Page:The New View of Hell.djvu/138

 them, in their ordinary evil state. How can they? for they are not in the all-revealing light of heaven, but in the fatuous light of hell; and this light which is real darkness, forever blinds and bewilders. In their own infernal light, these fellows appear to each other very respectable—appear, indeed, like men; but in the light of the Divine Word, or as viewed by heavenly minded people, they appear not as men but as monsters.

And not only are the faces and the whole personal appearance of the devils in exact correspondence with their evil loves, but all their surroundings exist under the very same law, and are produced in the same way. All the objects they look upon are but the embodied forms of their own evil loves. So that their whole outward or phenomenal world is a perfect reflection, under the law of correspondence, of their internal or spiritual condition.

Accordingly we are told that the devils appear clad in filthy and tattered garments; that they dwell in deserts, bogs, and miry places—some of them in caves and dens like those of wild beasts; that among the objects by which they are surrounded, are dreary deserts, rocky and barren wastes, thorns and thistles, ferocious beasts and venomous reptiles, dirty pools and heaps of filth. And these things (all of which are spiritual in their nature) are but the embodied forms, under the law of correspondence, of the filthy and infernal loves of the evil spirits themselves. To quote again from Swedenborg: