assumed that the essential nature of the Lord is love, and from this I have reasoned that the divine love, first clothing itself with spiritual causes, and operating through those causes as means, produces and sustains the natural world as an ultimate effect; and that it is thus inseparably and permanently connected with the final end for which it exists.
If the correctness of the view here presented is seen and admitted, we may be permitted again to remind you of the absurdity of supposing that a general judgment will soon, or at any time, take place in the natural world. This world will remain for the use which it now subserves, while successive generations of men, having here begun their existence, will pass to that spiritual world where they will receive their last judgment, and find their eternal home.
The remainder of this little book will contain a brief explanation of the nature and laws of the spiritual world; and this will direct our attention to the true nature of the Judgment Day, as well as those eternal states of goodness and happiness on the one hand, and of evil and misery on the other—called heaven and hell.
PART SECOND.
SECTION FIRST.
The nature of the Spiritual World.
Reference to former part—a deep and general conviction of the existence of a spiritual world—cause of difficulties on this subject—some minds will not receive spiritual truth—importance of the science of correspondences—correspondence of the natural earth to the world—nature of external objects in the spiritual world—confirmation from the word—quotations from Swedenborg.
In the former part of this little work I have given some reasons for believing that the last judgment will never be openly manifested in the natural world. The principal reasons that I have presented, in favor of such a belief, have been, first—that the material body will never be raised, and that the spirit cannot, therefore, be judged in the natural world; for, without a natural body it can never return to
