Page:The Other Life.djvu/220

 within by spirits more wicked than himself, spirits who cunningly make a vile slave of him and who delight in the tortures they inflict upon him, and through him upon others. All scenes of drunkenness, theft, obscenity, murder, war and cruelty, are places of high revel to these invisible demons, who scent from afar the sphere of such things with exquisite delight.

When a good spirit enters heaven he is attracted by the force of spiritual affinity to the society which is engaged in the performance of the uses that he loves best. He is received with joy and tender affection. All hearts flow toward him; all minds instruct him; all hands are ready to help him. He is clad in beautiful garments; conducted to a resplendent home; escorted to feasts of charity and love; and, bound to all by the sweet ties of brotherhood, he is gradually settled into that niche of loving use and joy which he is destined to occupy for ever.

Let Swedenborg tell in his plain and graphic manner, the reception which a sinner meets when he reaches at last his own place in hell:

"From every hell there exhales a sphere of the lusts in which its inhabitants are. When this sphere is perceived by one who is in similar lust he