There are many in the Christian world who have confirmed their minds in false ideas on many religious doctrines. With such erroneous ideas they can not enter heaven, where truth alone prevails. They therefore remain in the world of spirits until, through instruction, they see and reject the false persuasions they had contracted on earth. In some cases, where false doctrine has been deeply reasoned upon, and ground, as it were, into the mind, the process of its removal and rejection is attended with deep and prolonged suffering.
As the good reject all false ideas in the world of spirits, so the evil cast off all true ones. It may be asked, Why? Why should bad be made worse? Bad is not made worse. It is for the peace of the evil themselves that they should be divested of all truth. The presence of truth with the wicked only adds to their torment by the continual protest it makes against their sin. It is also well that the evil lose all truth, for the sake of the good, whom they might trouble and disturb through the power that truth would afford them to assume an angelic appearance; to become wolves in sheep’s clothing; or as Paul states it, “Satan transforming himself into an angel of light.” Hypocrites, who have used truth to subserve their own selfish ends, remain longer than others in the world of spirits, and endure much suffering ere they allow their means of subtlety and mischief to depart from them. The process of divesting the evil of the truths they possess, is described by the Lord in these words: “Take heed, therefore, how ye hear: for whosoever hath, to him shall be given; and whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken even that which he seemeth to have.” Luke viii. 18. What is heard is truth. The good alone have truth, for their goodness loves truth, and cherishes it. Truth thus loved, multiplies; therefore it is said, “more shall be given.” The bad may have truth in their memory, may use it for selfish purposes, and talk much about it; nevertheless it is not theirs. Their internal evil hates it. “Every one that doeth evil hateth the light;” and in the future life the truth which he seemed to have, is taken from him. How just, and at the same time how merciful, is this judgment!
Hell is the congregation of all evil spirits. As there are many heavens, so likewise there are many hells. As the inhabitants of heaven are arranged from similarity of goodness and truth, so the inhabitants of hell are arranged from similarity of evil and falsity. The hells are arranged so distinctly according to the differences of evil, that nothing more orderly and distinct can be conceived. The Lord, speaking through David, says: Psalm lxxxvi. 13: “Thou hast delivered my soul from the lowest hell.” Thus from Scripture we derive a direct proof, if proof were wanted, of the gradations of evil. There are several other texts to the same effect.
The scenery of hell, like that of heaven, is in perfect correspondence with the states of those there. It is an outbirth from the minds of its inhabitants; and as they are deformed and full of every pollution, so their scenery is full of horrors and things abominable. “In hell there is no sun, but the inhabitants roam in darkness corresponding to themselves, for they are darkness: their light is artificial, as of coal fires, meteors, ignes fatui, and the lights of night. They inhabit scenery of which they are the souls, as bogs, fens, tangled forests, caverns, dreary deserts, charred and ruined cities. In the milder hells, there appear, as it were, rude cottages, which are in some cases contiguous, and resemble the streets and lanes of a city. Within the houses infernal spirits are engaged in continual quarrels, enmities, blows, and violences, while the streets and lanes are full of robberies and depredations. The inhabitants are at continual war, hating and tormenting one another, and the cruelties they practice are indescribable.” “It is impossible to give a description of the horrible forms of the spirits of hell. No two are alike, although there is a general likeness in those who are in the same evil. They are forms of contempt of others, of menace against those who do not pay them respect, of hatreds of various kinds, and of revenge; and in these forms, outrage and cruelty are transparent from within; but when others commend, venerate, and worship them, their faces are drawn up, and have an appearance of gladness arising from delight. Some of their faces are direful and void of life, like corpses; some are black, and others fiery, like torches; others are disfigured by pimples, warts, and ulcers; and frequently no face appears, but instead of a face something hairy and bony, and sometimes nothing but teeth. Their bodies are monstrous, and their speech is the speech of anger, of hatred, of revenge; for every one speaks from his own false, and the tone of his voice is from his own evil. In a word they are all images of their own hell.”
“And does Swedenborg relate such horrors?” some may ask. For facts, we answer, Swedenborg is not to blame. Like the Israelites of old, we would fain have our prophets “speak unto us smooth things.” Let us rid ourselves of all morbid delicacy, and seek to know the truth. We should all do well to peruse with patience those pages wherein our author narrates the horrors of hell, so that we may see, shun, and detest the evils which make hell. It is well that every man should know whither his lust, his pride, his avarice, or anger, is leading him. If he shudder, it is for his eternal good.
The universal hell, like heaven, is as one man,—not of beauty, as heaven, but a hideous monster. In its collective capacity, it is the Devil and Satan; the Devil is the name of its evil, and Satan is the name of its falsity. There is no individual evil spirit ruling hell, and bearing either of those names. An enlightened view of Scripture confirms this doctrine in every point, and rids us of the innumerable absurdities which the commonly received theory in regard to the Devil involves. There is no spirit in hell who was not once a man on earth. There is no spirit in hell who was ever an angel in heaven. The Lord himself rules the hells, and by all means possible restrains their violence and mitigates their suffering.
Some people believe that God turns away his face from man, rejects him, and casts him into hell, and that he is angry with him on account of his evils; and others go still further, and affirm that God punishes man, and brings evil upon him. They also confirm this opinion from the literal sense of the Word, in which expressions occur that appear to sustain it. But these opinions are formed through ignorance of the real sense of these passages, and from a blind neglect of others, the literal sense of which teaches that God is goodness and mercy itself, and that fury is not in him. Isaiah xxvii. 4. True doctrine declares that the Lord never turns away his face from man, never rejects him, never casts any one into hell, and is never angry. The Lord is continually withdrawing man from evil and leading him to good; but man’s freedom is never taken away. If man will love evil and will do perversely, the Lord does not prevent. That man should go to hell is at variance with the Divine design; but to infringe man’s freedom would be to destroy his life and take from him all that is human, reducing him to the level of a machine or a brute. Those who are in hell, cast themselves down thither, and keep themselves where they are. “This is,” as Wilkinson says, “he last dogma of free will,—that of a finite being perpetuating for ever his own evil, standing fast to selfishness without end, excluding Omnipotence in all its dispensations, and making the ‘will not’ into an everlasting ‘cannot,’ to maintain itself out of heaven, and contrary to heaven.”
This is a very brief abstract of the leading ideas in Swedenborg’s wondrous treatise on Heaven and Hell. We are well aware how far short it falls of doing full justice to the work. Let us hope that what has been said may induce some to make a personal acquaintance with it; and then they will understand the difficulties we labor under in condensing within a few pages its multitudinous facts and closely linked logic.
It remains only to add, that the treatise on Heaven and Hell has been translated into English, French, and German. The English editions have been many, and in some cases large. The latest may be accepted as a sign of the times, being in the form of an eighteen-penny volume, a second edition of which has been called for. We lay no claim to the gift of prophecy, but we feel certain that the time is coming when Swedenborg’s “Heaven and Hell” will be the most popular and extensively read of religious books.