been enjoyed by those in the world who were in love to God and in love toward the neighbor, are then turned into the delight of heaven, which becomes perceptible and sensible in all manner of ways; for that blessedness which lay stored up and hidden in their interiors when they lived in the world, is then revealed and brought forth into manifest sensation, because they are then in the spirit, and that was the delight of their spirit."—H. H, n. 401.
"All goods increase immensely in the other life. But man's life while in the body is such that he cannot go beyond loving his neighbor as himself, because he is in corporeal principles; but when these are removed the love becomes more pure, and at length angelic, which is to love the neighbor more than one's self. For inheaven it is delightful to do good to another, and not delightful to do good to themselves unless in order that the good may become another's, thus for the sake of another; and this is to love the neighbor more than themselves." —Ibid, n. 406.Heaven, then, according to the New Christianity, is essentially a state of life. And if happiness must enter into our idea of it, as an essential element, then it can be no other than the very state that Swedenborg says it is; and the angels, if human and subject to the laws ordained for the government of human beings, must be of precisely the character that he has so often and so vividly portrayed. The nature of the heavenly life can be none other than that he describes. This is the clear and undeniable testimony of enlightened reason, common observation, and all human experience. To suppose the character of the angels to be at all different from that revealed through him—to suppose them pos-
