Multitudes, wearied with labor, look forward to heaven as a state of eternal repose. They will have no more duties to perform, no more burdens to bear; necessity will no longer goad them to reluctant tasks. They will have nothing to do but ” to sit among the lazy saints,” and bask in the sunshine of the Divine favor. Others add to this repose some degree of social life. They will recline upon the banks of the heavenly Jordan, and recount to one another the various scenes of their past life, and they will hear from others – from the lips of Adam, and Moses, and David – an account of their personal history while in this world. The prevalent idea among Christians at the present day is, that heavenly happiness will consist in for ever singing the praise of the Lord. The multitudes of the saved will surround His throne, bowing before Him, and casting their golden crowns at His feet; they will for ever sing the song of Redeeming Love, and make the whole heavens resound with anthems to His praise and glory.

In all these opinions, and in many others, the fundamental idea is cessation from all useful and active employment. Heaven is to be an eternal holiday, a state of security from every danger, and of rest from all work. This, as you will see upon a little reflection, is a merely negative conception of it. It is making heaven to consist in what it is not rather than in what it is. There will not be any labor, or care, or anxiety, or bereavement. There will not be any tears

or sorrow. There will be no more pain. But this can be said of the stones in the street, and the lilies in the field, and of the material body, as it lies moldering to dust in the grave. But this is not happiness. It may be escape from the punishment due to sin; a release from those fears which torment so many in this world, with a sense of security for the future; but still this does not constitute a single element of happiness.

And if we take all that is positive in popular belief, we shall find but a few simple elements of happiness which could not long content an intelligent being, unless his or her nature was much changed from what it is in this life, and shorn of many of its noblest qualities. Whittier’s poor Brother of Mercy spoke the truth who said

” And if one goes to heaven without a heart,
God knows he leaves behind his better part,

“To sit down clad in white robes and wear a golden crown, for ever and for ever” would be very poor and wearisome happiness, even if the repose was varied by conversation and song. No; if the common belief is true, heaven is not so perfect a life as this. Instead of advancing towards the perfection of the Divine character, we would sink down towards the condition of the brute and the clod when we enters the spiritual world. Our capacities for happiness are not so great as they are in this world, nor are the means of supply so various, full, and abundant. Our noblest faculties of reason and affection must lose their power, their very nature, before we could endure the torpor of eternal repose. We are now an instrument of myriad strings, and the common belief would destroy all conception of us as a real substantial being, and of the spiritual world as anything but an empty name, and leave us only one string to thrum upon in dull monotony through eternity. The conversation of such beings must become, in time, as trite as nursery rhymes. They would long to return to earth and undergo its labors and suffer its pains, or even think

” The world of pain were better, if therein
One’s heart might still be human, and desires
Of natural pity drop upon its fires
Some cooling tears,”

than to be a useless drone in the universe.

There is but little said directly in the Bible about the special means of our happiness in heaven. But every page of the Word declares the essential nature of a heavenly life. It is written so plainly and declared in so many forms, that it would seem impossible for any one who desired to know, to come to any other than one conclusion, and that is, that heaven must consist in a life of active use. If we examine our natures with any degree of care and wisdom, we cannot fail to see that all our happiness flows and must flow from the normal, healthy activity of our faculties, and the more full, varied, and harmonious the activity is, the greater our happiness. Reason and experience teach us this. Repose and rest are pleasant; but it is action that makes them so. Sleep is sweet and refreshing; but it is the labor of waking hours that makes it so. Eternal sleep is eternal death. It is delightful to throw off all the burdens of labor, to put the yoke of duty from the neck, and give the mind up to sport and play; free from all care. But if there was no sense of responsibility, and no special work to do, there would be no relief in our amusements, no recreation in our release from duty. The Lord has given us no useless faculties of head or heart. He intended them all for use. He formed them all to be the means of communicating to us some delight. And that delight can only be attained by their use. As the pipe and string make music only when they vibrate, so man’s faculties, from the highest to the lowest, give him delight only when they are exercised. It is wise use that gives the largest measure of happiness, and this use is the only condition of happiness on earth or in heaven.

The Bible everywhere inculcates this life of active use. We are commanded to love others; to do them good; to let our light shine; to improve the talents the Lord has given us; to work in His vineyard; and everywhere He promises to reward us according to our deeds. Many suppose we are to do our work in this life and to receive our reward in another. This is true in one sense. But the reward is not for work, as people pay wages; but in the work itself. In keeping the commandments there is great reward. The only way in which we shall be rewarded in the spiritual world for work done in this is in the strength and culture we get by it, and the consequent increase of capacity to do and to receive. In endeavoring to ascertain the nature of heavenly happiness, then, let us keep this eternal law of the Divine order and of man’s spiritual nature continually in view, as our guide and rule of reason.

Heaven is a state of greater happiness than this world because we shall find there more abundant, various, and perfect means for the exercise of every faculty of the will and the understanding.

All happiness flows from love. There is no exception to this law. The wicked find their delight in the indulgence and gratification of their evil lusts. It is the gratification of the affection, whether good or evil, which constitutes the delight. But the delights which flow from evil are soon turned to pain, because they are contrary to the Divine order; while those that originate in the exercise of good affections enlarge our capacities for happiness. The love of self and the world receives its poor and momentary reward; but it contracts the heart, and closes it against the inflowing love of the Lord, and arrays those who exercise it against Him, and against every human being; while the love of the Lord and the neighbor opens the heart to Divine influences, and conjoins us to each other, to angels, and the Lord.

The happiness of heaven consists preeminently in the fact that all pure and noble affections will have the widest scope and the most abundant means for their development, and I know of no other way in which that happiness can be described, than by stating the facilities we shall find there for the exercise of our affections, and some of the most general forms which they will assume.

1. In heaven we shall be in perfect freedom. All freedom springs from love. We feel free when we can carry into effect the ends of life, or do what we please. In this world we are restricted by the nature of material substances, by our necessities, by opposition from others, and innumerable other things, from carrying out our affections into complete effect. But in heaven

all these obstacles will be removed. Space will not separate us from those we love. They will

all be with us. Necessity will not compel us to forego any delight. We shall have abundant means to gratify every taste and every desire. We shall meet with no opposition from others. On the contrary, every one will do all in their power to assist us in the attainment of our ends. We shall find helping hands and encouraging hearts on every side. We shall find those who can tell us all we desire to know, and assist us in all we desire to do.

Reflect a moment upon this one element of heavenly happiness. You can form some estimate of it from your experience in this life. Suppose you have an ardent desire to accomplish some great good for yourself or for humanity in this world. The moment you propose it you find every one desirous of helping you. You find sympathy, encouragement, and helping hands in every movement, and you are borne up and carried along on the flood-tide of goodwill to the full accomplishment of your end. What consciousness of power it would give you ! What certainty of success! What security, satisfaction, and peace! You will find this happiness to perfection in heaven. Every heart, and brain, and hand will be yours. Yes, and vastly more than that; all the Divine forces will favor you; omnipotence will be yours.

2. There will be no conflict between the various faculties and degrees of your own mind. Every nature will be homogeneous throughout in all its planes and degrees. You will not have to practice any self-denial. You will have no right eye to pluck out, no offending hand or foot to cut off, no life to lay down. You will love the Lord and the neighbor supremely, and therefore you cannot have any personal ends to gratify in preference to their good. There is no ground for self-denial, for your selfhood consists in loving others; and the only room for self-denial would be in preventing yourself from doing all in your power to promote the happiness of others – in making your life an idle and useless one.

This harmony of nature will be especially manifest in the perfect unity of the will and the understanding. In this life they are distinct. We love and desire what we do not know how to attain, and we have a knowledge of truth which we do not love to obey and do. Hence there is a perpetual conflict between the will and the understanding, and a sense of incompleteness and a want of satisfaction in all we do.

