Page:The Swedenborg Library Vol 1.djvu/199

 earth; for there also are the Word and preachings, and Divine worship like that on earth; yet with the difference, that all these things are in a more perfect state there, because they are not in the natural but in the spiritual world. ..

It is believed that at the time of the last judgment, the Lord will appear in the clouds of heaven with the angels in glory, and awaken from the sepulchres all who have ever lived since the beginning of creation, clothing their souls with bodies; and that when they are thus summoned together, He will judge them—those who have done well, to eternal life or heaven, those who have done wickedly, to eternal death or hell.

The churches derive this belief from the sense of the letter of the Word; nor could it be removed so long as men did not know that there is a spiritual sense within every thing related in the literal sense of the Word, and that this sense is the Essential Word, to which the sense of the letter serves for a foundation and a basis; and that without such a letter as it has, the Word could not have been Divine, nor have served in heaven as in the world for the doctrine of life and faith, and for conjunction.

He therefore, who is acquainted with the spiritual things to which the natural expressions of the Word