Letters from England, Volume 3 (of 3)

by Robert Southey

The œconomy of the angels is more rationally imagined, and is better suited to our worldly habits, or suited to better worldly habits than Elysium, or Valhalla, or the Sorgon, the Paradise of Mohammed, or the ever-blessed state of Nireupan to which the Yogue approximates when he has looked at nothing for seven years but the tip of his own nose. You are not to conceive of angels as of disembodied spirits; they are material beings, though of a finer matter. They wear garments white, or flame-coloured, or shining, with which they are supplied by the Deity; only the angels of the third Heaven, being in the state of innocence made perfect, are naked. They dwell in houses, which are arranged in streets and squares, like our cities on earth; but every thing there is on a nobler scale, and of more magnificence. Swedenborg frequently walked through these cities, and visited the inhabitants; he saw palaces there, the roofs of which glittered as if with pure gold, and the floors as if with precious stones: the gardens are on the south side, where trees with leaves like silver produce fruits resembling gold, and the flowers are so arranged as by their colours to represent rainbows.—There is no space in Heaven, or, more accurately speaking, no such thing as distance: where angels wish to be, there they are; locomotion is accomplished by the mere act of volition; and, what is better still, if one angel earnestly desires the company of another, the wish attracts him, and he immediately appears.

There is a room in the southern quarter of the spiritual world the walls of which shine like gold; and in this room is a table, and on this table lies the Bible, set with jewels. Whenever this book is opened a light of inexpressible brilliancy flows from it, and the jewels send forth rays which arch it over with a rainbow. When an angel of the third Heaven comes and opens it, the ground of this rainbow appears crimson; to one from the second Heaven it is blue; to one of the first or lowest Heaven the light is variegated and veined like marble. But if one approaches who has ever falsified the word, the brightness disappears, and the book itself seems covered with blood, and warns him to depart, lest he suffer for his presumption.

There is public worship in Heaven, which Swedenborg attended, and heard sermons: they have books both written and printed; he was able to read them, but could seldom, he says, pick out any meaning; from which I conclude that he has successfully copied their style. Writing flows from the thoughts of the angels, or with their thoughts, appearing so coinstantaneously as if thought cast itself upon the paper; but as this writing is not permanent, it seems that pen and ink might usefully be introduced among them. The language of Heaven is like the writing, connate with thought, being indeed nothing more than thinking audibly. Its construction is curiously explained; the vowels express the affections; the consonants the particular ideas derived from the affections, and the words the whole sense of the matter. The angelic alphabet resembles the Chinese, for every letter signifies a complete thing,—which is the reason why the hundred and nineteenth psalm is alphabetically divided;—and every letter, and every flexure and curvature of every letter, contains some secret of wisdom. Different dialects of this language are spoken in the celestial and spiritual kingdoms; the celestials chiefly using the vowels U and O, the spirituals preferring E and I; the speech of the former resembles a smooth flowing water, that of the latter the sound of a running stream broken on its way. But the most enviable power connected with expression which the angels possess, is, that they represent their ideas in a thin undulating circumfluent fluid or ether, so that they can make thought visible.

In like manner as our human form goes on with us to our heavenly state, so also will our human affections. The ruling passion, whatever it be, not only lasts till death, but continues after death. Woe therefore to those whose whole aspirations are after things that are earthly, for they cannot enter the kingdom of Heaven! This truth is neither the less true, nor the less important, because it is found in the pages of a madman. Marriage also is not dissolved by death:—when one of the wedded couple dies, the spirit of the deceased cohabits with the spirit of the living spouse, till that also be released; they then meet again, and reunite with a tenderer and more perfect union. On no subject does Swedenborg dilate with more pleasure than upon this. The sphere of conjugal love, he tells us, is that which flows from the Creator into all things; from the Creator it is received by the female, and transferred through her to the male. It makes man more and more man; it is a progressive union of minds, for ever rejuvenescent, continuing to old age and to eternity; it is the foundation and germ of all spiritual and all celestial love; it is in Heaven, and it is Heaven, yea even the inmost Heaven, the Heaven of Heavens. It dwells in the supreme region of the Mind, in the conclave of the Will, amidst the perceptions of Wisdom, in the marriage chamber of the Understanding. Its origin is from the divine nuptials of Goodness and Truth, consequently from the Lord himself. After this it is ridiculous enough to see him trace the progress of this sphere or essence of love into the soul of man, thence into the mind, thence into the interior affections, from whence it finds its way through the breast into the genital region.

