Page:The Judgment Day.pdf/104

 ed from the same source, just as the natural world has been created and is still sustained from the natural sun. The divine love and wisdom are manifested and seen as the sun of the spiritual world, and from that sun the spiritual heat and light of that world are received. Were it possible that the influence of that spiritual sun could be for one moment withdrawn, in that moment the whole spiritual world would be dissolved and cease to exist. It is the heat and light of that sun which sustains each individual spirit, and gives him his place and use. But the correspondence be tween the natural and the spiritual world may be traced much farther, and may in fact be extended to every thing that exists in that world; for all these things are representatives of spiritual things. The same heat and light which in one part of the earth produces useful fruits for the support of man, in another part brings forth poisonous plants. So also in the spiritual world. The influence of the spiritual sun is every where diffused, but whether the fruits which that heat and light produce, be good or evil, depends upon the manner in which those spiritual things are received. When received in an orderly way, they produce the fruits of a good and useful life, but when perverted they bring forth all the infernal evils of self-love. Heavenly love perverted, is the love of self, and truth perverted, is the darkness of hell. Each spirit is left free to choose either good or evil, for such freedom is essential to its life; and the exercise of this choice, having become habitual and established, fixes the spirit's place,—its eternal state—makes it an inhabitant either of heaven or of hell.

But is the spiritual world then after all, nothing more than an immense aggregation of individal spirits, just as this natural earth is an immense collection of material particles? At first it may strike the mind as if this were so,—as if there could be no external scenes in that world, no surrounding objects, nor anything out of which to form them; nothing on which the eye could look, or the feet could stand.