It is to be noted that from the time of the Lord’s advent, when he effected the Judgment upon the Jewish church, there had been pouring into the world of spirits, in countless myriads, the souls of those who were full of evils and falsities, and who, collecting around terrestrial humanity, lay as thick clouds between it and heaven. Forming themselves into societies by spiritual affinities, the reformed churches were in the middle; the Romanists around them; the Mahommedans in a still outer ring; and the various Gentile nations constituted a vast circumference; while beyond all, lay the appearance of a sea as a boundary. Of the states of those associations, we have a most graphic picture in Swedenborg’s treatise; and no where else out of the Apocalypse, do we find a more thorough exposure of the internal atheism of the priests of Rome, their blasphemies and subtlety. But the time of the end had come; the world groaned to be delivered; and the eyes of Swedenborg were favored to behold the process of the great redemption. The vast concourse of these spirits, formed into societies, is what is meant in the Revelation by the first heaven and the first earth which passed away. The manner in which these societies were dissolved, Swedenborg describes as follows:—“Visitation was made by angels, and admonition given, and the good were singled out and separated by the heavenly ministers, agreeable to the Lord’s words, ‘He shall send his angels, and they shall gather together the elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other;’ and again, ‘All nations shall be gathered together before the Son of Man; and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth the sheep from the goats, and he shall set the sheep on the right hand, and the goats on the left.’” Then followed destruction. There were great earthquakes, and a vehement wind, which swept all before it. Then gulfs yawned, and seas appeared, into which the wicked threw themselves, and were drawn to their place in hell. “Then,” says Swedenborg, “I saw angelic spirits in great numbers rising from below, and received into heaven. They were the sheep who had been kept and guarded by the Lord, and who are understood in the Word by the bodies of saints which arose from their sepulchres and went into the holy city; and by the souls of those slain for the testimony of Jesus, and who were watching; and by those who were of the first resurrection. “After this, there was joy in heaven, and light in the world of spirits, such as was not before; and the interposing clouds between heaven and mankind being removed, a similar light also then arose on men in the world, giving them new enlightenment.”