It is De Quincey, we think, who accuses Swedenborg of sensualizing heaven, and reducing its sublime glories to the common order of things in this world. The assertion could only have been made through want of personal acquaintance with the writings of Swedenborg. No one can use the words, Isaiah lxiv. 4, quoted by the Apostle, 1 Cor. ii. 9: “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him,” with more fervor and truth than the New Church preacher. Everywhere we are told by Swedenborg, that the joys and delights of heaven transcend the highest power of language to express; everywhere we are told that our highest ideas formed from natural things, fall indefinitely short of the common realities of the heavenly life. Yet we also learn that the common humanities and pleasures of this life are not lost in the next; and that as men and women we carry with us to our eternal home every faculty of thought and affection which we possess here. In this most rational doctrine there is gain every way. In thinking of heaven we know we can never overrate its bliss, think as we will; and yet with this idea is associated nothing of dreamy vagueness. We feel that as we live well we are but walking onwards to a pleasant home, in which all that is truest and best in this life will go with us. What stronger incentive can a man have to a pure and religious life than this divine faith. Entertaining it, with what feeling may he, at the close of life, utter the poet’s words,—
“Draw near, sweet death;
Come raise me into life!”
The condition of admission into heaven is the possession of a soul whose existence is a continual fulfillment of those two commandments on which the Lord says, “hang all the law and the prophets”—love to God, and love to man. To enter heaven, we must habitually place self last, and our neighbor first; and unless we can do this, we can never know eternal bliss. Now we are born into this world selfish; and hence it is truly said we are hereditarily depraved. It is the Divine will to take all to heaven. To do this, it is necessary that we should be divested of our corrupt hereditary nature; as the Lord said to Nicodemus: “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” This regeneration of mind, this change from a supreme love of self, to a supreme love of God and our neighbor, is, of necessity, a gradual work. It is not accomplished in a day, nor in a month, nor in a year. Like all Divine works, it proceeds gradually, step by step; “first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear.” The regeneration of man is a Divine work, and as the Divine end in the creation of man was the formation of heaven out of the human race, the Lord’s providence is unceasingly exerted to draw man out of evil, by all means consonant with the maintenance of the inalienable freedom of his will. It thus follows that the Lord, in all his dealings with man, has respect solely to his eternal state, and amid all the apparent accidents and vicissitudes of life, he is present, bending them and making them all conduce to man’s everlasting peace. Life in this world, its cares, trials, pleasures, comforts, friendships, sympathies, and affections, form the divinely-appointed regenerative process; and those who will only believe this great truth, and submit to the Divine leading, will encounter nothing in life but what is good for them; and existence here, however bitter and painful at times, will resolve itself into a series of lessons devised by infinite wisdom to uproot all latent and known evils, transforming the patient sufferer into a true child of God. The Lord permits one man to be rich, powerful, and famous, and another to be afflicted with disease and perplexed with poverty; one to have a settled and calm peace of mind, while another is tried and tormented with doubts and anxieties; nor for any ultimate purpose on earth, but solely as a means of spiritual regeneration,—as a means of making man happy in the eternal life to come. All man’s states are under the minute guardianship of the Lord; and each day comes round with its circle of pleasant and unpleasant occurrences, often, apparently, the result of accident and chance, but in truth all provided of the Divine Providence for the eradication of evil, and the growth and nurture of goodness. There is no trial encountered, no circumstance met, or cross endured, but has its eternal issue; and man’s conduct in relation to it is looked upon by the Lord with a love and interest infinitely transcending our highest conception. All has been foreseen; and these daily recurring tasks are appointed by that wisdom which guides the stars in their courses, and by that love which requires eternity to satisfy the ardor with which it would bless. With what dignity does such a faith clothe existence! What earnestness and celestial patience must it infuse into life!
From all that has now been said, it will be very evident that heaven is not a gift of immediate Divine mercy, to be obtained by a verbal confession of faith at the hour of death. If man could be saved by immediate mercy, all would be saved; even the inhabitants of hell, and hell itself would not exist; because the Lord is Mercy itself, Love itself, and Good itself, and wills the salvation of all, and the damnation of no one. But man’s spirit is substantial; and if formed to evil, to change it would be equivalent to annihilation. “The angels declare that it were easier to change a bat into a dove, or an owl into a bird of paradise, than to change an infernal spirit into an angel of heaven.” “Ample experience,” writes Swedenborg, “enables me to testify that it is impossible to implant the life of heaven in those who have led an opposite life in the world. There were some who believed that they should easily receive divine truths after death, when they heard them from the angels; and that they would believe them then, amend their lives, and be received into heaven; and the experiment was made on great numbers of them, in order that they might be convinced that repentance is not possible after death. Some understood the truths they heard, and seemed to receive them; but as soon as they returned to the life of their love, they rejected them, and even argued against them. Some rejected them instantly, from entire unwillingness to hear them; but others were desirous that the life of the love they had contracted in the world, might be taken away from them; and that angelic life, the life of heaven, might be infused in its place. This was permitted; but when the life of their love was taken away, they lay as if dead, and deprived of all their faculties. From this it was manifest that no one’s life can possibly be changed after death, that evil life can not be changed into good life, nor the life of an infernal into that of an angel; because every spirit is from head to foot of the same quality as his love, and therefore of the same quality as his life; and consequently to transmute his life into its opposite is to destroy him altogether.” All this goes to confirm the Lord’s declaration before quoted, “Except a man be born again, he can not see the kingdom of God.” On no other terms can heavenly bliss be gained.
