Page:Heaven Revealed.djvu/195

 ears of many who have been educated in the old theologies, and who hear it now for the first time. But is it not both reasonable and Scriptural? Does it not accord with these words of the Lord? "And I say unto you that many shall come from the east and west, and shall sit down with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. But the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into the outer darkness." (Matt. iii. 11, 12. See also Luke xiii. 24-31.) By "the children of the kingdom" are plainly meant those who have the Word, and who imagine (as did the Jews) that, for this reason alone, they would be saved in preference to those who have it not (as in the case of the Gentiles), and who have not therefore eaten and drunk in the Lord's presence, nor heard his voice in their streets. And by the "many" who would come from the four quarters and find a welcome, while "the children of the kingdom" would be thrust into the outer darkness, are as plainly meant the Gentiles—the non-Christian peoples who have not the written Word.

And not only does Swedenborg teach that fewer are saved from among Christians than from among the Gentiles, but that the worst of all the devils in hell are from the Christian nations. "This I can aver," he says, "that they who come into the other life from the Christian world, are the worst of all, hating their neighbor, hating the faith, and denying the Lord: for in the other life the heart speaks, and not the lips merely. Besides, they are more given to adultery than the rest of mankind."—A. C. 1885; also 1032.

But while the worst of the devils go from Christian