Page:The Other Life.djvu/209

 true in any other spirit, and especially against the Divine Word and the sphere of the Lord, is intense and almost incredible. Swedenborg frequently saw it exhibited as a blind, insensate but impotent fury. The cause of it is the interior antagonism between evil and good, so that the sphere of love and wisdom produces severe pain in the wicked.

"Art thou come hither to torment us?" exclaimed the evil ones to Jesus of Nazareth.

This fire of self-love in the heart, engendering pride, hatred, contempt, scorn, menace, revenge, malice, cruelty and all evil passions, is the hell-fire which torments the wicked for ever and ever.

The heat and light of the spiritual world correspond to the love and wisdom of those there, or to their opposites. The mind of an angel is radiant with intelligence, because his heart is glowing with love. The mind of a devil is dark with falsity, because his heart burns with hate. His thoughts correspond to his affections. The ignorance, the stupidity, the hallucinations, the malicious cunning, the absurd opinions, the monstrous conceptions, the ridiculous fantasies, the vituperative argumentation from false premises to false conclusions, which prevail continually in every society in hell, and which produce a representative sound like snarling, or