are wearied with seeing, our noses with
smelling, and our palates with tasting: and this is the cause of the
sadness, sorrow, and weeping, in which you now behold us." On hearing
this relation, the attendant angel said to them, "This paradisiacal
labyrinth is truly an entrance into heaven; I know the way that leads
out of it; and if you will follow me, I will shew it you." No sooner had
he uttered those words than they arose from the ground, and, embracing
the angel, attended him with his companions. The angel as they went
along, instructed them in the true nature of heavenly joy and eternal
happiness thence derived. "They do not," said he, "consist in external
paradisiacal delights, unless they are also attended with internal.
External paradisiacal delights reach only the senses of the body; but
internal paradisiacal delights reach the affections of the soul; and the
former without the latter are devoid of all heavenly life, because they
are devoid of soul; and every delight without its corresponding soul,
continually grows more and more languid and dull, and fatigues the mind
more than labor. There are in every part of heaven paradisiacal gardens,
in which the angels find much joy; and so far as it is attended with a
delight of the soul, the joy is real and true." Hereupon they all asked,
"What is the delight of the soul, and whence is it derived?" The angel
replied, "The delight of the soul is derived from love and wisdom
proceeding from the Lord; and as love is operative, and that by means of
wisdom, therefore they are both fixed together in the effect of such
operation; which effect is use. This delight enters into the soul by
influx from the Lord, and descends through the superior and inferior
regions of the mind into all the senses of the body, and in them is full
and complete; becoming hereby a true joy, and partaking of an eternal
nature from the eternal fountain whence it proceeds. You have just now
seen a paradisiacal garden; and I can assure you that there is not a
single thing therein, even the smallest leaf, which does not exist from
the marriage of love and wisdom in use: wherefore if a man be in this
marriage, he is in a celestial paradise, and therefore in heaven."
9. After this, the conducting angel returned to the house of assembly,
and addressed those who had persuaded themselves that heavenly joy and
eternal happiness consist in a perpetual glorification of God, and a
continued festival of prayer an
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