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Cornell University Library 
 BX8713.P27 E7 1868 
 
 Essays / by Theophilus Parsons. (First s 
 
 I 
 
 olin 
 
 3 1924 029 469 172 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 THEOPHILUS PAESONS. 
 
 ( FIKST SERIES.) 
 
 SIXTH EDITION 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 WILLIAM CARTER AND BROTHER. 
 1868. 
 
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1855, 
 
 By Theophilus Paesons, 
 
 in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of Massachusets 
 
SUBJECTS OF THE ESSAYS. 
 
 Life. 
 
 Providence. 
 
 Correspondence. 
 
 The Human Form. 
 
 Religion. 
 
 The New Jeritsalem 
 
I have oonolnded to publish these slight and hastily-written 
 papers for the little good that they may do, but with great reluct- 
 ance from the fear that their faults and imperfections may be 
 attributed to the System of Truth, of which they present a few 
 portions. Whatsoever is found in them new Bud just and interest 
 ing, belongs to that system; and the obscurities which mingle with 
 the light I have endeavored to borrow, are my own. I call them 
 Essays, only for want of another name ; for if I knew one of less 
 significance I should certainly adopt it. They have been somewhat 
 circulated in manuscript,- -the purpose for which I began to write 
 them, — and I have yielded to the advice of others and put them 
 in print, only in the hope that they may sometimes lead a reader 
 to seek in the writings of Swedenborg and in the Wokd as it is 
 resplendent with the light which these writings uuyeil, the Truth 
 that is now descending from Heaven. 
 
 T. P. 
 Boston, 1845. 
 
LIFE 
 
 The wants and cares of life occupy most persons 
 and employ their thoughts exclusively ; but there are 
 always some who would answer the deeper questions 
 which the worlds without and within them constantly 
 suggest. The enigma of existence presses upon them. 
 Human destiny, the Nemesis of an old religious philo- 
 sophy, is to them, if they are feeble, a terror; and to 
 the strong and weak alike, it is a mystery. If reli- 
 gious tendencies lift up their thoughts, they seek a God 
 whom they may worship; and they who seek, find 
 Him. But clouds are all around Him, The statue 
 at Sais, above which " the learning of the Egyptians " 
 had written " I am whatever Is, or Has been, or Will 
 be," wore upon its face an impenetrable veil. How 
 many, in all ages, have sought to raise this veil ; how 
 many have labored to reconcile the world into unity 
 with itself, and into a higher unity with God ! Is this 
 
6 LIFE. 
 
 end reached at last? Has this veil been lifted? 1 
 believe so ; and will try to sketch the outlines, the bare 
 and naked outlines, of that system of the laws of 
 existence, which gives back his creation to God and 
 fills his creation with Himself. 
 
 I begin then with saying that there are three degrees 
 of Life — or of Existence. To those who hear this 
 for the first time, the words have no meaning ; and I 
 must first endeavor to explain the truth they express 
 before I use it as the means of explaining others. 
 There are three degrees of life ; and they are in every 
 thing that exists, because they are primarily in Him 
 from whom every thing exists. In God is Infinite 
 Love, — Infinite "Wisdom, — and the eternal Action of 
 that Love by or through that Wisdom. And in Him 
 these three are always one. For His perfect Love 
 perpetually desires and seeks that which His perfect 
 Wisdom contemplates, and precisely that which His 
 Power is always effecting. To repeat this in other 
 words. His Power is incessantly exerted, for if it ceased 
 for a moment, the universe would cease to be; and 
 this Power always acts in perfect conformity with 
 His Wisdom ; and this Wisdom is always warm with 
 the life of His perfect Love. He is always active, 
 and every Action is guided by his Wisdom and springs 
 from his Love. Thus these three elements of the 
 
LIFE. 7 
 
 Divine Nature, Love, Wisdom, and Power, are dis- 
 tinct, yet essentially cooperative and conjoined into 
 Unity. 
 
 The universe exists from Him ; for before Him, or 
 without Him, there is nothing ; or else it would be 
 another and an equal Eternal and Infinite. And as 
 He creates all things from Himself, so every thing 
 reflects Him ; the universe is His mirror, and every 
 thing in the universe bears his impress and is signifi- 
 cant of Him. The three elements of his divine life 
 are, in Him, perfectly one ; but when they come forth 
 from Him to do the work of creation, and when they 
 exist in his works, they are more or less separated and 
 one or another becomes more or less dominant ; and 
 this may be regarded as the first cause of the infinite 
 variety among the existences in His universe. Thus 
 there are three heavens. In that which is nearest to 
 Himself, His Love is the ruling element; because 
 they who compose that heaven have permitted Him to 
 infuse His Love into their wills, so that it has become 
 their love ; so that they love by His love and what He , 
 loves. They who compose the heaven which is only 
 lower than the highest, have not permitted him to do 
 more than open their eyes and their hearts to His 
 Wisdom. But they see the beauty of His divine 
 order; they perceive that out of that order grows 
 justice; and they love justice; they seek always to 
 
8 LIFE. 
 
 know and to do what is right, and they find what they 
 seek, and thus they love their neighbor, and have the 
 happiness of that love. Below this is another heaven ; 
 and its angels have reached their eternal home by the 
 way of obedience ; they acknowledge and adore His 
 power ; they listen to His Word ; they obey His com- 
 mands, and in this they find their happiness. Thus, 
 these heavens are severally arranged, animated and 
 governed by the elements of His Divine Nature. 
 Opposite to the heavens are the hells ; and they who 
 dwell in these unhappy states, have not permitted Him 
 to awake in their hearts, either a love for Himself, nor 
 a sense of right and thence a love of the neighbor, 
 nor even a disposition to obey. They have no con- 
 science, and they have no heaven. But they have 
 their own happiness, because He gives them all the 
 happiness such as they can enjoy ; but it is not the 
 happiness of heaven; and they are necessarily sub- 
 jected to such punishment and coercion as may pre- 
 vent their casting away, or destroying for each other, 
 the happiness they may enjoy. 
 
 Between the heavens and the hells are the earths 
 of the universe and all their inhabitants ; and all of 
 these have three distinct planes or degrees in their 
 minds, or three distinct grounds on which the element- 
 ary principles of their life and character rest. These 
 three degrees in human minds, correspond to the three 
 
LIFE. 9 
 
 geavens, just as these correspond to the three elements 
 or degrees of the Divine Nature. For every man 
 may have a disposition to obey vivified within him, 
 and this will place him in close connection with the 
 lowest heaven, where that love rules. Or, he may 
 not stop there, but, while on earth, (only on earth, for 
 as the tree falls so it lies,) he may permit his Father 
 to awake in him a sense of right and a love of his 
 neighbor, and then he will have within him the vital 
 influences of that higher heaven and its happiness ; or 
 he may permit Him to fill his affections with His love, 
 and then, in his spirit and through an eternal future, 
 he will dwell near His throne even in the highest 
 Heaven, and amid its light and bliss. And these three 
 are in perfect harmony and constitute one heaven. If 
 we go further down the scale of being, we still find the 
 image of this Trinity in Unity. Thus every individual 
 man has a soul, and he has a body, and would die but 
 for the constant action of the soul within and through 
 the body. Again, he has affection, which produces 
 thought, and through thought action. Indeed, we may 
 say that every thing, animate or inanimate, exists for 
 the sake of some end or purpose, and this may be 
 regarded, as that which it seeks or loves ; and it has 
 also a form or organization adapted to its purpose, 
 which form corresponds to its design; and it has an 
 activity or operation by which its character or quality 
 
10 LIFE. 
 
 is manifested and its purpose brought into effect. If 
 we bear with us this same truth to the realms of 
 nature, we shall find in the same correspondence, — 
 the animal kingdom, characterized by desire, affection, 
 will ; the vegetable kingdom, where there is organiza- 
 tion and life but without consciousness or will; and 
 the mineral kingdom, which only obeys the impulses 
 which it receives. Thus, beginning with God, we find 
 these three degrees, and go where we will through his 
 creation we find them also, for everywhere we find 
 Himself. And this is one of the inany senses in which 
 we may say with His Word, " Whither shall I go 
 from thy spirit, or whither shall I flee from thy pre- 
 sence ? If I ascend up into heaven thou art there ; 
 if I make my bed in hell, behold thou art there. If I 
 take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the utter- 
 most parts of the sea, even there shall thy hand lead 
 me." 
 
 I have thus endeavored to exhibit the existence, 
 the origin and nature, of the three degrees of being, 
 because it is by them, through them, and in constant 
 conformity with them, that God created and creates 
 and ever sustains all that is. And therefore, they are 
 so intimately connected with the laws of being, that 
 the knowledge of these degrees must constitute the 
 foundation of all understanding of these laws. 
 
 Of these laws themselves, the first thing to be said. 
 
LIFE. 11 
 
 is, that they are not dead laws, once enacted by sove- 
 reign power and written on the opened pages of crea- 
 tion, and there left. They are indeed nothing else 
 than the methods of His divine action in constantly 
 creating ; for, with Him, creation was not a work once 
 done, but a work that is always in doing. Time be- 
 longs not to His nature, but to ours. And the laws 
 of existence are but the methods and the order where- 
 by He is perpetually pouring forth life and being to 
 all things. I again repeat, for it is a central truth, — 
 that existence is but perpetual creation. 
 
 It is to be well remembered, that He alone has life 
 in Himself ; He alone is life. He alone is the vine ; 
 all other things and beings are the branches, the leaves, 
 the blossoms, the fruit. He alone is the Fountain ; 
 all other things are but drops of the ever-rolling and 
 unbounded stream of being. He alone is any thing by 
 Himself; and all other things are constantly created 
 by Him, from Himself. 
 
 And how ? Life, one effluent life, yet containing in 
 itself and consisting of the infinite elements of all pos- 
 sible life, flows forth from Him, first, into the heavens 
 nearest to Him. And because it is from Him and is 
 His own life, it forms and moulds them and all who 
 are in them into an image and likeness of Himself. 
 But it is Life ; it stops not on its way ; it still goes 
 on ; it passes through these heavens and into the hea- 
 
12 LIFE. 
 
 vens next to these, and forms and moulds them also 
 into a remoter image and likeness of Himself. Still 
 the stream of life goes on ; passing through these, it 
 flows into the lowest heavens and forms them into the 
 same image and likeness, but still on a lower ground 
 and with a more dim resemblance. 
 
 Because this life, in its origin attd essence, is Infinite ; 
 because its constant effect and tendency is perpetual 
 and infinite growth and reproduction, there is none the 
 less in God, although all the life of creation is always 
 proceeding from Him. And the stream of life flowing 
 into and through the heavens, and into and through 
 men on earth, still abides with all ; for it is one effect 
 of the original divine nature of life, that every thing 
 and every being that lives not only loses nothing by 
 imparting, but lives on condition that his strength, his 
 thought, his affection, his life, shall perpetually flow 
 forth in use. " He that would save his life shall lose 
 it," because the command, " Freely ye have received, 
 freely give," is constant and universal. 
 
 From the heavens, therefore, life again goes forth. 
 But let us stop, for a moment, to look at its effects 
 and manifestations in the heavens. The Love and 
 Wisdom which fill and constitute them, are in their 
 source and their divine perfection, alike ineffable and 
 inconceivable ; but when they reach the highest hea- 
 vens, and the created human beings who are there, 
 
LIFE. 13 
 
 they enter into their wills and understandings, and 
 become their love and their wisdom. And because 
 these angels are near to God, and love Him su- 
 premely, the love and wisdom they receive, although 
 limited and defined in them, are so little corrupted or 
 perverted, that they remain almost as inconceivable by 
 us as before. Their ' thoughts are not as our thoughts 
 nor their affections as ours; and their blessedness 
 nothing upon earth enables us to conceive. But when 
 the love and wisdom which constitute their affections 
 and thoughts, pass down into the lower heavens, there 
 they become more appreciable by us ; they become 
 what the wills and understandings of the angels of 
 those heavens make of them. They are still the 
 means of indescribable happiness ; but they are nearer, 
 and in the lowest heaven much nearer the love and 
 thought which may be experienced or conceived on 
 earth. 
 
 Below the heavens are the earths ; below the angels 
 are the inhabitants of earth. While we live here, we 
 are not arranged and classified as they who are there, 
 because our life here is but preparatory for and intro- 
 ductory to that ; and as a means of discipline for that 
 end all the elements of life are mingled here. It is 
 the constant effort of Providence to develop and vivify 
 in every human being the highest plane or degree of 
 his nature, which is capable of free and voluntary life ; 
 
14 LIFE. 
 
 further than this He does not go ; for, of all things, 
 He always guards and keeps that freedom which is the 
 essential condition and foundation of all good. All 
 men have in them capacities for the highest gifts which 
 bless the angels. All men have planes and degrees of 
 mind and affection answering to all those of the hea- 
 vens, from highest to lowest. But those which are 
 not developed here, which do not receive life here, 
 which the man does not by his free, voluntary, and 
 active cooperation, permit the influent life of the hea- 
 vens to vivify and fill, — these remain foreYsr closed. 
 The life of the heavens, or the divine love and 
 wisdom which constitute the life, the affection and 
 thought of all in the heavens, flow through them and 
 enter as they can the minds of men. Wherever it 
 is possible, the divine love and wisdom, modified only 
 by the wills and understandings of the highest angels, 
 enter into minds of kindred character upon earth. 
 Where this is not possible, but still, good and truth 
 though of a lower kind, reign, such persons live, be- 
 cause some among the apgels are media of life to them. 
 Some among the angels do, by their own wills and 
 understandings, so modify, so form and qualify the 
 divine love and wisdom, that it becomes adapted to 
 the states and wants of such men and capable of be- 
 coming life in them. Where even this cannot be, 
 where men have turned from good to evil, from light 
 
LIFE. 15 
 
 to darkness, and will not receive the life of the hea- 
 vens, even they still live; for in the regions of evil 
 and of darkness are those who so pervert the influent 
 life they receive, as to qualify and adapt it to find 
 reception with and give life to all of their unhappy 
 resemblances on earth. Thus it is, that every man, 
 whatever he may be and whatever he may choose to 
 be, lives, because Divine Providence finds in the hea- 
 vens or in the hells appropriate media through whom 
 he may receive the life which suits his own good or 
 evil nature. 
 
 But while to all men is thus supplied the life they 
 love, it is not permitted to rule them ; for good spirits 
 have no desire to possess those to whom they are me- 
 diums of life, and evil spirits are not permitted to do 
 so. Thus the influences which supply life are always 
 so met and equalized by opposite influences, that the 
 man himself has life, but has it in freedom. Earth, 
 with all who dwell upon it, is between heaven and hell. 
 In all things and beings here, influences from above 
 and from below, meet. Every man has near him as 
 the media of his life, good and evil spirits. With good 
 men, the former agree with the will and the choice, 
 and the latter only so temper the influence of the 
 former, as to leave the man in freedom ; with evil 
 men the case is precisely reversed. To every one it 
 is given, not merely that he mai/, but that he must, by 
 
16 LIFE. 
 
 his own will and life, determine whether the influence 
 from above, or that from beneath, shall prevail with 
 him forever. 
 
 The heavens, the hells, and the earths between them, 
 are inhabited by human beings, and we have con- 
 sidered the laws of their existence. But all of these 
 human beings have worlds round about them adapted 
 to their natures and their needs. Let us now look 
 at these worlds ; and first at our own earth and its 
 kindred earths in the material universe. How are 
 they created ? How do they exist ? We have already 
 seen that all human beings derive life from the One 
 Source of Life ; and this life consists of Love and 
 Wisdom, which are constantly flowing forth, and so 
 creating. Let us pursue the progress of this life-giving 
 influence. Having constituted the life of the heavens, 
 and the life of men on earth, it still goes on and 
 constitutes the earth itself. The Divine Love and 
 Wisdom, on their way to the earth, through the minds 
 of living and conscious beings, become in them affec- 
 tions and thoughts ; but when they flow beyond them, 
 and so beyond the realms of consciousness, they then 
 become tieat and Light. These are the primary ele- 
 ments of material creation, as Love and Wisdom are 
 of spiritual existence. The sun is as the shadow of 
 the Almighty in no merely poetical sense ; it is His 
 image, because it is tl»e first and nearest material 
 
LIFE. 17 
 
 form which He assumes in His descent to this outer 
 world. His Love and His "Wisdom perpetually well 
 forth in the form of heat and light; and that form 
 they assume as the medium or instrument whereby He 
 ■constantly creates and preserves the worlds of nature. 
 But this is not all. As in man, everywhere, there is 
 a will and an understanding, in which reside the love 
 and truth which are the heat and light of his. soul, 
 and this love and truth become in his mind all the 
 infinitely varied forms of affection and of thought of 
 which he is capable ; so, too, through all these various 
 forms the influent life passes and flows forth, and re- 
 presents them in the infinitely varied material forms 
 which it assumes and so causes to exist ; and all of 
 these taken together constitute the earth on which 
 man dwells. Thus it is that this earth is his mirror, 
 his exact exponent and representative ; thus it is that 
 it becomes precisely adapted to his wants and his use, 
 and thus it becomes his home. First, and nearest to 
 man, is the animal kingdom ; and, it consists of beings 
 who live because they are the representatives of his 
 affections and his thoughts. On the other hand, no 
 affection or thought is without its adequate represent- 
 ative, for in that kingdom we find the innocent and 
 useful creatures whom we gather about our homes, 
 the beautiful birds whose songs of joy are hymns of 
 praise to the giver of their happiness and io ects, that 
 2 
 
18 LIFE. 
 
 breaking forth from the graves they spin, spreading 
 their radiant wings and fluttering with delight from 
 flower to flower as if they were but winged blossoms, 
 image the resurrection of the soul ; — and not that 
 only, but the resurrection of our thoughts, that feeding' 
 for a while on grosser knowledge, and then, it may be, 
 resting in silence and in darkness, at length break 
 forth, beautiful, and winged, and free, and soar towards 
 heaven, in the light of unclouded day. And with these 
 representatives of what is good and true, are mingled, 
 as in the minds of men, the fierce tiger, the cunning 
 fox, the ravening wolf, the crawling and venomous 
 serpent, and the foul and stin^ng insect ; all of which 
 would rend away the veil that covers man's heart, if 
 he did not love that veil, and cling to it with all his 
 strength. 
 
 Below animal life is the vegetable kingdom ; and 
 this too represents, in its beauty and in its deformity, 
 in its fruits and in its poisons, and in the very laws 
 of its growth by which seed and plant, leaf, blossom, 
 and fruit succeed each other, all the varied elements 
 of human life. Human affection and thought are 
 imaged here, in the bud which conceals and guards 
 its treasure, in the green leaf, in the blossom which 
 light has painted, and in the ripened fruit which closes 
 the circle and contains the seed that is ready to begin 
 it anew. The time will come when all these things 
 
LIFE. 19 
 
 will speak. Boundless the instruction they will give, 
 happy the ear and the heart that open to receive it. 
 
 Below the vegetable forms, lies the mineral kingdom, 
 or rather the whole of unorganized matter, including 
 the airs and the waters, as well as the solid earth. 
 Here we reach the last and lowest limit ; and on this 
 plane also are similar analogies. 
 
