Page:The Other Life.djvu/156

 sphere received by the angels which is called the Lord in the angels. There are different heavens and myriads of different societies with their infinitely different forms and surroundings, all produced by the different modes and degrees of receiving and manifesting the divine sphere which is the life of heaven.

The angel himself contributes nothing either in spirit or substance to the creation. His own body is a form organized out of spiritual substances, which are emanations from the divine substance. The life which animates it is not his own life, but a constantly inflowing force from the divine life. In Him we live, move and have our being. The spirit's individuality, his impenetrability, resides in his free agency, in his volition, in his power so to turn or modify his own spiritual forms one way or another, that the divine life flowing in shall create through and around him one kind of a world or another.

This is not pantheism. If the universe was God, He would create all its external forms in correspondence with his own infinite divine love and wisdom. There could be no evil, no hideous things moral or physical, no suffering, no disease, no death, no hell. The fact that such things exist