5061. To end with let the following noteworthy incident be added. There were some spirits who lay shut up for a long time in a hell unlike any other, from which they could not break out. I wondered several times who exactly they might be. One evening they were let out, at which point a quite tumultuous grumbling sound was heard to be coming from them, which lasted for a long time. Having been given the opportunity to do so, I could hear them making jeering remarks about me, and I perceived that their desire and endeavour was to come up and destroy me. I asked the angels the reason for this. They replied that those spirits had hated me during their lifetime even though I had not done them any harm at all. I also learned that when spirits of this kind merely perceive the sphere of one whom they have hated they long for his destruction. But they were taken back to their own particular hell. From this it became clear that those who have hated one another in the world meet in the next life and set out to inflict many injuries on one another, as other examples of such hatred witnessed by me on a number of other occasions have also led me to know. For hatred is the opposite of love and charity, and is a turning away and so to speak spiritual antipathy. Consequently the moment such spirits in the next life perceive the sphere of one they have hated they go into a seeming frenzy. From this one may see what is implied by what the Lord has said in Matthew 5:22-26.