Page:The Doctrines of the New Church Briefly Explained.djvu/226

220 According to the new doctrine, then, as now revealed, the New Church believes and teaches that there is a spiritual world inhabited by spirits and angels, far more populous than the world in which we are now living, and as much more substantial, too, as the soul is more substantial than the body. All the inhabitants of that world were once dwellers on this or some other earth—having commenced their existence on the lowest plane of human life. They are not remote from men as to space, but are very near, and intimately associated with them as the soul with the body.

The good and the evil (for there are both classes in the other world, as there are in this) are soon separated there, forming two grand divisions, a heaven of angels and a hell of devils. And this is no arbitrary division, but one which takes place under and in accordance with the provisions of divine law, and with the full consent of all the inhabitants, whose best welfare the Divine Mercy perpetually wills, and is forever seeking;—the welfare of the evil not less than that of the good, for all are alike subjects of the Divine regard.

The angels, viewed collectively, are called heaven; yet the essential constituent of heaven is the Divine of the Lord in the angels. In the degree that they receive His influent life, which