he use of that language after his decease. At the same
time also he experienced, that the sound of the spiritual language
differs so far from the sound of natural language, that a spiritual
sound, though loud, could not at all be heard by a natural man, nor a
natural sound by a spirit. Afterwards I requested the chief teacher and
the bystanders to withdraw to their associates, and write some sentence
or other on a piece of paper, and then return with it to me, and read
it. They did so, and returned with the paper in their hand; but when
they read it, they could not understand any part of it, as the writing
consisted only of some letters of the alphabet, with turns over them,
each of which was significative of some particular sense and meaning:
because each letter of the alphabet is thus significative, it is evident
why the Lord is called Alpha and Omega. On their repeatedly withdrawing,
and writing in the same manner, and returning to me, they found that
their writing involved and comprehended innumerable things which no
natural writing could possibly express; and they were given to
understand, that this was in consequence of the spiritual man's thoughts
being incomprehensible and ineffable to the natural man, and such as
cannot flow and be brought into any other writing or language. Then as
some present were unwilling to comprehend that spiritual thought so far
exceeds natural thought, as to be respectively ineffable, I said to
them, "Make the experiment; withdraw into your spiritual society, and
think on some subject, and retain your thoughts, and return, and express
them before me." They did so; but when they wanted to express the
subject thought of, they were unable; for they did not find any idea of
natural thought adequate to any idea of spiritual thought, consequently
no words expressive of it; for ideas of thought are constituent of the
words of language. This experiment they repeated again and again;
whereby they were convinced that spiritual ideas are supernatural,
inexpressible, ineffable, and incomprehensible to the natural man; and
on account of this their super-eminence, they said, that spiritual
ideas, or thoughts, as compared with natural, were ideas of ideas, and
thoughts of thoughts; and that therefore they were expressive of
qualities of qualities, and affections of affections; consequently that
spiritual thoughts were the beginnings and origins of natural thoughts:
hence also it was made evident that s