5396. By way of addition let the following be recounted. There was a large crowd of spirits around me, which sounded like a disorderly lot going by. They were all grumbling, declaring that everything was now being destroyed; for no unity at all was apparent among those who constituted that crowd of spirits, which made them fear destruction. They also imagined that they faced total destruction, such as takes place when the situation is as it was with them. But I detected in the midst of them a soft, sweet angelic sound, which was a wholly well-ordered one.

Angelic choirs were present in the middle of them, while the actual crowd of spirits in all their disorder were on the outside. That angelic stream of sound lasted for a long time, and I was told that it served to represent the way in which the Lord regulates confused and disordered outward elements from a peaceful centre within them; He brings order into the disordered most outlying elements by withholding each one from the error peculiar to it.