Page:Swedenborg, Harbinger of the New Age of the Christian Church.djvu/268

 Stilling] recommended him to peruse. This work, as he informed me, gave him a full and satisfactory explanation of the extraordinary cases occurring in his valley, and which he himself was at length, from evidences which could not be doubted, constrained to admit. The satisfactory solution of these extraordinary cases afforded great pleasure to his mind, and he read the 'treasure,' as he called it, very attentively and with increasing delight. He no longer doubted the nearness of the spiritual world; yea, he believed that man by virtue of his better part—his immortal mind—is already an inhabitant of the spiritual world, in which after the death of the material body he is to continue his existence forever. He plainly saw, from the correspondent relation existing between the two worlds, that when it pleased the Lord, man might easily be placed by opening his spiritual senses in open communication with the world of spirits. This, he observed, was frequently the case with the seers mentioned in the Old Testament; and why might it not be so now, if the Divine providence saw fit, in order to instruct mankind more fully in respect to their relation to a spiritual state of