ire of this eternal punishment cease, it would in a great measure
obscure the light of heaven and put an end to a great part of the
happiness and glory of the blessed."25 That is to say, in plain
terms, the saints, on entering their final state of bliss in
heaven, are converted into a set of unmitigated fiends, out
sataning Satan, finding their chief delight in forever comparing
their own enjoyments with the pangs of the damned, extracting
morsels of surpassing relish from every convulsion or shriek of
anguish they see or hear. It is all an exquisite piece of
gratuitous horror arbitrarily devised to meet a logical exigency
of the theory its contrivers held. When charged that the knowledge
of the infinite woe of their friends in hell must greatly affect
the saints, the stern old theologians, unwilling to recede an inch
from their dogmas, had the amazing hardihood to declare that, so
far from it, on the contrary their wills would so blend with God's
that the contemplation of this suffering would be a source of
ecstasy to them. It is doubly a blank assumption of the most
daring character, first assuming, by an unparalleled blasphemy,
that God himself will take delight in the pangs of his creatures,
and secondly assuming, by a violation of the laws of human nature
and of every principle of morals, that the elect will do so too.
In this world a man actuated by such a spirit would be styled a
devil. On entering heaven, what magic shall work such a demoniacal
change in him? There is not a word, direct or indirect, in the
Scriptures to warrant the dreadful notion; nor is there any
reasonable explanation or moral justification of it given by any
of its advocates, or indeed conceivable. The monstrous hypothesis
cannot be true. Under the omnipotent, benignant government of a
paternal God, each change of character in his chosen children, as
they advance, must be for the better, not for the worse.

We once heard a father say, running his fingers the while among
the golden curls of his child's hair, "If I were in heaven, and
saw my little daughter in hell, should not I be rushing down there
after her?" There spoke the voice of human nature; and that love
cannot be turned to hatred in heaven, but must grow purer and
intenser there. The doctrine which makes the saints pleased with
contemplating the woes of the damned, and even draw much of their
happiness from the contrast, is the deification of the absolute
selfishness of a demon. H