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EULOGIUM OF SANDEL. 19
from the former, he draws conclusions* respecting the
latter he represents to himself, in conformity with the
world in which we live, another and entirely spiritual
world, in which, as in this, he admits of degrees of per
fection, an increase without end in the faculties of the
*This and the following statement of M. de Sandel is extremely
superficial ; but a better judgment could not be expected from him,
since, as he himself states, he had not studied and examined the
theological writings of his venerable countryman. As, however,
M. Sandel has given Swedenborg credit for the greatest sincerity
and veracity, which he exhibits as the prominent features of his
character, we cannot explain what Swedenborg has written on the
spiritual world according to the principle stated by Sandel " as
conclusions drawn from things visible respecting things invisible."
For Swedenborg did not publish what he has written respecting
the spiritual world as things concluded from what is visible, or the
natural world, respecting what is invisible, or the spiritual world,
but he published them as " matters offactfrom what he heard and
saw in the spiritual world." This he has declared in the titles of
several of his works. His assertion was, that the Lord had mer
cifully opened the sight of his spirit, so that he could, in a state
of perfect wakefulness, associate with spirits and angels, and
thus, from experience, he became acquainted with the nature of
the spiritual world, its relation tothe natural world, and the state of
men after death. Every man, he states, has, in his material
body, a spiritual body, for "there is a natural body, and there is
a spiritual body ;" (1 Cor. xv.) the organs of which are the only
ground of all sensations, since the material body in itself has no
sensation, but is only the instrument by which the spirit, that is,
the man himself, has communication with the material world. In
the spiritual world the spiritual body sees, hears, feels, &c., in
short, is in the perfect enjoyment of all the senses in a far more
exquisite degree than in the material body. These spiritual organs
can, when it pleases the Lord, be opened before death, and man
then can come into communication with spirits and angels and
see the objects of the spiritual world, all of which, as being from
the sun of the spiritual world, are not material, but substantial.
Thus, the spiritual sight of the prophets and apostles was opened
when they saw, in vision, the things they describe, as Zechariah,
Ezekiel, Daniel, &c., and especially John in the Apocalypse ; all
the objects they saw were not material but spiritual, for there are
spiritual substances as well as material ; but spiritual objects are
not, like material objects, subject to mechanical and chemical
laws, nor to the conditions of time and space, but they are subject
to pure spiritual laws, and precisely correspond to the states of
the spiritual inhabitants, and thus represent the state of their
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