Page:Heaven Revealed.djvu/224

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

the thoughts and feelings of their hearts. How, then, should we expect it would be in heaven where innocence, simplicity, purity and love reign triumphant?—where all are willing to be seen in the light, and no one desires to express by his looks a single emotion that he does not feel? Should not the faces of the angels express with mathematical exactness the unselfish love that dwells within their bosoms? And if so, how surpassingly beautiful must they be! How easy to believe, therefore, what Swedenborg so often declares, that their beauty is beyond the power of art to picture or of human language to describe! Otherwise there would not be a perfect correspondence between their internals and externals, and the face in heaven would not be the mirror of the soul.

The face, then, being intended by the Creator to faithfully express the feelings and dispositions of the heart, corresponds to the interiors of the mind, or to the ruling love. This love, therefore, is what is meant by the face in Sacred Scripture when spiritually interpreted. Accordingly the Psalmist prays: "God be merciful to us and bless us, and cause his face to shine upon us." (LXVII. 1: LXXX. 3.) The inmost and very esse of the Lord, is pure, unselfish love. And when there is an influx of this love into our hearts, and we feel it as our own, then the Lord's face shines upon us, and we are saved—delivered from the love of self which is altogether infernal. And so the Psalmist again prays: "O God, cause thy face to shine, and we shall be saved." Deliverance from the dominion of self-love, and reception of the Lord's own love instead, is the only true salvation. Again, in Isaiah: "Your iniquities have separated be-