"No! how should we know aught of such a being?"
"Chiefly by revelation, but also somewhat by observation."
"Give me your idea on the subject, Eugene."
"God is light, power, and love. He created intelligent beings, that he might impart to them a degree of these attributes, and in their degree call upon them to participate in the joys they impart. The unvarying law impressed on material agencies, whether endowed with vitality or not, did not (in all reverence be it spoken) content the love of God; the enforced obedience of the material world to the attractions acting upon it, and the instincts animating the various races of the verified matter, though beautiful, though glorious evidence of power, wisdom, and benevolence, did not call forth a consciousness of creatureship, could not render to the creator a free-will offering of warm, outpouring, grateful love. This the Creator desired. It is his pleasure to desire to be loved; and he created the human soul for the satisfying of this desire; he rendered it free, and endowed it with the faculty of loving, that it may freely offer the purest love to himself."
"Go on; how do you reconcile this with hell?"
"God is pure, holy, incapable of defilement, change, or division. His essential being penetrates all space, comes in contact, literally, with all material and spiritual existence. Now, God created the human soul like unto himself, with affinities to himself, and in proportion as that likeness continues or is restored, light, love, and power exist in that soul. The absence of these constitutes disease, which will result in spiritual death. They are absent in the wicked, and the divine rays entering that soul cause pain, even as the rays of the sun cause pain when they enter the eye of the body after it has become diseased."
"But eternally?"
"The soul preserves its identity and consciousness eternally, though it undergoes spiritual death. If by an act of volition it has lost light, love, and power, it has not lost immortality, and the divine rays, penetrating this wreck of life, necessarily fill it with terror and dismay when all affinity for purity and holiness are destroyed. The spirit of love, culturing the spirit of hate, must produce pain, discord, rage; and as the strife is now unequal and hate is impotent, it creates despair also. We see this on a minor scale on earth. The French revolution [{617}] brought prominently before us men whose spiritual faculties seemed already dead—men given up to a reprobate sense, who appeared utterly beyond conversion, and who were styled by the vulgar incarnate demons; yet these are immortal beings who will carry their dispositions beyond the grave. Should you like hereafter to come in contact with such?"
Annie shuddered. She thought of Alfred Brookbank, whose mere entrance into the room had often caused her blood to curdle.
Eugene continued: "Remember, sister, that evil means cutting ourselves off voluntarily from God, and thereby subjecting ourselves to become the prey of our own passions, of our own selfishness, which when once loosed may lead to every kind of excess. Good, on the contrary, is living in God, adoring his will, admiring his perfections, loving his law. While on earth the choice of good and evil is before us; and what repugnances to perfect action or to perfect dispositions we find difficult to overcome in this our fallen state will be overcome for us if we pray in a sincere, in a co-operative spirit, or rather we shall receive power to overcome all evil and to accomplish all good if only in simplicity of heart we turn to him who is faithful to fulfil all promises; for he has said, 'Ask and you shell receive' all graces necessary to form in you the true spiritual life. If we choose to neglect this means appointed by God, we have no right to complain of the result."