 Perhaps this doctrine, of the descent of Life, may 
 be illustrated by a diflferent example. Thus, let us 
 begin by the endeavor to conceive of God, not merely 
 as loving, but as Infinite Love itself ; to consider Love 
 as being itself the very divine essence and substance. 
 This may be difficult; for in the present universal 
 habit of sensuous thought, we can easily conceive of 
 loving, but not of Love as a substance. But we may 
 as well deny that fire is a substance, because we know 
 it only as flaming, or burning, or melting. If we suc- 
 ceed in believing that Love is a spiritual substance 
 and not merely a quality, and if we comprehend that 
 this in its origin and infinity is a divine substance, 
 then let us consider this, first, as manifesting itself in 
 God, in His infinite love for all his children, and as 
 being that which makes Him a Universal Father. 
 From Him this paternal love comes into the will of 
 man, and finds that an organized spiritual form, made 
 for the very purpose of becoming a recipient of divine 
 love. Being in man, it there manifests itself as hia 
 
20 ' LIFE. 
 
 paternal affection, withoAt which the earth would soon 
 cease to be inhabited. But it goes lower down. It 
 e.nters into all animals ; in the timid bird it manifests 
 itself as the tender love, which gathers its young under 
 its wings, and labors earnestly to feed them, and makes 
 the fearful creature fierce against all danger and will- 
 ing to die to save its unfledged brood. But it goes 
 down yet lower. It enters into the vegetable king- 
 dom, and there manifests itself in the constant effort 
 of the plant or tree to nourish and perfect its seed, 
 and so perpetuate itself in its productions. Still lower 
 in the world of matter, it produces those efforts at 
 crystallization and arrangement and growth, which 
 science has just begun to lay hold of. One — every- 
 where — in all the various forms of being which it fills, 
 it manifests itself everywhere, by an effort to the same 
 end, which varies in its appearance and effect, not only 
 in the classes of being but in every individual bemg, 
 according to the form, organization, and quality of that 
 being. And this may be regarded as one simple illus- 
 tration of a universal law. For every affection or 
 desire in man or animal, and every effort, tendency, or 
 activity in the material world, exists primarily in the 
 one Source of being, and passes through all the stages 
 of existence, to the ultimates of being ; and is in each 
 being manifested as that which it becomes from the 
 influence of the form by which it is received. 
 
LIFE. 21 
 
 This lower world may indeed be regarded as a 
 world of effects, of which the causes are in the higher 
 world ; and as the causes manifest themselves in thesp 
 effects, so the effects do therefore correspond to and 
 represent and signify these causes of their being. 
 Hence, all that we see around us of dead matter, lives 
 and speaks if we will hear. Earth is but an opened 
 book ; her mountains and valleys ; deserts gemmed 
 with islands qf refreshment wherever springs break 
 through the sand ; fields and rocks and waters ; the 
 great sea and " the sky spread like an ocean hung on 
 high ; " all these are significant and instructive, if we 
 will let them be so. Poetry has always known this. 
 To her the beauty of nature has always been only 
 the transparent covering of its inward life, and it has 
 always been her delightful office to make that beauty 
 eloquent. But science, the truest and highest science, 
 will, in coming ages, invest with her own firmness and 
 consistency truths that do indeed rest upon immutable 
 and universal laws, although hitherto seen only by the 
 poet. Seen indeed by him only in fitful glances, like 
 the gleams which for a moment pierce a broad, cold 
 cloud that darkens the whole heaven ; and because so 
 seen only, untaught reason, in the bhndness of its pride, 
 calls them mere beautiful imaginations, even while 
 they stir and teach the heart with the power of living 
 truth. 
 
22 LIFE. 
 
 By far the most momentous inference from these 
 views of the Laws of Existence, is that which relates 
 .to the Bible, — the Word of God. For our Father in 
 heaven, besides creating all things and beings through 
 His Truth, reveals that truth to all in the form of 
 doctrine, that it may be a perpetual light to their steps. 
 This revelation is made to all, but in various ways ; 
 to those in the highest heavens, to all other angels, 
 and to men on earth. But the truth is ever the 
 same. It is His own truth, and therefore ever 
 the same, always and to all. Yet they who are in 
 one state of existence need very diflFerent instruc- 
 tion from that which is required by others who are 
 in a very diflferent state. How is this difiFerence 
 effected ; how is the adaptation of divine truth to 
 all the states and exigencies of angels and of men, 
 produced? Chiefly by means of the law of corres 
 pondence. For the same Word which is radiant with 
 the manifestation of divine truth to the angels, and 
 always teaches them the way of their own blessed 
 life, descends to earth to lead man to heaven. Here 
 it was revealed through, men to men, and thus was 
 made to assume a natural appearance. It narrates 
 external historical facts, real or supposed, and refers 
 to objects of sense, and commands things of outward 
 observance, all of which exactly correspond to, and 
 therefore exactly represent and signify the higher 
 
LIFE. 23 
 
 truths which the same Word teaches to the angels. 
 It is thus that the natural, literal sense of the Word 
 was formed ; it is thus that it contains within it spirit- 
 ual and heavenly senses ; thus is the literal sense 
 made holy by the divinity within ; thus is this sense 
 exactly adapted to lead men along the paths of good 
 ness and truth, to that state wherein they need and 
 are willing to receive and able to obey the higher 
 senses which lie within the literal ; and it is thus that 
 these higher senses may be brought within the appre- 
 hension of men who are willing to learn and love 
 them. 
 
 These internal senses are now revealed ; for now 
 the Son of Man has, as he promised, " come in the 
 clouds of heaven with power and great glory." The 
 divine truth by which the heavens are created and 
 which fills them, is BLeaven, and its clouds are the 
 literal and natural senses which are interposed that 
 the unprepared eye may not be blasted with excess 
 of light. The Son of Man now eomes, in these clouds, 
 for he now reveals the truths concerning Himself, 
 His laws, and His providence, which are contained 
 within the literal sense. He comes with the Power 
 of divine truth to build up a New Church, a new 
 Earth, a new condition of Humanity. And with great 
 Globt, for the sum and substance of all that the 
 Bpiritual senses teach, is, that every thing good and 
 
24 LIFE. 
 
 true comes from Him alone, and to Him alone they 
 give the glory. 
 
 Hitherto much of the Bible has been a sealed book ; 
 and but a small portion of the human race has had 
 access to it, for most of the nations were supplied with 
 the instruction they needed from other sources. Far- 
 descended traditions, forms of worship and ritual, and 
 books of religious doctrine, have in various ways fur- 
 nished the heathen with instructions which guided to 
 heaven all who were willing to be led thither. But 
 the Bible, illustrated and glorified by the revelation 
 of its concealed treasures, will now go forth conquering 
 and to conquer. To every nation and in every tongue 
 will it go in the bright future on which the light of 
 hope and promise now rests, and to all it will carry 
 blessing and salvation. The remarkable efforts which 
 have been made within the few years since the New 
 Church was established upon earth, to spread the 
 Scriptures, at once indicate and assist the new influ- 
 ences from heaven which are preparing for the child- 
 ren of men, a new earth. 
 
 It is impossible to give a just impression of what is 
 meant by the internal senses of Scripture, except by 
 examples ; and it is impossible to give them in suffi- 
 cient number and with sufficient fulness to effect this 
 purpose within a brief space. It can only be said that 
 the laws of correspondence are exact and definite ; 
 
LIFE. 25 
 
 they constitute a science of great precision and cer- 
 tainty. Swedenborg devotes about twenty volumes to 
 the explanation of three books only of the Scriptures, 
 and professes to do little more than open the way 
 to their meaning. The inner truths of the Word 
 are indeed infinite; and through revolving eternities 
 their successive development constantly gives new 
 instruction and new light to those who consent to 
 receive the gift. 
 
 Another interesting result from these laws of exist- 
 ence is that which explains the spirit-world. The life 
 which, flowing through angels into men, and through 
 men into nature, constitutes our world, flows also out 
 from angels aU around them, and constitutes their 
 world. For they have their world, real, varied, beau- 
 tiful, and formed to contribute to their happiness as 
 purs ; or rather far more so, because they are far more 
 capable of happiness. As it exists in the same way 
 in which our world exists, springing from the same 
 causes and governed by similar laws, it is like our 
 own. Milton was more than a poet, or rather he was 
 truly a poet, when he says. 
 
 Though what if earth 
 Be but the shadow of heaven and things therein, 
 Each to the other Jike, more than on earth is thought 1 
 
 And Wordsworth, true to the same poetic instinct, has 
 
26 LIFE. 
 
 the same idea in his Laodamia. He speaks of the 
 spiritrworld as composed 
 
 Of all that is most beauteous, imaged there 
 
 In happier beauty; more pellucid streams; 
 
 An ampler ether, a diviner air, 
 
 And fields invested with purpurea! gleams ; 
 
 Climes which the sun that sheds the brightest day 
 
 Earth knows, ia all unworthy to survey. 
 
 But though these worlds are like, they also differ ; 
 and there are two or three points of difference which 
 should be noticed. One is, that here, the living ener- 
 gies that give form to nature, are ultimated or vested 
 in material substance, which is comparatively hard 
 and gross. But there, life flows forth into spiritual 
 substance, which is yielding, and more perfectly obeys 
 the life that creates it. Moreover, there, angels are 
 together ; for the societies of heaven are discriminated 
 and arranged with the greatest precision and order. 
 Hence the world about them is not mingled, discord- 
 ant, and conflicting, like this. Life is there without 
 decay ; beauty, and no worm to gnaw its bud ; light 
 and warmth, and all lovely and innocent creatures 
 breathing the bright, soft air ; and. a vegetable king- 
 dom but faintly imaged upon earth by those plants 
 which have at once and in full perfection leaf and fruit 
 and flower. If the thought occurs that we should miss 
 
LIFE. 27 
 
 the sublimity of the frozen mountain-top, the storm- 
 cloud and fierce lightning, and winter's wide expanse 
 of unstained snow, let us consider whether lessons of 
 equal sublimity and emotions of yet greater depth may 
 not be given, when all the elements of natural beauty 
 are evolved in infinite variety and a perfection un- 
 imagined now. Moreover, because this spiritual sub- 
 stance yields readily to the plastic power which fills 
 it, and is nearer in its own nature to the soul, it reflects 
 the soul and all that is within it more constantly and 
 more perfectly. Here, this correspondence is general ; 
 the earth presenting in its various forms an image of 
 human nature. There, this correspondence is particu- 
 lar ; adapted to the societies of angels ; and ■ every 
 angel has about him a home, and all natural forms, 
 which perfectly represent himself. He sees there his 
 own affections, his own thoughts, in form and in ac- 
 tivity ; they grow as he grows ; they change as he 
 changes ; they are always himself in outward repre- 
 sentation. Into this spirit-world man enters at death. 
 While he remained in this lower world his spiritual 
 body was within his natural body, giving it life and 
 power and sense. It was always his spiritual eye 
 which saw, his spiritual ear which heard, his spiritual 
 senses which took cognizance of all things about him. 
 But while he lived in the material body, it was only 
 through the material organs of that body, that the eye 
 
28 LIFE. 
 
 of his spiritual body could see and its ear could hear ; 
 and for that purpose these material organs were exqui- 
 sitely fitted to the spiritual organs which they served 
 as instruments. But when these material organs or 
 coverings fell off, the spiritual eye, the true and living 
 eye, does not lose the power of seeing. It loses the 
 power of seeing the material things for which it once 
 possessed a material organ, but it acquires the power 
 of seeing the spiritual substances and forms which this 
 material organ had veiled. So it is with all the senses, 
 and with all the organs of the body. ■ The man rises 
 from that portion of earth which his soul once vivified ; 
 rises with the spiritual body he always had, and rises 
 in full possession of all his senses and faculties, into a 
 world of spiritual substances, of which his spiritual 
 senses and organs now take cognizance in the same 
 manner as the material organs here perceive material 
 things. In a word. Death is Birth, and then man 
 rises a man as before, but in a new world : yet, with 
 all his organs, limbs, senses, faculties ; and into a 
 world like in its appearances, and analogous in its 
 uses, to the world he has left. 
 
 Besides the mediate influx from God, which I have 
 attempted to consider, every being receives constantly 
 an immediate influx. And it is rather to this influx 
 that creation should be ascribed ; for it is this which 
 calls every thing and being into existence, and renders 
 
LIFE. 29 
 
 it capable of receiving the mediate influx, of which I 
 have spoken. Perhaps it is enough to say upon this 
 topic now, that whatever exists, receives its life in a 
 twofold way. One, and the first, directly from God, 
 the source of Life, and this gives to it being and exist- 
 ence. The other comes from God through all the 
 intermediate planes or degrees of being ; and is thus 
 adapted to the state of every one, so as to supply him 
 with life, while it is also in the constant endeavor to 
 improve and elevate that state. I have spoken of 
 this, rather because so essential a truth should not be 
 omitted in a view of the laws of Life, than in the hope 
 that the brief statement I have space for, in this Essay, 
 can render it intelligible. 
 
 Thus far I have spoken of the life-mfluences of the 
 Divine, in their descent, in their progress from within, 
 outward. But they return to their infinite Source. 
 Always life, they stop nowhere. Thus, when they 
 have reached and created this lower, material world, 
 they manifest themselves in this by a constant effort to 
 reassume an upward flight ; and they begin to accom- 
 plish this by providing sustenance and support for the 
 vegetable kingdom. Earths, stones, and waters, always 
 acted upon by the air anf* the imponderable fluids, are 
 always endeavoring to become more and more adapted 
 to sustain vegetable life, and to enter into vegetable 
 life, and so ascend in the scale of being. This endeavor 
 
30 LIFE. 
 
 may seem to be arrested where desolation reigns, and 
 an inhospitable climate is at war with life, but still the 
 work on the whole earth is always going on. Thus 
 the vegetable world, which lives by the descent of the 
 principles of life, is nourished and preserved by the 
 same principles in their returning ascent ; and in the 
 vegetable kingdom they are again active in making its 
 whole organization subserve the purpose of giving sus- 
 tenance to the animal world which lies next above the 
 vegetable creation. Then this whole lower world, all 
 the existences below man, are filled and animated by 
 the constant effort to provide for him a fitting dwelling- 
 place, and food and raiment and shelter. In the mind 
 of man, the principles of life have a form less removed 
 from their divine Original ; they become again, what 
 they were in their descent to him, Love and Wis- 
 dom ; — they are in Hm, the wisdom which looks up 
 to God, to find in Him the only source of life and 
 blessing, and the love which leads that wisdom up- 
 wards, the love of God, which now, as the conscious 
 and voluntary love of human beings, returns to Him 
 from whom it descended. 
 
 Nor is this all. Upon the earth the heavens rest ; 
 from it they are supplied, for none are there who were 
 not here or on some other earth. The character is 
 formed in this life which fits for heaven. Conscious 
 of their blessedness, the angels desire more than aught 
 
LIFE. 31 
 
 else to extend that blessedness ; to enlarge the hea- 
 vens ; to make their inhabitants more numerous and 
 their home more perfect. And the joy that is in hea- 
 ven over every sinner that repenteth, over every one 
 who allows himself to be led thither, gives a constant 
 direction to angelic endeavor, and a constant happiness 
 to angelic life. 
 
 To state the preceding views in a more condensed 
 form, it may be said, that, — 
 
 The various classes of being exist on different planes 
 or degrees, which are measured and determined by 
 their distance from Him who is the origin of being. 
 
 The existences upon every plane but the highest 
 having others higher than themselves, and upon every 
 plane but the lowest having others lower than them- 
 selves, are all so created and formed by the efflux of 
 life from the Highest, (which passing through and 
 giving birth and form to all, impresses itself upon all,) 
 that they all correspond together; the higher every- 
 where repeating itself in the lower, and there accom- 
 modating itself in form, use, and manifestation to a 
 lower and remoter life. 
 
 Every order or degree of beings is the medium 
 through which life and existence flow to those below ; 
 and in every order or degree of being, there is a con- 
 stant tendency upwards ; a constant endeavor to pro- 
 
32 LIFE. . 
 
 vide support, sustenance, exercise, and happiness for 
 those above. 
 
 It is this system of existence which ancient mytho- 
 logy represenfed by the chain, that, fastened to the 
 throne of God, fell in perpetual folds, embraced the 
 earth, encircled within one or other of its golden links 
 every created thing, and then returned to Him from 
 'whom it descended. Or, to refer to another and more 
 appropriate symbol, the laws of Existence, thus under- 
 stood, realize the ladder of the Patriarch's dream. It 
 rests upon the earth and its top is in the heavens; 
 and upon every step of its infinite length, the angels 
 of God are descending and ascending forever and ever. 
 
PROVIDENCE. 
 
 It was the purpose of the preceding pages to exhibit 
 the laws of life, as they are manifested in the creation 
 and support of all that exists. Closely connected with 
 this subject, is one of yet deeper interest. What 
 are the laws of human improvement ? What are the 
 means by which the progress of man towards heaven 
 and towards God, is made possible ? These questions 
 I will now attempt to answer. And again we must 
 go far back towards the source of existence. Indeed, 
 the great Problem of Life presents three, distinct 
 aspects. It calls upon us to know whence we derive 
 life ; and how it is that the life we are conscious of is 
 so imperfect and impure ; and how such a life as this 
 may be cleansed, enlarged, and elevated. 
 
 Whence do we derive life ? We have already said 
 from God, who is life itself and the only Source of 
 Life. Nor can it be necessary to reassert this ; for 
 3 
 
34 PROVIDENCE. 
 
 all who profess any religion acknowledge it to be, in 
 some sense, true. Still it is a truth obscured by pre- 
 vailing falsehood ; so obscured and dimmed, that it 
 would be extinguished, if it were possible for any depth 
 01 darkness of the clouds to blot out the sun. There 
 IS especially one falsity shrouding this truth in these 
 days in almost all minds. It tells us that life was 
 given to our first parents, and is given only by trans- 
 . mission or inheritance to their children ; or if it do 
 not remove the work of creation so far backwards, it 
 teaches that when a living soul was breathed into each 
 man, the gift of immortality to him was entire, and 
 the work of creation completed, and could neither be 
 exhausted nor repeated. But there are so many ways 
 in which this falsehood may be exposed, that escape 
 from it cannot be difficult. It ascribes to the Eternal 
 Present of divine power, our Past and Future. It 
 elevates Time, as the nations strove to build their 
 tower in the plains of Shinar, until it pierces the hea- 
 vens ; and utter confusion of tongue and thought is the 
 result. It brings down God to man only by a process 
 of degradation ; only by imparting to Him our imper- 
 fections. We construct a clock or other machinery ; 
 and admire our own skill, in proportion as the work 
 of our hands goes on the surer and the longer without 
 our touch and presence. And so we think God made 
 man and built the world. But we forget that our 
 
PROVIDENCE. 35 
 
 clock goes on, only because we leave it to the constant 
 operation of the constant activities of nature. For not 
 even here, on this lower plane of existence, is there 
 any thing which encourages us to believe that any effect 
 can continue after the cause has ceased to operate. 
 
 God is the one Cause. He is the cause of all causes. 
 Exclude this truth from the idea of God, and nothing 
 is left. He is also a continual, a constant cause. 
 There is a universal tendency which leads us to limit 
 Him as we are limited, and, reversing the truth, create 
 God in man's image ; but if we reflect upon the divine 
 nature with any endeavor to resist this tendency, we 
 shall perceive that it must be His constant operation 
 which not only sustains, but is always imparting life, 
 and as an always-present act, causes all that is, to be. 
 When this truth is clearly seen by us, we have gained 
 much ; for it is a truth of great power. It touches 
 the dead bones which we call the laws of nature, and 
 they live. It comes with consolation and with hope, for 
 it comes to tell us that God is very near, and always 
 Himself present; and that he has ^ not delivered us 
 over to lower agencies or lifeless laws, as his vice- 
 gerents. 
 
 When this truth becomes our own, and we are able 
 to acknowledge sincerely that life is the constant gift 
 of God, another question presents itself. What is the 
 life He gives? There can be but one answer to 
 
36 PROVIDENCE. 
 
 this; — the life he gives is His own life ; and it is and 
 must be from Himself. In a former Essay I have 
 endeavored to illustrate this truth. But we cannot 
 rest in this truth, because it leads directly to a ques- 
 tion of great difficulty. How can the life of God 
 become tJiM which our life is ; so imperfect, so impure, 
 so full of all that demands change and improvement ; 
 so directly and thoroughly opposed to the will of God 
 himself. 
 
