Sabin Hough

“ But how evident is the change, and that a change for the better, which, in many other respects likewise, has passed upon the state of mankind:—a change so obvious to all, that we can scarcely take up a magazine, or newspaper, or any new publication whatever, without finding it adverted to with admiration!"
"The improvements everywhere springing up, are continually calling forth, from every quarter, exclamations of surprise, and expanding every bosom with the hope, that the opening of a new and happier day than the world has ever before seen, is now dawning on mankind." ”

“ It is impossible, therefore, for that divine power, by which all spiritual, as well as natural laws are executed, ever to manifest itself in any way, that shall disregard the just and necessary connection, between goodness and happiness, or between evil and misery. To the man who has become confirmed in the love of goodness and truth, and whose delight is in leading a useful and orderly life, there is secured a store of endless happiness and delight, of eternal enjoyment in heaven, of which no power in the universe can ever deprive him ”

“ Henceforth the man, or the spirit, is internally united to hell. He lives in hell, for hell lives in him. Such is conscience, and such is the way in which it is gradually weakened and finally destroyed, by an evil life. And who will imagine that there are any regenerating influences in the infernal world, by which conscience can ever be restored? What possibility can there be of restoring the man's conscience to a healthy action, or to any action, by permitting him eternally to associate with those who, like himself, are confirmed in the love of evil and falsity? ”

“ Thus myriads upon myriads of atoms—for you may count up till imagination is wearied, and then reckon that you have but one unit of the still inapproachable sum—myriads upon myriads of atoms, the dust of kingdoms, the ashes of all that have lived, are perperually jostled, and mingled, and separated, and animated, and swept away, and reproduced, and, nevertheless, not a solitary particle but holds itself ready, at the sound of the last trump, to combine itself with a multitude of others, in a human body in which they once met perhaps a thousand years before. ”

“ The sun was not literally "turned into darkness," nor the "moon into blood." On the morning after that fatal day, on which "the heavens and the earth passed away," the natural sun no doubt shone forth in its usual splendor. The moon continued to look down, with the same quiet lustre, even upon Calvary itself. The stars held their places in the skies. The earth pursued its long travelled path in the heavens; and the whole machinery of nature moved on as if nothing had happened. But were the divine prophecies unfulfilled? ”

“ Reader, ask yourself candidly and honestly,—is not this love of self, including the love of the world and all things in it, for the sake of self—is not this the source and origin, the very essential principle of hell?—
And yet these selfish affections appear to be closely interwoven with the inmost texture of our hearts. We have inherited them from our forefathers, as a part of our very life. They have come down to us with the accumulated strength of ages. ”

“ There is, plainly, a deep spiritual meaning here. The sun that rises upon the evil as well as the good, is the Sun of divine love, while the rain that descends upon them, is the divine mercy clothed in the form of divine truth: And, it is only by thus spiritually loving our enemies, even those who are in the very worst states, that we can be the children of our Father who is in heaven. ”

“ Since the time at which we believe the Last Judgment, in the spiritual world to have taken place, every branch of science has been improved to a most unexpected extent, whilst many new ones have been added, and others have assumed a form which makes them virtually new; thus Geology, whose discoveries are so highly interesting, whose conclusions are so momentous, and whose practical uses are so eminent, is entirely the offspring of modern times; whilst chemistry, which is so continually astonishing us with fresh wonders, has undergone, in our times, a change equivalent to a new creation. ”

“ The moon transmits to us the light which she receives from the sun. It very finely and beautifully represents that heavenly charity and faith which is the reflected image of the divine love and wisdom. But when the sun is turned into darkness, the moon is also turned into blood. When the divine love and wisdom disappear from the spiritual heavens, charity and faith are turned into that which is evil and false. ”

“ The mind accustomed to survey and be delighted with the beauties of nature and the works of ingenuity and taste, will find itself involuntarily asking, where are the flowing rivers,the towering mountains and the wide extended plains, with their fields of fruits and flowers? Where are the stately temples, towering up in finely moulded architectural forms? Are these all wanting in that spiritual world? ”

“ It does seem a little strange, that men do not instantly see the false-hearted selfishness of attending upon the external duties of religion, only for the sake of obtaining eternal happiness for themselves, as an end. If you suspect a man of making a profession of religion, for the sake of attaining some worldly end, you call him a hypocrite, and say that he has no real regard for the duties of religion; but how much better are you, if, in your attendance upon those duties, you are also acting from the hope of a selfish reward? ”

“ Death, they know, will deprive them of their mortal bodies, but as for themselves—the spiritual part—that expects to live on. The mind is its own witness of its immortality. There are times however, with most persons, when the anticipation of another life grows dim and uncertain; dark shadows gather around it. This is when the mind, guided only by the light of natural science, or by the still dimmer light of the popular religious doctrines, seeks to obtain some idea of the nature and form of that spiritual world. ”

“ Never before since the Christian religion was vouchsafed from heaven to be a blessing to mankind, was the whole mass of its professors thus raised by a simultaneous impulse and arrayed against one another; as if they had all agreed as one man, while disagreeing in every thing else, to disown the empire of the Prince of Peace: never indeed before, since the world began, was any war excited, which deluged the surface of the globe with such wide-spread desolation. ”

