Page:The New View of Hell.djvu/186

 poses; as putting it into the heart of Judas Iscariot to betray the blessed Saviour; as corrupting and misleading men by craft and subtlety; as "going about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour."

The Scripture testimony on this subject is abundant and conclusive. We see not how it could be more explicit. If the existence of an innumerable company of angels and devils, their close proximity to man, and their intense desire and earnest effort, the one class to do him good and the other to do him harm, be not plainly taught in the Bible, then it would be difficult, I think, to say what is plainly taught there.

And yet the explicit teaching of Scripture on this momentous theme, has come to be quite overlooked or ignored by many Christians; and so explained by others as to cast doubt on the very existence of spirits, good or evil. These facts go to show how important it was that some one should be intromitted into the spiritual world in the manner that Swedenborg was (or, if you please, claimed to be), that he might thereby be enabled to make a truthful revelation concerning that world.

That the practical bearings of the question discussed in these pages, may be more distinctly seen, I will give a brief outline of the spiritual world, even at the risk of treading upon some ground that has already been traveled over.

I observe, then, that the spiritual world is one of substantial realities—more real, indeed, than the one in