 To this question we have already given one answer. 
 We have endeavored to show how the Divine Life 
 comes to us through intermediate natures, of which the 
 series constantly approaches us, and terminates in those 
 who are like ourselves. This answer, so far as it is 
 intelligible and understood, may explain the fact, that 
 Life, although pure in its source, becomes in us such 
 as we are. But why are we permitted to become 
 such ? This question too is answered, when we under- 
 stand that freedom, free-agency, is given to man and 
 constantly preserved, as the essential condition of his 
 happiness. For if we understand this, it is easily seen 
 that freedom to be good, must also be freedom to be 
 evil, or else it is not freedom. For liberty of choice, 
 and free-agency, imply of necessity the capacity and 
 ability to abuse and pervert them ; and this capacity 
 being exercised, has made man what he is. 
 
 These considerations may help us to comprehend 
 
PROVIDENCE. 37 
 
 how man acquires his actual state and character, and 
 is still supplied with life from its only Source, which 
 life' is modified into an adaptation to his quality ; and 
 let us now look at the means by which he may rise 
 into another character and state. If we can form any 
 just idea upon these two subjects, we may hope to 
 discern something of the reason why man has been 
 permitted to fall into his present condition, and some- 
 thing of the mercy which constantly keeps open a way 
 by which he may escape from it. 
 
 I would repeat, to prevent misconception, that I can 
 now attempt to give only the most general view of a 
 subject, so extensive and so difficult. 
 
 Let us begin then by inquiring, in what form do the 
 questions of the problem we attempt to solve, present 
 themselves to the mind. Perhaps it may be thus. If 
 we know that men live by means of an influx, that, 
 coming from pure and perfect Life, becomes adapted 
 to them, by passing through intermediate beings, and 
 thus by gradual approach becoming such as they 
 are, the difficulty then arises how can men grow 
 better? And when we know, on the other hand, 
 that man lives cdso by an influx directly into the 
 inmost of his soul, from Life itself, from Divine Life, 
 the question then occurs, how is it that man is so 
 impure, so imperfect, so full of affections which are 
 opposite to divine affections ? The answer to both 
 
88 PROVIDENCE. 
 
 of these questions is one. For that answer is, that 
 this influx through media, and this other direct in- 
 flux, are both from one Source, both for one end ; 
 and must cooperate to produce that end. As we 
 assist this cooperation, we advance our own regene- 
 ration ; and as we understand this cooperation, so we 
 shall understand what regeneration is, and how it is 
 effected. 
 
 Before this can be understood, some idea must be 
 formed of the three degrees of life which are within 
 every one. The internal and the external man are not 
 the soul and the body. They are rather two natures, 
 if we may so speak ; almost two beings. Nor can this 
 be illustrated better than by appealing to every one's 
 experience. "Who has not known what it is to be 
 impelled in one direction by vehement desires, while 
 at the same time, other affections above and within 
 these restrain and hold us back with a firm hand, and 
 will not let us go ? This is not a mere comparison of 
 arguments, or balancing the expediency of one course 
 against that of another. That exists by itself. But 
 beside it all, there is in every one's experience that 
 which, if he permits it, may give him a consciousness, 
 that he has within him truths, affections, principles, 
 other and higher than those of his external life. The 
 common phrase which invites the erring or the tempted 
 to look within, and ask of conscience what is rights is 
 
PROVIDENCE. 39 
 
 but one expression of a universal truth. The external 
 of man is that part of his nature which is nearest his 
 condiict, his outward life ; on that plane are his pas- 
 sions, his most apparent motives, his opinions, and the 
 plans and purposes which fluctuate with circumstances ; 
 by this he comes in contact with the world without ; 
 and these are the thoughts and affections which are 
 the first effects of sensation, or which lie just within 
 the senses. The internal of man is something more. 
 There are his principles of action ; there, whatever of 
 reason he may have ; there, the great and permanent 
 ends, -^ whatever may be their quality, — which deter- 
 mine and constitute his real character. Within this 
 again is his inmost ; and in the inmost of every man 
 is Life directly from God ; not so assimilated to him 
 that he can be conscious of it ; not within his reach 
 that he may pervert it ; and therefore not within either 
 his knowledge or his power. 
 
 The life and love which flow into man through living 
 media, conform to his state, so as to fill him as he is, . 
 and whatever he may be, with life. These media are 
 good and evil; the evil perpetually endeavoring to 
 make him like themselves ; the good ever striving to 
 improve and elevate him ; and both together filling all 
 his life, and so tempered by each other, as to leave 
 him in freedom. While this is so, the life which flows 
 in directly from God, and is concealed within, per- 
 
40 PROVIDENCE. 
 
 petually seeks and endeavors to bring the states of 
 conscious and voluntary life into a free conformity 
 with itself. In doing this, it constantly uses and works 
 through and with the efforts of those who are the 
 media of life to the external. In this way are sup- 
 plied and vivified the constant means of human im- 
 provement and regeneration. 
 
 Between these two, — life in the inmost of the heart 
 and external life, — there is in the beginning no con- 
 formity; there is an active opposition. This opposi- 
 tion produces conflict, a sense of internal warfare, a 
 want of peace, unless the divine and inmost life ceases 
 its endeavor to bring the external life into conformity 
 with itself, because the opposition to that endeavor is 
 confirmed and absolute ; and then there is the peace 
 of the unhappy and the lost. It is not meant that the 
 good, or they who are becoming good, have no peace, 
 no rest. Their prevailing state is one of warfare. 
 The language of the Bible harmonizes with all human 
 experience, in declaring that all progress implies effort, 
 resistance, combat ; but there are intervals of peace, — 
 intervals, when the battle of that day is won, and the 
 wearied soldier rests and rejoices ; intervals, when the 
 climbing pilgrim has reached a mountain-top, and while 
 he breathes the sweet freshness of its air, he looks 
 back upon his nights of darkness and his days of toil, 
 and around upon a world now glowing with beauty 
 
PROVIDENCE. 41 
 
 because the love which fills it is, for that hour, un- 
 veiled, — and upward to a sky, from which the clouds 
 have melted or else give back the sunshine in golden 
 light; and forward, to the distant and loftier summits, 
 where peace has a more abiding home. These are 
 intervals of refreshing rest and calm and quiet glad- 
 ness. They spring from the cessation of conflict be- 
 tween the life that lies latent in the inmost soul and 
 that which animates the external character. This 
 external life is not yet wholly obedient, wholly con- 
 formed to the life within ; but for a while it is quies- 
 cent, — for a while it yields so far as to give rest to 
 the soul, and a foretaste, of the joy, the measure of 
 which will be full when the work is done. And these 
 states of peace give strength for further endeavors, 
 further conflicts. They come again before the mind 
 when hope is fainting, and breathe into her the breath 
 of life : they come to rebuke the fear that might else 
 be despair; to invigorate the efforts which begin to 
 fail, to strengthen the resolution when it wavers. They 
 come to remind us that in the treasury of Divine Love 
 there is enough to compensate for all that we can do, 
 and all that we can suffer. 
 
 If we know that regeneration is produced by the 
 endeavor of the life ■within to bring into conformity 
 with itself the Hfe of the external mind, the next truth 
 necessary to the comprehension of this subject is, that 
 
42 PROVIDENCE. 
 
 this is done, and can be done, only through the con- 
 scious and voluntary act and efifort of the man himself. 
 It is not meant that there is no progress unless there 
 be a knowledge of these truths and principles, and an 
 endeavor after improvement based upon them. Far 
 from it. But it is meant that there is no progress 
 unless where there is a conscious and voluntary en 
 deavor to conform to the wUl of God. And this is, in 
 effect, the same thing. In the laws of God, revealed 
 by Him to various nations and in different ways, but 
 always as rules of life, God reveals Himself. These 
 laws, in their purity, express the principles of His own 
 nature and life. They come down into language, and 
 are variously modified to meet the exigencies and suit 
 the disposition of the time and people to whom they 
 are given ; and thus they are often mingled with much 
 that is derived from the state of those to whom they 
 are addressed, because it is thus that these laws may be 
 made intelligible, accessible, practicable. But within 
 tliem all, as that which gives them life and power and 
 makes them good, is the truth which describes the very 
 life of God himself; and therefore this truth is an ex- 
 pression in words, of the life which, by direct influx 
 from Him, fills the inmosts of all men. Thus these 
 laws are, in their essence, one with the inmost life of 
 man. And they who endeavor to obey them and to 
 love them, to conform to them in conduct and affection^ 
 
PROVIDENCE. 43 
 
 do thus in fact endeavor to bring their external and 
 conscious life into conformity and oneness with the life 
 within; and these laws are given for this very purpose. 
 The disposition to obey them . comes from this inward 
 life ; and the ability to obey them is from the same 
 source. While this disposition and ability are always 
 given, but without controlling the man's own will and 
 so doing violence to his freedom, and while they are 
 given just so far as may be done without impairing 
 freedom, the influence ffom the spiritual world, which 
 gives us conscious thoughts and affections, is always 
 so modified as to place the man in freedom to turn 
 towards or from the laws of genuine life. It is so 
 modified, that whosoever is willing to receive into his 
 will the disposition to obey those laws, and is also 
 willing to exert his ability to obey them, finds in the 
 life which forms his conscious being, no obstruction 
 which he may not overcome. It is not said that he 
 will find no obstruction. Evil spirits are there, for 
 that part of his character which is evil must also be 
 filled and vivified, and they and their seductive prompt- 
 ings must be resisted and overcome ; sometimes with 
 labor and pain ; but always with success, if the effort 
 be earnest and sincere, because their injurious infiu- 
 ence is so qualified, so met and counteracted, as to 
 leave man in freedom. 
 
 The law on this subject may be stated, generally, 
 
44 PBOYIUENCB. 
 
 thus. Man lives by influx of life from the Source oi 
 life into the inmost of his being. He also lives by 
 influx from the same source through such media as 
 modify that life into fitness and conformity with him- 
 self. Angels and good spirits are in part these media. 
 Their efforts are constant to make him better than he 
 is ; and the life which flows to him directly from the 
 Lord, constantly endeavors to make these efforts suc- 
 cessful, and bring the outward conduct into oneness 
 with the purer life within, so far as this may be done 
 without violence and in freedom. The man may com- 
 pel himself; and is then most free, when he asserts the 
 sovereignty of truth and of religion, and compels his 
 external life to obedience. 
 
 This statement may seem strange and paradoxical 
 in many respects ; but chiefly in this. It may suggest 
 the idea that Divine Providence, in operating thus, 
 employs a circuitous and complicated mode of effecting 
 objects, which might be reached more directly and 
 more perfectly by the mere will of Omnipotence ; and 
 in so believing, we may seem to ascribe to Him infirm- 
 ity and lack of power. 
 
 We give one -answer to this objection, when we refer 
 to the whole course of existence, to all the varied life 
 of the universe. We have everywhere a proof that 
 God acts by means ; we have no single instance of 
 other action. All things that exist exert an influence 
 
PROVIDENCE 45 
 
 of some kind, greater or less, nearer or more remote, 
 upon all other things ; and the various forms of heing 
 which constitute the universe, are preserved from isola- 
 tion and uselessness, by this mutual and perfectly uni- 
 versal interdependence. But while the objection may 
 be silenced by this answer, it is explained only when 
 we remember that this very law of interdependence 
 constitutes the perfection of every thing and the happi- 
 ness of whatever can be happy. For, by means of it, 
 while Providence, gives to each one and does for each 
 one what he needs, another is made the medium of the 
 gift, and so is in his own use and happiness. Think 
 but for a moment of depriving any being we may place 
 before the mind, of all influence upon others, all effect 
 whatever upon man or society, by example or other- 
 wise ; and we see at once that we take from that being 
 all life, all occupation, all wherein and whereby he now 
 lives and enjoys. If we do not kill him outright, we 
 bury him alive. So far therefore as the objection to 
 the manner of regeneration we have attempted to 
 describe rests upon the apparent complexity of the 
 means, so far it should be answered by the truth, that 
 this complexity doubles the blessing, — making it bless 
 him on whom it falls, and them through whom it de- 
 scends ; and this law is in the truest analogy with all 
 the laws of the universe. 
 
 But a part of this objection rests upon another 
 
46 PROVIDENCE. 
 
 ground ; upon the difficulty of believing that perfect 
 Love accomplishes its purpose of blessing, only through 
 the toil and suffering of those on whom the blessing 
 rests. That it is so, all experience and observation 
 prove; for not religion only, but all philosophy teaches, 
 that for all great good a great price must be paid. To 
 explain this, however, requires another consideration ; 
 and that consideration touches the need and use of 
 individual freedom. 
 
 Let us remember what it is to be. regenerate. It is, 
 to love, consciously and freely, the will of God. And 
 how can this be if we have no freedom, or if this free- 
 dom be violated ? We can undoubtedly conceive of 
 Omnipotence as changing, at once and by irresistible 
 will, the whole conduct and motives of a man ; but if 
 we attempt to combine with this, the thought that the 
 man remains always through this process and at its 
 close a free man, we shall find ourselves employed in 
 reconciling contradictions. We are bringing together 
 ideas which are mutually destructive. To lead one by 
 persuasive means, which, in their constant gentleness 
 use no force, impairs no freedom. But compulsion 
 and inevitable necessity cannot make any person choose 
 one of many things ; they may make him take, accept, 
 what they will ; but no choice is there, for there is no 
 freedom ; and because there is no choice and no free- 
 dom, there is no willing reception into the heart, there 
 
Jb-UOViUENCJfi. 47 
 
 is no love, no happiness, no heaven. Here then is the 
 truth which explains the dealings of God with man, for 
 it is the truth which those dealings regard. Heaven 
 is love, is happiness, is freedom, for these are insepara- 
 bly connected. We might almost say that the problem 
 which every man's regeneration presents to the Divine 
 Providence, is the leading him from one classs of afiFec- 
 tions into others which directly oppose the first, with- 
 out violating his freedom at any single step, or in 
 the final result; and I suppose this problem to be 
 solved, this work to be done, in the manner and by 
 the means of which I have attempted, in the preceding 
 pages, to give a very general idea. 
 
 If we have a clear perception of these truths, and 
 hold them constantly connected, we have a key to the 
 mystery of human life. We may apply this key to the 
 occurrences of our own life, and understand the origin, 
 the operation, and the use of many events, perhaps of 
 many sufferings, which were otherwise shrouded in 
 more than midnight blackness. Let me re-state these 
 truths 6r propositions, or principles, in the simplest 
 form in which I am able to convey them. 
 
 The first is this. Every man lives by influx from 
 the Lord, who is Life itself. This influx of life 
 reaches him in two ways ; in one way through inter- 
 mediate beings, the last of the series approaching 
 nearest to himself; and this influx being modified by 
 
48 PROVIDENCE. 
 
 this transmiBsion, fills his external character, his con- 
 scious thoughts and aflfections, with a life at once in 
 correspondence with his will and disposition, whatever 
 they may be, and yet constantly endeavoring to elevate 
 that will. An influx of life also reaches man directly 
 from God ; and this is pure unmingled Divine life. It 
 goes into the inmosts of his soul, and remains there 
 unseen, unknown, except in its influence ; and this in- 
 fluence it constantly exerts in the endeavor to bring the 
 outward, voluntary, conscious character into conformity 
 with itself. 
 
 The second of these truths or principles is this. 
 The inmost life, in its endeavor to bring the out- 
 ward life into oneness with itself, never acts with vio- 
 lence. It always regards man's freedom, his choice, 
 bis will; and this it seeks never to break and crush, 
 but to bend and lead, and gradually renew the charac- 
 ter. It would make the man love what he has hated ; 
 and this it would do in such wise that he may do it as 
 of himself, and retain his liberty and indulge his affec- 
 tions, even in the work of changing his affections. 
 
 Take with us these two truths, and they reveal the 
 secret mercy which leads man through sorrow and 
 through temptation, even to the very Source of mercy. 
 
 Many are the enigmas which may thus be solved. 
 The success, prosperity, and happiness of the wicked 
 often stand in mournful contrast with the sorrows and 
 
PKOVIDENCE. 49 
 
 painful labors of those who would be good. The world, 
 often gives to the one its honor, power, and homage ; 
 and to the other, poverty, depression, and contempt. 
 How easily are these things now explained ! God 
 knows — He alone knows — what manner of man each 
 one is. He knows whether ill success and pain and 
 sorrow will check self-love, and turn the thoughts from 
 earth to heaven, and vivify religious wishes, and bring 
 forth true humility ; and if this will be the effect of 
 sorrow and disappointment, they are permitted. But 
 where they would only exasperate, and anger and de- 
 spair would mingle in the heart like the fire and hail 
 which ran together along the ground of Egypt, — then 
 success and prosperity are given instead. For God does 
 not willingly afflict, and chastens them only whom chas- 
 tisement may improve. Often, too, it happens that they 
 who cannot be made with their own cooperating con 
 sent good, may yet be restrained from deeper evil by 
 affliction and various suffering ; and then it comes to 
 them from the same mercy which gladly drops the oil 
 of gladness upon all who in their happiness remember 
 Him, and can therefore be led to heaven by the paths 
 of peace. Yet none may hope that all their ways 
 will be pleasantness, and all their paths peace. Our 
 natural proneness to love self and the world more than 
 we love God and His will, being universal, it may be 
 said that none can be prepared for heaven without 
 4 
 
50 PROVIDENCE. 
 
 passing through the dark valleys where affliction 
 dwells. 
 
 Nothing of this is or can be at any moment, to 
 any person, accidental. The Providence of God never 
 remits its care, never abates its love, never changes its 
 purpose, and its wisdom never fails. Because it is 
 Infinite it fills and guides alike the least and greatest 
 things, and so disposes all as to promote His constant 
 purpose. The spirit of God is often compared in the 
 "Word to the wind which bloweth where it listeth, and 
 we know not whence it pometh nor whither it goeth. 
 Tet who can doubt, that the wind, alike in its sport and 
 in its fury, whether it brings refreshment or destruc- 
 tion, moves in obedience to the physical laws which 
 God impresses upon nature. If the storm lashes the 
 ocean into fury or devastates the earth, we are willing 
 to listen as to the voice of God, and we look with awe 
 upon the putting forth of his power. And yet how 
 blind are we not to know, how dull not to remember, 
 that the soft wind of summer, answering with its 
 sweet song to the bird and the insect and all the plea- 
 sant sounds of nature, and bearing away upon its gentle 
 breath the perfume of the blossoms, — is equally and 
 wholly His instrument, His servant. So it is with the 
 wind of His spirit. No hair of our heads, no sparrow 
 falls to the ground without His cognizance and permis- 
 sion — and for His purpose. 
 
PROVIDENCE. 51 
 
 If we apply the principles we have been considering 
 to those dispensations of Providence by which churches 
 have been established, we may perhaps explain the 
 fact, that they have come successively, and have brought 
 with them but partial disclosures of the Divine Truth. 
 One would think that if Truth were a good thing, it 
 would be given to man at once, in full and overflowing 
 measure. So it might be given. If it were the will 
 (rf God, all His creation would utter forth His Wis- 
 dom audibly, irresistibly. The sighing or the stormy 
 wind, the singing bird, and all the myriad voices of 
 nature, might easily be made to declare His laws. The 
 burning lights of the sky would record them in fire, 
 and every leaf, tossed by the breath of autumn to man's 
 feet, would bring its written lesson. But there is no- 
 thing of all this. The means which God has chosen 
 for His revelations are very diiferent ; and the mea- 
 sure of His revelation to every succeeding church 
 seems carefully adjusted by some law to some end. 
 We have now the law and the end disclosed to us ; for 
 we may know now that truth is given only in such 
 form and measure as may best lead man in freedom, to 
 submit his external and conscious life to the life within 
 and to the laws of that life. More than this is not 
 given, because it would do violence and thus prevent or 
 retard a real progress. The truth given in successive 
 dispensations advances in quantity and in clearness, 
 
52 PROVIDENCE. 
 
 for the yery reason that every dispensation which pro- 
 duces its intended eflFect upon the human race, therehy 
 makes it possible for more and brighter truth to be 
 given safely. As this is the law of Divine Providence 
 to ages and to races, so it is to individuals. The cir- 
 cumstances which surround every person are so govern- 
 ed, and opportunities are so closed or opened, that the 
 very truth most useful to him is placed within his 
 reach; and every truth received, obeyed, and loved, 
 opens the way for more. Nor is there in this more 
 than in any of God's laws, a motive to inaction or an 
 excuse for it. Whatever is given to man is given 
 through man ; and they who possess truth which others 
 have not, cannot without wrong forget that they have 
 it, first that they may obey it, and next that they may 
 give it. And while they exert, temperately and reason- 
 ably, all the means which God has given them to diffuse 
 the truth w^hich He has given them, they may be sure 
 to be blessed as the means of blessing in a greater or 
 a less degree, and He will guard them from becoming 
 the means of mischief. 
 