But it will not be so in heaven. We shall know how to do all that we love to do, and we shall love to do all that we know how, and we shall do it. There will be no overplus of knowledge or of will. Thus every deed will be complete. It will be to us the perfect ultimation and embodiment of our affection and thought, and consequently will perfectly content us. What a profound satisfaction there must be in this! What fullness and completeness it must give to the activities of every day! Our work will content us; our affection is perfectly satisfied! We see no way in which it could have been done better. There is nothing lacking and nothing over.

3. Our work will not only content us, but it will content others also. There will be no envy or jealousy. Each one will hold the same relation to others in the same society that an organ of the mind or the body holds to the other organs. Each one will have his pr her special function, some use which they can perform better than any one else. As the hand can do some things better than the eye, and the eye some things better than the ear, and so on with every organ in the body, so each member of a society can perform their own use better than any one else in the whole heavens. They will delight to do it, and all will delight to acknowledge their special use.

What harmony and loving regard this would produce in the society and in the whole heavens! Imagine such a society in this world. Every member is in their place, and delights to be in it. Each one can do something that will be useful to the whole society better than any one else, and he does it perfectly, and all delight to acknowledge his use. What unity and power such a society or government would possess, and what happiness they would find in working together for a common end! Such will be the happiness of every society in heaven. Each one will be content with their function because it will content all others; and all others will be content with it because the person who performed it was filled with delight in doing the good, and because no one else could do it so well. Thus, while each person is a complete human being, they are also a complement to every other member of a heavenly society, and they are all rounded into a symmetrical and perfect whole. Each one serves the whole, and all serve each one.

Can you conceive of any state, so far as regards yourself personally, that could be more conducive to perfect peace and happiness than this? There is not a discord in your whole nature; there are no conflicting elements within or without you. All the faculties of will, of understanding, of reason, and even sense, act in perfect harmony with each other. There could be no hesitation whether to speak or act; there could be no doubt about how we ought to act, or what we should say. There would be no imperfection in our utterance. We could express ourselves fully to the nicest shade of meaning; there would be no danger of being misunderstood. The hand and foot, and the whole spiritual body, would perfectly obey the will. Every faculty and organ would move as one and reach the desired attainment.

This would be rest worthy of the name. Not the rest of inaction and death, but the rest from every jar and discord and constraint. The rest of perfect freedom, of harmonious activities that invigorate rather than exhaust. This would be the peace of heart and mind, of reason and act, all reposing upon each other, and moving joyously in accord with all other movements without and within.

4. But not only will all the elements of our own natures be in perfect harmony with each other, and with all who dwell in the heavens, and with the Lord, but every object without and around us will also be in perfect harmony with us. It is impossible for us to conceive how much this state of the outward world would enhance our happiness. But its effect must be far greater than we have any words to express, or imagination to conceive. To see everywhere around us, and above us, within the whole scope of our vision, nothing to offend us, nothing to suggest the feeling or the thought that anything is wanting to the perfection of the scene. Not only to see beauty everywhere, in landscape and home, but just the kind of beauty that is the most delightful to us. Wherever the eye rests to be able to say, that suits me; that equals my ideal. And far more than this, not only to be content with it, but to see the significance of everything. How little we know of the meaning of the outward world! The flower is lovely, the landscape beautiful, the mountain sublime, but we gather only a vague and imperfect meaning from them. They say but little to us. But in heaven it is not so. Everything in particular and in general will answer to our affections and thoughts; will be our idea; and we shall feel a personal interest in it. There will be the same harmony and unity of the whole outward world with the whole world within, that there is between the various faculties of our being. Imagine yourself to be in such a world, in such a state, where perfect harmony reigns! even with your present capacities for happiness, your senses dimmed and muffled with the veil of clay. And could you ask for anything more? What more could you ask? It equals your highest conceptions, and you could not ask for what you could not conceive. There would be no want of satisfaction; no vague longing for some unattained and unattainable good. Your affections and thoughts would rest in peace and perfect contentment.

5. But if we should stop here, we should have a very poor and imperfect conception of heavenly happiness. I have as yet stated but little more than the means for the attainment of happiness. We shall not only be in this harmonious and perfect state as to the essential conditions of happiness, but all our capacities will be largely and variously increased in power. The senses will become inconceivably more delicate and acute. The sight will become amazingly sharpened. Two causes will heighten the brilliancy of all colors, and the splendor in which all objects will be seen: the vastly increased purity and power of spiritual light, and a corresponding increase of sensitiveness and capacity in the eye. The light is so great that the light of our sun is mere darkness compared with it. The atmospheres glow and sparkle as if composed of rainbows and diamond dust. There are colors which cannot be formed from material light, and each color is far more clear, distinct, and brilliant, than the brightest on earth. The sense of touch is so delicate and acute in the spiritual body, and so perfectly adapted to all outward things, that every contact will give the most exquisite delight. We shall be all alive with sensation.

The same perfection will exist in the sense of hearing. This sense is closely allied to the affections, communicating directly with them. It is this fact that gives to music its power. We know that each affection expresses itself by a peculiar tone of voice. Sorrow moans and wails; quiet and gentle affections flow forth in soft and winning harmony; joy is loud and jubilant. Some chords are so plaintive, that they move us to tears quicker than any words. Indeed, some states of affection can be expressed much more fully and clearly by music than by words. If this is so here, what must it be in heaven, where the senses are much more acute, and the whole nature is attuned to finer harmonies than we can conceive! There are no discords there, nor do the inhabitants of heaven learn music as we do; it is spontaneous. At certain times, the affections of the angels flow forth in song; and then the song becomes the perfect embodiment and expression of the affection. And such is the similarity of state, that thousands and tens of thousands join in it in perfect concord. The particular states which gave it birth are fully expressed in the various parts and movements of the song, and all combine like various chords in one grand harmony. All who hear it understand it, and are affected by it. Thus every heart in the whole society vibrates in unison, is delighted, exalted, and thrilled by it. What voices the angels must have! We hear some in this world that thrill us with delight; what then must they be in heaven? Every tone is clear, round, smooth, and sweet; every chord is perfect; every note has its meaning, a meaning that is fully understood. All voices blend in perfect harmony, and give full and varied expression to every particular in the affection sung. And then with what acute perception they listen to this musical expression of pure, innocent, and exalted affections! Such delights will constitute one of the elements of heavenly happiness.

So we might employ a whole discourse upon the various delights of each sense, simply carrying out the general principle in some details to their logical consequence. Eternity will not exhaust, but increase their variety and perfection. But it is enough for our present purpose to know that the senses are far more acute, act with far more precision, and are more exquisitely adjusted to all outward forms. And all forms, colors, sounds, and qualities of external objects are correspondingly perfect, and clearly defined.

It is a very common idea that all things in the spiritual world (if there are any things there) are vague and indistinct in outline, shadowy, unreal, and illusory. But this is directly the reverse of the truth. They are far more real and distinct to every sense. Every person becomes more individualized. The lines which mark the identity of the angels are far more nicely and accurately drawn than they can be in this world. And this clear distinction in form, in office and quality of character, will constitute one of the perfections of the heavenly state. While all will act in harmony, each element in the society will become more distinct from every other.

6. Another element of heavenly happiness consists in the fact that all the inhabitants live in the present, and are totally absorbed in it. It is a very common opinion that one of the great sources of pleasure in heaven will consist in reviewing our former life in this world. But a little reflection will convince us that there could not be much pleasure in that. It does not give us much pleasure here to look back upon the past; why should it there? There would certainly be as much pain as pleasure in it. We shall be so fully absorbed in the various activities and delights of the present, and the new and attractive forms of the Divine wisdom, that we shall not think of the past or the future. There will be no regrets for the past, and we shall borrow no trouble about the future. The Lord will fill our hearts so full of absorbing activities and exquisite delights, that there will be no room for remembrance or expectation. We shall take no thought for the morrow; but, like lilies and sparrows, grow and sing, and in all possible ways communicate our delights, and trust implicitly in the Lord. There will be no sting from the past, no shadow of doubt about the future. We shall be ever busy and active in giving to others; and while we do it, and in doing it, the Lord will give to us good measure, pressed down and running over, through others, and immediately from Himself; and so the eternal years will be an eternal succession of delights.

