Page:The New View of Hell.djvu/66

 diseased; their mental eye, adjusted to error. And however bright the truth may shine, they do not see it. To them it appears as falsity. They "put darkness for light and light for darkness." Therefore the Lord says: "If thine eye be single [or more correctly, sound, healthy] thy whole body shall be full of light; but if thine eye be evil [i. e., unsound, diseased], thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If, therefore, the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!" Matt. vi. 22, 23.

Agreeably to this, Swedenborg often tells us that the denizens of heaven dwell in light inconceivably more brilliant than the light of this world; while those in hell live in great darkness—for their understandings are darkened by innumerable falsities originating in evil lusts. Milton had a perception of this great truth when he sang:

There is a great darkness within all evil spirits, and this produces the darkness without; for in the other world everything without is but the reflection, under the great law of correspondence, of the state or quality of life within. But evil spirits do not appear to themselves to