Page:The Swedenborg Library Vol 1.djvu/49

Rh, the more conformable it is to heaven, and hence the more beautiful is the face. Hence the angels of the inmost heaven are the most beautiful, because they are forms of celestial love.

But they who have loved divine truths externally, and have therefore lived externally according to them, are less beautiful; for the exteriors only shine forth from their faces, and no interior heavenly love shines through their exteriors, consequently not the form of heaven as it really is. There appears something respectively obscure in their faces, which is not vivified by the translucence of interior life.

In a word, all perfection increases toward the interiors and decreases toward the exteriors; and as perfection increases and decreases, so likewise does beauty. I have seen the faces of angels of the third heaven, which were so beautiful that no painter, with all his skill, could ever impart to colors any such animation as to equal a thousandth part of the brightness and life which appeared in their faces. But the faces of the angels of the ultimate heaven may, in some degree, be equalled by a painter. (H. H. 453-459.)