soever there be, to Himself in heaven. For his mercy is infinite, because it is the Divine [Love] itself; and is exercised toward the whole human race, alike toward the evil as toward the good." (Arcana Cœlestia 2401.)
"The life of a man cannot be changed after death, but must remain for ever such as it had been in this world; for the character of a man's spirit is in every respect the same as that of his love; and infernal love can never be changed into heavenly love, because they are in direct opposition to each other. This is what is meant by the words of Abraham addressed to the rich man in hell: 'Between us and you there is a great gulf fixed; so that they who would pass from hence to you, cannot; neither can they pass to us who would come from thence.' (Luke xvi. 26.) Hence it is evident that all who go to hell, remain there for ever." (New Jerusalem and its Heavenly Doctrine n. 239.)
"He who is in evil in the world, is in evil after his departure from the world; therefore if evil is not removed in the world, it cannot be removed afterwards. Where the tree falls, there it lies. So also does a man's life, when he dies, remain such as it was. Moreover, every one is judged according to his deeds; not that these are recounted, but because he returns to them and does them as before; for death is a continuation of life, with the difference that the man cannot then be reformed." (Divine Providence n. 277.)
"Because it has been granted me during many years to be with the angels, and to speak with new-comers from the world, I can with certainty testify that every one is there explored as to the quality of the life he had led; and that the life which he contracted in the world remains with him for ever." (Conjugial Love 524.)
"Since it has been granted me for many years to be in company with the angels, and to converse with those who have left the world, I can testify with certainty that every one is there examined as to the quality of his past life, and that the life which he had contracted in the world remains with him to eternity. I have conversed with those who lived many ages ago, whose lives I was acquainted with from history; and I found them to be of a character similar to the description given of them. I have also heard from the angels that no one's life can be changed after death." (Brief Exposition n. 110.)
"I have been told by the angels that the life of the ruling love [after death] is never changed with any one to eternity, since every one is his own love; wherefore to change that love in a spirit, would be to deprive him of his life, or to annihilate him." (Heaven and Hell n. 480.)
"I can testify from much experience, that it is impossible to implant the life of heaven in those who have led an opposite life in the world." Then—after relating some experiments made with persons who had imbibed the notion that they might receive the life of heaven in the other world, however they had failed to obey the laws of that life in this—the writer concludes: "From these and other experiments, the simple good were instructed that no one's life can possibly be changed after death; and that evil life can by no means be changed into good life, nor infernal life into angelic, since every spirit from head to foot is of the same quality as his love, and therefore of the same quality as his life: and that to transmute this life into the opposite, were to destroy the spirit altogether. The angels declare that it were easier to change a bat into a dove, or an owl into a bird of paradise, than an infernal spirit into an angel of heaven." (Ibid. n. 527.)
(See also Arcana Cœlestia n. 3762, 3993, 4464, 4588, 5145, 7186, 8206, 9061, 10,243, 10,284; True Chris- tian Religion n. 531, Doctrine of Life n. 8, and other places, where the same doctrine is plainly taught.)
The above quotations and references (and many similar ones might be made), leave us in no doubt as to what the doctrine revealed for the New Church on this subject, is. I have quoted freely, that the reader may see how explicit and uniform and positive Swedenborg is in his teaching concerning the impossibility of any essential change of character taking place in the other world. The time in, which the several works here quoted were written, stretches over a period of more than twenty years; yet the essential fact stated is always the same. There is not a single point of doctrine on which he has been more explicit or more positive.
Nor does he proclaim the endless duration of the hells as his belief or opinion merely, but as a part of the revelation which he was divinely commissioned to make. And not only does he declare the fact over and over again, and without any essential variation throughout the long period of his illumination, but he tells us that this is what the angels believe and teach on the subject, and is what is meant by the passage in the Word which speaks of a gulf that cannot be passed over after death. And not only so, but he assures us that he saw and conversed with persons known to him from history, who had been dead, some of them seventeen hundred years, and some for ages, and whose characters had not essentially changed since that period. And elsewhere he tells us why the character cannot be changed after death, as will be shown in a future chapter.
Now no one is under obligation to accept Swedenborg's teaching on this or any other subject. He may accept or reject it as suits his inclination. But I submit that he cannot consistently accept this man as a teacher sent of God—as one divinely illumined and commissioned to make a new revelation—and at the same time discredit or reject such explicit teaching as we find in the foregoing extracts.
Can we suppose the Swedish seer to have been enlightened as no other man ever was upon spiritual subjects generally, yet more in the dark on this one—and by no means an unimportant one, either—than some of us who give no evidence of, and make no pretensions to, any special illumination? There is as little reason for believing him mistaken in regard to the duration of the hells, as there is for believing him mistaken in regard to a hundred other things that he tells us he was commissioned to reveal concerning the great Hereafter.
We cannot, therefore, reject Swedenborg's teaching on this subject, without virtually discrediting his claim as a divinely commissioned messenger, and claiming for ourselves a higher degree of illumination than he enjoyed—upon one subject, at least.
The eternity of the hells, then, is not a human invention. It is not the conclusion of natural reason, nor the offspring of an unenlightened mind. It is a matter of divine revelation, as much so as the immortality of the soul, the nature and time of the resurrection, the nature of heaven and hell, and the law that determines the associates of each one and the appearance of his surroundings in the Hereafter. Whoever rejects the doctrine, therefore, sets his own reason above revelation, or assumes to be "wise above what is written." Yet the revelation is not contrary to enlightened reason, but quite in accordance with it, as will be shown hereafter.
But let us suppose, for the sake of argument, that the hells are not to be eternal;—that, ultimately, all the devils will become, through a process that no one yet understands or is able to explain, shining and happy angels. Supposing this to be the fact, the time may come when the Lord will reveal it to the children of men. But certainly that time has not yet arrived. The Lord has not yet made such a revelation as justifies any man who plants himself upon revealed truth, in maintaining the non-eternity of the hells. What right, then, have we to preach, on such a subject, a doctrine which the Lord in his infinite wisdom has thought proper not to reveal—nay, a doctrine the very opposite to that which He has revealed? If it were best for the world in its present state that this doctrine be preached, certainly God would have known it, and would have vouchsafed the needed revelation. But since He has not done this, but has told us in the most explicit language that the hells are eternal—that a man's ruling love cannot be changed after death—shall we assume to be wiser than the Most High, and proclaim in advance a doctrine, which (supposing it to be true) the Lord in his wisdom has thought proper hitherto to conceal from the children of men?
No: Let us scrupulously guard against such presumption. Let us reverently acknowledge that the infinitely wise One knows what truth, or what measure of truth, is adapted to human wants, and what is the proper time to reveal it. Under the New Dispensation the Lord has plainly taught the eternity of the hells. True or not, it is clearly His will that it should be believed and preached—for the present, at least—yes, during the continuance of this Dispensation. And to believe or teach a different doctrine, is either to discredit the revelation that has been made, or to assume to know better than the Divine Being himself what is true on this subject, or when is the proper time to proclaim this truth.
We see not, therefore, how any one who professes to believe in Swedenborg's divine illumination—who regards him as a man especially prepared, authorized and sent of God to make a new revelation—can for a moment think of rejecting or questioning his teaching in regard to the duration of the hells, or of substituting for it the more than doubtful conclusions of his own understanding. Surely it is not wise to shut ourselves in a dark room and invoke the feeble glimmer of a lamp, when the great orb of day is shining in meridian splendor.