 The remark is often made, and sometimes in any 
 thing but a religious mood, that it depends upon the 
 accident of a man's birth whether he be a Christian, a 
 Mahometan, or a Pagan. Undoubtedly this is true ; 
 excepting so much as is implied in the word " accident," 
 for there is no such thing as accident. Every man 
 
PROVIDENCE. 63 
 
 born into this world inherits the accumulated qualities 
 and tendencies of a long line of ancestry. Under 
 whatever dispensation these have been formed, to that 
 they are adapted, and that again is adapted to them. 
 Thus he who is born of Mahometan parents among a 
 Mahometan people, for that very reason is born with 
 germs and tendencies which can be improved most 
 effectually by Mahometan truth. This is the general 
 law ; and to its power must be attributed a large part 
 of the extreme difficulty with which what are called 
 " conversions " are made in foreign lands, and national 
 religions overthrown. It is, however, only a general 
 law. It is subject to many exceptions and much quali- 
 fication, and when well understood contains nothing to 
 induce one to abate a jot of any wise endeavors to im- 
 prove the religious state of other nations. But into 
 these details we cannot now enter. 
 
 So, too, within a dispensation or a church, there are 
 many varieties of faith and practice. There are, for 
 instance, those who practise and inculcate asceticism. 
 This belongs to all religions, although it differs in form 
 and in intensity in different nations and ages ; but 
 everywhere are some devoted to the hardest, harshest 
 self-denial, and sometimes self-torment. Something of 
 this may be well for all. There are some whose na- 
 tural love for the enjoyments of sense, of taste, of art, 
 and of the world, is so strong that moderation is almost 
 
54 PROVIDENCE. 
 
 impossible ; and when they are led to resist and sup- 
 press that love altogether, others who err in blaming 
 them for seeking that path of safety, err equally in 
 wishing that all the ways of life and of improvement 
 ghonld be deserted for that in which alone they them- 
 selves find comfort and security. ■ That which is the 
 best path for them, is not so for the whole world. 
 There is no one which is best for the whole world. In 
 our Father's house are many mansions, and to every 
 mansion its own path leads. 
 
 Least of all should differences like these become the 
 grounds of self-conceit, or, what is worse, of bigotry. 
 ■ Not only because Truth is not man's own ; not only 
 because the mere possession of truth makes no man 
 wise or good ; but because the possession of the highest 
 truth is not of itself evidence of a higher state. This 
 is well illustrated now by the relative condition of the 
 Heathen and of Christians. We have Swedenborg's 
 authority, together with all the proof which can be 
 derived from exhibition of character, that at this mo- 
 ment there is among many Heathen nations more of 
 purity, of benevolence and religion, more of what leads 
 to heaven and constitutes heaven, than in most of the 
 nations of Christendom. In general, it may be well 
 for all to know and to remember, that the possession 
 of exalted truth justifies no conclusion as to the actual 
 moral state ; because it proves only that truth of that 
 
PROVIDENCE. 55 
 
 order and degree is best adapted to effect the measure 
 of moral and religious improvement of which that in- 
 dividual may be capable. 
 
 The law of human regeneration founded upon the 
 constant endeavor of the life within, to bring into con- 
 formity with itself the life without, implies that all 
 circumstances are so guided and controlled as to pro- 
 mote this end. Man is never made to sin ; but he is 
 permitted to sin, if he cannot be restrained without 
 violating his freedom. Even here, however, the mercy 
 of God faileth not ; for no man is allowed to cast him- 
 self into an abyss so deep and dark as to extinguish the 
 hope or the possibility of return. And this assurance 
 offers comfort and strength to those who are bowed 
 down, not with the sense of sorrow only, but with the 
 far heavier burden of sin. Truth does not tell us that 
 it is better for us to sin ; it does not say to our evil 
 propensities, be ye indulged that ye may become the 
 means of good. For if is not good, but evil, and only 
 the spirit of evil, which says, under any circumstances 
 whatever, — Evil, be thou my Good. I mean that 
 there is nothing in these truths, nothing in any truth, 
 to comfort us while we sin, or give new strength to 
 the voice of the Tempter. But if we turn away from 
 our sins that we may live, if we repent and do the 
 work of repentance, then we may remember, and then 
 
56 PROVIDENCE. 
 
 we should remember, that we were not deserted of God, 
 were not where He was not, even in the hour of dark- 
 ness when we yielded and sinned. "If I make my 
 bed in hell, behold thou art there." What is the law 
 of Divine Providence in this respect ? The passions 
 and sinful propensities to which we yielded, could not 
 have been stirred into activity without the influence of 
 those who live forever in such delights. They are in 
 hell; in bondage; and could not have assailed and 
 attempted us but with His permission ; and He would 
 not have permitted it but for our possible good. If the 
 question be asked, how can this be, the answer is, that 
 every sinful propensity resisted, opens a way for the 
 opposite good affection to enter and be received into the 
 heart, and be loved and cherished there and made our 
 own. Therefore those evil propensities are awakened 
 which we may, if we will, resist, and only those. Again, 
 every sin committed strengthens and roots the disposi- 
 tion to that sin. But if it be repented of, the work of 
 repentance plucks the poison-plant out from the heart, 
 and when that sin is hated, the opposite good is loved. 
 If therefore we are conscious, not merely that we 
 lament the external consequences of our fault, not 
 merely that we fear its punishment in this world or 
 another, not merely that our pride is sorely wounded 
 and we shrink from the blow of dishonor — but that 
 we hate the sin and the sinful thought that led to it, 
 
PROYIDENCE. 57 
 
 then it becomes our duty to hope that one disposition, 
 one propensity, one obstacle which stood between the 
 life of God in us and our conscious, voluntary life, has 
 been taken away. Such is the law of Divine Provi- 
 dence. There are, who pass through life with but 
 few stains upon their innocence, few recollections to 
 haunt the memory with a dark presence, few appa- 
 rent reasons for beating the breast like the publican in 
 the gospel, and uttering the cry, have mercy upon me, 
 a sinner. Yet it is not always upon them that the 
 highest blessing rests; it may not be they who can 
 best understand and most deeply feel that Divine Love 
 which uttered the words of mercy, — They to whom 
 much is forgiven love much. We are all filled with 
 the seeds and germs of all that is evil. It is these 
 which constitute the chasm, the barrier between our 
 inmost life and our outward life; and as more of these 
 are drawn forth into consciousness, resisted and so put 
 away, the more freely that life which comes directly 
 from God may flow from within and animate our con- 
 scious will and thought. 
 
 For it is to be known and well considered, that it is 
 not the efibrt of the life within to control, subdue, en- 
 slave the life without. But to fill it, liberate it, make 
 it a willing instrument, endow it with new life and bless 
 it with its own happiness. There are two things which 
 constitute angelic life and its happiness; one is the 
 
58 PROVIDENCE!. 
 
 knowledge and perception that their whole life, their 
 every thought, affection, faculty and power are from 
 God, and are His. The other is, the consciousness 
 that these things have become theirs ; and that they 
 live and work and are happy, as of themselves, though 
 from Him. Hence it may be understood, that every 
 one of our conscious thoughts and affections which be- 
 comes such that the inmost life is able to reach and fill 
 it, becomes also a means by which the happiness of that 
 life reaches us and comes into our possession and into 
 our consciousness. It is the constant endeavor of that 
 life to bring into conformity and correspondence with 
 itself, all of those thoughts and affections, or as many 
 of them as may be so regenerated; because in that 
 proportion the freedom with which it fills our conscious 
 life is increased and the blessings it bestows are multi- 
 plied. 
 
 Hence, too, it may be understood why regeneration 
 makes us happy. The effect of it is, to make the 
 Divine life our life ; ours by voluntary adoption ; ours 
 in freedom ; ours in willingness and love. This life 
 is love, and therefore it is happiness. So far as 
 we are in self-love, we nourish within us the cen- 
 tral root from which springs everything of evil. We 
 cannot always trace back to this origin all the evils 
 we commit or of which we are conscious. Their dis- 
 guises are many ; they lead us away in many direc- 
 
PKOVIDBNCE. 59 
 
 tions ; but they all radiate from one common centre, 
 and that centre is the love of self. And this love 
 has its delights. Bad men, and bad spirits who 
 were bad men, enjoy them. But these delights differ 
 from the blessedness of genuine love precisely as 
 that differs in its whole essence and effect from self- 
 love. Only the enjoyments of this last, — impure, 
 transient, disturbed, and gro'velling, — they who are 
 unregenerate can know ; for the love which feels and 
 confers a higher happiness has not yet penetrated to 
 their conscious perceptions and their thoughts. This 
 can be only so far as their hearts are purged from 
 self-love and from pride, from sin and the propensity 
 to sin ; and therefore only so far can the life within, 
 from its latent, inward, unconscious condition, come 
 forth into free and manifested life, and be felt as the 
 source of a truer, higher happiness, as happiness itself, 
 as Heaven. 
 
 And there is another, a yet wider application which 
 may be made of these truths. Do they not solve that 
 which has been called the riddle of life from the days 
 when the Sphinx was fabled to sit by the wayside, 
 with a countenance full of charms, but armed below 
 with weapons of destruction, propounding her ques- 
 tions to all who passed, and devouring all who failed to 
 answer ? So is Human life in all its ongoings ; in its 
 whole course of social or individual existence. . Fuji 
 
60 PKOVIDENCE. 
 
 of charms and interests which absorb the whole care 
 and the whole love of most men, and enwrap the heart 
 as with a veil of clouds ; but clasping with the embrace 
 of death those who fail to recognize and pursue the 
 true purpose of life. Who is there that is capable of 
 one thought higher than the low level on which he 
 walks, but has asked himself why indeed he lives? 
 Is it only to learn this trade or art or profession, and 
 perform this or that labor, and so get shelter, food, and 
 raiment, and then pass away? It is for all these 
 things, but for them because within them all lie the 
 infinite purposes of the Almighty. This life is disci- 
 plinatory and preparatory in no merely general sense. 
 It is strictly so, always, in every particular to all. 
 Every one may know, for the Word of God and all 
 reason and religion are always ready to tell him, that 
 his use or employment, however humble and poor and 
 opposed to his taste and wishes, is given him, because 
 it is precisely that which is best adapted to develop and 
 exercise those affections, which may hereafter have the 
 breadth of Heaven for their scope, the works of Heaven 
 for their employment, and the happiness of Heaven for 
 their effect. Vast is the difference in earthly positions 
 and occupations in the eye of man. In the sight of 
 God the only difference is in the use which is made of 
 them, for there is no difference in the purpose for 
 which they are given. They differ, as men differ, be- 
 
PROVIDENCE. 61 
 
 cause to all they are exactly adapted. But they are 
 alike in this ; they are always just those employments, 
 by means of which, while man is heartily engaged in 
 them from love to his fellow-men and a wish to love 
 God and do his duty, his inmost life may be bending 
 and leading the thoughts and affections which these 
 employments excite, into conformity with itself, so that 
 it may prepare them to be filled with the life of heaven. 
 The degree in which this is effected depends upon the 
 degree in which we do the very duty which lies before 
 us, from benevolent and religious motives, — or, to 
 use better words, from love to our neighbor and love 
 to God. 
 
 In no man can this work be perfected. In no man 
 can the life which fills his inmost, become absolutely 
 one with his external life. But this work was per- 
 fected in our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. The 
 inmost of His life was not an influx from God ; it was 
 Jehovah, Himself; and His external life was the human 
 nature born of Mary. That inmost Life, through temp- 
 tations which were admitted to that human nature, and 
 which were such as no mere man could endure, through 
 sorrows such as no man could outlive, through combats 
 passing all human strength, glorified that human nature 
 
62 PBOVIDENCE. 
 
 and made it one with the Divine, and made it itself 
 Divine. This was the whole work ; then was that com- 
 pletely done and fully consummated, which each one of 
 us may do in our own degree and in our own way — 
 must do or be lost. But because it was aU done in 
 Him and in His Life, therefore we are commanded to 
 take up the cross and follow Him ; and therefore we 
 are permitted to hope that at every step of our progress 
 He is working with us. 
 
 He drank the cup offered to His lips ; He ascended 
 to His Father and our Father. If we, too, drink, the 
 bitterness of its taste will pass away, and in His path 
 we also shall ascend ; and our home will be near His 
 home, and it will be eternal. 
 
CORRESPONDENCE. 
 
 In former pages I have spoken of the correspond- 
 ence between the world of matter and the world of 
 spirit; nor could I say aught of Life, or of Divine 
 Providence, without recognizing this correspondence; 
 because only through it and by it have spiritual causes 
 operated to produce material creation. The same 
 causes always operate in the same way to preserve and 
 perpetuate creation. AU the powers and activities of 
 nature, all its laws, its substances, its forms, and changes, 
 are at once the effect and the mirror of spiritual ener- 
 gies. 
 
 But the effect of this correspondence which first 
 meets an inquirer into the doctrines of the New Jeru- 
 salem, is that which is manifested in the Word. He 
 learns that this is written according to the laws of 
 correspondence; that there is within the letter a spirit, 
 within the body a soul. That the science of corre- 
 
64 COKBESPONDENCE. 
 
 spondence, being now revealed, interprets anew the 
 Word of God, and discloses the spiritual truths which 
 lie within the literal ; and he finds very soon, in the 
 works of Swedenborg, in sermons, and other New 
 Church compositions, passages of Scripture so ex- 
 plained. The exceeding beauty of many of these 
 explanations delights the imagination. The profound 
 moral significance thus given to many texts, which in 
 the letter "profit nothing," touches every heart that 
 has any religious tendency ; the emotion of surprise 
 and the charm of entire novelty make these explana- 
 tions yet more attractive. An earnest desire to read 
 in this way all the Scriptures is awakened ; and as yet 
 the inquirer knows no reason why he may not learn to 
 interpret them by the science of correspondence, just 
 as he has learnt or seen others learn to interpret them 
 from their original languages. The attenlj)t is made ; 
 but unexpected difficulties arise ; it is not found easy, 
 and seems indeed very difficult ; and the disappoint- 
 ment produces not only a feeling of uncertainty as to 
 what correspondences are, but perhaps a doubt whether 
 they are any thing more than a mere ingenious fancy. 
 If such a person happens to have some acquaintance 
 with " Phrenology," he may think of the " organ of 
 comparison," of which it is supposed to be the office 
 and the delight to discern resemblances and analogies, 
 and to construct parables and symbolic representations. 
 
CORRESPONDENCE. 65 
 
 Much of this has always been done ; but more in those 
 Eastern lands, where the Old Testament and much of 
 the New were written, than elsewhere ; and he sup- 
 poses the same faculty, existing in a high degree in 
 Swedenborg, may have brought out many beautiful 
 and striking results, without disclosing new principles 
 or a new science. 
 
 We have known readers to labor awhile under these 
 difficulties, from which they are gradually relieved as 
 they begin to understand better the grounds, principles, 
 and results of the science of correspondence. Some 
 of the views and truths, which may serve to make 
 these difficulties press less heavily and pass the sooner 
 away, I propose to present, very briefly 
 
 In the first place, then, I must repeat that the 
 Science of Correspondence rests upon and springs from 
 the Laws of Existence. The pi'oblem of Being pre- 
 sents its most difficult question to the human mind in 
 the inquiry how God created and creates, sustains and 
 fills the world. The answer is, — from Himself, and 
 in such wise that all things being linked together and 
 to Him, are connected by a mutual interdependence, 
 and by definite relations. The inmost of all things, is 
 Love. And this in its various forms of afiection, de- 
 sire, and purpose, produces thought; and thoughts 
 clothe themselves in words. But the same power and 
 5 
 
66 CORHESPONDENCE. 
 
 providence which, from its own Love, supplies men 
 with Love, makes the outward world also. All the 
 energies, tendencies, and activities of the outward, ma- 
 terial worid, are derived from the same Love, and are 
 images and forms which bear its impress and reveal 
 its nature and operation. And not the laws and ener- 
 gies of nature only, but the substances and forms of 
 this outward world, — oM its material things, — are 
 again effects and images of the same Love, and of the 
 Divine Wisdom which springs from the Divine Love 
 as men's thoughts do from their affections. Because 
 the. Divine Love is infinite and inexhaustible, and be- 
 cause it is guided by an equal wisdom, it is able and 
 disposed to come down even into the lowest things of 
 nature, and form there what is needed for use ; and 
 accommodate itself in every stage of its descent, to all 
 the subjects which it forms and fills. Being everywhere 
 one and the same infinite thing, however variously mo- 
 dified, all these subjects image it, reflect it, reveal it 
 And hence and thus, God is All in all. 
 
 One consequence of this is, that the whole material 
 world is representative and significant of the inner 
 world of spirit, mind, and affection. And this not 
 generally only, but particularly ; not in a loose, poet- 
 ical, imaginative sense, but strictly and most truly so, 
 by its constitution and the very laws of its being. 
 
 Another consequence is, that truths which relate to 
 
CORRESPONDENCE. 67 
 
 character, conduct, motive and life, may be imaged and 
 represented by more external truths which relate to 
 the things of the external world and have no apparent 
 reference to duty ; and truths which in express terms 
 prescribe laws of conduct of an external kind, may 
 have within them other and higher laws of spiritual 
 life. This is the way in which the Bible — the Word 
 of God — is written. Not by the genius of man; nor 
 through a thorough knowledge of the laws of corre- 
 spondence ; but by Divine Inspiration. Because writ- 
 ten by Divine Inspiration, and for the purposes of 
 Divine mercy, it is so written that its external truths 
 are and forever will remain the basis of aU religious 
 or genuine improvement, while, at the same time, they 
 contain a distinct class of higher internal truths. This 
 is effected by the laws of correspondence, and it is in 
 exact conformity with those laws. Hence, too, these 
 internal truths are in no sense a substitute for, and still 
 less are they to be regarded as in the attitude of oppo- 
 sition to the external truths. 
 
 A large part of the Word, especially of the Old 
 Testament, contains, in its literal sense, very little 
 which has any discernible relation to conduct and cha- 
 racter; and of this part it can only be said now, that 
 treasures of truths which have this relation are here 
 stored up within the spiritual sense. But the greater 
 portion contains, in the literal sense, truths or facts 
 
68 CORRESPONDENCE. 
 
 illustrative ot truths, which are precisely those needed 
 and best adapted to improve the conduct and external 
 character. 
 
 It is not difficult to understand that one truth and 
 one kind of truth will operate beneficially upon a per- 
 son in one state of mind and in one condition, and an- 
 other truth upon a person in another state and condi- 
 tion. It is in this adaptation of truths, by various 
 means, that the mercy and wisdom of God are mani- 
 fested. Hence the vast diversity of religions ; and 
 hence the variety in the instruction and amount of 
 knowledge given to diiferent individuals, in the same 
 church or professing the same religion. This diversity 
 depends upon differences of character, which, for the 
 most part, are beyond our perception or comprehension ; 
 and, therefore, even if we have a general understand- 
 ing of the principles which must govern and direct this 
 adaptation, we cannot always clearly comprehend the 
 application of these principles to particular cases. But 
 the principal and most general means of this adaptation 
 is the difference and mutual relation of the natural and 
 spiritual senses of the Word. Nor can it be difficult 
 to obtain some clear views of the ground of difference 
 between the external and the internal truths of the 
 Bible. 
 
