And yet ignorance on such subjects cannot be excused; for men might have known from the Word that heaven and hell are from mankind, and that man is raised up and lives immediately after death. Information on these subjects might have been obtained from the Lord’s words to the thief upon the cross, “Verily I say unto thee, To-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise;” and from those which he spoke concerning the rich man and Lazarus, that the one went to hell, and spoke with Abraham, and that the other went to heaven; and what the Lord told the Pharisees respecting the resurrection, that “God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.” And then we see how inconsistent men are with themselves on these subjects. A worthy church-member, who is a firm believer in the burning up of the world, and the resurrection of the dead at the Last Judgment, comes to his death-bed, and straightway all his doctrine passes into forgetfulness; and he talks of going home to glory in heaven, and being within a few hours of the angels. He dies; and his friends, as orthodox as himself, think of him as happy in heaven; and yet they profess to believe in the resurrection of his corrupt and diseased body. What strange inconsistency is this! But it is one of the marks of error, that it is always inconsistent with itself. The leading fact in Swedenborg’s doctrine of the Last Judgment, is, that it takes place in the spiritual world, where all men congregate after death. A judgment takes place in the world of spirits whenever a church comes to its end; that is, when its charity, and consequently its faith is dead, and all things that remain are mere empty forms of life. A judgment took place at the end of the Jewish church. For proof of this, we need only turn to the Gospel of _John_, (xii. 31,) where Jesus said: “_Now_ is the judgment of this world: _now_ shall the prince of this world be cast out.” We all know there was at that time no visible judgment in the natural world. Everything went on as before; yet, we learn from the Lord’s own lips, that a judgment was effected.