ngelic intercourse. It is now twenty-eight years since
I have lived in the Spiritual world with angels, and on earth with men;
for it pleased God to open the eyes of my spirit as he did that of Paul,
and of Daniel and Elisha.'

"And yet," continued the pastor, thoughtfully, "certain persons have
had visions of the spiritual world through the complete detachment which
somnambulism produces between their external form and their inner being.
'In this state,' says Swedenborg in his treatise on Angelic Wisdom
(No. 257) 'Man may rise into the region of celestial light because, his
corporeal senses being abolished, the influence of heaven acts without
hindrance on his inner man.' Many persons who do not doubt that
Swedenborg received celestial revelations think that his writings are
not all the result of divine inspiration. Others insist on absolute
adherence to him; while admitting his many obscurities, they believe
that the imperfection of earthly language prevented the prophet from
clearly revealing those spiritual visions whose clouds disperse to
the eyes of those whom faith regenerates; for, to use the words of his
greatest disciple, 'Flesh is but an external propagation.' To poets and
to writers his presentation of the marvellous is amazing; to Seers it
is simply reality. To some Christians his descriptions have seemed
scandalous. Certain critics have ridiculed the celestial substance
of his temples, his golden palaces, his splendid cities where angels
disport themselves; they laugh at his groves of miraculous trees, his
gardens where the flowers speak and the air is white, and the mystical
stones, the sard, carbuncle, chrysolite, chrysoprase, jacinth,
chalcedony, beryl, the Urim and Thummim, are endowed with motion,
express celestial truths, and reply by variations of light to questions
put to them ('True Christian Religion,' 219). Many noble souls will not
admit his spiritual worlds where colors are heard in delightful concert,
where language flames and flashes, where the Word is writ in pointed
spiral letters ('True Christian Religion,' 278). Even in the North some
writers have laughed at the gates of pearl, and the diamonds which
stud the floors and walls of his New Jerusalem, where the most ordinary
utensils are made of the rarest substances of the globe. 'But,' say his
disciples, 'because such things are sparsely scattered on this earth
does it follow that they are not abundant in other worlds? On earth
they are te