Page:The New View of Hell.djvu/135

 ever, who are in a similar evil, and thence in a similar infernal society, there is a general likeness, from which, as from a plane of derivation, the faces of all there appear to bear a certain resemblance to each other. In general, their faces are hideous, and void of life like corpses; in some cases they are black; in others they are fiery like little torches; in others, disfigured with pimples, warts, and ulcers. . . . Their bodies also are monstrous; and their speech is like the speech of anger, hatred, or revenge,—for every one speaks from his own falsity, and in a tone corresponding to his own evil. In a word, they are all images of their own hell"—Heaven and Hell, n. 553.

And mark here the unspeakable love and mercy of the Lord!—the wonderful display of the Divine benignity! The devils are not permitted to see themselves or each other as the hideous creatures they really are. They only appear under these disgusting and loathsome forms when seen, as Swedenborg saw them, in the light of heaven; for this light aione reveals the real quality of persons and things. Seen in the false and fatuous glare of hell, nothing appears as it really is. And so the true character of the devils—their internal and external deformity—is mercifully concealed from themselves and from each other. Their dreadful wickedness does not seem to them wickedness, but praiseworthy shrewdness. Their unmitigated foolishness seems to them not foolishness at all, but rarest wisdom. They do not appear to