n them to eagles as to
rapacity, but as to keenness of vision.

141. Being questioned concerning the God whom they worshipped, they
replied that they worshipped a God visible and invisible; a God
visible under the Human Form, and an invisible God, under no form at
all; and I learned from their discourse, and likewise from the ideas
of their thoughts which were communicated to me, that the visible God
was our Lord Himself, and they also called Him Lord. To this it was
given me to reply, that on our Earth also, an invisible and a visible
God is worshipped; and that the invisible God is called the Father,
and the visible, the Lord; but that both are One, as He Himself
taught, saying, that no one had ever seen the form of the Father, that
the Father and He are One, that whoso seeth Him seeth the Father, and
that the Father is in Him and He in the Father; consequently, that
both Divine [Essences] are in One Person. That these are the words of
the Lord Himself, see John v. 37; x. 30; xiv. 7, 9-11.

142. Afterwards I saw other spirits from the same earth, who appeared
in a place beneath the former: with these also I conversed; but they
were idolaters, for they worshipped an idol of stone, like a man, but
an unhandsome one. It is to be observed, that all who come into
the other life, in the beginning have a worship which is like their
worship in the world, but that by degrees they are removed from it.
The reason why this takes place is, that all worship remains implanted
in man's interior life, from which it cannot be removed and eradicated
except by degrees. On seeing this, it was given me to tell them that
they ought not to worship what is dead, but what is living; to which
they replied, that they knew that God lives, and that a stone does
not, but that they thought of the living God while looking on a stone
resembling a man, and that otherwise the ideas of their thought could
not be fixed upon and determined to the invisible God. It was then
given me to tell them that the ideas of thought can be fixed upon
and determined to the invisible God, when they are fixed upon and
determined to the Lord, who is God visible in thought under the Human
Form; and thus that man can be conjoined with the invisible God in
thought and affection, consequently in faith and love, when he is
conjoined with the Lord, but not otherwise.

143. The spirits who were seen on high were questioned whether on
their earth they live under the rule of pri