by the Lord with a love and interest infinitely transcending our highest conception. All has been foreseen; and these daily recurring tasks are appointed by that wisdom which guides the stars in their courses, and by that love which requires eternity to satisfy the ardor with which it would bless. With what dignity does such a faith clothe existence! What earnestness and celestial patience must it infuse into life! From all that has now been said, it will be very evident that heaven is not a gift of immediate Divine mercy, to be obtained by a verbal confession of faith at the hour of death. If man could be saved by immediate mercy, all would be saved; even the inhabitants of hell, and hell itself would not exist; because the Lord is Mercy itself, Love itself, and Good itself, and wills the salvation of all, and the damnation of no one. But man’s spirit is substantial; and if formed to evil, to change it would be equivalent to annihilation. “The angels declare that it were easier to change a bat into a dove, or an owl into a bird of paradise, than to change an infernal spirit into an angel of heaven.” “Ample experience,” writes Swedenborg, “enables me to testify that it is impossible to implant the life of heaven in those who have led an opposite life in the world. There were some who believed that they should easily receive divine truths after death, when they heard them from the angels; and that they would believe them then, amend their lives, and be received into heaven; and the experiment was made on great numbers of them, in order that they might be convinced that repentance is not possible after death. Some understood the truths they heard, and seemed to receive them; but as soon as they returned to the life of their love, they rejected them, and even argued against them. Some rejected them instantly, from entire unwillingness to hear them; but others were desirous that _the life of the love they had contracted in the world, might be taken away from them; and that angelic life, the life of heaven, might be infused in its place_. This was permitted; but when the life of their love was taken away, they lay as if dead, and deprived of all their faculties. From this it was manifest that no one’s life can possibly be changed after death, that evil life can not be changed into good life, nor the life of an infernal into that of an angel; because every spirit is from head to foot of the same quality as his love, and therefore of the same quality as his life; and consequently to transmute his life into its opposite is to destroy him altogether.” All this goes to confirm the Lord’s declaration before quoted, “Except a man be born again, he can not see the kingdom of God.” On no other terms can heavenly bliss be gained.