Page:The Other Life.djvu/233

 accidental or imaginary, but real and organic; flowing from laws as fixed and positive as those of chemistry or physics.

Suppose the evil spirits to be made quiescent and to listen to what the angels had to say; what impression could be thus made upon them? The angels could speak nothing but spiritual truth, for they know nothing else. If this were not changed into the opposite, as it would be if flowing into their minds by the interior way, it would at least be utterly unintelligible. Evil spirits in hell are thoroughly sensual. The celestial, spiritual and even the rational degrees of the soul are totally closed. They think and feel from a standpoint far lower than that of men upon the earth. They are veritably wild beasts in human form, inaccessible to truth, reason and mercy.

The Word of God interpreted in its lowest and most sensuous manner might possibly still reach and influence them; but the literal meaning of the Word of God with its sensuous appearances of truth, which the natural man takes for real truth, is limited to nature, to a world of time and space. It was written in nature and in natural forms; it cannot be elevated above nature. It cannot be presented in its literal text to beings who are living