scious person, the ecstatic bliss of spiritual
sex-union.

Naturally the question will arise as to whether these saints really
came into contact with their spiritual mates in these paroxysms of
holy fervor, and if so, why did the vision of the Christ so frequently
appear to them and not alone the vision of some other being?

The answer is found in the fact that spiritual experiences must be
interpreted through the channel of the outer mind, which in these
instances was obsessed by the thought implanted by Medieval Theology,
that human love is sinful. It may be questioned whether, even though
the visions did relate to some person other than the members of the
Holy Family, the fact would have been admitted since it would have
been attributed to unworthiness on the part of the saint.

They were practically compelled to include God and Christ in their
ecstacies to prove their respectability.

One phrase, commonly employed to describe the kind of love which
"flooded the soul" in these saintly ecstacies, is particularly
applicable to the effects of spiritual sex-union, as described by
those who have experienced counterpartal union, and which Swedenborg
so constantly emphasizes in his recital of "conjugal delights." This
phrase is "melting love." It is a feeling of melting or merging into
the other's being, until there seems to be but one person, formed by
the two souls. In fact, it is _union_; whereas the lesser, or we may
say the lower, phase, of the sex-relation is at best but _contact_.

If this view of the trances and ecstacies described in the lives of
the saints, be repulsive to our readers, we can only say that we are
sorry for our readers. They have imbibed the spirit of the Dark Ages,
which regarded human love as sinful, overlooking the fact that all we
may know of the "love of God," is by analogous comparison to what we
know of human love.

If human love be sinful, by logical deduction we would inevitably
arrive at the conclusion that the universe is all sinful. In which
event, the very word itself would have lost its significance.

The objectionable part of the orthodox view of the effects of
saintliness lies in the realization that neither the saints
themselves, nor the Church which perpetuates their recitals, had any
conception of the real situation, so evident to the enlightened and
unprejudiced reader. And if this view of saintly ecstacies,
postulating the transmutation of sex-force into spiritual chann