 We must, in the first place, remember that the great 
 purpose of the written Word, as of the incarnate 
 
CORRESPONDENCE. 69 
 
 Word, is, " to call sinners to repentance." Therefore 
 it addresses itseif first to sinners ; to those who indulge 
 sinful propensities and feelings and have acquired sin- 
 ful habits. It is perfectly obvious, that with persons 
 as yet buried in the slough of sinfulness, motives of the 
 most elevated and spiritual character have little or no 
 power. Fear, and the hope of recompense, and caution 
 and prudence are, in them, all that can be appealed to 
 successfully. The external truths and commands of 
 the "Word make this appeal. They require the re- 
 nouncing of sinful pleasures and the resisting of sinful 
 propensities, under fearful penalties and with magni- 
 ficent promises. If they prevail ; if the command be 
 obeyed ; then the whole conduct is reformed ; then the 
 various propensities to sin are weakened by resistance ; 
 new states of mind and feeling grow up ; new capa- 
 cities of improvement by new means are developed ; 
 for the mind can comprehend and the heart can feel 
 new motives. Then the time has come when these 
 new motives can be presented by means of new truths ; 
 and the new truths, which may supply new motives, 
 are the internal truths of the Word ; and their rela- 
 tion to the external truths of the Word is such, that an 
 obedience to the literal commands of Scripture is the 
 precise and appropriate preparation for listening to its 
 spiritual commands. 
 
 In fact, these commands may be called the same. 
 
70 CORRESPONDENCE. 
 
 The literal truth of the word is the same with its spi- 
 ritual truth; but it is this truth brought down into 
 lower forms, in order that it may thereby be adapted 
 to lower states of thought arid affection, and elevate 
 them ; and as these are elevated, the truth rises also, 
 and the faint light of morning brightens into day. 
 
 In considering the intellectual difficulties which op- 
 pose a thorough learning of the science of correspond- 
 ence, its extent should be regarded. For the spiritual 
 truth of the "Word, in its own nature infinite, can be 
 adequately expressed by correspondent natural truths, 
 only because the correspondence between spiritual and 
 natural things is universal. This lower world is but a 
 world of effects, of which the higher and inner spiritual 
 world is the world of causes. Every thing, every sub- 
 stance, every energy, every law of nature, is the effect 
 of a spiritual cause to which it corresponds, and of 
 which it is the expression and image. Hence the 
 science of correspondence can never be fully known, 
 until the whole spiritual world, and all the natural 
 world, and all the laws of mind and matter are fully 
 known. That is, it can never be fully known ; because 
 the condition of a healthy human mind, in this world 
 and in the other,, is one of eternal progress and im- 
 provement. More is continually learnt of the love and 
 wisdom of God as manifested in creation, and therefore 
 more is continually learnt of the science of corre- 
 
COEEESPONDKNCE. 71 
 
 spondence. But it follows, also, that all progress in 
 the knowledge of this science assists all progress in 
 other knowledge ; and, on the other hand, if the lead- 
 ing principles of this science are rightly apprehended, 
 all true knowledge promotes the better understanding 
 of them, and of their use and application. 
 
 Besides the extent of this science, there are other 
 sources of difficulty. One of them is this. Whatever 
 proceeds from the Source of being is in itself, and in 
 its origin, good ; and yet there is much evil in the 
 world ; because that which is good in its origin and 
 essence is abused and perverted by man. Thus, Love, 
 from Him who is Iiove itself, entering into the will of 
 man, becomes love, desire, affection in him. But it 
 becomes such desire or affection as the character of his 
 will may make it ; and therefore love with evil men 
 becomes love of self and hatred of others. In the 
 same way truth becomes falsehood. And whatever in 
 the natural world corresponds to and signifies love or 
 truth, may also be used to signify their opposites ; and 
 sometimes the question, which of these is meant, may 
 present a difficulty, although very generally the con- 
 text makes it clear. 
 
 Love and Wisdom, in their divine perfection and 
 infinity, are the Lord ; and heat and hght are their first 
 and most general representatives in nature. For these 
 flow continually from the sun, which is the image of 
 
72 CORllESPONDENCE. 
 
 the Lord, and represents him in the work of creation. 
 The whole material world is dependent upon and go- 
 verned by the sun, and every thing in it stands in a 
 definite relation to its heat and light ; and this relation 
 Borresponds to the relation between spiritual things 
 and Love and Wisdom. Hence, as there is nothing in 
 nature which does not stand in its own definite relation 
 to heat and light, so there is scarcely any thing which 
 may not be used to represent and indicate Love or 
 Wisdom in some of their forms or operations. The 
 difficulty of always distinguishing these, of always dis- 
 cerning and applying aright the laws of the science of 
 correspondence which relate to them, is similar to the 
 difficulty we find in comprehending and classifying the 
 things of nature, and acquiring a clear view of their 
 natural causes, laws, and relations. 
 
 But there is nothing in this or any difficulty, which 
 diminishes the worth of the science of correspondence, 
 or should operate as a reason for neglecting the study 
 of it. It will be understood that we have spoken of 
 these difficulties only in reference to the endeavor to 
 acquire a thorough knowledge of the science. What 
 is there of equal value which does not demand equal 
 labor ? But this same science ofiers itself at once to 
 the most simple, as explaining much that was before 
 hopelessly dark, and as giving life and utility to many 
 passages of the Word which were but a dead letter. 
 
CORRESrONDENCE. 73 
 
 Indeed, the science has never been wholly lost, and 
 cannot be. Some of its results are so obvious that 
 they force themselves upon every mind ; as for in- 
 stance, the analogy between Love and Heat, and be- 
 tween Truth and Light. The very faculty of compa- 
 rison, of which I have spoken in the beginning of these 
 remarks, has always found its most delightful and ele- 
 vating exercise in detecting and exhibiting these ana- 
 logies. Poetry is full of theift ; and the loftiest and 
 purest of all poetry is in the Bible, for the very reason 
 that here the laws of correspondence exert their full 
 influence. The proper function of the imagination is 
 not to delude, or give to nothing the name of some- 
 thing. The Creator of man gives him no faculty of 
 which the principal office is deception. We use our 
 imagination aright, when we ' look above the low plane 
 6f sensuous thought, and bring higher truths down 
 within the reach of reason ; of reason in its childlike 
 mood, loving to labor in the service of religion. The 
 oriental world, say critics and philosophers, was always 
 characterized by a disposition to figurative and para- 
 bolic expression ; and hence the Bible is full of it ! But 
 the Bible is God's Word ; and its fulness of symbolic 
 language arises from its absolute conformity with the 
 laws of correspondence. In the East, where, in the 
 early ages of the world, the science which discloses 
 these laws was well known, the remains of it, brou^t 
 
74 CORRESrONDEKCE. 
 
 down by tradition, and the effect of it perpetuatea 
 through successive generations, have imparted to the 
 human mind in those regions that peculiar disposition. 
 
 It is of some importance to discard from the mind 
 the idea that the science of correspondence offers a 
 new translation of the Bible, to be learnt as others are. 
 It is not as a foreign tongue that it is to be considered, 
 for many reasons. In the first place, it is not, as we 
 have already said, all foreign. In many passages the 
 symbolic character is manifest, and the spiritual mean- 
 ing comes to the surface, and is and always has been 
 universally recognized. There are very many others, 
 indeed the greater part of Scripture, where the internal 
 meaning may be distinctly discerned, after a little 
 acquaintance with the principles of correspondence 
 and some practice in applying them. Then, however, 
 the work only begins. Because th-e laws of corre- 
 spondence are among the essential laws of creation 
 and existence, and because all creation images and 
 reflects the infinite attributes of the Creator, therefore 
 the science of correspondence is itself infinite, and 
 progress in it will be eternal. Therefore greater 
 meaning and more fulness, variety and force of mean- 
 ing will be discovered and constantly again discovered 
 in the most familiar passages, as they are considered 
 in connection with others, and in their relation to va- 
 rious laws of mind and of matter. 
 
CORRESPONDENCE. 76 
 
 One thing should always be remembered in the study 
 of this science. It is not a merely natural science. It 
 is not one which stands disconnected from the will and 
 the life. No science, and no truth, needs to be so dis- 
 connected ; for there is no knowledge of any thing in 
 the universe of God which should not point the way 
 and lift the soul to Him. The time is coming when 
 all the paths of truth will be found leading upwards to 
 their origin. But other sciences may be so discon- 
 nected. Tills cannot be. The one thing which it 
 teaches is the correspondence of the whole material 
 world with the spirit-world; and its application to 
 Scripture gives moral instructiveness and religious 
 force to every passage. 
 
 We may understand, from its moral character, why 
 this science was withdrawn from the knowledge of 
 mankind. Recent investigations into the intellectual 
 condition of the ancient world, are making it probable 
 that those early times were illustrated by an amount 
 of knowledge which, in some directions, equalled or 
 surpassed all we now know ; and it is quite as obvious 
 that this knowledge was most peculiar in its character. 
 The explanation of this we have in the fact that the 
 science of correspondence was once familiarly known ; 
 that it was a thing of common perception ; that the 
 whole world of matter was transparent ; a medium of 
 light and not its veil. Of the race of man, as Words- 
 
76 OOURESPONDENCE. 
 
 worth has said of individual man, " Heaven lay around 
 him in his infancy." But as the heart became cor- 
 rupted, and thence arose the danger of perverting and 
 abusing this knowledge, it was withdrawn, at first into 
 the secret sanctuaries of religion, and then into the con- 
 cealed philosophies of earlier days ; there it was for a 
 while preserved and variously guarded, and its revela- 
 tions came down by a far-descending tradition, more and 
 more darkened and deformed, as there was among men 
 less that welcomed spiritual truth, until at length it 
 was almost wholly lost. 
 
 It may seem difficult to reconcile this decay and loss 
 of truth with the constant goodness of God. Many 
 pages ,would be needed to give an explanation of the 
 fact and the reason for it. But that such is the course 
 of Providence is obvious and certain. Why was Christ- 
 ianity delayed so long ; why diffused so slowly ; why 
 now is its reception so limited ? Without attempting 
 at this time to answer the question, I refer only to the 
 fact, as positive proof that it suits the purpose of Pro- 
 vidence to delay and to measure his gifts of truth, in 
 accordance with some kind of preparedness, whatever 
 that may be. In the same way and on the same 
 grounds, truths once given may be withdrawn, and 
 again re-given with greater brightness and fulness, 
 when unerring Wisdom sees that unfailing Mercy may 
 siafely bestow them. That time has come, and the 
 
CORRESPONDENCK. 77 
 
 science of correspondence is now revealed agaii^', to 
 man. 
 
 The fact that this revelation required, as its condi- 
 tion, a state of preparedness in mankind, may help us 
 to believe that it requires, also, a state of preparedness 
 in individual minds ; nor need it be very difficult to 
 understand this. If this science be studied from that 
 love of knowledge, which has not within it the love of 
 applying knowledge to its proper use, or if the ends and 
 uses for which knowledge is sought be not sanctified by 
 religion, if mental wealth be striven for as the aliment 
 of pride, and self-love, and self-reliance, the woe pro- 
 nounced on those who " trust in riches " falls upon it ; 
 and where this must be, it is the mercy of our Father 
 which says again, " I have blinded their eyes lest they 
 should see.'' The very first, — the earliest, and the 
 chiefest preparation for this study, is a preparation of 
 the heart ; a cleansing of the motives ; an earnest 
 prayer for light, because light reveals duty. 
 
 Nothing can be said more opposite to the common 
 belief than this ; nothing which would seem to most 
 readers more absolute foolishness. All around us pre- 
 vails a settled conviction, that the understanding alone 
 is employed or concerned in the investigation or acquire- 
 ment of truth ; that nothing is required as the condition 
 of obtaining it but strong faculties duly cultivated and 
 vigorously exerted. For there is an utter forgetfulne^* 
 
78 COEEESPONDENCE. 
 
 and disregard of (founded upon a total ignorance of 
 what is meant by) our Lord's declaration, that only as a 
 little child can any one receive the kingdom of heaven, 
 and that He reveals His truths to babes and sucklings. 
 There can be no better evidence or illustration of the 
 prevailing condition of the human mind than may be 
 found in this disregard and ignorance. Natural and 
 sensual truth now fills the horizon of the mental eye, 
 and spiritual truth has faded out of sight. 
 
 We have reached that period, or rather that state of 
 mind, denoted in the words of Israel to Dan. The 
 patriarch had gathered his children to see him die ; 
 and in few, but pregnant words, he prophesied of each, 
 what would " befall them in the last days." Of Dan 
 he says, " Dan shall judge his people as one of the 
 tribes of Israel. Dan shall be a serpent by the way, 
 an adder in the path, that biteth the heels of the horse, 
 so that his rider shall fall backward." The twelve 
 sons of Israel, as afterwards the twelve tribes, and still 
 later, the twelve apostles, represent, as a whole, the 
 whole church, or the whole mind of man ; and indivi- 
 dually they represent its distinctive elements. Dan's 
 portion and residence were at the extreme north of 
 Palestine, whence the phrase, "from Dan to Beer- 
 sheba." His home was the coldest and the farthest 
 from Jerusalem; and he represented the sensuous 
 reason, as it may be called ; or the disposition and 
 
CORRESPONDENCE. 79 
 
 faculty of judging of things only by the senses, and by 
 reasonings resting directly upon them. He corre- 
 sponds to the apostle Thomas, who, after the Lord had 
 arisen and stood before the disciples, could not believe, 
 until " he laid his fingers in the wound." Yet Dan was 
 one among the tribes, as Thomas was one of the apos- 
 tles ; because this faculty and disposition are good, and 
 have a most important office to perform. Hence it is 
 said, " Dan shall judge his people as one of the tribes 
 of Israel." But let him judge only his people; and let 
 him judge them as one of the tribes of Israel; then this 
 faculty, acting within its proper shere and in a proper 
 spirit, keeps the mind steady, and gives strength and 
 clearness to conviction. Hence the apostle Thomas, 
 when he did believe, spake as none other of the apos- 
 tles did ; " Thomas answered and said unto him, my 
 Lord and my God." But in " the last days " Dan shall 
 become " a serpent," " an adder ; " for the serpent is 
 an animal which cannot leave the ground, however 
 agile and strong and able to penetrate every crevice or 
 recess. It is said of him, " Upon thy belly shalt thou 
 go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life ; " 
 and he corresponds to and represents sensuous reason- 
 ing in its perversion and abuse. Paths are the way, 
 by which men go forward, and truths are the ways by 
 which the mind goes forward, and paths correspond to 
 and signify truths ; and it is in these truths that this ser- 
 
80 COHRBSPONDENCE. 
 
 pent now lieth in wait. The horse which draws or 
 bears man along his paths, corresponds to and signifies 
 the faculty of making progress in truth, and, as the 
 chief of all, it denotes the understanding of the Word ; 
 and it is this which the serpent now lying in wait in 
 the paths of the mind, hiteih, so that the bidee 
 
 FALLETH BACKWARD. 
 
 Perhaps it may be well to remark, that while the 
 great purpose of the science of correspondence is to 
 open the spiritual senses of the Bible, that is not its 
 only effect. This science being a thing of familiar 
 and universal knowledge in the earliest ages, was pre- 
 served in subsequent times under the form of tradition 
 and mystery, as has been already said, and it formed 
 or at least greatly influenced the fables and mytholo- 
 gies which have come down to us. These were much 
 corrupted, and have reached us in a very imperfect 
 form. Yet will they be found capable of interesting 
 illustration. As an instance of this, the doctrine of 
 metempsychosis or transmigration may be referred to. 
 It is found almost everywhere. In Greece and Bome 
 and Egypt and the East, it is seen, and in forms more 
 or less disguised traces of it are discernible in nearly 
 all the religions of which we know any thing distinctly. 
 Differing somewhat in detail, it was always substan- 
 tially as follows. He who is not good, passes at death 
 into the form of some kindred animal, and thence into 
 
CORRESPONDENCE. 81 
 
 another and another, until the circle of expiation being 
 completed, he becomes again a man, and a redeemed 
 and happy one. Now this doctrine was taught very 
 earnestly by Pythagoras ; a man whom we can sneer 
 at only when we can forget the vast influence he ex- 
 erted in his own day, and through such men as Plato 
 ever since, and the golden truths still discernible in the 
 fragmentary remnants of his doctrines, and the fact 
 that the system of the universe established by Coper- 
 nicus was but a revival of his own, and the many other 
 indications of the extent and accuracy of his know- 
 ledge. How, then, could he have taught such a folly ? 
 But are we sure that it is all folly, that it contains no 
 certain, no valuable truth ? Let us ask if the science 
 of correspondence can explain it. Man, the micro- 
 cosm, or little world, as Pythagoras and Plato and so 
 many of the ancients called him, represents the uni- 
 verse. Thus, all animals that ever were or can exist, 
 live by virtue of the fact that they severally represent 
 some of the elements, faculties, or qualities of the 
 human character. Goodness does not consist so much 
 in the absence of any of these, as in the presence 
 of all and their due subordination, and their harmo- 
 nious performance of their several functions. Among 
 the prophecies which foretell the establishment of a 
 true church among men, or, (for it is the same thing 
 upon a different scale) the establishment of a true 
 6 
 
82 COKEESPONDENCE. 
 
 church within a man ; are those which declare, that 
 "the wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the 
 leopard shall lie down with the kid ; and the calf and 
 the young lion and the fatling together ; and a little 
 child shall lead them. And the cow and the bear shall 
 feed, their young ones shall lie down together ; and the 
 lion shall eat straw like an ox.'' He is a bad man, in 
 whom this order and harmony are interrupted; in 
 whom some one has usurped a supremacy and con- 
 quered the soul. Suppose that such a man begins to 
 reform and is penetrated with a profound sense of evil. 
 He becomes aware perhaps that he is lost and buried 
 in foul and gross gluttony, and in his remorse he feels 
 that he is not a man, that sin has transformed him, 
 that he is no better than a hog ! He says with the 
 Psalmist, " I am as a beast before thee ! " And he 
 repents and reforms and casts this sin way. Then he 
 discovers that his ferocity makes him a tiger, and the 
 same process of acknowledgment, repentance, and re- 
 form, again relieves him, and then it may be he sees 
 in himself the cunning of the fox, or other and yet 
 other faults which disfigure and conceal his human 
 nature. So he goes on, until this same acknowledg- 
 ment, repentance, and reform have been repeated until 
 they have cast out the devils and restored him to the 
 power, the consciousness and the happiness of man- 
 hood. Now we know that Pythagoras had an inner 
 
CORKESPONDENCE. 83 
 
 and secret doctrine, never published, and taught only 
 in private to the initiated under the most solemn obli- 
 gation of secrecy. Is it too much to suppose that 
 these two doctrines, the inner and the outer, had some 
 relation to each other? What would he have gained 
 by teaching the doctrine as we have stated it above, to 
 the gross and grovelling world about him ? What bet- 
 ter thing could he do than to teach them the same truth 
 in the lower form of the metempsychosis, as he gave 
 it to the public ? 
 
 It is to be noticed that this doctrine in its lower and 
 grosser form is adapted to do for the lower and grosser 
 classes of minds, the very same good which the same 
 doctrine in its higher form is able to confer upon minds, 
 in a condition to receive it and be subject to its in- 
 fluence. They who would not resist gluttony, or fero- 
 city, or low cunning, because they disfigured their spi- 
 ritual humanity, might do so, if they were persuaded 
 that they must expiate these sins in the bestial shape 
 and life of the hog, the tiger, and the fox. In this 
 lower form, its influence upon minds to which it was 
 then fitted, would gradually elevate those which were 
 capable of improvement into a capacity of hearing and 
 profiting by the higher. This would be in exact con- 
 formity with the law which prevails over the relation 
 between internal and external truth, and between the 
 literal and spiritual senses of the Word. On similar 
 
84 CORRESPONDENCE. 
 
 grounds I account for the universal prevalence of the 
 doctrine of metempsychosis, which Pythagoras himself 
 derived from Egypt. Apply this law to the Bible, 
 and we shall come to the result already stated, that 
 observance of the precepts of the literal sense is pre- 
 cisely the way in which we may be elevated into the* 
 purer atmosphere, where the voice of an inner law 
 may be heard. 
 