7. But although we live in the present we shall not remain stationary. The law of mental and spiritual development, which is clearly established in this life, will not be annulled in the spiritual world. On the contrary, it will be carried out under more favorable conditions. All the powers of the mind gain strength and expand by action. Our affections grow stronger and purer by exercise. So do the reason and the understanding. The more you put into the mind the more capacious it becomes. The more you know, the more rapidly you can learn, and the more you see there is to learn. The more you enlarge the range of your affections, the purer and stronger they become. The more you love others, the more your capacity to love increases, and the increase is not by a diminished, but by an accelerated ratio. A wise man can learn a thousand things more easily than a child can learn one. When a person once looks beyond themselves and begins to do good to others, it is much easier to do two good actions than one. When you have given a dollar to your neighbor, from love to him or her, you can give two much more easily than you did the first.

Now, carry this law on into the spiritual world, and what must be the consequences? Do you not see that the infant born today may pass beyond the present attainments of the highest angel? Do you not see that there are, and can be, no assignable limits beyond which the regenerate soul may not pass? That our capacities for knowing, and loving, and, consequently, for happiness, must forever increase in a continually accelerating ratio? What shall we become, then, when millions of ages have rolled away? The cup of life’s happiness, full today, and by this fullness made larger for tomorrow; every affection giving birth to a purer, higher, and more glorious truth, and every new truth preparing the way for a sweeter, lovelier, more blessed affection, and so on, for ever rising, for ever perfecting, for ever nearer the Lord. “It doth not yet appear what we shall be!” No, it doth not. The highest angel cannot conceive it. Oh, the grandeur, the glory of the blessedness of human destiny! As a necessary consequence of this continual and rapid expansion and perfection of our natures, you can see that no one grows old in heaven. You can see that what Swedenborg says upon the subject must be true, for it is the legitimate result of principles which we all acknowledge and see in constant operation in this life.

“They who are in mutual love,” he says, “are continually advancing to the springtime of their youth, and to a more and more gladsome and happy spring the more thousands of years they live; and this with continual increase to eternity, according to the degree and progress of mutual love, charity, and faith. Those of the female sex who have died in old age and enfeebled with years, and who have lived in faith in the Lord, in charity towards the neighbor and in happy marriage love with a husband, come after a succession of years more and more into the bloom of youth and early womanhood, and into a beauty which surpasses all conception of beauty that is ever perceptible to the sight. For it is goodness and charity forming and presenting their own likeness, and making the enjoyment and beauty of charity shine forth from every least feature of the countenance, – even so that they are very forms of charity. . . . This form is of ineffable beauty to the sight, affecting the very inmost life of the mind with charity. Through the beauty of this form truths of faith are presented in an image, and are even perceived from it. Such forms, or such beauties, do they become in the other life who have lived in faith in the Lord, that is in faith of charity. All the angels are such forms, with innumerable variety. Of these is heaven.” (Arcana Coelestia, no. 553)

There is no old age, no infirmity, no sign of decay in heaven. Conceive every face you look upon to be a special and perfect form of some affection so that it shall be distinctly, variously, and adequately portrayed in every feature, gleam forth in mild but radiant splendors from the eye, be enthroned in the forehead, molded into beauty in the cheek, playing in smiles and lovely expression about the lips, flowing in harmony in the voice, rounding the whole form, and swaying it in graceful and gentle motions. And then conceive that you have the power of perceiving the meaning of every form and motion, and of being affected by it. It would send a thrill of joy through you even to look upon such forms of purity and loveliness. What then must be the happiness of seeing such faces and forms everywhere, and of associating with them freely in all heavenly ministries?

8. I have said but little about the relations of the angels to the Lord, and I have no space to do it now, except to say that they are with Him, where He is. They are one with Him, not immediately in His personal presence, as many suppose; they could not bear that; but they live in the sphere of His love, and in the light of His wisdom. They see Him in everything around them. They delight to acknowledge that all their possessions are His continual gift to them, and the various tokens of His love. All beautiful outward things, their habitations, their dress, their food, their beautiful ornaments, are His gifts; and they value them more as tokens of His love than they do for their beauty. They are objects which suggest His love and thoughtful care. And they have a perception of their meaning. The thought is not, see what beautiful things I possess; but see the munificence, the love, and wisdom of the Lord! My Father gave me these.

So in all their lovely ministries to one another, they remember that the brother angel is only the voluntary medium of the kindness. The Lord is the real giver. They ask no return for the favors they bestow. They rather thank the Lord that He has permitted them to be the almoners of His bounty; and so in all things they regard Him first. And when they think of Him, and open their hearts to Him, a new wave of life from Him flows into them, expanding them, making their natures more delicate and sensitive to deeper and more exquisite delights. The attractions of His love get a more powerful hold upon them. They become more perfectly magnetized by it, and He draws them gently and lovingly, closer to His infinite heart. They feel the new life thrilling through them, and they see it blossoming into all lovely forms around them. Thus He lives in them, and they in Him, and the angels are continually becoming more and more perfect in union with the Lord. It is the Divine of the Lord; the Divine love and the Divine wisdom, which constitute heaven; and all are in heaven just in the degree they can receive that love and wisdom. You have friends there. Some who walked by your side in these streets, and met with you to worship. We see their faces here no longer. We have put their material bodies away tenderly into the earth, where they are returning to dust. But they are in heaven. Their faces are radiant with the Divine love. They have thrown off the infirmities of age, and they are advancing towards the spring-time of an eternal youth. There are our children. Beautiful, lovely innocents! They, too, are unfolding in those soft and glowing vernal airs, and becoming forms of the Divine love and wisdom. Our places will soon be vacant here. May they not be left eternally vacant there! May the Lord in His infinite mercy help us all to begin a heavenly life here, that we may continue it there, and become the partakers of its ineffable and ever enduring blessedness!

But with the good, and with all who have not confirmed themselves in evil, who have not established a decidedly evil character, it is not so. Being essentially good, or having the capacities for the reception of the Divine life, which have not become destroyed or permanently obstructed by evil, they can receive truth corresponding to the state of their affections. They enter upon a third state, which is a state of instruction and special preparation for heaven. This is the subject of the present chapter. I am to show the necessity for instruction, its nature, and the methods by which it is given.

The necessity for instruction is evident from the nature of heaven, and the state of those who are to be introduced into it. Heaven is not merely escape from the punishment of sin. If the Lord should offer a free pardon to every one, it would not make any person any better. It would not form the kingdom of heaven within them. It would not create a single heavenly affection, or give the understanding a single truth. Heaven is not a negative, but a positive state. When we are weary, we think of heaven as a place of rest; and by rest most persons mean inaction, or at least freedom from the labors, the cares, the anxieties and disappointments of this life. And so it is. But this is only what it is not; the causes of pain which are not there. Permanent inaction is not rest; it is death. It is blindness in the eye, deafness in the ear, darkness in the intellect, and torpor in the heart. The rest of heaven is not inaction, but the harmonious and orderly activity of all the spiritual faculties; an activity which does not exhaust, but rather increases our powers. All delight originates in some faculty of the will or of the understanding. Heaven, then, must depend upon what we love, what we know, and our ability to carry our will into successful effect.

A little reflection upon what constitutes the essential elements of happiness, will make this clear to our minds. We are happy when we attain what we desire or love. There are three things, then, essential to happiness: the will or love, which gives rise to the desire to obtain certain ends, which we call good; the understanding or truth, which shows us how to obtain them; and the actual attainment of the ends we seek. If any of these elements is wanting, we fail of happiness. If there is no will, there is no motive power, and there will be no action, though there may be the greatest amount of knowledge. If there are ardent desires and little wisdom, we must be subject to perpetual failure. If there is a powerful will and extensive knowledge, but some physical or other hindrance which prevents their ultimation in act, the whole soul is filled with pain. The utter inability to obtain the gratification of our desires is the most prolific cause of our unhappiness.