We now come to speak of the World of Spirits, which Swedenborg thus defines: “The world of spirits is neither heaven nor hell, but an intermediate place or state between both, into which man enters immediately after death; and then after a certain period, the duration of which is determined by the quality of his life in the world, he is either elevated into heaven, or cast into hell.
“The spirits in the world of spirits are immensely numerous, because that world is the general assembly of all immediately after their resurrection, and all are examined there and prepared for their final abode; but the length of their sojourn in that world is not in all cases the same. Some only enter it, and are immediately taken up into heaven, or cast down into hell; some remain there a few weeks, and others several years, but none (since the Last Judgment,) more than thirty years.”
A belief in the existence of an intermediate state has been entertained in all times and churches, except among Protestants, who, in their anxiety to divest themselves of every remnant of Popery, rejected the doctrine entirely, through aversion to the follies of Purgatory. A return to the truth is however slowly taking place; not a few Protestant divines having expressed their faith in the existence of Hades, or the intermediate state alluded to in the literal sense of Scripture. But the world of spirits is not to be thought of as a revived idea of Purgatory. The soul of no man is changed in the world of spirits. “As the tree falls so it lies.” The discipline of this life is perfected at death, and its opportunities never return. The world of spirits is a place where the externals of man are brought into correspondence with his internals; for no one, either in heaven or in hell, is allowed to have a divided mind, understanding one thing and willing another. What any one wills, he must understand, and what he understands he must will; therefore he who wills good in heaven, must understand truth; and he who wills evil in hell, must understand falsities. On this account also, falses are removed from the good in the world of spirits, and there are given them truths which agree and harmonize with their good; but truths are removed from the evil, and they take to themselves falses which agree and harmonize with their evil. Let us explain this subject further.
We suppose the generality of our readers will admit that countless thousands of good men and women among the Mahommedans, Chinese, Hindoos, and all the heathen nations, who live according to the measure of their light, are saved and taken to heaven. But it is very evident that they can not go to heaven carrying with them false notions on religious subjects, and knowing nothing of that good Lord into whose kingdom they are about to pass. They must be instructed. They must have errors removed from their minds, and truths implanted in their stead. Time is required to effect these changes, and the world of spirits is the school in which the process is accomplished. Instruction in truth is readily received by the simply good; and after being enlightened and purified from falsity, they are led to their eternal homes among the blessed—to those of a disposition and order of mind like themselves.
Then, again, among Christians, there are many who die with slight failings pertaining to them, with infirmities of temper, with bad habits of one kind and another; yet who are really sound-hearted and good men. Their lot can not be hell; yet with these flaws in their character, their presence in heaven could not be pleasant, because their state of mind is at variance with the perfect order and peace of heaven. Such, then, remain in the world of spirits, passing through trials, and temptations, and sufferings, until they reject all that is disorderly and impure. The processes by which this removal of external evils is accomplished, are frequently extremely painful, and extend over many years. Their removal might with less difficulty have been accomplished in the present life. The Lord warns us of this in these words: “Agree with thine adversary quickly, while thou art in the way with him; lest at any time the adversary deliver thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the officer, and thou be cast into prison. Verily I say unto thee, Thou shalt by no means come out thence till thou hast paid the uttermost farthing.” Matthew v. 25, 26. Our adversary is the truth. Truth is ever an adversary to the evil. Elijah the prophet represented the Divine Truth. When he approached the wicked Ahab, Ahab cried: “Hast thou found me, O mine enemy?” “In the way with him” is in the present life; and the “prison” is the world of spirits, often so called in the Word, out of which we shall not be delivered until entirely divested of selfish affections, and false principles of thought. How practical, thus viewed, becomes our Lord’s advice! But without a knowledge of the world of spirits, and the spiritual sense of Scripture, it is quite mystical and unintelligible.