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 have received and lived the genuine truths revealed through Swedenborg, and whom some suppose to be the only persons belonging to the New Jerusalem. This is plain from the following:—

"The men of the internal Church are they who have qualified their good by interior truths, such as are those of the internal sense of the Word; but the men of the external Church are they who have qualified their good by exterior truths, such as are those of the literal sense of the Word." (A. C. 7840.)

And not less pertinent, and even more explicit and conclusive, is Swedenborg's explanation of the meaning of that "great multitude" whom the seer of Patmos beheld in vision after he had heard the number sealed from each of the tribes. That great multitude, he tells us—

"Signifies all the rest who were not among the above recited [i. e., the 144,000] and yet are in the Lord's New Heaven and New Church, being those who compose the lowest heaven and the external church, whose quality no one knows but the Lord alone. . . . They who are meant by the twelve tribes of Israel are such as constitute the Lord's internal Church; but they who are now mentioned are such as constitute the external Church, and cohere as one with the above recited, or as the body with the head." (A. R. 363.)

And we are told that in this class who constitute an essential as well as the largest part of the