Supposing these essentials to be secured; then the degree of our happiness will be measured by the purity and largeness of the will, and the extent of the understanding. For example: Here is a man of feeble will and little knowledge. He has but few wants, and those are easily satisfied. He is contented with little. He is happy according to the degree of his desires, and the extent of his knowledge. Another man has a powerful will, and a corresponding understanding. He has a wide range of affinities and tastes. He enjoys art, delights in music, has a keen perception of natural beauty, an ardent love for science, enters with real zest into a wide interaction with the wise and good, is a warm friend, and his whole soul is attuned to the refined and delicate joys of domestic life, and all his faculties are alive to everything beautiful, true, and good in nature and man. A person with such endowments may enjoy more in one day than the other in a year.

Our happiness in this or the spiritual world, then, must depend upon the breadth and depth and purity of our affections, a corresponding extent of knowledge, and the ability to attain the ends our affections desire. When the will, the understanding, and the ultimate effect correspond, and act in perfect harmony, our happiness will be in proportion to their extent. The larger our affections, the wider the range, and the more various our affinities, the more numerous and exquisite must be our joys.

Human beings’ spiritual nature consists essentially of the will and the understanding. The will is the receptacle of good, and the understanding of truth. The happiness and peace of heaven consist in the perfect union of the will and the understanding. As they expand they must keep equal pace with each other, or the balance of force is lost, and the harmony and peace are destroyed. As the affections expand by exercise, knowledge must correspondingly increase. We must be learners, then, for ever. The moment we cease to be capable of gaining more truth, we reach the limits of our happiness, and either remain stationary or, if our desires increase, as they must, we begin to be tormented with disappointments.

Now, if we revert to the actual condition of persons who have passed into the world of spirits, and who have not confirmed themselves in evils, we shall see the absolute necessity for instruction.

A very large part are infants and children, who have no knowledge of spiritual things, and no character confirmed in opposition to good. Great numbers also are children in knowledge and spiritual life, though adult in natural age. They have never sinned against light. They never had any rational knowledge of their spiritual natures, and their accountability to God, nor any means of obtaining it. This, we know, must be the condition of by far the greatest number of persons, when they leave this world. They have lived according to the knowledge they had; perhaps have lived more fully in accordance with it than those who have had much greater light. To say the least, they have not formed any character in determined opposition to the truth, for they have had no means of doing it. They are, therefore, substantially in the same state as children. Many Christians have lived good lives, but have believed in some false doctrine. They have been honest and sincere in their opinions; they have believed what they were taught in childhood; what they have learned from men, whom they regarded as thoroughly informed upon all spiritual subjects. But they are mistaken.

We know that this is so. We know that our own views of the same doctrines change. We call the doctrine by the same name, perhaps, but it is not the same doctrine to us that it was once. No one but the most narrow bigot can deny that there are good people in all religious denominations; and no rational mind can admit that the belief of every good man and woman is true in every particular, because they are exactly opposite in some points. It necessarily follows that they will need instruction.

But even the most intelligent minds are in doubt upon many subjects concerning spiritual things. There are very few persons who, by their own confession, have any distinct, and much less any rational idea of the nature of the spiritual world, of heaven and hell, and of what they themselves will be after death. Now, if it is true, as I have endeavored to show, that the spiritual world is a real world, and that we are real human beings, having gained no knowledge and lost none by death, the conclusion is inevitable that there would be very few, if any, who would not need instruction. They would have the same belief on first entering the spiritual world, that they had when they left this. They cannot enter heaven with any falsity for, by the very nature of heaven, every thought and affection must be in perfect harmony. Knowledge is not gained by mere entrance into the spiritual world. They would adhere to their belief with more or less tenacity, according to the degree in which they had confirmed it. And it might require much instruction and much positive evidence of its falsity before they would give it up. We all know by our own experience how slow we are to reject opinions which have become thoroughly established in our minds. It is like taking away our very life to part with them.

The instruction given would evidently be in those principles which constitute the Lord’s kingdom. Spirits preparing for heaven would be taught the existence of one God. How large a part of the human race do not know that simple and fundamental truth! They would be taught the true nature of His essential attributes. How little is known, even among professing Christians, concerning them! How diverse, and even opposite, are the conceptions of good people who have the Bible, and who are really desirous of living according to His commandments! Some regard Jesus Christ as God; others believe Him to be a mere man. Some regard Him as one person in a trinity of Beings whom they call God; and while they say one God with their lips, they have three distinct persons in their minds. If there is this difference among Christians, how great must be the diversity of opinion among others; there is the same diversity of belief concerning His character. He is all mercy to one, and all anger to another. To one He is a tender and loving Father; to another a stern and inflexible judge. He cannot be all that people conceive Him to be, and they cannot come into harmonious relations to Him until they have a true knowledge of His character.

They would be taught what is really good and true in life. Many persons are honestly in doubt upon a multitude of subjects which relate to practical life. But they cannot take these doubts to heaven. That is no place for trial; for the rectification of opinions. The grand themes of instruction, therefore, would be the real nature of man as a spiritual being, and of the Lord as a Divine Being, and the relations which exist between all beings. We learn something upon these subjects here, but how little How imperfect that little! How much it is blended with fallacies and positive errors! How various and contradictory are the opinions honestly entertained concerning the nature of heaven and heavenly joys! It is a very common doctrine, that the happiness of heaven will consist mainly in perpetual adoration and praise. If the doctrine is not true, how greatly disappointed those will be who have firmly believed it! If it is true, how many more will fail to find their true idea of happiness! Truth is infinite; there is no danger that there will be any lack of subjects upon which most persons will need instruction. Especially since in this world we see as through a glass darkly, and our clearest knowledge concerning spiritual and Divine things is mingled with so many fallacies and appearances.

There is every reason to believe, therefore, that we shall become learners for ever. But there will be many circumstances which will greatly facilitate our acquisition of a knowledge of spiritual truth.

1. We shall be freed from the encumbrance and limitations of the material body. Our senses and all our mental faculties will be much more acute. Being in a world where all things are spiritual, there will not be that contrariety and antagonism which we find between our thoughts and affections and dead inert matter. We shall not be continually deceived by the illusions of appearances, and bound by the strong bonds of hereditary opinions. All the faculties being in clearer light, we can see through, and clearly understand many subjects at a glance, which we could not comprehend by years of study in this life. We all know something of the influence the body has upon the mind. When it is weary, enfeebled by disease, and filled with pain, we find it difficult and often impossible to think upon any subject, in a connected and rational manner. In old age, people sometimes seem to lose all their knowledge and mental power. How great the change from the elastic and vigorous action of the mind when the body was in its prime, and acted in perfect harmony with it! But the difference is not so great as it will be between the highest attainments of the mind, when clothed with the material body, and when entirely_. emancipated from it. All comparisons between the most extreme states of the soul when in the body must fall far short of the reality. It will be vigorous, elastic, keen, comprehensive, untiring, perceptive; so great will be the change that people will seem to awake as from a dream; to have passed from darkness into light.

2. Angels will be our teachers. We all know how much a wise teacher can help us. And by a wise teacher I mean one who not only understands the subject he or she teaches, but the mind being instructed. In the spiritual world people do not wear masks. The whole outward form is the embodiment of the inward life. The angels can understand at a glance the specific spiritual state of those committed to their care. They can put themselves in other peoples’ states, as it were, and see truths from those other standpoints. They know, therefore, exactly what they need. And they know equally well how to supply it. The angels know in what order, and by what processes, to lead our minds from step to step, out of any error, to the recognition of any truth. What an amazing help this must be! While here in the material body, using the clumsy methods of an artificial language, we often fail to make our exact difficulties known. The wisest teachers must often give their instructions at random, and even if they meet the case, we may not understand them; and so we grope our way along, the blind often attempting to lead the blind, and both falling into the ditch. But in the spiritual world, minds will come into perfect rapport with each other; and each will give and receive to the extent of its power. Such being the state of those who learn, and the wisdom of those who teach, they could hardly fail to make the most rapid progress.