 So, too, there are applications of the science of cor 
 respondence to the ancient classical mythology, which 
 often make it significant. Sisyphus and Tantalus, und 
 the like, are no longer the wild and meaningless crea- 
 tions of fantasy, and we can understand their perma- 
 nence, and charm, and power, amid the beautiful culti- 
 vation of the Greek mind. Pegasus, the winged horse, 
 again alights upon Helicon, and opens a new Hippo- 
 crene, and again Minerva tames his fire, and gives him 
 to the warrior who is called to do battle with the mon- 
 ster Chimaera. But these things would carry me too 
 far, and perhaps it would have been better not to have 
 referred to topics which I have not space to explain. 
 
 To Emanuel Swedenborg was revealed, and by 
 him was published for the instruction of mankind the 
 spiritual sense of Genesis, Exodus, and the Apocalypse. 
 His works on these subjects consist of about eighteen 
 octavo volumes ; and in them very many passages from 
 
CORRESPONDENCE. 85 
 
 other parts of the Bihie are incidentally mentioned and 
 explained. In his other theological writings, which 
 amount to seven or eight volumes more, he treats 
 often of the science of correspondence and its prin- 
 ciples. Books of various descriptions have been written 
 by others, intended to assist in the study of the works 
 of Swedenborg. The sermons of the New Church are 
 generally explanations of Scripture. Let him, or her, 
 who would inquire into this science, apply to these 
 books and aids. Every single passage or text of Scrip- 
 ture, which is so learnt and understood, leads to others. 
 When the mind is employed in the endeavor to apply 
 the principles of correspondence, it may happen that 
 a supposed meaning is not the true one, and a better 
 knowledge will correct the error. As more and more 
 examples of the spiritual meaning of the Word are 
 understood, they will throw light upon each other, and 
 gradually lead to a comprehension of the principles of 
 the science of correspondence. In this case, as in all 
 others, true knowledge will become the parent of know- 
 ledge. The progress may seem to be slow ; sometimes 
 it will be toilsome and difficult ; but it will be pro- 
 gress. And it depends only on the mind, the motive, 
 the purpose, and the heart of the student, whether that 
 progress shall be eternal. 
 
THE HUMAN FORM. 
 
 It is seldom that the word " Form " is used in any 
 sense which would not be adequately expressed by the 
 word " shape." Indeed these words are usually regarded 
 as synonymous. But this is an error; and an injurious 
 error so far as it limits the idea of form to its lowest 
 and most external manifestation ; for shape is but one 
 manifestation oi form. It is far nearer the truth to 
 regard Form as the mode of existence. "We can un- 
 derstand it better by considering it in its relation to its 
 correlative idea — essence. For this purpose essence 
 may be defined as what one is, while form is how one 
 is. Essence is that from which a thing derives its 
 quality and its power, while form is that hy which a 
 thing manifests its quality and exerts its power. 
 
 It is somewhat difficult for those who are accus- 
 tomed to what has been called Philosophy, until quite 
 recently, in England and this country, to admit that 
 
THE HUMAN POKM. 87 
 
 essence has any reality. For this philosophy is the 
 philosophy of sensuous thought, and it rests upon the 
 foundations which were laid by Mr. Locke, in his Essay 
 on the Human Understanding, with admirable skill and 
 consistency. He proves, with all the force of demon- 
 stration, that if retiectioii makes use of no materials 
 but the facts of sensation, and acknowledges no entities 
 of an higher order, it can form or recognize no idea of 
 essence ; and as sensuous thought admits of no other 
 materials, and acknowledges nothing more, he con- 
 cludes that essence is nothing. And- it is nothing 
 within the range and scope of his system ; for the idea 
 of essence and whatever belongs to this idea, transcends 
 the faculty and function of sensuous thought ; and it 
 is therefore true, that, viewed in this way, essence has 
 no existence. 
 
 It is also true in fact, and as a conclusion of the 
 strictest logic, that essence has no separate and inde- 
 pendent existence whatever, because whatever exists 
 must have its own distinct _/br»j or mode of existence. 
 And it is also and equally true, that form has no sepa- 
 rate and independent existence, because whatever exists 
 must manifest outwardly and bring forth into effect its 
 essence, or its own essential nature and use. Thus 
 these two, essence and form, must combine to make up 
 the whole of any real entity. 
 
 We repeat, that it may be difficult for those who are 
 
88 THE HUMAN FOEM. 
 
 accustomed only to a sensuous philosophy, or are wholly 
 unused to consider subjects of this kind, to understand 
 the relation between these two things. It is, however, 
 of some importance. As soon as the words " Essence " 
 and " Form " are presented to any mind, a dim con- 
 ception comes at once of the superiority of essence 
 over form ; and a common use of the words " essen- 
 tial" and "formal" is expressive of the common sense 
 of mankind, and is built upon and implies this concep- 
 tion. A negative and narrow philosophy, finding itself 
 wholly unable to remove the dimness of this thought, 
 imputes the darkness, not to its own eye, but to the 
 object. It finds, in the very blindness which cannot 
 (Mscern the higher principles of mind, good reason for 
 denying their existence and denouncing the results to 
 which they lead. But a better philosophy takes us 
 back to common sense, and at once confirms its im- 
 pressions, and defines and illustrates them by the light 
 of its own clearer views and loftier principles. Such 
 a philosophy must recognize the soul, the destiny of 
 man, the laws of his creation and his life, the purpose 
 of his being, and his relation to its Infinite Source. It 
 cannot but discern, that whatever exists, be it spiritual 
 or material, of the highest or lowest worth, exists by 
 virtue of an inherent and indispensable quality upon 
 which its identity is founded, and which determines 
 what the thing is ; while it also exists in some p^rti- 
 
THE HUMAN FOEM. 89 
 
 cular mode, which is exactly suited to its true quality, 
 and by means whereof that may come forth into action 
 and influence, and perform the function for which it 
 exists. If the true relation between essence and form 
 be apprehended, it will be seen that the essence of a 
 thing is that whereby and for which the creative Pro- 
 vidence creates and determines the form ; because the 
 form is but the appearance and instrument of the 
 essence, or its way of coming forth into existence and 
 action. 
 
 This truth, like most others of importance, forces 
 itself upon our recognition, and is always, however 
 dimly, seen. Thus, when it is proposed so to arrange 
 a society as that it may perform its destined use, it is 
 not unusual to speak of its form and of bringing it into 
 form, although the society cannot have a shape like any 
 single thing. The common phrase of bringing irregu- 
 lar or incoherent matters into " form and order " im- 
 plies an identity between form and order, which is far 
 nearer the truth than the more common identity of 
 form and shape. 80, too, it is very properly said, 
 that our thoughts are the forms of our affections, and 
 again, that our thoughts form themselves into words. 
 But still this truth is so imperfectly seen, that we are 
 apt to suppose it has no real existence. We say that 
 in expressions like those, we are only using figurative 
 language; and then we think that we have no real 
 
90 THE HUMAN FORM. 
 
 truth, until we descend far down, to the notion that 
 there is no real form, but shape ; for we do not know 
 that we are then descending from the truth itself which 
 is in the higher regions of the mind, down to its shadow, 
 which lies upon the earth. 
 
 What we commonly call Form, is but the aspect 
 which a thing bears when presented to our senses, or 
 rather when our senses present it to our mind. This 
 is the shape or the physical or material form. It is 
 that whereby our senses take cognizance of the thing 
 which however exists in its true and more internal 
 form. Indeed, we usually limit this to the testimony 
 of two of our senses, — the touch and the sight. Thus 
 a rose is grateful to our sense of smell ; and it requires 
 but very little thought to be certain, that it must be the 
 peculiar organization of the parts and atoms of the 
 rose, which produce its peculiar fragrance. For this is 
 just as certain as that the shape and colors of the rose 
 give to it its beauty. Yet when we speak of the form 
 of the rose, we commonly mean only so much of its 
 form as the eye perceives. The same thing is equally 
 true of whatever gratifies or affects the ear or the 
 taste ; although, as I have already said, we commonly 
 limit our idea of form not only to the disclosures of 
 the senses, but to two only of them. 
 
 I have said that physical form or shape is that 
 whereby our senses of sight and touch take cognizance 
 
THE HUMAN FORM. 91 
 
 of a thing. And it may not be useless to consider why 
 our senses are given us ; especially, as an answer to 
 this question is obvious and easy. It is important to 
 our well-being, that we should be able to know the 
 existence, and recognize the presence of many of the 
 infinite variety of substances which compose the world 
 about us. Therefore we have senses, and these sub- 
 stances are so adjusted to our senses, and our senses to 
 them, that we perceive their presence and existence. 
 This perception of them, we call them ; and the aspect 
 under which they are perceived, or the testimony of 
 some of our senses concerning them, we call their 
 forms. 
 
 But there are also very many of these substances, 
 not so revealed to us. They are latent: some are 
 always invisible and intangible, others are so under 
 ordinary circumstances. Gravity, electricity, the ethers, 
 and all the forces and finest substances of nature are of 
 this class. Science, by observation and deduction, dis- 
 covers a part, and, as it improves, discovers more, and 
 willingly acknowledges their immeasurable importance 
 in the system of the universe ; and yet, of all these 
 things we usually say, they have no form. Although 
 it is not only true that they must have form, but pro- 
 bable that they are the agencies by means whereof all 
 grosser things are shaped. There is little harm in this, 
 for the human mind must begin, as the child's mind 
 
92 THE HUMAN FORM. 
 
 begins, with sensuous thought and knowledge ; and for 
 this degree and mode of thought they have no form. 
 But the mind ought, in its growth and development, to 
 rise, and constantly to be ascending above the lowest 
 plane; and the progress in this direction has, as yet, 
 been feeble and uncertain. 
 
 Still, though the growth of the mind upwards should 
 be continual and constant, it stfould be like the growth 
 of a tree, whose roots are firmly fastened in their native 
 soil. The plane of sensuous thought, and perception 
 must forever remain the basis of all true knowledge, all 
 sound belief, all wise and beneficent action. That we 
 should not know this class of truths alone, or that we 
 should not suppose it to stand alone, is important to the 
 mind's progress ; that we should not deny, or forget it, 
 is essential to its sanity. For it is but a false philo- 
 sophy and a false religion, which will allow the feet no 
 standing-place, and the heart no home. 
 
 In this case, as in many others, one extreme has 
 produced another, and the opposite extreme of wrong 
 is not often right. Ardent minds, shuddering at the 
 darkness and pained by the fetters of the prison-house 
 of sensuous philosophy, have broken forth and lost 
 themselves delightedly in the misty mazes of " Tran- 
 scendentalism," and other similar illusions. Symptoms 
 of the reproduction of an ancient Gnosticism are visible 
 around us. Rejoicing that thought is unchained, men 
 
THE HUMAN FORM. 93 
 
 forget that it is unguided ; and it leaves tlie solid earth, 
 upborne by the wings of fantasy ; its home is the path- 
 less air, and its fruit is nothingness. Not very imper- 
 fectly is this fallacy typified by the popular error in 
 eastern countries, where they suppose the Bird of 
 Paradise never alights, and lives only on the wing. 
 They deem her beauty and her name too glorious for 
 the earth. But they forget that they thus doom her 
 never to know the refreshment of rest amid the shelter- 
 ing foliage, nor the joy of brooding over her young, in 
 their still and steadfast nest. 
 
 These two errors are opposites ; and both may be 
 best illustrated by again comparing the mind to a living 
 tree. The falsity which believes in nothing beyond the 
 plane and power of sensuous thought, mole-hke, bur- 
 rows in the ground, and is blind to the lovely sky and 
 the blessed sun, and believes that the roots upon which 
 it feeds in damp and darkness are all the tree, all that 
 lives, all that is. But the opposite falsity would sever 
 the living plant from its sustaining roots and cast it 
 upwards, as if it could grow in the air, or live when 
 sundered from its means of life. The truth, equally 
 remote from both these falsities, tells us that the roots, 
 the stem, the branches, and their ornament and fruit, 
 all are necessary to the perfect and healthy tree. It 
 traces the fostering sap from the rootlets, far below the 
 surface, to the green leaf and the ripened fruit; it 
 
94 THE HUMAN FORM. 
 
 knows that the roots, forever at rest in their silent 
 darkness, differ from the branches that answer in grace- 
 ful motion to the wind, from the bright redundant 
 foliage, from the varied beauty and fragrance of the 
 blossom, from the fruit which gratifies the taste and 
 sustains the life of man, — only as sensuous thought 
 and knowledge differ from the loftier, purer, and 
 brighter perceptions of a Reason which acknowledges 
 Religion as its light and life. But it knows also, and 
 never forgets, that all these things are indissolubly con- 
 nected, all indispensably necessary. All are necessary, 
 all forever necessary to us, to all of us, by the very 
 constitution of our nature. And therefore it knows 
 also, that as this world is adjusted to our senses, and 
 our senses to this world while we live here, so, when 
 we go hence, we shall find the spirit-world adjusted to 
 our spiritual senses, or the senses of our spiritual body, 
 in a similar manner, and for a similar use, and from a 
 similar necessity. And therefore, there as here, we 
 have a home ; a world beneath, and above, and around 
 us, cognizable by our senses, adapted to our wants, 
 capable of administering to our eternal progress in 
 goodness and in wisdom, full of all the means of use- 
 fulness and improvement, and therefore of angelic hap- 
 piness. 
 
 Visible form, or shape, including the more internal 
 organization, of which we become awai'e by research 
 
THE HUMAN FORM. 95 
 
 and observation, are but the outer appearance of the 
 true form ; because that is, abstractedly considered, 
 only the mode of being. But the visible, external 
 form corresponds to and represents the true internal 
 form. By this, it is not meant that there is an inner 
 shape, of which visible shape is the image ; but that 
 the order, beauty, and adaptation to use of the true 
 form, are represented and revealed by the visible form, 
 because of the correspondence between them. Thus, 
 when more is known of the soul of man, it will be 
 seen that its faculties, proportions, functions, and enjoy- 
 ments all exist in their own form, and ai'e all repre- 
 sented by the corresponding visible form, which is its 
 instrument and clothing. When this relation is seen, 
 it will be readily believed that the soul without a body 
 is impossible ; and if it were possible, it would be 
 naked, useless, joyless ; that it must therefore have its 
 spiritual body in the spii'itual world. And this body 
 must be in the image of the material body, because 
 the material body being already in perfect correspond- 
 ence with the soul, and so its perfectly adapted en- 
 velope, a spiritual body not in its image would be less 
 perfectly adapted to be forever its dwelling and its 
 instrument. 
 
 The truth revealed through Swedenborg teaches that 
 the soul exists now and here in its own spiritual body, 
 of which the material body is but the temporary cover- 
 
96 THE HUMAN FORM. 
 
 ing, which is cast off at death ; that during this life, this 
 material body is at once a medium whereby the spirit- 
 ual senses perceive material things, and a veil which 
 prevents those senses from perceiving spiritual things. 
 
 If, however, we would know the central truth on the 
 subject of Form, — that from which all others flow, 
 and by which they may be illustrated, it is this ; that 
 God exists in a Perfect Human Form. 
 
 To those who are startled by this assertion, it may 
 be useful to reflect upon the source of human life and 
 character. If they have already realized that God 
 alone is the source of being ; that all being, therefore, 
 flows primarily from Him, they will begin to perceive 
 that the humanity of man implies a divine humanity 
 as its source. It is not the body and limbs, nor the 
 senses, nor the speech which constitute man. They 
 all belong to him, but only as coverings and instru- 
 ments of that which truly makes him, man ; for this is 
 his love and his wisdom in all their various forms of 
 affection and thought, and all their various effects in 
 life and conduct. Now, Love and Wisdom in their 
 divine perfection, and their infinitely diversified opera- 
 tion, constitute God ; and, on a lower scale, and derived 
 from Him, in their finite and imperfect reception and 
 manifestation, they constitute man. On this lower 
 scale and in their imperfection they constitute our Hu- 
 manity, and in their infinite source and perfection they 
 
THE HUMAN FORM. 97 
 
 constitute that Divine Humanity, from which our own 
 is the derivation and effect, and of which it was made 
 and is the image and likeness. 
 
 The human form as it exists in us, is, first the mode 
 of being which springs from our essential nature, and 
 is perfectly adapted to it, and this we will call our inner 
 form; and next our visible form, our human shape, 
 which again corresponds to and reveals our true and 
 inner form; and this we call our outer form. This 
 outer form is spiritual in the spiritual world, and so 
 adapted to that world ; and in this material world it is 
 material, and so adapted to this world. But in both 
 worlds our inner form puts on the outer form, that in 
 this and through this its due relations with others like 
 itself, and with the world about it, may be established, 
 and its proper uses performed. 
 
 The human form of God is His Divine mode of be- 
 ing, of which ours is the correspondent and revealed 
 image. For as Love and Wisdom in their perfection 
 constitute God, and in Him have their appropriate and 
 perfect mode of Being, which is His Divine Form, so 
 in their imperfection they constitute us and our form : 
 and this last is the express image of the former, be- 
 cause it is from Himself that God created man in his 
 own image and likeness. 
 
 When our Father comes before the thought, for 
 prayer, and worship, and love. He comes there as 
 
98 THE HUMAN FORM. 
 
 our Lord Jesus Christ, Jehovah God. And when He 
 appears to the senses of men or angels, and when he 
 has so appeared in former times, we are taught by 
 Swedenborg that He is and was manifest to sense, by 
 filling an angel with His presence, so fully, that the 
 individual nature of the angel is latent and inactive. 
 An angel, so filled with the Divine, is called in Scrip- 
 ture the angel of the Lord. As in the third chapter 
 of Exodus it is said, " The angel of the Lord appeared 
 unto him (Moses) out of the midst of a bush ; — and 
 God called unto him out of the midst of the bush, and 
 said, I am the God of thy father ; — and Moses hid his 
 face ; for he was afraid to look upon God." The word 
 translated " angel," both in Hebrew and Greek, or in 
 the Old and New Testaments, signifies one sent. But 
 His constant presence in the heavens, is as the Sun of 
 heaven. Its heat flows and is perceived as heat, but 
 the essence and inmost of this heat is Divine Love. 
 Its light flows and is perceived as light, but the essence 
 and inmost of this light is Divine Wisdom. Through 
 this Light and Heat He creates and preserves the 
 visible spiritual universe, as, through the heat and 
 light of the sun of this lower world. He creates and 
 preserves the earths of the material universe. The 
 angels ever see this Sun. They do not call it Him, 
 nor think it Him, nor worship it in His place. But 
 they know that within it and always acting through it, 
 
THE HUMAN FORM. 99 
 
 He is, a Man, a Divine Man, from whose Divine Hu- 
 manity their own is continually derived. As a Divine 
 Man they worship and they love Him ; and it is their 
 constant effort to bring men into that love and worship, 
 without which there is no beginning of angelic life on 
 earth, and no preparation for it. 
 
 We have said that God exists in a perfect human 
 form ; we have not said that He exists in human shape. 
 Form is more and "higher than shape. Form belongs 
 to all things of necessity ; it is the condition of exist- 
 ence, and without it there can be no existence. But 
 shape is for our senses, and for tbe sensuous reason, 
 which is the proper basis and ultimate of all thought ; 
 it is the aspect or manifestation of form. It is that 
 manifestation which brings the thing within reach of 
 our senses, spiritual or natural, for it is they which 
 recognize and measure shape, and thus aid and support 
 the mind. 
 
 Let it not be supposed, however, that shape is no- 
 thing, or a delusion, or a weakness. For shape is the 
 revelation of form in those things of which the senses 
 take cognizance. And the truths we learn by means 
 of shape, the impressions it gives, the feelings it ex- 
 cites, are not to be cast off as so many errors, but used 
 as the means of progress ; used for the information 
 they perpetually give of the form which lies within. 
 
