to a reflecting mind, how the immense variety of worlds, and the innumerable multitudes of human beings issuing from them, may in like manner all be necessary to complete the harmony, the union, the perfection, and the happiness of heaven, and thus to form the most indissoluble conjunction of the creature with his Almighty Creator.
The doctrine of a plurality of habitable planets, not only in our solar system, but also in numberless other systems in the universe, may therefore be regarded as a just deduction of reason from the wisdom and design manifested in our own world, and from analogies of the highest order. But is the doctrine susceptible of more positive evidence? Can any human testimony be supposed capable of verifying and confirming, as a fact, what appears so probable in itself, and so worthy of being true? And if so verified and confirmed, can it be demonstrated by an appeal to any of the acknowledged principles or laws either of mind or of body, that it is a possible case for an inhabitant of this earth to see and converse with the spirits of deceased men from other earths, and occasionally even to see the very inhabitants themselves upon those earths, while at the same time the body of the man so visiting those distant earths still remains in it's own proper place? To each of these questions an affirmative answer may be given: and most extraordinary as this part of our doctrine may at first sight appear, we doubt not but the intelligent reader will, on paying due attention to the difference between state of mind, and place of body, see good reason to concur with us in the sentiment here advanced.
Baron Swedenborg professes to have held open intercourse with angels and spirits for many successive years of his life; and there appears no just reason to dispute his solemn and repeated avowals of the fact.