But the methods of our spiritual teachers will be as wise as their knowledge is perfect. By the operation of spiritual affinities, to whose action there are no obstacles in the spiritual world, those who are in similar states of affection and thought would be drawn together, and a complete classification would be effected. Those whose spiritual wants are the same, and those who are the most competent to supply them, would be drawn into close relationships. This would only be carrying out, under perfect conditions, principles which are universally operative in this life, and the accomplishment of results which we are always in the effort to attain. As society advances in civilization and intelligence it becomes more distinctly classified and arranged. This process goes on in business, in education, in social and civil life, in everything. The results, however, are very imperfect, because we are compelled to judge by external and artificial means. Whereas, in the spiritual world, state alone will determine our place, and our associates, even to the most minute particular.

It would necessarily follow that those whose spiritual wants were the same would be drawn into the same society. Thus, infants, children, youth, and all of every age and state would be arranged into societies or schools where they could receive instruction exactly adapted to their wants. All of the same age, even in infancy, would not be together. But those of a similar hereditary character; those who needed similar processes of instruction to repress every evil tendency and to develop the true principles of a heavenly life, would be in the same schools.

It must be a most consoling thought to every parent who has children in the spiritual world that they are not to remain in the ignorance and feebleness of infancy; that the Lord has made provision for their instruction and for the development of all their faculties, into angelic perfection. They are free from all contagion of evil example, from the temptations of wicked companions, and the imperfect methods and the false principles of the schools of earth. They will never be taught anything that is untrue; they will never have any lesson to unlearn. Their delicate natures will not be subject to the rude and blind treatment that children receive in this life. The angels will love them with a tenderness greater than a mother’s; they will know how to touch the secret springs of their innocent natures; and all their faculties will develop in beautiful harmony and order, as the bud unfolds into the blossom, and develops into the fruit. No shadows will fall upon their hearts; no tears will ever dim their eyes; they will have no hard and repulsive tasks to perform; they will never go astray. The innocence of infancy will never receive a stain; and the elastic, bounding joys of childhood will never be repressed. They will grow up into the manly strength and feminine grace of adult age; they will attain the wisdom, the culture, the comeliness, and the ineffable beauty and blessedness of the angels, by processes of order, harmony, and ever-increasing delight.

But not only are all shades of character nicely discriminated, and all specific wants perfectly met; the methods of instruction are also as superior to those which are practiced in the schools of this life as that world is superior to this. This perfection does not consist in their being entirely different or opposite to the methods of instruction in this life. They could not be, unless we are entirely different beings from what we are here. This shows the coherency and logical consistency of the doctrines of the New Church; for while they teach many things concerning the spiritual world and the nature of spiritual life, which many persons regard as the mere fancies of a diseased mind, they will be found, upon careful examination, to be logical and inevitable deductions from the nature of the human mind, and perfectly consistent with all we know of the Divine methods. What better evidence of their truth could a rational mind demand?

As illustrations and proof of this assertion, take what these doctrines teach us concerning the methods of instruction in the world of spirits. ” Truth is taught principally by representatives.” Instead of describing a subject by words only, it is represented to the life. This can be done in the spiritual world, because thoughts assume form and become visible there.

Suppose, for example, a number of novitiate spirits had an imperfect or false idea of what really constitutes the neighbor, or of who is our neighbor, as all children and most adult persons have. Instead of a parable of words, the actual scene could be presented. To teach this truth, our Lord has given us the Parable of the Good Samaritan. If the persons He desired to teach were in the spiritual world, the scene described by words in the parable could be made to appear in reality before the eyes of the persons who needed the instruction, with innumerable particulars, and in such fullness that a whole library could not contain a verbal description of them.

Or suppose the nature and delights of innocence was the subject upon which instruction was to be given. The angels could cause a perfect panorama of all living objects which were the perfect embodiments and representatives of innocence, not merely to pass before those who were to be instructed, but to surround them on every side as far as the eye could reach. And this whole scene could be filled with everything which the purified intelligence and exalted perceptions of an angel could conceive. Flowers of the most pure and lovely colors; lambs and doves, and the young of every living thing which represents this affection; and little children, of surpassing loveliness and beauty, would gambol and sport with one another in many various forms, so that the very nature of innocence would be acted out to the life. And not only the abstract nature of innocence could be made to appear in various forms, but the origin of this affection as from its germ; the various methods of its development, and its various results, could all be represented by changes in the scene. There would be nothing wanting to make the beautiful panorama of this soul of virtue and essential quality of heavenly character, perfectly adequate to the states of every one who beheld it.

Those who beheld this representation would also perceive the meaning of every particular form, of every motion, and every change, and its perception would be accompanied with inmost delight.

No one can deny that this would be a most effectual method of instruction, and a little reflection will show that it is in perfect accordance with the wisest and best methods in this life. The novelist and poet seek to accomplish this end in words, the artists with their colors and canvas, and the forms into which they mould the marble. The teacher of science finds the greatest help in diagrams and pictorial representations of the truths he or she seeks to communicate. The most of you have doubtless seen the pictures or the engravings of Cole’s Voyage of Life, and know how vividly he has portrayed the willfulness and confidence of youth, the illusions of ambition, and the certainty that the angels we desert in the morning of life are our only hope in death. How much more vivid and powerful the impression such pictures make upon our minds than the most forcible statement in words of the abstract truth. But if we could see the whole history, only a few suggestive images of which can be represented upon the canvas, acted out to the life before us in all the details; if we could see the bright hopes fade, the terrible struggle, the inevitable defeat and final despair, the effect would surpass the picture far more than that does the verbal statement of the truth.

The reason is evident. When we are taught by the instrumentality of words, we are compelled to make the picture for ourselves. And there are but few persons who have much skill in that. In all cases the idea or picture before the mind’s eye will depend upon the meaning attached to the words. The picture upon canvas is made for us, and we have only to open our eyes to it. Still, the objects are comparatively few, and we may not understand them. But when they move and act before us in various relations, we can hardly fail to gain their true meaning.

This method is, therefore, perfectly adapted to all the human faculties, and one which we all seek to adopt when we can. It is the Divine method, as we know from experience. The Lord taught by parables, which are pictures of imaginary events, painted in words. The whole Bible is such a panorama. In it, for thousands of years, the Jewish race is made to pass before us in all its phases of victory and defeat, of servitude and dominion, of glory and shame, from its rise to its dispersion. In this history every person can see their own life as in a glass. We can see our relations to the Lord, and to our fellow man; the blessings which follow obedience to the Divine commandments, and the inevitable and terrible consequences which must flow from their violation. What further proof do we need that the same method will be continued in the new and more favorable conditions of the spiritual world, for the perfect use of those who dwell there?

By another method, people are convinced of the falsity of many of the doctrines they may have imbibed. They are permitted to try them until they are convinced of their falsity by actual experiment. This is often the only way that we can be made to see and acknowledge our errors in this life. One person will not take the experience and wisdom of another for his or her own use. Suppose, for example, that we carry with us the idea that the happiness of heaven consists in perpetual worship, as multitudes do; it would be more difficult to convince us by the force of argument of the falsity of this idea in the spiritual world than it is here. A simpler and more effectual method is adopted. We are permitted to test the truth of this doctrine by actual experiment. We are admitted into temples or are gathered by the attractions of a similar thought and affection into great multitudes around a throne, and there they worship until we become so weary and exhausted by the forced and long-continued exaltation of mind that we are perfectly convinced of our mistake, and are ready to be instructed in the true idea of heavenly happiness, which our Lord has taught us consists in doing good to others from love to them and the Lord. Those who use the talents given them are the only ones who enter into the joy of the Lord.

In these and in many other ways, impossible in a material world, all who will receive instruction are prepared for heaven. Infants, children, and the ignorant are taught heavenly truths, and are led to practice them until they have made them their own, until their whole characters are established in heavenly principles. Those who are good at heart, but who have imbibed false doctrines from education or other means, are permitted to see their errors, and when they see them they gladly reject them. Thus everything that is false is eliminated from their minds; the whole nature becomes homogeneous with itself and with the angels.

