am in them, and they in me. If one whose ways are altogether evil,
serve me alone, he is as respectable as the just man; he is altogether
well employed; he soon becometh of a virtuous spirit, and obtaineth
eternal happiness."

For the anomalous pretension of Revelations of the other world,--only
his probity and genius can entitle it to any serious regard. His
revelations destroy their credit by running into detail. If a man say,
that the Holy Ghost hath informed him that the Last Judgment (or the
last of the judgments) took place in 1757; or, that the Dutch, in the
other world, live in a heaven by themselves, and the English in a
heaven by themselves; I reply, that the Spirit which is holy, is
reserved, taciturn, and deals in laws. The rumors of ghosts and
hobgoblins gossip and tell fortunes. The teachings of the high Spirit
are abstemious, and, in regard to particulars, negative. Socrates'
Genius did not advise him to act or to find, but if he proposed to do
somewhat not advantageous, it dissuaded him. "What God is," he said,
"I know not; what he is not I know." The Hindoos have denominated the
Supreme Being, the "Internal Check." The illuminated Quakers explained
their Light, not as somewhat which leads to any action, but it appears
as an obstruction to anything unfit. But the right examples are private
experiences, which are absolutely at one on this point. Strictly
speaking, Swedenborg's revelation is a confounding of planes,--a capital
offence in so learned a categorist. This is to carry the law of surface
into the plane of substance, to carry individualism and its fopperies
into the realm of essences and generals, which is dislocation and
chaos.

The secret of heaven is kept from age to age. No imprudent, no sociable
angel ever dropt an early syllable to answer the longings of saints,