confidence by the spiritual interpretation he gives it, that we find it easy to accept his disclosures (always rational) about the life after death, about heaven, hell, and the world of spirits. And because the Spiritualists of the present day offer us a philosophy and theology different from those taught in the Bible, we can give no more heed to their communications than to the whisperings of the idle wind.
How can we know anything of the other life? Not from scientific studies, not from theological speculations, not from communication with spirits, but from the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg.
It is from this source, divinely appointed and rationally authenticated—from this inexhaustible mine of spiritual treasures, and not from any communication with spirits or from any vain imaginations of my own, that I have drawn the interesting and beautiful things which the reader will find in this book. Let him not be dismayed at difficulties. The subject must unfold gradually. Each succeeding chapter will throw some light upon all that has gone before.
