heart which is utterly alienated from God and for ever divorced from heaven.
This fearful portion of the spiritual world must have been photographed upon the mind of the great poet when he conceived the following lines of the Paradise Lost:
"Through many a dark and dreary vale
They passed, and many a region dolorous,
O'er many a frozen, many a fiery Alp,
Rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens, and shades of death,
A universe of death, . . .
Where all life dies, death lives, and nature breeds
Perverse, all monstrous, all prodigious things,
Abominable, unutterable, and worse
Than fables yet have feigned or fear conceived,
Gorgons and hydras and chimeras dire."
The poet imagines this hell; Swedenborg explains it. The devils have rejected that divine love and wisdom which create through angelic souls the lovely and beautiful things in heaven; therefore they see no cheering and golden sun which represents the Lord, no blue ethereal dome, no rosy clouds, no rainbows in the air, no flowers upon the earth, no verdure in the fields,
No mountain-altars tipped with azure fire,
No far-off glimmer of the emerald seas.
