Page:The Other Life.djvu/79

 God, cannot pass the threshold of heaven. He will be kept in the world of spirits until he is instructed and purified, disciplined and trained to a sacred communism, rid of his selfhood and his selfishness, so that he is willing to lose his individual life in the larger life of the body and members of Christ.

We are not surprised that Swedenborg says there are churches and preaching and sacred music in heaven. What could be more rational? They do not constitute all of heaven indeed, but the most essential part of it. The communion of thought and affection thus established and fostered in the religious sphere of the soul, is the true secret of the infinite order, beauty, peace and joy, which reign perpetually in the social and civil spheres, and in all the external relations of the heavenly life.

Sound is to the ear what sight is to the eye. The seven notes of the musical scale correspond to the seven colors into which a ray of white light may be decomposed. There is, indeed, a series of wonderful parallelisms running through all the forms and forces of nature. These are simple repetitions upon different planes or discrete degrees of creation, of the fundamental laws and principles of the divine love and wisdom.