Page:The Doctrines of the New Church Briefly Explained.djvu/104

98, for nothing less would be adequate to the removal of such falsities and evils, and the consequent inauguration of a new Age or Church.

And according to the teachings of the New Theology, such consummation of the first Christian Age or Church was reached about the middle of the last century (1757); when also a general judgment was executed in the spiritual world upon the vast multitude of spirits who had been congregating in the intermediate realm since the time of the Lord's advent in the flesh. Being alike in externals, they were kept together in that realm for a long time, and formed there a kind of heaven for themselves. It was not a true but only an imaginary heaven,—the heaven in which there was "war" between Michael and the Dragon (Rev. xii. 7),—the "first heaven" which passed away (Rev. xxi. 1) as the judgment was executed on its denizens. That judgment occurred as one of the normal results of a new and more powerful influx of truth from the Lord into the minds and hearts of those there, thus revealing and judging their interior quality; and as this was found to be quite different and even opposite—that of some being good, and that of others evil—when their interiors were fully disclosed a separation took place by force of the law of spiritual attraction and repulsion. The good were elevated to congenial societies in heaven, and the evil passed into