Page:A Compendium of the Chief Doctrines of the True Christian Religion.djvu/163

Rh, if his interiors are open, the natural objects of his world, and hear through his ears the natural sounds there produced.

From these and similar considerations it may plainly appear, that man was originally so created, that, during his life in the world amongst men, he might at the same time live in heaven amongst angels; and on the other hand, that, while in heaven, he might also have intercourse with the world: so that heaven and the world might be united in man, and men might know what passes in heaven, and angels know what passes in the world; and that, when men depart this life, they might pass thus from the Lord's kingdom on the earths into the Lord's kingdom in the heavens, not as into another, but as into the same, in which also they were during their life in the body. But man, by becoming so sensual and corporeal as he now is in his various affections and thoughts, has closed heaven against himself, and totally changed the order of his life.

That it is possible for man to see and converse with spirits and angels, is very evident from the whole testimony of the Sacred Scriptures, particularly from the cases of Abraham and Sarah, Lot, the inhabitants of Sodom, Joshua, Gideon, Manoah and his wife, Zacharias and Elizabeth, Mary, John, and many others, who all saw and conversed with angels as with men. The Lord himself also appeared in like manner after his resurrection; and they who saw him, knew no other than that he was a man of the earth, until he revealed himself, as he did to the two disciples going to Emmaus, who at first took him for a fellow-traveller, and to Mary Magdalene, who supposed him to be the gardener of the place where the sepulchre was situated. But at this day such appearances are rarely exhibited; the reason of which