Page:The Other Life.djvu/76

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

world, who are busied with the pursuit of money, pleasure, power, fashion, or pre-eminence, and who look to the external forms of things instead of to the interior life.

Our spiritual bodies, which are the perfect forms of men and women, have hearts which beat, lungs which respire, tongues that speak and ears that hear.

"And I heard a voice from heaven as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of a great thunder; and I heard the voice of harpers harping with their harps; and they sang as it were a new song before the throne."

The voices of angels are described by Swedenborg as being indescribably sweet and beautiful. He saw a hard-hearted spirit who involuntarily wept upon hearing an angel's voice, for he said that it seemed to him that love itself was speaking. On the contrary the voices of evil spirits are harsh and discordant, and their interchange of ideas sometimes sounds at a distance like wailing and the gnashing of teeth.

The songs of angels, individually and in choirs, constitute one of the greatest enjoyments of the other life. Imagine a city in heaven, every house of which is a palace, and whose architectural glo-