Page:The Swedenborg Library Vol 1.djvu/44

 I am permitted to confirm the spiritual truths of heaven and the church even by rational considerations; and this in order that the falsities which have closed the rational with many, may be dispersed by the conclusions of reason, and that thus, perchance, their mental eye may in some measure be opened. For such confirmations of spiritual truth are allowed to all who are principled in truths.

Who could ever understand the Word from its literal sense, unless he saw the truths which it contains from an enlightened rational faculty? Whence, otherwise, so many heresies from the same Word?

That the spirit of man, after its separation from the body, is itself a man, and similar in form, has been proved to me by the daily experience of many years; for I have seen, heard, and conversed with spirits thousands of times; and I have even talked with them on the prevailing disbelief that spirits are men, and have told them that the learned regard those as simple who think so.

The spirits were grieved at heart that such ignorance still continues in the world, and especially within the church. But they remarked that this infidelity had emanated chiefly from the learned, who have thought of the soul from their corporeal-sensual apprehensions; and have therefore concluded that it is mere thought, which, when viewed without any subject in and from which it exists, is like a volatile breath of pure ether, which cannot but be dissipated when the body dies.