The progress they make is inconceivably more rapid than it could be in this world, owing to the increased power and freedom of the mind, and the facilities for showing every truth and falsity in its true light and form. Some pass rapidly along, and in a few days are ready for heaven. Others linger and yield up with more or less reluctance the false principles they had imbibed in the world, according to the degree in which they had confirmed them. But sooner or later, all who have not destroyed their spiritual life and become dead in trespasses and sins; all who are really good at heart, though they may not have been entirely free from natural evils and falsities, are prepared for their eternal home.

When the preparation is complete, when everything is removed from their characters which is repellent to the purity and perfect order and harmony of heaven, they are drawn to it by the force of those spiritual affinities which separated them from the wicked, and which now operating more powerfully and specifically, draw them to those of a homogeneous nature, and to their eternal home.

This is effected without any violation of their freedom, without any external and arbitrary power, without any force. Each goes, as of him or herself, though constantly directed by the infinite wisdom and mercy of the Lord. In effecting this end, the same laws operate that we see in full and universal force around us in this world. Everyone preserves their identity and their consciousness of individuality. There is no link broken in the chain of his being. Through all the vicissitudes of life, from the cradle to the grave, from the grave to the open portals of heaven, we have been led in perfect freedom by a way we knew not. We have been protected from innumerable unseen dangers; we have been turned aside from paths which seemed to us flowery and leading only to good, to steep and rugged ways, because the Divine mercy saw that the strait and narrow path was the one that led to heaven; we have cast off the material body when infinite wisdom saw it was the best time for us to do it; we have been raised up into the world of spirits by the ministry of angels; we have been instructed and led by them to renounce every principle in our characters that was not in harmony with heaven. And when this work was fully accomplished, they have led us in opening paths of growing beauty and ever-increasing peace and blessedness to our home; to the home of the heart and the understanding, the home of friends, of those who love us, and by whom we are loved the best of all in the universe; the home of every faculty and every joy.

Now the six days of labor are ended. For us there are to be no more blasted hopes, no corroding cares, no weariness from heavy burdens, no vain regrets, no rending anxieties, no blind gropings for the way, no illusions of the senses, no shadows on the soul, no repulsive labor, no repugnant associations, no pain, no sorrow, no eyes wet with tears, no partings from loved ones, no jar, no discord in the universal harmony. There will be no more death. The former things are passed away. All imperfection lies behind us.

What lies before us? Eye hath not seen, ear hath not heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive. The highest angels cannot tell. But one thing we may know. With intellects elevated into a light so clear and brilliant that the brightest noon on earth is darkness compared with it; with their power so great, and their compass so extended, that all earthly knowledge is weakness and ignorance; with affections glowing with the intense ardors of the Divine love, and yet perfectly married to truth in the understanding, so that every desire finds full expression; in a world where all without is in perfect harmony with all within; where all the faculties are increased in power beyond conception; in these exalted conditions I know the promise will be fulfilled, “Ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.” I know that when we have passed beyond the present capacity of the highest angel, in our varied power to ask and to receive, we shall only be gathering the crumbs which fall from our Father’s table. Our ability to ask, and our power to receive, are yet only the infant’s knowledge and the infant’s power. We have but just begun to live; we are just opening our eyes upon the riches of our Father’s bounty. Eternity-eternity is yet before us; and infinite beauty, peace, and blessedness, await our desire to ask and our power to receive.

Before entering directly upon the subject, let us glance backwards, and take our bearings from the principles we have endeavored to establish, and see what light they throw upon the question before us. I do not wish to state personal opinions, merely. No opinion or theory is of any value unless it is true; unless it is according to the order established in the nature of man by infinite wisdom. If we can find that order, we shall find the truth, we shall find harmony; and so long as we follow it, we can never go astray.

In previous chapters I have aimed to show that spirit is a substance, and is capable of existing in various organic and inorganic forms; that there can be, therefore, and is, a real and substantial spiritual world; that we are essentially spirits in the human form, organized of spiritual substances; that death is really our resurrection from the material body, and a regular and orderly step in life; a step people would have taken if they had never sinned; that we rise in the world of spirits the same being that we left this world, and with the same character. We have the same form, the same features, the same knowledge, and the same affections. The infant is an infant, the youth is a youth; the ignorant gain no knowledge, the wise lose none.… The evil have the same evils, and the good abhor wickedness and love purity and truth the same as ever.

These human beings, in all states of moral, intellectual, and spiritual character, are pouring into the world of spirits more than sixty a minute. At this rate the whole population of a vast city would be removed in ten days. If this grand levy of death was limited to this country alone, in one year it would take every man, woman, and child, and leave these great cities and this vast territory without inhabitant. These people, according to our belief, are never to return to this world. The material body is never to be resumed. Their resurrection is already accomplished. Their judgment must, therefore, take place in the world of spirits, where all great judgments have been and will be effected. The judgment which John describes in the Revelation took place in the spiritual world.

What is to be done with this great, seething, incongruous mass of humanity? If the Lord is a Being of infinite wisdom and mercy, He could not permit this vast multitude to remain promiscuously together. This would be a most terrible fate, unless their natures have become totally changed. If they are nothing but vital principles, or mere shadows of a shade, flitting around in the empty realms of space, being nobody and nothing, they would need no care. But if they are, as we believe, real human beings, with human hearts throbbing with human desires; with intellects thirsting for truth; with affections hungering for love, with passions stimulating them to intense activity, they must come under the power of law, and be arranged into societies, in which each individual will sustain some definite relations to all others. Is it not so? They could not live together in this world without some discrimination of character… and the establishment of definite relations; and unless they lose their individuality, they cannot, there. Happiness would not be possible with such a commingling and contact of incongruous elements.

But besides this assemblage of opposite and repellent characters, there are many opposing and inharmonious elements in individual minds. There are few, if any, who are so good that they have no evils and falsities; and there are few, if any, who are so wicked that they have not some apparently true principles and good traits of character. A great number have no established character; infants and children certainly have none. Our happiness depends upon the degree and quality of our affections, and their harmonious activities. There can be no heaven where there is no knowledge and no affection, or where the various affections are in conflict with one another.

The nature of man, when he rises in the world of spirits, requires that these conflicting elements shall be eliminated from his character. All his progress depends upon it. It requires also that the good and evil shall be separated, and that only those of congenial characters shall associate with each other. The happiness of the evil as well as the good requires this, and the Lord regards their happiness as much as He does that of the good. He has declared that He is kind to the evil and to the unthankful. A wicked man is never so unhappy as when he is compelled to live in the society of the good. He is compelled to act under restraint. His evil principles are continually assaulted. But let him get among his companions, and he feels that he regains his freedom, for he can act out freely his desires. He is less miserable, also, when his whole character is evil and false, than when it is composed of conflicting elements. We see abundant evidence of this truth in this life. A thoroughly bad person, a person who loves evil, and has persuaded themselves that evil is good and the false true, is not so miserable as the person who knows what is good and true, but loves what is evil and false. The person who believes it is right to make the best bargain for himself that they can, as many people do, is delighted when they overreach another and makes money out of the other person; while another, whose greed of gain overcomes his or her principles, would be tormented by his consciousness of having done wrong. It is of the Lord’s mercy, therefore, that the character of the evil as well as the good shall become homogeneous, and that the conflict between them shall cease, when it can be of no more service to a person.

In this world every one has two characters, a real and an apparent one. A bad person can appear to be very good. They can be very polite. They can assume all the airs of virtue and innocence; be kind and attentive to others; they can even preach and pray and exhort others to live a good life. Every one can conceal their real feelings. They can speak differently from what he thinks, even when he has no intention of deceiving. A good person knows he or she has two natures. Two opposite characters are struggling in them for the mastery. In the New Church we call these two characters the internal and the external person. The internal is the real person. The external sometimes acts in harmony with the internal, and sometimes does not. We know from our own experience, from observation and history, that the internal and real character gradually gains the ascendancy even in this world, and brings the external, and even the body, into conformity with it to some extent. Vice graves its ugly lineaments on the face so clearly that every one can see them. The habitual exercise of a pure and good affection, changes even a homely face into its own likeness. This work must continue to go on until the external and internal become one, and the whole being is perfectly homogeneous. Every one can see that no one could enter heaven until this perfect unity between the external and the internal was effected.

