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stored to the church. On this point he several times remarks to the following effect:

"I foresee that many who read the relations immediately following, and those annexed to the chapters, will believe that they are inventions of the imagination; but I assert in truth, that they were not invented, but truly done and seen; nor seen in any state of the sleeping mind, but in full wakefulness. For it has pleased the Lord to manifest himself to me, and to send me to teach those things which will belong to the New Church, which is meant by the New Jerusalem in the Apocalypse; for which purpose he has opened the interiors of my mind and spirit; whereby it has been given me to be in the spiritual world with angels, and at the same time in the natural world with men, and this now for twenty-five years."—Con. Love, n. 1.

I will close this section with expressing the hope that the reader will not permit himself to reject the doctrines here advocated, on account of the very imperfect manner in which they have been presented. Let him rather read and study the works of him, through whose spititually illuminated mind, the heavenly doctrines of the New Jerusalem, have been given to the world. He will then obtain a much clearer and more perfect view than I could possibly present, in regard to this and many other doctrines; and will have reason to thank the Lord for the light of heavenly truth, in regard to the most important and interesting subjects that can engage the attention of the human mind.

SECTION SECOND.

The Nature and Form of Heaven and Hell.—The Enjoyments of the Former, and the Miseries of the Latter.

Heaven and Hell states, not Places—Origin of these Spiritual states–Essential Nature of each—Many different Societies in each—The Enjoyments of Heaven and the Miseries of Hell.

Having endeavored in the preceding section to convey some idea of the nature and form of the spiritual world in general, we will now turn our attention more directly to those portions of that world, which constitute, on the one