Page:Heaven Revealed.djvu/141

 far more acute than ours, and the light in which they dwell far more brilliant, they see the objects in their world with greater distinctness than we see those in ours. And the law which determines the aspect of their outward world, is the same as that according to which the Sacred Scripture is written—the same law that always governs in the descent of the Divine love and wisdom to ultimates—the law of correspondence between the internal and external, or between cause and effect. Spirit tends forever to clothe itself in correspondential forms. It cannot become clothed in any other. God cannot speak or reveal Himself to finite beings, except according to correspondence. He cannot create, and so exhibit his love and wisdom to the senses of men, except according to the same law. And the objects which appear in heaven, exist there by virtue of an influx from the Divine into the minds of the angels, and through them into their outward or phenomenal world. The character of their outer is therefore determined by that of their inner world. The former is the visible representation of the latter. The things which greet their senses are the creations, and therefore the correspondential forms, of their own affections and thoughts. Thus their outward world corresponds in all respects to the world within them. Every active principle in their minds is pictorially represented to the outward sense, and under a form perfectly correspondent. The objects round about them, therefore, are so many mirrors, as it were, reflecting with mathematical precision the world of thought, affection and purpose within them. But we will give Swedenborg's report on this subject in his own