churches, whether sculptured or painted, are always depicted as men.
In respect to this insight from heaven they said that it is the
Divine flowing into such as are in the good of faith and life.

{Footnote 1} Unless man is raised above the sense-conceptions
of the external man he has very little wisdom (n. 5089). The
wise man thinks above these sense-conceptions (n. 5089, 5094).
When man is raised above these, he comes into clearer light,
and finally into heavenly light (n. 6183, 6313, 6315, 9407,
9730, 9922). Elevation and withdrawal from these was known to
the ancients (n. 6313).


75. From all my experience, which is now of many years, I am able to
say and affirm that angels are wholly men in form, having faces,
eyes, ears, bodies, arms, hands, and feet; that they see and hear one
another, and talk together, and in a word lack nothing whatever that
belongs to men except that they are not clothed in material bodies. I
have seen them in their own light, which exceeds by many degrees the
noonday light of the world, and in that light all their features
could be seen more distinctly and clearly than the faces of men are
seen on the earth. It has also been granted me to see an angel of the
inmost heaven. He had a more radiant and resplendent face than the
angels of the lower heavens. I observed him attentively, and he had a
human form in all completeness.


76. But it must be remembered that a man cannot see angels with his
bodily eyes, but only with the eyes of the spirit within him,{1}
because his spirit is in the spiritual world, and all things of the