the good were left to form a celestial society,
but the evil were cast into the hells."

In another star, the people are clad after a
curious fashion. "There was a man with his
wife. The woman had before her bosom a
cloak or covering broad enough to conceal
herself behind it, which was so contrived
that she could put her arms in it and use it
as a garment, and so walk about her
business; it might be tucked up as to the lower
part, and then it appeared like a stomacher
such as are worn by the women of our earth;
but the same also served the man for a
covering, and he was seen to take it from the
woman and apply it to his back, and loosen
the lower part which thus flowed down to his
feet like a gown; and, clothed in this manner,
he walked off." There is another little star,
one of the smallest, he says, in the starry
heavens, being scarce five hundred German
miles in circumference. The sun of that
earth, to us like a star, appears there, flaming
in size about the fourth part of our sun. In
that diminutive world the year is about two
hundred days, and the day fifteen hours:
yet there were men, women, and children,
animals, fields of corn, trees, fruits, flowers,
&c., all exactly as we have them here at
home.

In this way Emanual Swedenborg settles
conclusively, from his own personal
knowledge, the sublime question of the plurality of
worlds—a question much mooted of late, and
on which doubts have been raised by learned
professors and divines, as if it were heterodox
to believe that the boundless universe
contains any inhabited world save our own.
How such a doubt can dwell for a moment
on the mind of a human being who looks up
to the starry heavens—sees the myriads of
shining orbs which surround us—knows that
there are myriads and myriads more stretching
into the regions of space and growing in
countless numbers as the aids of science extend
our powers of vision, and considers that
among them our little abode is as a single
grain among all the sands of the ocean; how
we say, such doubts can exist, is to us
incomprehensible. We believe, indeed, only from
reason and analogy, and remain in the dark as
to the mysterious beings who people the
regions of space, while the Swedenborgians,
infinitely far happier, not only know their
existence, but everything about them more
exactly and minutely than about the
inhabitants of the wilds of Africa or central
America.

We do not find it easy to explain Swedenborg's
views of "the spiritual world," as we
often fail to understand his meaning; but we
will endeavour to present a general idea of
them. The "spiritual world," he holds, does
not exist in space. "Of this," he says, "I was
convinced, because I could there see Africans
and Indians very near me, though they are
so many miles distant here on earth; nay,
that I could be made present with the inhabitants
of other planets in our system, and also
with the inhabitants of planets in other
systems revolving round other suns. By
virtue of such presence I have conversed with
apostles, departed popes, emperors, and kings,
with Luther, Melancthon, and Calvin, and
others from distant countries."
Notwithstanding however the non-existence of space
in the spiritual world, everything retains its
material aspect. "After death a man is so
little changed that he does not know but he
is living in the present world; he eats and
drinks and enjoys conjugal delights. In the
spiritual world there are cities, palaces,
houses, books and writings, trades and
merchandises, gold, silver, and precious stones;
everything as in the natural world, but in an
infinitely more perfect state." In as far as
we can make out the meaning of this revelation,
Swedenborg holds that each material
world has a distinct spiritual world connected
with it. The spirits belonging to this earth
and to each of the other earths, of which the
universe consists (for he brings them all
under the same general law) are located in
some incomprehensible manner (seeing that
they do not exist in space) near the earth
which they inhabited in the body. When
men—that is, the inhabitants of this and all
other worlds—die, they are clothed with a
substantial body instead of the material body
they throw off. And in these substantial
bodies they continue to live in a substantial
though not a material world, in the same
manner (as we have seen) as they did before.

This distinction between two states of
bodily existence, the material and the
substantial, metaphysically subtle as it seems, is
familiar to us all. It appears something
natural and instinctive, and has been the
foundation of all the beliefs and superstitions
of the untutored mind, ever since the world
began—the rude notions of the savage as
well as the exquisite dream of the poet. It
is the belief expressed by Banquo when he
gazes on the vanishing witches—
  
The earth hath bubbles as the water has,
And these are of them.

And so beautifully illustrated by Addison in
his tale of Marraton, the Indian chief who
penetrates into the world of spirits. "This
happy region was peopled with innumerable
swarms of spirits, who applied themselves to
exercises and diversions according as their
fancies led them. Some of them were tossing
the figure of a quoit; others were pitching
the shadow of a bar; others were breaking
the apparition of a horse; and multitudes
employing themselves upon ingenious
handicrafts with the souls of departed utensils, for
that is the name which in the Indian language
they give their tools when they are burnt or
broken." Marraton sees his wife, whose
recent death he is lamenting, standing on the
opposite bank of a river. "Her arms were
stretched out towards him; floods of tears