teaching can be more solemn than this? What more practical, or more potent in benign influence when clearly ưnderstood and cordially accepted?
XII.
SOCIETIES IN HEAVEN.
ARE the angels endowed with social affections kindred to those of men? and have they an opportunity to exercise them? Do they all dwell in one society, or are there many societies? And if arranged into societies, what is the law that governs in the arrangement? What answer does Swedenborg give to these inquiries?—for he must have known how the case is, if his claim to open intercourse with the heavenly world be well founded. But we will first consider the subject in the light of reason.
It was shown in the early part of this work that the angels are all from the human race. They are human in their form and nature—men and women in an advanced or thoroughly regenerate state. Therefore they must possess social qualities; and social qualities imply social relations, or the existence of societies. For man is a social being. He was created to live in society; and he cannot be happy without intercourse with his fellows. In a perfectly isolated state, what would there be to call forth his affections or to give exercise his varied powers? The faculties of each soul have a definite relation to other souls, as truly as the eye has to light, the ear
