Page:The Swedenborg Library Vol 2.djvu/10

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men in the flesh. And all along the path of history are found some well-authenticated facts in perfect agreement with this Scripture teaching.

If it be true, then, that man continues to live as a spirit in the spiritual world after the body dies, it seems not difficult nor unreasonable to believe that, within this outer "vesture of decay" is contained a spiritual and immortal body, endowed with senses of transcendent acuteness waiting to be opened. Nor does it seem less reasonable to expect that, in the progress of knowledge and the fuller unfolding of the grand capabilities of the human soul, some such disclosure of the great facts and laws of the spiritual world as that claimed to have been made through Swedenborg, would be vouchsafed unto mortals. And where among the sons of men shall we look for one better qualified than he to make this sublime disclosure? Or what explanation of the manner of his intromission into the spiritual world can be conceived of, more rational or philosophical than the one he has himself given?

2. But may he not have been self-deceived? our objector perhaps will ask. May he not have believed that he saw into the spiritual world and talked with angels and spirits, while laboring all the time under a strange hallucination? And his alleged disclosures,