Now hell exists because men have chosen wickedness; yet there is mercy there. God is mercy itself, and He descends not into hell with inverted nature. Where there is no reform there is no endless torture. But an appreciation of heavenly joy and an eternal knowledge of an everlasting loss of bliss like this, would be unceasing pain. A conscience forever torturing itself over what might have been, having a constant and realizing conviction of its loss, would be unremitting agony. A devil is a devil because he has lost his appreciation of love, of heaven and of heavenly bliss;—because his conscience is blasted through willful and continual sin.
So the flame of the sword turning itself in the heart, self-love and sensualism flaming with false persuasions, keeps man back from reaching for the tree of life and profaning its fruit; and this, because self-love does not appreciate the tree of life, deeming the fruit of the forbidden tree in all respects infinitely superior to it. It is only as self-love ceases to be itself, and that the love of God and good takes its place, that the joy of Eden and heaven is seen and sought. But after death, when conscience is lost and evil is become the rooted love of the soul, the happiness of heaven is a thing impossible to be known; and if approached it is felt as something repulsive and painful.
So no devil could seek to enter the Eden of the
