"I have met several of those who, before they died, had renounced the world and retired into solitude, in order to devote themselves to the contemplation of heavenly things, and thereby to make themselves a surer path to heaven. They nearly all had a gloomy and depressed appearance, seemed to be annoyed that others were not like them, and that they themselves were not rewarded with greater honour and a happier lot. They live in hidden places, like hermits, almost in the same way as they had lived in our world. Man is created to live in harmony with others; in society and not in solitude he finds numerous opportunities of exercising Christian mildness towards his neighbours." In solitude one only contemplates oneself, forgetting all others. Consequently one thinks only of oneself, or of the world, in order to avoid it or to feel the want of it, which is the opposite of Christian love. As regards the so-called everlasting punishments, at the last moment, the seer appears as a deliverer, and allows a ray of hope to dawn on us. He says, "Those among them, for whose deliverance one may hope, are set in waste places, which only afford a picture of desolation. They are left there till their sorrow has darkened into despair, because this is the only means to conquer the evil and falsehood which rule them. Arrived at this point, they cry out that they are no better than animals, that they are full of hate and all kinds of abomination, and that they are damned. These exclamations are pardoned them, as being cries of despair, and God softens their mood, so that their expressions of reproach and abuse do not transgress the assigned limits. When they have suffered all that can be suffered, so that their bodies are also dead, they are troubled no more about it, and are prepared for deliverance. I have seen some of them taken to heaven after they have been visited with all the sufferings of which I have spoken. When they were admitted, they displayed such great joy that I was moved to tears." What the Catholics call "_conscientia scrupulosa_," a tender conscience, is caused by malicious spirits, who induce pangs of conscience for nothing at all. They delight in laying a load on the conscience, and this state has nothing to do with the improvement of the sinner. In a similar way there are unwholesome temptations. Evil spirits evoke in the depth of the soul all the evil it has committed since childhood, and bring its worst side uppermost. But the angels discover all the good and true which they can in the exhausted soul. That is the strife which is revealed under the name, "pangs of conscience." I stop here, because I do my Master an injustice by tearing asunder the web which he has so well woven together, and by exhibiting the fragments as samples. Swedenborg's work is one of enormous compass, and he has answered all my questions, however presumptuous they may have been. Disquiet soul, suffering heart, "_Take up and read_." VIII CANOSSA