 Shape, the senses, and all their faculties and all they 
 
100 THE HUMAN FORM. 
 
 tell US, are but the appointed means by which we may 
 here and hereafter recognize persons, and discharge 
 towards them our various duties, and also so use the 
 outer world as to stand upright upon it, and possess it 
 as our own, and grow into our destined stature. For 
 between mind, on the one hand, and the objects of 
 thought and perception on the other, forever lies the 
 world of sense and shape. And this world is capable 
 of two effects. It is, according to our constitution of 
 mind and the use we make of it, a veil and a thick 
 darkness, or a world of transparent media, exquisitely 
 adapted to the perceptive faculty on the one hand, and 
 to the highest objects of perception on the other. This 
 adaptation is possible and is effected, because, between 
 whatever is within and whatever is without, between 
 the whole world of thought and intellectual life and the 
 whole world of sense, there is an exact and constant 
 correspondence. 
 
 Let us then hold fast to the great truth, that God 
 ever remains Infinite in Form, filling all space with^ 
 out being subject to the limitation of space; and yet 
 never forget, that His Form is truly and perfectly 
 Human in the strictest sense and in all particulars. 
 We may surely understand that something would be 
 wanting in us, something without which our eternal 
 progress and never-ending approach towards Him who 
 is Perfection, would be checked and limited, if the 
 
THE HUMAN FORM. 101 
 
 germs of all human perfection were not in us. But 
 how are they in us, whence come they, if not from 
 Him ? Taken all together they constitute Him ; and 
 our visible form, which is the correspondent and expo- 
 nent of our inner form, is also the correspondent and 
 exponent of His Divine Form. For every thing in uSj 
 even to its least and most recondite fibril, proceeds 
 from its prototype in Him, and in us images forth its 
 origin in the Divine Humanity. 
 
 It is important to understand, that the correspond- 
 ence between internal things and external, is in no 
 sense arbitrary ; for many" results flow from it of great 
 moment, not only in a philosophical point of view but 
 in more practical relations. By virtue of their corre- 
 spondence, internal things come into manifestation and 
 adaptation to us, and so become externals ; and again, 
 externals may be regarded as internals, which have 
 assumed an outward aspect and condition. This is true 
 of form as an internal thing, and of shape as external, 
 just as it is true of the spiritual sense and the natural 
 sense of the Word. The effect of this, in relation to 
 the Word, is, that these two senses do not contradict 
 each other. The knowledge of the spiritual sense 
 gives higher truths, opens and elevates the mind, and 
 supplies new motives and means of progress. But he 
 who has only the literal sense has also the means of 
 making progress in the same direction. And when he, 
 
102 THE HUMAN FORM. 
 
 who having learnt and loved and obeyed the command- 
 ments of the literal sense, acquires in this life or in the 
 other, the spiritual sense, he does not discover that he 
 has been in an error and misled ; nor does he see one 
 jot or tittle of what he had before pass away. But in 
 the boundless treasures which he discovers within it, 
 he finds new cause for loving it, and new and infinite 
 cause for loving Him who gave it to him. So it is 
 with the relation of form to shape, of the world of re- 
 ality to the world of appearance. As we have already 
 said, our senses are given us as a means of holding in- 
 tercourse with each other, and of recognizing and using 
 the world without us. And shape is form which has 
 become adapted to a portion of our senses. Although 
 it is most true, that, to comprehend the inner laws of 
 being, the nature of the divine operation and the ar- 
 rangement of heaven, we should know something of 
 the true relation of shape to form, and rise above the 
 level of merely sensuous thought, — it is also true that 
 we are not to regard the senses as deceiving us in this 
 matter. They tell us not what is false, but only a 
 lower and more partial truth. Still, it is the appropri- 
 ate truth for the beginning of the mind's progress. It 
 is needful and wholesome truth ; not to be cast away, 
 but to remain as the footstool on which we stand while 
 we look abroad on the clear air and up to the outspread 
 heaven. 
 
THE HUMAN FORM. 103 
 
 • 
 
 Nor are we to feel as if they were wholly in the 
 wrong who do not rise above these sensuous thoughts. 
 Far better is it to remain in them than to have no firm 
 footing. Far better to stand still, upon the earth, see- 
 ing only the fields we humbly till, than to rise and be 
 lost in cloud and mist. Hence, they who, believing 
 that God is a divine man, so worship and love him, 
 without knowing more of the attributes of a Divine Hu- 
 manity, are in a far healthier and happier state of mind 
 than they who reject this great and simple Truth, and 
 regard God only as a diffused Essence, a Being without 
 form, as that which the mind can in no way contem- 
 plate, and therefore as that which the heart cannot love. 
 Recently, and in this neighborhood, it has become a 
 prevailing form of thought, to regard the Divine Being 
 as in fact and reality, wholly impersonal ; and to con- 
 sider the truth that He is a Spirit as excluding the 
 possibility of His having Form. They who, really 
 holding this opinion, give themselves up to it, and are 
 contented with it, are they who are content without 
 loving the Author of all good, and are willing to have 
 a reason why they should not try to love Him. But 
 there are those who hold to these doctrines in words, 
 and even perhaps in their conscious thoughts, who yet, 
 in the deeper region which these falsities have not dark- 
 ened, feel that God is a person, and so give to Him 
 their affections. It is not one jot more certain that only 
 
104 THE HUMAN FOEM. 
 
 a man, a person, can love, using the word in any pro- 
 per sense, than it is that he only who is a person, a 
 man, can be the object of love. 
 
 It might be supposed that views of the external, 
 visible world, which regard its appearances as an ac- 
 commodation to the senses, would produce in the mind 
 a painful and embarrassing feeling of its unreality. 
 But what is meant, is, that its appearances are adapta- 
 tions of realities to sense. 
 
 There is no affinity between the philosophy which 
 may be gathered from the works of Swedenborg, and 
 that bewildering logic which has endeavored, in most 
 of the cycles of human opinion, and in the hands of 
 Berkeley almost successfully, to destroy the reality of 
 material objects.'' This world is indeed the solid basis, 
 the ultimate, of all existence. Shake it, and every 
 sound doctrine of religion or of philosophy, trembles. 
 The effect of the principles I have endeavored to state, 
 is not to disturb this reality, but to penetrate to it 
 through the veil of appearance. If we would know 
 the effect of this upon the mind, let us consider some 
 not very dissimilar instances, which already exist. 
 Thus, we know that the sun is central and steadfast, 
 and that the earth journeys around him and around 
 itself. But we see the solid earth motionless in space, 
 
 1 See the note at the end of this Essay. 
 
THE HUMAN FORM. 105 
 
 while the sun rises and sets to mark the day and night, 
 and ascends towards the zenith in summer, and with a 
 low and slanting beam gives the cold light of winter. 
 But our hnowledge, in this instance, inflicts no harm 
 upon the appearance to sense, while it is eminently 
 useful as the foundation of astronomy, and the applica- 
 tion of its problems to navigation, and other depart- 
 ments of science and art. So will it be, but in a far 
 greater ratio, when the truths which lie within sensual 
 phenomena are discovered. Upon all the work^ of 
 God we shall then see His words 'written. The pheno- 
 mena of nature will then become the steps, the solid 
 and enduring steps, by which the soul will rise from 
 matter to spirit, from science to religion, from nature 
 to God. And yet the beauty, magnificence, and sub- 
 limity of creation will lose no charm or power, and we 
 shall walk upon the earth with a tread as firm as if we 
 walked in ignorance. 
 
 Just so, too, it is in the spiritual world. Because 
 the soul, or spirit of man, must live within a body or 
 have no personal distinctness and identity cognizable 
 to itself or others, and because the embodied spirit 
 must have a world around it and senses to recognize 
 and use that world, all these it has eternally. But the 
 truth is known. The origin and nature of the spirit- 
 ual objects of sense are known. Still, this knowledge 
 lessens in no way the enjoyment and use of the things- 
 
106 THE HITMAN FORM. 
 
 of sense, but heightens them, even while the thoughts 
 and affections are soaring far above. For it glorifies 
 the outward world into oneness with the world within. 
 Perhaps it may be well to state, in a condensed 
 form, the principles we have endeavored to illustrate. 
 They are these. God is Man, perfect, Divine Man. 
 He exists in Form, because so must every being. And 
 His form is perfectly Human. From Him man exists 
 and lives ; from His Humanity that of man is de- 
 rived. Form assumes shape, to meet, by means of 
 sense and sensuous thought, the exigencies of life. 
 Within these shapes and forms lies the creative influ- 
 ence of the Divine, in all its infinite varieties of Love 
 and Wisdom ; and the outward things created by and 
 from the things within, correspond to, represent, and 
 indicate the things within. 
 
 Innumerable and vast the inferences from this doc- 
 trine, and the instructions which it yields. Let me 
 endeavor to suggest a very few of them. 
 
 As God is Man in a divine human form, that form 
 is perfect, and perfectly adapted to be the instrument 
 of Love and Wisdom. As man is made in the image 
 of God, and made to be a recipient of the love and 
 wisdom which are the life of God, and to live by re- 
 ceiving into himself those elements of divine life, so his 
 form is after the divine type, and his shape, or body, 
 
THE HUMAN FORM. 107 
 
 is *he correspondent and image of that form and type. 
 It is also true, that the whole heavens are in that 
 form ; for in the sight of God they are as one man ; 
 and this is true also of the larger societies which com- 
 pose the heavens, and of the lesser societies which 
 compose the larger, and so down through the vast 
 series, until we come again to the individual man. 
 
 This seeming paradox may appear more intelligible 
 and more reasonable, when we consider not only the 
 principles from which it springs, but those practical 
 and positive results to which it leads. For although 
 this truth may indeed seem a paradox, when stated as 
 above in all its length and breadth, yet something of it 
 has always been apparent, always operative upon men's 
 actions, and always implied by expressions in common 
 use. Thus, the word " head " is often employed to 
 indicate command and sovereignty ; the heart, the eye, 
 the arm, the hand, are used as symbols in like manner ; 
 and pages might be filled with similar illustrations. 
 The truth itself may be stated in its most general form, 
 thus. Every well-constructed and well-ordered society 
 is in the human form, and every society which is in 
 the way of improvement and progress tends to this 
 form. This is true in some degree on earth ; in the 
 degree in which the mixture of good and evil here, and 
 the constant change and fermentation of all things, 
 _ permits it to be true. In the heavens it is perfectly 
 
108 THE HUiVIAN FORM. 
 
 true. For all who are there are gathered into socie- 
 ties, and every one takes his place in his own society, 
 according to his use and function. And the uses and 
 functions of all the several members are correspondent 
 and analogous to those of the several members of the 
 human body. This is true in general, as of the head, 
 the heart, the lungs, and other viscera, and the limbs ; 
 and it is also true in every particular, down to the 
 least fibre and the finest fibrils of which the fibres are 
 composed. 
 
 It is easy to see and admit this, in general and in 
 reference to the principal members of the body ; but 
 our ignorance and sensual habits of thought make it 
 very difficult to see that the same thing may be true 
 in the least particulars. We may be aided, however, 
 by reflecting upon the origin and purpose of human life. 
 
 Man is created by God, from His Infinite Love. 
 He therefore creates man in such wise as to give him 
 the utmost degree of happiness ; and to this end creates 
 him so that he may not only be the object of the divine 
 love and wisdom, but the actual recipient of that love 
 and wisdom, and the blessedness that attends their 
 exercise. He creates him with a will and an under- 
 standing ; with a will into which the divine love may 
 flow and abide, and an understanding into which the 
 divine wisdom may flow and abide. The will, by itself, 
 is only a capacity of loving ; but it has and feels no . 
 
THE HUMAN FORM. 109 
 
 love, nor desire, nor emotion, until tlie divine love 
 flows into it, and fills it, and becomes in it such affec- 
 tion or love as the form and character of the will cause 
 it to become. So the understanding, by itself, knows 
 nothing and thinks nothing, being only a capacity of 
 knowing and thinking. Into it the divine wisdom flows, 
 and remains, and is developed, so far and in such man- 
 ner or into such knowledge, and belief, and thought, as 
 the form and character of the understanding may de- 
 termine. Now, the Divine Love and Wisdom in the 
 Lord are One, — but a one composed of infinite par- 
 ticulars. As one they flow forth from Him ; in man 
 they become immediately two, as love and wisdom or 
 affection and thought are two. And not only so, but 
 the indefinite varieties among the human family (hav- 
 ing now no reference to those who pervert this influent 
 love and wisdom by a life of wilful evil,) are produced 
 by the fact, that in every man some of the infinitely 
 diversified particulars of the influent divine life are 
 prominent and predominant over others. In this way, 
 and on this ground, one man differs from another. But 
 because all these infinitely varied elements in their 
 divine original and their essential unity constitute a 
 perfect Human Form, no one of them is without or 
 beyond that form ; for each possible element of life or 
 character is derived from that perfect Human Form 
 which, with others, it constitutes, and to the perfection 
 of .which each one is essential. 
 
110 THE HUMAN FORM. 
 
 Therefore, every man who receives that life, and m 
 whom any one of its elements prevails, must be, as it 
 were, within that form ; that is, he must be governed 
 by a principle of life, which, in the Divine, helps to 
 form somewhat that is human. His character and 
 functions must be such as may be represented by some- 
 thing correspondent in the human form, and by the use 
 and function of that correspondent. Because all the 
 elements of the Divine Life, though infinitely varied, 
 are yet essentially One, therefore all who receive these 
 elements of life and live from them, are, when con- 
 joined by their mutual affection and operation, a one 
 which is representative of the Divine One, from which 
 each and all derive their being. Each represents and 
 embodies some element of the Divine Life; and he 
 stands to his neighbors in the same relation in which 
 his element of life standi in the Divine Form to those 
 other elements of life which they embody and repre- 
 sent. And as these elements of life constitute, in their 
 original and perfect union, a perfect one, so all those 
 who severally receive, embody, and represent them, 
 do, when taken together, constitute a one, which re- 
 ceives, embodies, and represents the original and primal 
 One. 
 
 For if the divine purpose in the creation of man, 
 was to produce a being capable of great and abiding 
 happiness, so the end and purpose of human life may 
 
THE HUMAN FORM. Ill 
 
 be said to be the reception of divine life, and the exer- 
 cise in freedom and in blessedness of that life, in some 
 of its forms of love and wisdom. Now some of these 
 elements and forms of life would be inadequately re- 
 ceived, if there were not those who could receive them 
 as ruling elements of their life, and have their charac- 
 ters, their uses, and functions, and their happiness 
 determined by them ; and thereby he made their repre- 
 sentatives, their living forms. 
 
 Because the Divine Love and Wisdom as a One is 
 infinite, and infinite because it embraces and includes 
 infinite particulars, therefore the number of the human 
 race upon all the earths is boundless, and its variety 
 inexhaustible. From the beginning, and until that end 
 which will never come, and through all the immeasur- 
 able universe, men have lived and are living and will 
 live, and no two of them have been or can be alike in 
 all particulars. Tet, although no two men ever were 
 or can be precisely similar in all respects, all are alike 
 in this, — that they are all human ; all are types of 
 somewhat in the Divine Humanity ; and each one of 
 them is human in the sense, the manner, and form, 
 which are his own, and not another's. 
 
 Hence, all may live and work together. All may be 
 as one in the sight of Him who is their common Father ; 
 for, precisely as in the human body, although the differ- 
 ence between one part and some other part is as great 
 
112 THE HUMAN FORM. 
 
 as can be imagined, as, for example, between the brain 
 and the finger-nails, yet every one is precisely and 
 perfectly adapted to all the rest. So perfectly adapted, 
 as to be necessary and indispensable ; for every part 
 of the human frame, even the noblest, would have 
 something less to do, (and in dmng consists happiness 
 and health,) something less or different to he, — if every 
 other part and portion of a part which belongs to human 
 perfection were not present and connected with the 
 rest. 
 
 It is thereifore obvious that the condition of the whole, 
 of all the human race considered as one, must be con- 
 stantly and eternally improving. For every man who 
 is born and becomes regenerate, and takes his place in 
 the heavens, fills a place which was never filled before. 
 It may be humble or lofty, small or great, but it is his 
 own. Because he fills it, something of the Divine 
 Form which was before represented only subordinately 
 and in general, becomes now more fully and precisely 
 represented by a more adequate correspondent. There- 
 fore, that element of the divine life flows forth and is 
 received more fully ; its use, and good, and blessedness 
 are brought forth in greater clearness and fulness ; and 
 the Heavens as one, as one Man, the child of the Al- 
 mighty, is created more completely into the image and 
 likeness of our Father. 
 
 Nor is this all ; for it follows as obviously that with 
 
THE HUMAN FORM. 113 
 
 the growing perfection of the whole, grow the perfec- 
 tion and happiness of every one. Because they all 
 constitute one universal man, the strength, health, and 
 happiness of all become that of each. Precisely as in 
 the human body, where by the wholesome action of the 
 whole frame, and its universal health, the proper vigor, 
 peace, and comfort of each part are promoted and 
 secured. As these increase and expand in the whole, 
 so they do in all the parts. A truth, which like every 
 other universal truth, is true first, on the greatest scale, 
 or in the heavens as one man, and then by derivation 
 true in particulars and individuals. 
 
 As the heavens grow in their perfection, the earths 
 receive through them more fully of the divine life, for 
 the heavens are the mediums through which that life 
 passes; and thus improvement, eternal progress, is the 
 constant law of the universe. 
 
 Every man who passes into the other world, takes a 
 place in some one of the societies of that world. If in 
 heaven, the society to which he belongs, and his place 
 and function within it, are determined by the peculiar 
 good which he does and loves to do. This place is not 
 arbitrarily assigned to him or chosen by him. It is, as 
 it were, of his essence ; it belongs to him by his nature. 
 He may, in the exercise of his freedom while here, 
 become qualified to fill that place, and perform and 
 enjoy its heavenly uses, or he may become qualified to 
 8 
 
114 THE HUMAN POEM. 
 
 fill only its opposite in the hells. It is to be remem- 
 bered, also, that the energy with which he discharges 
 his duty and enjoys its blessedness, the warmth of his 
 love for that usefulness, and the clearness of his per- 
 ceptions of the truths which belong to it, may vary 
 indefinitely. They do vary according to the measure 
 of the development of his internal powers and affec- 
 tions by regeneration, which is a work that not only 
 admits but requires his cooperation. Thus, while what 
 may be called the quality of his happiness is deter- 
 mined by the essential character of his will and under- 
 standing, we may regard the amount of it as also de- 
 pendent upon his own exercise of his own freedom. 
 
 While in this world, every man receives life through 
 the heavens as the medium between him and God; 
 and more particularly through that society to which he 
 is most akin, and still more particularly through those 
 members of that society who are individually nearest 
 to him. As, while he lives here, his state is often 
 changing, so he changes the spiritual associates who 
 are the especial media of life to him. For it is resem- 
 blance and conformity which bring them together and 
 keep them together. These changes are determined by 
 his progress upwards or downwards. They are, by 
 the infinite providence of God, such and so adjusted as 
 to lead him to his final place through means and in- 
 fluences compatible with his entire freedom. They 
 
THE HUMAN FORM. 115 
 
 prepare him for that place, in such wise and so far as, 
 in the exercise of that freedom, he is willing to be 
 prepared. 
 
