which constitutes sin and misery, that discord
with him which generates hell, must prove an ever smaller
accompaniment of his plan, a transitory phenomenon ceasing in even
degree with the spreading conquests of his almighty purpose, as
race on race of creatures, and system on system of worlds, sweep
into the victorious harmony, until the boundless realm of being
shall be boundless heaven.

Heaven, then, in essence, is not merely a favored locality, not
merely a resigned soul, but the result of a combination of these
in a just relation. It is not a playing power in the material
environment nor an inherent attribute of the spiritual instrument;
but it is the music which flows from the instrument when it is
attuned to react in coordination with the acting environment.
Salvation, consequently, is not simply a divine place of abode,
not simply a divine state of soul; but it is these two conjoined.
It is the experimental deposit between the two poles of rightly
ordered conditions in the realm and rightly directed energies in
the inhabitant. Heaven, then, in the best and briefest definition
we can give, is the will of God in fulfillment, or the law of the
whole in uncrossed action.

Hell is the experience produced by the rebound of violated law.
Or, if we hold that, strictly speaking, a divine law is incapable
of violation; as every seeming resistance to gravitation is in
fact a deeper obedience to gravitation, then we may say, in more
accurate phrase, hell is the collision and friction of the
limitations of different laws. It is the discord of the part with
the whole. It is the antagonism of the soul with God. But the
perpetual preservation of a perfectly balanced antagonism with God
is inconceivable. It must vary, totter, grow either worse or
better. If it grows worse, it will finally destroy itself, the
aberrant individuality or malign insurgence vanishing in the
totality of force, as the filth of our sewers vanishes purely in
the purity of the ocean. If it grows better, its improvement will
finally transform the opposition into reconciliation, the evil
disappearing in good. Therefore, every being must at length be
saved from misery, if not by redemptive atonement then by
absolvent annihilation, and one absolute heaven finally absorb the
dwindling hells.

The question of chief importance to us in relation to heaven is,
How can we gain admission into it. The limitations of language
necessitate the use of imagery for th