Page:Heaven Revealed.djvu/202

 character. Some are passionate and others calm, some bright and others dull, some deceitful and others frank—born, too, of the same parents, and subjected to the same nurture and discipline. Naturally, therefore, they are as near akin as they can be, and in their faces they may resemble cach other. But spiritually viewed, there is little or no resemblance between them; they are wholly unlike, and have no moral or spiritual affinity. And in view of the law that governs in every association of spirits, it is plain that they would have no desire to dwell together in the spiritual world. Their spheres would be mutually repulsive, and their society mutually disagreeable.

The conclusion, therefore, seems irresistible, that the natural relationships of this world will not be continued in the world beyond; but that new relationships based upon interior and spiritual resemblances, will be established there. The legitimate deductions of reason bring us to this conclusion. Now let us see how far Swedenborg's disclosures accord with these deductions.

"Consociations in the other life are comparatively like relationships on earth, in that there is an acknowledgment as of parents, children, brethren, kinsfolk and connections; according to such differences is their love. The differences are indefinite, and the communicative perceptions so exquisite as to admit of no description,—no respect whatever being had to parents, children, kinsfolk, and connections on earth, nor to any personal considerations of quality or character, consequently not to dignities, riches, and the like, but only to the differences of mutual love and faith, the faculty of receiving which each had obtained from the Lord during his abode in the world."—A. C. n. 685.