This external person is not the material body. We carry that external with us when we go into the spiritual world, and when we are first raised up we can pretend to be what we are not. The hypocrite is a hypocrite still; and though a wolf in nature, they may and will try to deceive others by putting on the sheep’s clothing of goodness and truth. The person who has been externally religious and devout, hoping thereby to gain entrance into heaven, though evil at heart, will still be devout. Every one carries their whole character with them. Their character is themselves.

The whole question of judgment is simply the arrangement of these people into societies; bringing them into true and orderly relations to one another, and leading them by their own affections to their final abode. I say leading them by their own affections, for the Lord always respects a person’s personality. He never violates a person’s freedom. That is the essential human principle, and to destroy that would be to destroy the individual.

Our doctrines teach us that this judgment is effected in the following manner. When a person first rises in the spiritual world, he or she is received by the angels with the utmost kindness, whether he is good or evil. All are welcomed alike. Every attention is paid to them and everything is done for them that it is in the power of the angels to do. When people find they are in a real world, and are themselves real human beings, they begin to inquire about heaven, and desire to know whether they are likely to gain entrance into it. The angels then instruct them concerning the nature of heaven and heavenly happiness. Here the real character begins to show itself. Those who have the kingdom of heaven within them, that is, those who love the principles which constitute a heavenly life, listen with delighted attention to what the angels tell them; while the evil, who have no real love for goodness and truth, are listless and inattentive, and desire to turn to other subjects. Those who have an angelic nature delight to remain with the angels and be instructed by them; but those who are evil at heart grow uneasy and restless, and desire to leave them; which they are always permitted to do. But others of a different genius, and better adapted to their states, attend them and introduce them to various societies, where they remain as long as it is agreeable to them, and when they desire it, they depart to others, and they continue to do this, until they find those who are in a similar state of affection, and consequently congenial to them.

This change from one society to another is not accidental, nor is it effected in an arbitrary manner. But they are drawn by a spiritual attraction by the secret but powerful affinities of their natures. They are also at the same time undergoing great personal changes. They are in a world where all spiritual forces operate more directly and powerfully upon them than in this. The ruling love rapidly subdues all things to itself. The will and the understanding become united. The external becomes subject to the internal and the perfect form of it. If the essential character is evil, it will be acted out in speech and deed. All restraints will be cast off. People will have no regard for public opinion, no shame for their wickedness. They will rather glory in it.

The will and the understanding being united, they cannot even think of anything good and true, and the whole form becomes changed into the similitude and perfect expression of their evil wills. The same principles apply to those who are interiorly good. All which is not in accordance with their ruling love, which is essentially love to the Lord and the neighbor, is put off They are freed from everything which restrained its activities. Their whole form be comes the similitude of their affection. It glows in their faces, and every feature becomes molded into a heavenly beauty. It is heard in the tones of the voice, which express it in every modulation. It speaks in every limb and motion of the body. The whole form is the embodied and varied expression of the essential character. Thus the good and the evil are separated and drawn away from each other, by the inevitable attractions and repulsions of their natures. And the great gulf that finally separates them is in their souls. “They are judged according to the deeds done in the body,” that is, according to their characters. Their allotment is not in any sense arbitrary. They choose their own lot. And the Lord does all He can for the evil as well as the good. But what He can do for each one depends upon what he can receive.

This is a very brief statement of the manner in which, according to our doctrines, every one is judged. Let us now examine some of the reasons on which this doctrine is founded.

It is executed with the most delicate and perfect regard to peoples’ freedom. That is never violated. They are not forced to any course of conduct or bound to any society against their will. They are not driven away from heaven and the Lord. On the contrary, every effort is made to bring them into communion with the good, and to make them happy. Their identity and the continuity of being is preserved. Instead of losing it, they becomes more perfectly themselves: all that is extraneous to them is discarded; every thought and desire acts in perfect harmony, and even the outward form is the exact similitude of the internal character.

It is in perfect harmony with all we know of the nature of people as intellectual and spiritual beings. It is only carrying out to perfection, under the most favorable conditions, those spiritual laws which we see in full and universal operation here, and which, if a person continues the same being, must operate in the spiritual world.

We know, for example, that we are drawn together in this world by similarity of tastes, habits, pursuits, and character. It is true, there is much that is arbitrary and factitious in our associations, and there are many obstacles that prevent those of similar natures from finding one another, and coming together. But we are always struggling against them and endeavoring to overcome them. A knowledge of the same mechanical employment, or the study of the same science, the practice of the same profession or art, draws people together into societies and more or less intimate associations, and forms a common ground on which they can stand.

When the tastes and habits are similar, the union is more intimate, and its bonds are stronger. The more interior the ground of sympathy, the more powerful the attraction. Thus, those who love the same spiritual truths, find in them a most powerful bond of union. These fine and delicate but powerful affinities, are to people what attraction is to matter. They are universal in their operation in every plane and degree of the creation. It is the Divine method of combining all beings and all things into some degree of unity. There are many obstacles to this unity from interior grounds in this world, owing to our selfish and worldly loves; and we are compelled to seek by outward restraints and force, by external laws and arbitrary punishments, a kind of formal or legal unity. It is, however, at the best, a very external and imperfect bond.

Can any one suppose that the Lord abandons His universal methods, embodied in rock and plant, in beast and bird, and in the inmost nature of man; a law so perfect that no one can escape from its influence; a law that is self-executing? Does the Lord abandon this law, reverse His own methods, when a person comes into a world where there would be no obstacles to their perfect operation? How can any rational mind entertain so absurd an idea?

The doctrines of the New Church simply carry out this universal principle to its legitimate conclusions. They have the logic of the Divine order as it is embodied in the creation and in the hearts and minds of men. It is a conclusion also which every good and every wicked person must desire, if they understands their own nature. A wicked person cannot be happy in the presence of the good. Heaven would be a perfect hell to them. What delight could a supremely worldly and selfish person find in loving the Lord and the neighbor? In doing good to others? What pleasure could the impure find in purity? the proud in humility? the ambitious and tyrannical in serving others? Their whole nature must be reversed before they could find any delight in these heavenly virtues. What we inmostly and really love is what we call good. It is and ever must be the measure of our good, and must determine its quality. We can no more escape from it than we can escape from the laws of gravitation. People desire to escape from hell because it is a place of torment; and to go to heaven because they think it is a place of happiness. But they forget that what is happiness for one is torment to another. They forget that freedom from punishment is not happiness. If every law was abolished in the land, and every penitentiary leveled with the ground, it would have no effect in making wicked people delight in what is good. They would rejoice, no doubt, that they could freely indulge in their wicked desires. But these would soon react upon them in some form of punishment, and in the end they would gain no happiness by it. No. If those heavenly principles, which constitute the kingdom of God, are not formed within us – if we have not made them our own, by actual life – we can never taste a heavenly joy. We pronounce judgment upon ourselves, in the spiritual world, in the same way we do in this world. The wicked man seeks hell there as he does here, because he is drawn to it by his infernal delights – the only delights he is capable of enjoying; and he is drawn to it by the current of his desires, as a vessel is drawn to the ocean by the current of a stream.

The change which takes place in their own persons by which each one becomes externally the form of his own interior affection, is also the effect of laws which we see in universal operation here; and when carried out to their legitimate effects, they must produce the results our doctrines ascribe to them, unless they are arrested in their course in some miraculous manner and the whole nature of the human mind is changed. The soul being an organized form expresses its thoughts and affections by changes of form, and even the material body conforms to its action. Under the influence of powerful passions the material body seems to be, as it were, fused in their fires, and cast into their mould. The same affection or passion always expresses itself in a similar form; and those forms are universally recognized as the natural expression of the corresponding affection. All representative art in painting and sculpture is founded upon this immutable law. The mind is the great sculptor, and, line by line, traces its own habitual moods and states of affection upon the body and moulds it into its likeness. Every passion and affection leaves its own marks. Invisible or evanescent at first, they gradually come out in clearer lines and more permanent forms, until the whole body becomes changed into their similitude, and the hidden affection is spread like a banner over the face, and the secret thought is proclaimed in every tone of the voice and movement of the limbs.

