nce with each
one's state of life. They are magnificent for those in higher
dignity, and less magnificent for those in lower condition. I have
frequently talked with angels about the places of abode in heaven,
saying that scarcely any one will believe at the present day that
they have places of abode and dwellings; some because they do not see
them, some because they do not know that angels are men, and some
because they believe that the angelic heaven is the heaven that they
see with their eyes around them, and as this appears empty and they
suppose that angels are ethereal forms, they conclude that they live
in ether. Moreover, they do not comprehend how there can be such
things in the spiritual world as there are in the natural world,
because they know nothing about the spiritual. [2] The angels replied
that they are aware that such ignorance prevails at this day in the
world, and to their astonishment, chiefly within the church, and more
with the intelligent than with those whom they call simple. They said
also that it might be known from the Word that angels are men, since
those that have been seen have been seen as men; and the Lord, who
took all His Human with Him, appeared in like manner. It might be
known also that as angels are men they have dwellings and places of
abode, and do not fly about in air, as some think in their ignorance,
which the angels call insanity, and that although they are called
spirits they are not winds. This they said might be apprehended if
men would only think independently of their acquired notions about
angels and spirits, as they do when they are not bringing into
question and submitting to direct thought whether it is so. For
everyone has a general idea that angels are in the human form, and
have homes which are called the mansions of heaven, which surpass in
magnificence earthly dwellings; but this general idea, which flows in
from heaven, at once falls to nothing when it is brought under direct
scrutiny and inquiry whether it is so, as happens especially with the
learned, who by their own intelligence have closed up heaven to
themselves and the entrance of heavenly light. [3] The like is true
of the belief in the life of man after death. When one speaks of it,
not thinking at the same time about the soul from the light of
worldly learning or from the doctrine of its reunion with the body,
he believes that after death he is to live a man, and among angels if
he has lived well, and