their selfhood, they are thus secretly fed with new life from above. They are drawn back to the Lord. Then comes the heavenly dawn again with its glimmer of pearl and gold. The joy and peace of a new and more innocent childhood burst upon them. They sing praises which are prayers, and they turn toward each other with that love which is both praise and prayer. Then the sun opens his palace-gates of cloud, and, renovated by his warmth and light, they consecrate themselves to the duties and blessings of another day.
Swedenborg says that the angels advance in perfection by means of these successive and charming alternations of state. We are apt to suppose that the angelic life will be one continued, unabated blaze of glory, and a steady advance from height to height, with never a look cast downward or backward. Swedenborg's disclosure is far more rational and beautiful, and founded, moreover, in the nature of things.
For there is an eternal and universal alternation and revolution impressed on spirit and matter; an attraction and repulsion; a going and returning; a rising and setting; systole and diastole; inspiration and expiration; contraction and expansion; light
