will, perhaps, be asked—how can spiritual beings delight to dwell in the midst of eternal torments: We answer, they do not delight in the miseries of hell. Their delight is in the love of evil. This is their life. The miseries of hell they would gladly escape; but from those vile lusts, they have no wish to be delivered, and with these, the miseries that they suffer, are necessarily and inseparably connected. It is thus that they are chained eternally to the torments of hell. Just as the man who is suffering the miseries of drunkeness; or any other form of sensual lust, does not love the wretchedness, poverty, disease and disgrace that result from his evil habits. But he loves the evil habits themselves, and the misery follows as a necessary consequence,—a consequence which even mercy itself—being founded in truth, Cannot avert.
But this subject is painful to dwell upon; we will detain the reader no longer with it. If, however, he desires to examine more fully, the nature of that misery, which the wicked are already beginning to suffer, and which will be fully consummated, when, in the world of endless woe, the last desire for goodness and truth, shall have perished, he may find this subject unfolded and explained, with a life like truthfulness, in those writings to which we have so often referred. He may there find a description, as full, at least, as he will desire, of the various forms of misery, which, by unchangeable laws, are connected with their corresponding evils. In those writings may be found the most ample confirmation, of the principle which I have stated above, that the torment of hell, in its most general form, is the raging fire of unsatisfied lust; that the "common torment of hell, consists in the unhappy spirits being withheld from their loves, from which, however, innumerable other miseries exist." It is very clearly and fully shown from the Word of the Lord, from the nature of the divine goverment, as well as from the laws of the human mind, that the torments of hell are not arbitrarily inflicted upon those who