If this is true of the hard and intractable substances of the material body, how much more must it be true of those spiritual substances, which yield readily to the plastic forces of the will! If a person in this world who habitually indulges in any lust, is gradually but surely changed into the forms of that lust so that he or she becomes the embodiment of it, how much more will the spiritual body become permanently molded into the exact image and likeness of the interior and real affection!

When our doctrines teach, therefore, that every essentially wicked person becomes the form of their own evil, so that it is written all over them; flashes from their eye, croaks and grates in their voice; forms its infernal ugliness in every line of the face, twists the limbs and knots the muscles into its own deformities, and makes the whole spiritual organization the embodiment of its inverted, disorderly, misshapen and repulsive self, they only state a universal law; a law that the child understands; a law that you judge and act from every day. And if it is a punishment too awful to contemplate, to be for ever the embodiment of some infernal lust – to be so hideous and repulsive to all pure and good beings that they would shrink from us with horror – we cannot say it was a punishment inflicted by the Lord. He has ever done all in His power to save us from it. The law is beneficent in its action. It is the same law that makes the angel the embodiment of a loveliness and beauty which no words can describe and no art can adequately represent.

If these changes in the external form do actually take place in the evil and the good until the external and the internal become homogeneous, you can readily understand that it would take no Divine edict and Almighty power to separate them. They would be a terror to each other. They would flee from each other, and thus the sheep would be divided from the goats, and each would seek his own companions, and his own home. And it would be done without the violation of a person’s freedom; it would be accomplished by means of it. There would be no violation or suspension of universal laws, and the end would be perfectly accomplished, and by the simplest means, as the Lord always accomplishes His end. The book of each one’s life is opened, for the book of life is the internal and real character; and each one is judged out of the things written in that book. And all that it contains has been written by the deeds done in the body; thus every one is judged according to his deeds. These books are opened as the Lord opens every book of life, not in a forcible and arbitrary manner, but by the orderly and harmonious development of what is really written in them.

This method of judgment is perfectly illustrated by the Divine methods we see in operation everywhere around us. Here are two seeds somewhat similar in outward form, perhaps; but internally they are totally different. How shall we judge them? How shall we estimate their true value and assign them their proper place in the paradise of the garden, the orchard, the field, or the hell of fire? Shall we weigh them? Shall we measure them? Shall we compare their colors and form? Shall we send them to the chemists or examine by any outward test? They would all fail. By none of these methods could we discover their real character, which is written in invisible lines on the delicate and folded leaves of their closed book. There is only one way to learn their character, and that is to open the book and read their past history and the sure prophecy of the future, every event of which is written there. But how shall we open the book, sealed with seven seals? And if we could open it, how shall we read what is invisible to mortal eye, and written in forms which no finite mind can understand? How can we compel or persuade them to give up their history? We will plant them. The sun and the rain and the secret forces that pervade the earth and penetrate all things will loose their seals and open the book. We put them in a rich soil and a genial climate. When we first plant them, they have the same form as ever. But soon they begin to change. They may seem to perish; but they do not. A little stalk pushes itself above the ground, and delicate leaves begin to unfold from it. You cannot yet tell whether it is vine, or shrub, or tree. You give to each plant the best culture you can. You use no partiality. Both grow. Branches push out from the increasing stem. Summer and winter pass, and yet you may not be able to read what is written in the book of their lives. In time their inward forms unfold into leaves; but every twig and leaf of the one is armed with thorns which pierce you. They cover themselves with the glory of blossoms. Both fill the air with odors, but the odor of one is fetid and poisonous; the other sweet, delicate, and grateful. You now begin to discover their real character. They are proclaiming it to every breeze. They mature their fruit. The one is pungent, bitter, poisonous, and fills every one who eats with pain and disease; the other is sweet, delicious, wholesome, nourishing; gives delight and health to every one who partakes of it. Now the book is opened: the meanings of its characters are all so plainly revealed, that beast and bird, and even insect and worm, can understand them. “By their fruits ye shall know them.” How simple and orderly the process! How inevitable the result! There is no chance for escape. There is no room for error.

So the Lord judges people. They are not arraigned before some awful tribunal, surrounded with inconceivable terrors, every evil thought and sinful act of a whole life brought before their consciousness, and made to testify against them; they have no formal, legal trial according to an arbitrary law, like a criminal before a civil court. Nor is the judgment pronounced before the assembled universe, in tones of thunder, and with flashes of fierce wrath, that the face of the poor sinner may be covered with confusion and shame, and their soul filled with awful terrors. Their Creator, their Father, their Savior, who has ever loved them with an infinite love, does all He can for their. He gives him every opportunity to show the best the person is, and to obtain the highest good that person can receive. He does not drive him or her away; the person goes away of their own accord, in the pursuit of what they regards as their highest good. The Lord and the angels do not close the doors of heaven against them. They have closed those doors against themselves by not having them open in their own heart, as the person in this world would close the gates of the sun against themselves by putting out their own eyes. The Lord does not seek to expose them for the purpose of putting them to shame, but He gives people every facility for proving what they really are, by becoming the form of their ruling or essential love, that that person may find their own place and be recognized in it; that they may not be a torment to others, and that the others may not be a torment to them. The Lord does not condemn people. People condemn themselves. The Lord loves them, and would gladly draw all of them to Himself, and pour into their heart the glowing currents of His own life. But that would torment and consume people who did not want it so. So He does the best He can for such people; and He does it according to the laws of His immutable and infinitely wise order.

Can you conceive of a better method of trial and judgment than this? It is in perfect accordance with infinite love. The tenderest pity and mercy itself could do no more. It is as certain in its results as infinite wisdom and omnipotent power can make it. The wicked can no more fail of condemnation than the evil seed can fail of bearing evil fruit. By the operation of the same principles, those who have any love for goodness and truth cannot fail to receive all that they have the capacity to enjoy. The result is inevitable, and the Divine goodness, justice, and mercy are equally displayed in the method and the result.

You will observe also that according to this method of trial and judgment the result is predetermined in this world, for it is in this world that the character was formed. The book was written here, as the history of the future plant, as it is embodied in the seed, was written in the tree that bore the seed. The world of spirits is not a place of probation, but simply a world where many obstructions are removed, and many influences, more powerful and better adapted to the reduction of every external principle to perfect harmony with the essential ruling love, can be brought to bear upon every soul.

You will see also that this view abates none of the real terrors of a final judgment. If it is not attended with the picturesque and sublime, and I may add impossible scenes, which are generally associated with this great event, it is, if possible, more terrible and certain in its results, and much more consonant with all we know of the Divine laws, and with the infinite mercy of the Lord. And in its results it is in perfect harmony with the Sacred Scriptures, and in its forms and methods also when they are properly understood.

In discussing this subject I have endeavored to adhere to my simple plan, which was to take certain principles, generally admitted in some form to be true, and carry them out to their legitimate consequences, and in this manner show that the doctrines of the New Church are based on the immutable laws of the Divine order; and so far as we know, that they are in perfect harmony with them.

I have not quoted largely from the Bible, even when I might have done so, nor from any other book, because I have not sought to establish a doctrine by any other authority than that of the truth itself. I may fail in so arduous an undertaking. I doubtless shall fail in the opinion of some. But all will acknowledge that, if any doctrines of spiritual truth can be established upon the immutable order of the Divine wisdom, and can be shown to be in perfect harmony with all the Divine methods, so far as they come under our observation; and if they are in perfect consonance with the Sacred Scriptures, they must take their place with mathematics and other established sciences, and carry irresistible conviction of their truth to every rational mind. We believe the doctrines and philosophy of the New Church have this basis, and we can conceive of no greater service to humanity than to make them known, and to show the true grounds on which they are to be received.