sinner will die or be destroyed "that the man may be saved"—meaning by the sinner "the inverted forms of the natural degree, which constitute the external body of the infernal in the hells." There is no such "sinner" then and there, apart from the living, conscious, immortal individual;—no such "external body" that may be sloughed off, leaving "the man in his original infant state of conscious existence"—"the actual state of the infant man of the New Heaven." All this is mere theory, without the slightest foundation in fact, philosophy, or duly authenticated divine revelation.
Swedenborg's teaching, then, in regard to the eternity of the hells, is clearly in accordance with reason and the highest spiritual philosophy of which the world has any knowledge.
And the Bible, so far as it teaches anything on the subject, confirms the testimony of reason and philosophy. It speaks of the wicked in the Hereafter, going away "into everlasting punishment," while the righteous go into "everlasting life";—of a great gulf between the evil and the good, which cannot then be passed over;—of a fire that "never shall be quenched." It assures us that, in the other world, every one will be judged and rewarded according to his works. "The dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works." "The word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day." The blessing of the higher, even the heavenly
