Afterlife: A Guided Tour of Heaven and Its Wonders - Swedenborg ...

AFTERLIFE
reflects some feeling, and in this case not with the words
them selves but with their sound, which will be further
dealt with later.
The fact that angelic language has nothing in common
with human language is evidenced by angels’ inability to
pronounce a single word of a human language. It has been
tried, and they could not. The only things they can utter
are the ones that are in complete accord with their own
affection. Anything that does not agree offends their very
life, since their life is a matter of affection and their lan -
guage flows from it.
I have been told that the first language of people on our
earth shared this nature because it was given them from
heaven, and that Hebrew resembles it in some respects.
Since angels’ language corresponds to the affections of
their love, and since heaven’s love is love for the Lord and
love for our neighbor, we can see how elegant and delight -
ful their conversation is. It affects not only the ears but
also the deeper levels of the minds of those who hear it.
There was one particular hard-hearted spirit with whom
an angel talked, and eventually he was so moved by what
the angel was saying that he burst into tears, saying that
he couldn’t help it, love was talking, and he had never
cried before.
The language of angels is also full of wisdom, since it
flows from the deeper levels of their thought and their
deeper thought is wisdom the way their deeper affection is
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