Page:The Other Life.djvu/118

 kingdom of heaven is within you" is the great spiritual truth announced by the Word of God; and the kingdom of heaven without the spirit corresponds in its minutest particulars to the kingdom of heaven within him.

"Heaven", said an old English divine, "is a state first and a place afterward." Swedenborg shows that the place is created by the state, changes instantaneously with it, and is altogether dependent upon it.

It seems, at first view, a strange idea that the objects surrounding spirits and angels are created from moment to moment by the influx of the divine creative sphere through the affections and thoughts of the inhabitants. That external objects should, in some manner, represent or symbolize affections and thoughts is credible, and commends itself to our aesthetic sense as beautiful and even true. But that they are caused or created by affections and thoughts, that they appear, change and disappear with them, is extraordinary to the mind which still thinks from the sensuous appearance of the natural life.

Strange as it seems, however, is it not the simple statement of the law by which all creation is effected—the law by which the sublime panorama