Page:The Doctrines of the New Church Briefly Explained.djvu/194

188 and unconscious outgoing of the individual's inner and real life, should be—must be—of precisely the same nature as that life; heavenly or hellish (in varying degrees) according as the life's love is angelic or infernal.

And any one of much spiritual discernment, or who is at all susceptible to the influence of mental spheres, if he has ever been long in the immediate presence of very saintly or very vile persons, knows from personal experience that what we have here spoken of as altogether reasonable, is actually true. In the humble cabin or poorly furnished chamber of some saintly soul, how many have often felt a sweet and heavenly peace as perceptibly as he ever smelled the perfume of clover-blossoms or new-made hay!—an experience inexplicable upon any other theory than that of the existence of spiritual spheres. Accordingly Swedenborg says:

"In the spiritual world the will or love of every one constitutes the whole man; and a sphere of life thence proceeds from him as an exhalation or vapor, and encompasses him, and makes as it were himself around him; like the effluvium encompassing vegetables in the world, which is also made sensible at a distance by odors; like that also encompassing beasts, of which a sagacious dog is exquisitely sensible." (A. C. 10,130.)

"Man does not know that a certain spiritual