lation. By its obvious practical tendency, you may know whether the alleged revelation be true or false. Let us apply this test to Swedenborg's disclosures concern the spiritual Sun.
It was said in the last chapter, and shown by extracts from the seer's writings, that the spiritual Sun does not appear the same to all the angels. Its appearance is always in correspondence with the state of the beholder. To those of the highest heaven, who receive the light of divine wisdom and the warmth of divine love in largest measure, the Lord appears most glorious even to their external vision, He appears as a sun warm and bright according to their internal reception of his light and life. To those of a lower heaven who receive his love and wisdom in an inferior degree, He appears less glorious—comparatively as a moon. While to those not in heaven, whose lives are not in harmony with its laws, and in whose hearts is none of God's unselfish love, but the supreme love of self instead, the sun of heaven does not appear at all. Their state is, therefore, one of comparative cold, darkness and night. Hence the meaning of that "outer darkness" into which the wicked are said to be cast; for they have shut the door of their souls against the Sun of righteousness, and therefore the myriads of interesting and beautiful things which that Sun reveals to the angels, are invisible to them.
Now the different angelic heavens are, neither more nor less than different states of human life—all good, but some superior to others. And so, too, the different kinds and degrees of evil in the wicked, are what necessitate the different hells. The higher states of angelic
