Page:The Doctrines of the New Church Briefly Explained.djvu/254

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248
The Doctrines of the New Church.

distributed to every single fibre, and thus throughout the whole frame. The perception and sensation of delight and blessedness thence resulting, surpass all description." (H. H. 409.)

And that he might have some idea of the delights of heaven, he says he was "often and for a long time permitted to have a living experience of them." And he thus relates his experience:

"I perceived that the joy and delight came as from the heart, diffusing themselves very gently through all the inmost fibres, and thence into the collections of fibres, with such an inmost sense of enjoyment that every fibre seemed as it were nothing but joy and delight; and thence all the perceptive and sensitive faculties seemed in like manner alive with happiness. The joy of bodily pleasures compared with those joys, is as coarse and offensive grime compared with the pure and sweetest aura. And I observed that when I wished to transfer all my delight to another, there flowed in a more interior and abundant delight in place of the former. And the more intensely I desired to do this, the more abundant was the influx of that delight; and this I perceived to be from the Lord." (H. H. 413.)

All of which agrees with and confirms the teaching of Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians.[1]


  1. For a full and detailed exposition of the New Church teachings on the subject treated in this chapter, the reader is referred to Vol. II. of the Swedenborg Library, which treats exclusively of Heaven.