2234. * THAT THE UNIVERSE IS GOVERNED BY THE LORD WITH NO TROUBLE, BUT VERY EASILY. There were around me very many spirits and angels, [amounting] perhaps to [some] thousands, to whom it was shown to the living experience how easily the universe is governed by the Lord. It was allowed to me to inflow into [their] thoughts, and thus, as it were, govern them who were around and it was [effected] merely by one thought with its variation each and all things were disposed as if according to [my] nod, as well to confer happiness on some as for other purposes, and to vary [these things] according to what I thought: [to bestow these things] in like manner on every spirit who was with me in society, also to spirits more removed [remote] according to their manner. Hence we could know how easily each and all things are ordered by the Lord, who is in the highest, yea, in the inmost, more interior, and interior things. This could not be confirmed by spirits and angels for some hesitate because so vast a multitude hovers before their ideas [in eorum ideis obversatur], and such a variety. The reply also is made them that they thus argue from the inferior [lower] ideas of man, where it so appears; but that from inmosts, as from centers, the whole circuit, as it were, is ruled very easily and with no trouble. It is different with those who are stationed [constitute] in the circumference [peripheriis], and who argue from ideas which are in the circumference [peripheriis], to whom these things appear more obscure the farther they are from the center. - 1748, June 7. * Number 2233 is wanting in the original.