“ Shall we say as some are doing, that evil is only undeveloped good; that hell is nothing more than an imperfect heaven? This solution of the difficulty may seem reasonable enough to the man who is in an entirely unregenerate state, and knows nothing by experience of the essential difference between good and evil.—Such a man may even suppose that spiritual goodness consists in nothing more than "doing good to others, in obedience to the commandments of God, and for the sake of an everlasting reward," thus resolving all goodness into the love of self as an inmost principle. ”

“ The human mind had for ages been immersed in the worst forms of idolatry and sensuality. It was necessary, therefore, that it should be very gradually brought out into the pure light of heaven. If the poor prisoner, who had long been confined to some dark and gloomy dungeon, were suddenly brought out into the full light of day, he would gladly rush back to his dark retreat. And thus would the human mind have fled back to the lowest depths of sin and profanation, if, from the dark haunts of idolatry and sensuality, it had been suddenly brought forth into the pure light of spiritual truth. ”

“ If the principles here advocated are founded in truth, the resurrection will be that of a spiritual body, for which none of the matter of this earth will be needed. And that final judgment which will determine our eternal destiny will take place in that world where spirits dwell,—far above that in which we now live;—a world whose solemn and thrilling scenes are never beheld in such light as flows from our natural sun. Thither will the spirit go when it leaves this natural world. Its entrance into that world will constitute its resurrection. There will it meet its final judgment. ”

“ I have witnessed many a death bed scene, and have seen the departing spirit cheered and encouraged by the hope of an eternal and happy life; but I have never seen nor heard of an instance where the most devoted advocate of the doctrine of a literal resurrection attempted to use that doctrine for the purpose of consoling or encouraging a dying man. In the halls of religious controversy, this doctrine may be magnified into a question of immense importance; but in the hour of death, and especially from the chamber where the good man dies, it withdraws and stands rebuked. ”

“ There is a spiritual insanity which delights to kill and bury those who are engaged in making known the heavenly truths of the New Jerusalem. But, those whom it thus seeks to destroy, and upon whom it would gladly call down the vengeance of God, still live on, and delight to make known the truths which they love. They are killed and buried, only in the imagination of the men who hate those truths. ”

“ It must not be supposed, however, that the works, according to which all men are rewarded, denote simply the external form of their conduct, as it appears before men. It is the internal intention, the end from which they act, that gives character to their works, and constitutes them either good or evil. Every external act first originates in some affection of the will; it is then brought out into the light of the understanding, where it is clothed in thought, and at last is openly manifested in the form in which we behold it. ”

“ But on the other hand I looked upon the man who would put off the destruction of the world, for more than a few hundred years at the most, as a great heretic who ought to have his name erased from the church books, or as a hopeless infidel who means to put off the destruction of the world intirely. But since I have become rationally convinced that this earth was made for permanent use, I have been led to inquire whether those internal fires by which I had supposed it would be burned up, have any other than an imaginary existence. ”

“ To go to heaven is voluntarily to receive spiritual goodness into the affections of the heart, and spiritual truth into the light of the understanding, and to bring these heavenly things into life. To go to hell is, to receive, love and act from the opposite qualities,—evil and falsity. It is still true that each of these worlds is external to the spirit who dwells in it. But it is external because it is first internal. The world without is the effect of the world within. ”

“ And when we read of the "coming of the Son of man in the clouds of heaven," we understand the coming of the Lord himself, as divine truth, revealed through the clouds of the literal sense of his word. ”

“ I will not now attempt to estimate the extent of that ruin,—to determine whether the earth would still move on its course, in cold, dark and lifeless desolation, or whether the elementary particles of which it is composed, being released from all sustaining or combining force, would be dissolved and dissipated through the immensity of space. It is sufficient to see that there would instantly follow an entire destruction of all that now renders the earth a habitation for man. For all practical uses the destruction would be as total as if the earth were annihilated. ”

“ And though the strong current of his evil loves, bears him downwards with a force which seems irresistible, because he has no sincere and earnest desire to resist it, yet before he arrives at his eternal state, he is doomed to suffer many a painful struggle, in breaking loose forever, his affections, from those whom he once loved, but whom he can love no longer. Breaking away from every restraint he goes to his own place—to those who are internally as well as externally, like himself, and there he finds his eternal abode. ”

“ While the man remains in the natural world, he may, and ought to compel himself faithfully to conform to those external relations, with which Divine Providence has surrounded him, and the observance of which is necessary to the good order and welfare of society. But when he leaves the natural world, he goes where all social relations rest upon a spiritual basis. Here the interposition of space, together with the arbitrary arrangements of society, separate him in a great measure, from those whom he is prepared to love, and rendered it impossible for him even to know them. ”

“ If spiritual evil dies with the natural body, it must belong to the body and not to the spirit. But this is opposed to the reason and consciousness of every man. Spiritual evil is but another name for the love of that which is evil and false. It belongs therefore to the mind and its affections, to the spirit itself; it goes wherever the spirit goes. Its continuance is quite independent of anything that death can do.
Let us, then, direct our attention again to the spirit, just having entered the unseen world,—the man just now divested of his mortal body. ”

“ And we might even add to this, that the greatest good ought to be regarded as our neighbor, in the highest sense, and hence that we ought to seek to promote the welfare of the individual neighbor, not so much with a view to his own happiness, as our end, but rather that he may become a means of eternal usefulness in the kingdom of the Lord. To love our neighbor simply because he loves us, or because we have discovered in him something that is gratifying to our natural feelings, is only a selfish affection, in which there is nothing of heaven. ”