Page:The Doctrines of the New Church Briefly Explained.djvu/239

Rh The scenery, too, by which the angels are surrounded, is described as far more magnificent than any ever seen on earth. Hills and valleys, fountains and streams, gardens and groves, trees and flowers, clustering vines and delicious fruits, "such as were never seen in the natural world"—"all of such beauty as no language can describe." And all their beautiful surroundings are but the embodied forms of their own wise thoughts and sweet affections—a mirror reflecting with mathematical precision, under the great law of correspondence, the living and lovely things within their own souls. They are created and exist through the angels, and are in exact correspondence with their internal states; and they change, therefore, as their states change—the outward or phenomenal world in heaven, being always in correspondence with the internal states of its denizens.

As there are societies in heaven, some of them consisting of many hundreds of thousands of angels, and as all in any society are not equally wise, we should expect to find some kind of government there; and we should expect, also, that the wisest and best of the angels would be appointed to administer the government,—those who are least in the love or thought of themselves, and most in the thought and love of serving, and