and mingled: one was the Angel of Love, the
other the Angel of Wisdom. Swedenborg's guide told him that the two
Angels had been linked together on earth by an inward friendship and
ever united though separated in life by great distances. Consent, the
essence of all good marriage upon earth, is the habitual state of Angels
in Heaven. Love is the light of their world. The eternal rapture of
Angels comes from the faculty that God communicates to them to
render back to Him the joy they feel through Him. This reciprocity of
infinitude forms their life. They become infinite by participating of
the essence of God, who generates Himself by Himself.

"The immensity of the Heavens where the Angels dwell is such that if man
were endowed with sight as rapid as the darting of light from the sun to
the earth, and if he gazed throughout eternity, his eyes could not reach
the horizon, nor find an end. Light alone can give an idea of the joys
of heaven. 'It is,' says Swedenborg ('Angelic Wisdom,' 7, 25, 26, 27),
'a vapor of the virtue of God, a pure emanation of His splendor, beside
which our greatest brilliance is obscurity. It can compass all; it can
renew all, and is never absorbed: it environs the Angel and unites him
to God by infinite joys which multiply infinitely of themselves. This
Light destroys whosoever is not prepared to receive it. No one here
below, nor yet in Heaven can see God and live. This is the meaning of
the saying (Exodus xix. 12, 13, 21-23) "Take heed to yourselves that ye
go not up into the mount--lest ye break through unto the Lord to gaze,
and many perish." And again (Exodus xxxiv. 29-35), "When Moses came down
from Mount Sinai with the two Tables of testimony in his hand, his face
shone, so that he put a veil upon it when he spake with the people, lest
any of them die." The Transfiguration of Jesus Christ likewise revealed
the light surrounding the Messengers from on high and the ineffable joys
of the Angels who are forever imbued with it. "His face," says Saint
Matthew (xvii. 1-5), "did shine as the sun and his raiment was white as
the light--and a bright cloud overshadowed them."'

"When a planet contains only those beings who reject the Lord, when his
word is ignored, then the Angelic Spirits are gathered together by the
four winds, and God sends forth an Exterminating Angel to change the
face of the refractory earth, which in the immensity of this universe is
to Him what an unfruitful seed is to Nature. A