Do not, however, suppose that there are any births in Heaven. All spirits both in Heaven and Hell were born on earth; from which, it seems, a puzzling argument against the system itself might be brought: Ex nihilo nihil fit—Of nothing nothing is made; where then was the Grand Man before all the parts of which he is composed were in existence?—Heaven is supplied with children by those who die in infancy; happy are they, for they are given to virgins whose maternal feelings find in them an object, and under their tuition they grow up in the gardens of Paradise. They advance to the full bloom of youth, not beyond it; the old, who arrive in Heaven with all the marks of age, grow younger till they also arrive at the same perfection: to grow old in Heaven is to increase in beauty.

There are many mansions in Heaven, and infinite degrees of happiness, yet is there no envy nor discontent; every one is happy to the utmost measure of his capacity; the joys of a higher state would be no joys to him: his cup is full. But the longer he has been in Heaven, the happier he becomes, his capacity of enjoyment increasing as he is progressive in virtue and goodness, that is, in divine love.

As all Heaven is one Grand Man, or Divinity, so is all Hell one Grand Devil, and the wicked are literally to become members of Satan. The road from one to the other is through the Maximus Homo's Port Esquiline; it opens immediately into the mouth of Hell, and the two-and-thirty white millers who sit in the gateway, receive all they have to grind through that channel.[13] Hell fire is no torment to the damned: it imparts no other sensation to them than an irascible heat; for in truth the fire of Hell is nothing more than their evil passions, which appear to good spirits in flame and smoke. This is the only light they have, proceeding from themselves, and resembling that which is given out by red-hot coals. The Hell of Swedenborg is what earth would be if all virtue were destroyed, if the salt of the earth were taken away, and its corruptions left to putrefy. There are cities inhabited only by the profligate, where they are abandoned to their own vices, and to the inevitable miseries which those vices produce. They have even their places of public amusement; he saw the dragons holding their abominable diversions in an amphitheatre. Deserts, fields laid waste, and houses and towns in ruins which have been destroyed by fire, fill up the picture.

Of all the heretics who have sprung from the spawn of Luther, Swedenborg is the only one who admits a purgatory.—You will not expect a rational one;—in this intermediate world, as the good are purified from their imperfections, so are the wicked divested of what little goodness they may possess, and thus the one are fitted for Heaven, and the other for Hell. The state of maturity for Heaven is known by the appearance of the regenerate, which is not altogether consistent with our earthly ideas of beauty, for the cuticle appears like a fine lace-work of bright blue. Here the wicked follow their accustomed vices, till, after they have been repeatedly warned in vain, their cities are shaken with earthquakes, the foundations yawn under them, they sink into the gulf, and there grope their way into their respective Hells.

Hypocrites who still preserved an exterior of piety were permitted to remain in the intermediate world, and make to themselves fixed habitations. This constitutes one of the wildest and absurdest parts of all this strange mythology; for Swedenborg teaches that these residents, by the abuse of correspondences and help of phantasies, built Heavens for themselves, which became at last so many and so extensive, that they intercepted the spiritual light and heat, that is, divine love, in their way from Heaven to Earth. At length this eclipse became total; there was no faith in the Christian church, because there was no charity, and the Last Judgment was then executed; which consisted in destroying these imaginary Heavens, like the tower of Babel, stripping the hypocrites of their cloak, and casting them into Hell. This consummation took place in the year of our Lord 1757; and there is no other Last Judgment to come, except what every individual will experience for himself singly, after death.

Nothing now remains but to apply the science of correspondences to this scheme of the Maximus Homo and the Grand Satan. Spirits act upon men in those parts which correspond to their own anatomical situation: thus impulses and affections of good come from the agency of good angels operating by influx on their corresponding region, whether head or foot, heart, pancreas, or spleen; they, for instance, who inhabit the brain watch over us when we sleep. On the contrary, diseases are the work of the devils; hypocritical devils occasion belly-ache; and spirits who are ripening for Hell, and take delight in putridity, get into our insides and manufacture for us indigestion, hypochondriasis, and dyspepsy; so that in all cases exorcism must be more applicable than medicine.