Page:The Swedenborg Library Vol 1.djvu/228

 Hence it is that they communicate with certain societies of the ultimate heaven by a devout external, and with the hells by a profane internal; so that they are at once in both. On which account, moreover, they allure simple good spirits, and appoint them habitations near themselves; and also congregate evil spirits, and dispose them around the society in all directions, by the simple good conjoining themselves with heaven, and by the evil with hell. Hence they are enabled to accomplish abominations which they perpetrate from hell. For the simple good who are in the lowest heavens, look only to their devotional external, and their very devout adoration of the Lord in outward things; but they see not their wickedness, and therefore they favor them, and this favor from the good is their greatest protection. Yet in process of time they all recede from their devout external; and then, being separated from heaven, they are cast into hell. It may now be known in some degree what manner of men they of Babylon are in the other life.

But I am aware that they who are in this world and have no idea of man's state after death, of heaven or of hell, but an empty one, will wonder at the existence of such things in the spiritual world.

But that man is equally a man after death, that he lives in fellowships as he did in the world, that he inhabits houses, hears preaching in churches, discharges duties, and sees things in that world similar