Page:Emanuel Swedenborg, Scientist and Mystic.djvu/326

310 first indifferent, then as if frivolous, and finally bring sadness and anxiety."

After these words of the angel, Swedenborg says, "the door was opened and those sitting near sprang out and fled to their homes, every one to his employment and to his occupation, and revived."

The second company of spirits had the idea that heaven consisted in feasting with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and with the Apostles. On being introduced into their heaven, they thought they met these venerable personages, with their wives, and were delighted that they were going to feast with each one in turn, and that after the feasting, as they had also expected and wanted, there would be "sports and public shows" and then feasting again, and so on.

Hardly necessary to say that after a few days the aspirants said "Food has become inspid to us, we have lost relish for it; our stomachs loathe it; we cannot bear to taste it." "We have dragged on some days and nights in this luxury and beg earnestly that we may be permitted to go away." And then "they with rapid pace and panting breath fled to their homes."

Not, however, without first receiving a little homily by the angel, who told them that in heaven there were feastings, and music and song, and sport but that there was only happiness in those joys because of work well done.

The desires of the third company of spirits was to have the promise of the Bible literally carried out that they should reign with Christ forever. They expected to be kings and princes.

So they were introduced to their thrones and scepters and had crowns for their heads, and young men who seemed to be angels from heaven flew to them to wait on them. And they sat and they sat, until a voice from heaven cried out to them some timely warnings about their folly in preferring to be idols rather than men.

Emanuel Swedenborg may not have been thinking of his father's autobiography, but certainly Bishop Swedberg had stated in it that he knew when he got to heaven his guardian angel would have his throne and his crown ready for him, there to sit forever.

And the fourth company were very sure that heaven ought to be a wonderful garden, a paradise. They found it, a place in which as they expected "there is entire rest from labor, and that this rest