 There are practical results from these views of great 
 value. Thus, if we look at the human body, and ask 
 what constitutes its highest health and greatest vigor, 
 we shall see that it is the absolute prevalence of neigh- 
 borly love among" its parts and members. For every 
 part of the human body works for all the rest, and not 
 directly for itself. The brain secretes its nervous fluid, 
 and sends it in a stream of life to give sensibility and 
 motion to the whole body. The heart impels its cur- 
 rent of living blood even to the extremities, and the 
 lungs are busy in purifying and vitalizing this blood 
 for the service of the whole. The stomach and viscera 
 are always employed in elaborating and preparing the 
 means of hfe. The limbs move the body where it 
 would go, and procure for it the means of nutriment. 
 The eye sees every thing but itself, and the senses 
 generally take notice of all things but themselves. Yet 
 every part and organ lives and flourishes, because for 
 it all the rest are unceasinglj'^ employed. As long as 
 order and health prevail, no part appropriates any 
 thing to itself or works in any way for itself, excepting 
 so far as to secure for itself the full power of doing 
 its proper work for others. In this condition and in 
 this law of the human body, we have a vivid picture 
 
116 THE HUMAN FORM. 
 
 of the true order of human life. We may learn here 
 by the opposite of this order what self-love is. When 
 we see that the moment any part of the body diminishes 
 its labor for others, or begins to appropriate to itself 
 more than its capacity of usefulness requires, that 
 moment disease begins ; and if this selfish indulgence 
 continues, disease leads on to death ; — when we see 
 this, self-love stands unveiled ; for we may see in this 
 its evil, its destructiveness, its true nature. Because 
 God is Love, and His Divine Form is the perfect form 
 of love, and man is created in the image and likeness 
 thereof, therefore the body of man is the living image 
 of the love of the neighbor, and is the exact opposite 
 of self-love. Therefore, it is the one condition of its 
 health and vigor, that, from the crown of the head to 
 the sole of the foot, no self-love should be found in it. 
 The moment this infernal poison enters and acts, dis- 
 ease comes with it and grows with it, until death ensues. 
 In the body, love is the only law of Jife ; self-love the 
 one law of death ; and this is so with the body from 
 no other cause than that it is so with the soul, of which 
 the body is the image. 
 
 Let us now see how it is with the societies of heaven, 
 each one of which is also a Man. In them every indi- 
 vidual has his own place and function, and is respected 
 in that place. There is subordination, and command, 
 and obedience ; all perfect, prompt, spontaneous, as the 
 
THE HUMAN FORM. 117 
 
 command of the brain and the obedience of the hand 
 and foot ; so perfect, and so spontaneous, that it may 
 not assume the aspect nor bear the name of command 
 and obedience. There is no more thought or feeling 
 of arrogance and pride, or envy or humiliation, than 
 exists among the members of the healthy body. The 
 highest feels and knows, and is glad to feel and know, 
 his perfect dependence upon the lowest. And this 
 feeling is reciprocal and universal, because the union 
 which binds them together is not disturbed by any 
 conflicting affection. 
 
 Nor is there in this doctrine any thing which lessens 
 or limits the variety or the resources of human action 
 or enjoyment. True it is, that the good man can do 
 nothing which is not human, and which does not work 
 in with what others are doing, so as to make a human 
 form of the whole. But it is not less true, that this 
 human form is from a divine Original, which is not 
 only a perfect humanity, but an Infinite Humanity, 
 containing infinites within itself. Hence it can never 
 be exhausted ; hence it is, and always will be, impos- 
 sible to conceive of any human faculty or taste or ten- 
 dency, which, if it be not tainted with self-love, may 
 not find within the limits of an Infinite Humanity work 
 to do, which shall employ its utmost strength in perfect 
 freedom, and give back the recompense of happiness. 
 
 B""rom this view of heavenly society, let us descend 
 
118 THE HUMAN FORM. 
 
 to earth, where its image ought to dwell. Precisely in 
 proportion as influences from heaven are dominant upon 
 earth, order and subordination, and command and obe- 
 dience, will here also coexist with freedom. They will 
 join to produce mutual respect and all the happiness 
 that belongs to a brotherhood of love. Law itself will 
 be but the form and instrument of liberty, and order 
 its effect. There will be none so low, that the highest 
 needs him not, and owes him nothing ; none so humble, 
 that any others may look down on him with pride. 
 None so high and none so low, as to give room for 
 arrogance or humiliation ; because no person can be so 
 feeble or so poor, that he has not a duty to perform, 
 which, being performed, makes him one with the highest 
 and the greatest. This would be the perfection of 
 social and political life ; and the approach to this will 
 always measure the progress of society. 
 
 In the whole universe of God's creation, Love is the 
 rule, the order ; and self-love is the exception, the dis- 
 order and disease. In man, self-love is possible, be- 
 cause it is the abuse of that freedom which is given to 
 him that he may freely love to love. Because self-love 
 thus exists and acts in man, its baleful impress is to be 
 seen in all the disorder of creation, — in the angry 
 tempest and desolating volcano, the deadly cold of 
 winter and withering heat of summer, the ferocity of 
 the brute, and all the suffering which mingles its tones 
 
THE HUMAN FORM. 119 
 
 of wailing and despair with the sweet voices of nature. 
 All these things are here, because the world without 
 mirrors the world within. But if we would know with 
 clearness and precision the operation and effect of self- 
 love, we may discern them, as has been already said, in 
 the disorder and disease of that human body which 
 was made to be the image of the divine form and 
 divine order. 
 
 Little reflection and experience are needed to know, 
 that in the social world self-love is the source of mis- 
 chief. So true is this, that society is obliged to protect 
 itself by forms of courtesy and politeness, which simu- 
 late forbearance and benevolence, and without which 
 men would fly from each other like the wildest of the 
 brute creation. But, although artificial politeness can 
 disguise or repress selfishness so far as to make human 
 association practicable, and although habits of cour- 
 teous demeanor are of great value, because they exert 
 a strong influence upon the feelings, and make them 
 less harsh and savage in their selfishness ; nevertheless, 
 it is not from this source that the soul can draw a 
 healing medicine. It must seek a purer spring, a 
 deeper well. If it would be cured of the disease of 
 self-love, it must drink of the living waters of religious 
 truth. And all genuine truth is indeed religious,, and 
 always seeks to reascend to its divine source. 
 
 While common sense teaches the expediency of mu- 
 
120 THE HUMAN FORM. 
 
 tual love ; and all just views of the moral world, of the 
 duty and destiny of man, confirm, illustrate, and elevate 
 the lessons of expediency ; I have endeavored to exhibit 
 that other confirmation and illustration which may be 
 derived from the consideration of the human form. 
 Nor would it be difiicult to construct on this basis an 
 exact and rigid demonstration of the law of charity. 
 We need assume, for the groundwork of the argument, 
 only that God is Love and Wisdom, and that he creates 
 man from Himself. It follows that He so creates him 
 that He may give him of His own love and wisdom, 
 because this being the greatest good that He can give 
 him, is that which infinite Love would desire to give. 
 And as His own Divine Form must necessarily be the 
 perfect Form of His own perfect Love and Wisdom, 
 the form of a man, mental and bodily, must be in the 
 image and likeness of that Divine form, that it may be 
 the best adapted to receive, appropriate, and exercise 
 the same elements of life. This form must, therefore, 
 be in the whole and in its parts, in its laws, and order, 
 and operation, an image and reflection of the form, the 
 laws, and order of love. We may perceive this in the 
 mental and moral constitution of man by reason ; and 
 we may discern it in his material and physical consti- 
 tution, by the senses and their experience. Nor is there 
 any other difference between these two modes of the 
 manifestation of the same truth, excepting, that down 
 
THE HUMAN FOKM. 121 
 
 in the lower plane of physical life it is open to sensuous 
 observation, and to that exact and definite knowledge 
 which is comparatively easy in that degree of thought 
 and perception. 
 
 Let it not be supposed that the New Church claims 
 the discovery of this analogy. It is of the mercy of 
 God that a truth so universal and so powerful could 
 not but force itself into sight and recognition. But we 
 may now see the origin of the analogy, and pursue it 
 to its results, and connect this ■ truth with its kindred, 
 and bring the scattered rays of light into union and 
 harmony. Among the interesting legends of antiquity, 
 is that of Menenius Agrippa. Whether modern criti- 
 cism has. succeeded in making it a legend only without 
 fact ; whether such a person as Menenius ever quelled 
 a Roman rebellion, or soothed the angry jealousy of an 
 infuriated multitude, by the fable of the body and its 
 members, are questions of little moment. For it is 
 beyond question, that the fable has always been re- 
 membered and repeated, and its instructiveness recog- 
 nized. . 
 
 The instruction derived from this source may be 
 universal, embracing all topics within its scope and 
 influence ; and it will be eternal to those who receive 
 it, forever new, and ever growing with the capacity of 
 receiving it. For the mysteries of the bodily organi- 
 zation of man are without end. Science may go on to 
 
122 THE HUMAN FOKM. 
 
 discover within the least fibrils of to-day, others yet 
 more delicate to-morrow. More may be continually 
 learnt of the functions and the laws of the parts and 
 of the whole, in sickness and in health, in decay or 
 growth ; but the whole will never be known, for upon 
 it is impressed the seal of the Infinite. 
 
 The body is the adequate image of the soul. What- 
 ever may be learnt of it, in the present days of cloud, 
 and of a night which is drawing towards the morning, 
 or in the coming ages, when the light whose upward 
 ray is now scarcely discernible shall have brightened 
 into the splendor of unclouded day, whatsoever can be 
 learnt of the human body, that knowledge will reveal 
 somewhat of the mind, the soul, the life within. 
 
 And the stream of knowledge will flow on ; its waves 
 rejoicing as they swell with ever-growing affluence, 
 and roll o'er sands of ever brighter gold, and bear the 
 waters of refreshment to the living plants upon their 
 shores. And among those plants, forever drinking in 
 those waters, are the trees of God, whose leaves are for 
 the healing of the nations. 
 
 N T E , p. 9 8 . 
 
 As it is possible that this book may fall into the hands of some 
 one who loves the study of philosophy, I would suggest to him, what 
 
THE HUMAN FOKM. 123 
 
 indeed, if he has drank of its earlier fountains, he must know, that 
 the distinction of "form" and "essence," and an investigation of 
 their attributes, lies near the centre of the ancient philosophies. In 
 these days, we are so much wiser than Plato and Pythagoras, one 
 risks something by 'alluding to them in terms of respect. It may be 
 safer to come down to modem times, and speak of Kant. I do not 
 pretend to understand the whole of his system, and its exceeding 
 difficulty has indeed — with other causes — deterred me from a very 
 thorough study of it. But I regard it as the greatest movement in 
 philosophy that has occurred for centuries, and much of the light 
 which it caste upon mind can be denied or unseen only by ignorance. 
 The distinction, which he did not invent, but restored and illus- 
 trated, and has made permanent in all philosophy, that between the 
 gubject and the object of thought, is of great importance. The gub- 
 ject is that which — subjacet — underlies all faculty or power, while 
 the object — c^'acet — lies as it were against faculty or power, and is 
 perceived by them and acted upon by them. The subject of sight is 
 the eye, which supporte and possesses the faculty of seeing, while 
 the object of sight is any thing towards or upon which that faculty 
 is exerted. We contemplate or consider a thing sutjeciively^ when 
 we regard it as within us, as ourselves, as a part of our identity, or 
 as a German would say, as a portion of our Me. We consider it 
 objectively when we look at it as external, abroad, separate from us, 
 and at a gieaXer: or less distance. Thus we may say, that it is the 
 great end of Providence that man should be not only the object of 
 divine love and wisdom, but the subject of them. My principal pur- 
 pose, however, in speaking of this distinction, is to refer to what is 
 not so much a conclusion, as a fundamental axiom, of the Kantian 
 philosophy, and of the many which have sprung from it: namely, 
 that we can know nothing whatever either of the subject or the 
 object of thought or perception, as Ihey const im themselves. We know 
 them only relatively, and as they affect each other. Thus of the 
 subject, our Mb, — we can know nothing but that it has a. capacity 
 of being affected and acted upon in a certain way, by the objects all 
 
124 THE HUMAN FORM. 
 
 around ns. And of any object, we can know only that it is a some 
 thing which acts or reacts upon and affects our Mb in a certain 
 way, producing certain sensations or emotions. What it is that 
 Bees, or what it is that is seen, we do not and cannot know, because 
 our knowledge is necessarily limited to the impressions which the 
 thing without us produces upon us. And this axiom is sound and 
 mdisputahle, within the limits of that system. Vast were the efforts, 
 ana various and strange the means, used by the ancient philosophers 
 to escape from this conclusion; but they did not escape. Now, 
 however, he that will apply to the incontestable principles of onto- 
 logy, the doctrine of the New Church, respecting the source of all 
 being, and the manner in which the ultimates of existence are 
 fashioned and vivified by Him from Himself, may find that Beligion 
 is the true key to Philosophy; that they are indeed one. I cannot 
 but hope that the reader who regards this remark merely as the 
 ebullition of my Dlinding love for the doctrines of my church, will 
 not be so convinced of this as to let the snggesijon pass wholly 
 nnheeded, if his taste and pursuits lead him to the study of philo 
 sophy. 
 
RELIGION. 
 
 The origin of the word Religion is not certain, but 
 it is supposed to be derived from Latin words, which 
 signify to bind again. If so, from the very elements 
 of its composition, we may infer that religion seeks to 
 bind again that which has fallen away or broken loose ; 
 to rebind man to God; to reattach him to the Source 
 of all good, by a chain whose links are love, while the 
 hand which binds it round the heart knows no touch 
 but that of mercy. Religion is a universal fact, inde- 
 finitely varied with ages and races ; falsified, until it 
 represents itself in idols of grotesque deformity, and 
 darkened until neither the light of truth nor that of 
 hope glimmer in its abysses. Still, religion is every- 
 where. 
 
 Its universal presence is often noticed, and often I 
 explained somewhat vaguely by the demand of human 
 nature for supernatural thoughts, and hopes, and fears ; 
 
126 KELIGION. 
 
 by our innate propensity to look beyond nature for 
 protection and assistance, when death impends, and the 
 blows of calamity have fallen, and every thing which 
 belongs to earth fails or assails us. But there is an 
 explanation more simple, direct, and adequate. Man 
 lives that he may ascend to heaven ; this was the end 
 which God proposed in his creation, and holds in view 
 in his whole care of the inward and outward life of 
 every individual. For this universal end, religion is 
 the universal means ; and, therefore, in some shape or 
 other, it is offered to the mind of every man. The 
 end or purpose of the divine government is always the 
 same ; it cannot change with time or place, or circum- 
 stance. But men vary, and therefore the means by 
 which this end is sought are also varied. Hence 
 comes the variety and diversity of religions, or rather 
 of the aspects under which religion presents itself to 
 men. It is made, by Him from whom it comes, to take 
 the form and offer the motives, and enforce itself by the 
 sanctions, which are best adapted to the race of men 
 to whom it is given ; and this necessity of adaptation 
 is the first cause that its difference, in different periods 
 and nations, is almost as boundless as the difference 
 among men. But another cause may be found in the 
 various ways and degrees in which men have falsified 
 and perverted their religion. 
 
 It is the free gift of God ; and from heaven it de- 
 
RELIGION. 127 
 
 scends, a heavenly gift. But when it reaches earth, it 
 assumes a dress which may veil its splendors, and fit 
 them to a diseased eye. And thereafter, in the hearts 
 and minds of men, it is gradually mingled with the 
 corruptions which it finds. Constantly in conflict with 
 them, it is assailed and wounded. Always combating 
 with errors, they, day by day, stain, distort, and poison 
 it, until its beauty is soiled, and its strength becomes 
 weakness, and. its life decays, and its words no longer 
 have power to save ; then it passes away, and another 
 is given in its place; and hence the succession of 
 churches which marks the history of the human family. 
 Nor could this be avoided, because the freedom of the 
 human mind is the supreme and absolute condition 
 without which religion can do no portion of its proper 
 work, and that condition must be preserved, although 
 the abuse of this freedom necessarily leads to the per- 
 version of religion. 
 
 The true and constant purpose of religion is twofold ; 
 and it may be stated with precision and certainty. It 
 is, first, that men should be good ; and then, that they 
 should give the glory of their goodness to God. This 
 is not the purpose of religion now only, or here, or 
 under this form or that, but always and everywhere. 
 Nor is this the purpose of religion by the arbitrary 
 appointment of its Author ; but it follows by irresist- 
 ible necessity from the constitution of His nature and 
 of our nature. 
 
128 RELIGION. 
 
 Jt is the essence of love to wish to give something 
 of its own to another. God is love — is perfect, infinite 
 love. Therefore, it is His constant and universal desire 
 to give to man something of His own, something of 
 Himself — to give to him, Himself; that is, to give him 
 Love. This was the Divine desire, from which man' 
 was created ; and from this Divine desire, man was so 
 created that he might receive of the Divine Love, and 
 appropriate it to himself, and live by it a^ his own love 
 and life. But this love is the love of goodness, of 
 every thing good, and of that only ; and therefore, in 
 proportion as a man loves what is good, he answers 
 the purpose for which he was created, because in that 
 proportion he permits God to give him of Himself. 
 Therefore it is the first purpose of religion, — which is 
 the divine means whereby the divine ends may be 
 accomplished, — to make man good. But selfishness 
 is the opposite of love and of good. A disposition to 
 love self, and to give to self what belongs to another, 
 is the exact opposite of the disposition which it is the 
 purpose of religion to produce and conjoin. And the 
 greatest possible injustice and selfishness consists in at- 
 tributing to one's self that goodness which comes as the 
 free gift of Him who alone is Good. It is therefore the 
 purpose of religion, not more to make man good, than 
 to make him know and acknowledge that this is the 
 work of God. Indeed, these two things are one ; be- 
 
RELIGION. 129 
 
 cause genuine goodness in any man must necessarily 
 exclude the thought that he is good of himself and of 
 his own proper power, since it must necessarily exclude 
 selfishness and injustice. There is yet another reason 
 for this conclusion. Wisdom is the thought and form 
 of love; and because God is Love, He is also Wis- 
 dom ; and if He seeks to give to man of Himself, he 
 must seek to give him wisdom, or truth, in the degree 
 in which man can receive it. He works for this end, 
 too, by means of religion ; and therefore religion must 
 oppose the perfect falsity that man is or can be good 
 of himself alone, and must strive to teach and enforce 
 the opposite truth. 
 
 I have dwelt upon this purpose of religion, — one, 
 although capable of being seen under a twofold aspect, — 
 because, when we have in our minds a definite and just 
 view of this purpose, we have a standard whereby we 
 may measure the character, condition, and operation of 
 all churche*, in all their periods of morning, noon, or 
 night, and judge of their mutual relation and influence, 
 and understand their succession in the order of time. 
 
 If we apply this test, we shall discover in every reli- 
 gion somewhat which leads towards this purpose, and 
 somewhat that leads away from it. We shall find some 
 elements of its divine original, and some of the perver- 
 sions which result from man's endeavor to provide for 
 its requirements substitutes raoi-e agreeable to unregene- 
 9 
 
130 RELIGION. 
 
 rate human nature. Thus, from the very earh'est ages, 
 and among all nations before the Christian era, sacri- 
 fices of some kind were in use. These, in their origin 
 and primary use, were rites which served as aids of a 
 pure religion. To " sacrifice," means to make a thing 
 sacred ; and to ofier a thing in sacrifice to God, origin- 
 ally meant and was known to mean, an acknowledgment 
 that it came from Him and was His. Everywhere at 
 first, as in the ritual of the Jewish Church, only things 
 useful to man and without blemish, were made the 
 subjects of sacrifice. All of these had their distinct 
 meaningSj by the laws of correspondence, which were 
 once familiarly known, and of which the memory has 
 never wholly passed away. The fruits of the earth, 
 oil, and the finest whg^t, the dove, the lamb, the ox, 
 all are representatives. They all exist from spiritual 
 causes. These causes are afiections and truths. The 
 objects themselves may be regarded as these afiFections 
 and truths brought down into the ultimate substances 
 of nature ; and these their inmost causes they repre 
 sent and signify. To those in the earliest ages, who, 
 in the light and purity of an unsullied nature, saw in 
 all the brightness and beauty of earth only the shadow 
 of the glory of heaven, these objects were as living 
 mirrors. They constantly suggested that which theiy 
 constantly represented. They were offered to God, 
 in acknowledgment that they were His, and were 
 
RELIGION. 131 
 
 received from Him. Hence the act of sacrifice was a 
 useful act; the wheat, the oil, the wine, were offered 
 to God, as a confession that the things they represented 
 were his gifts ; and the offering was useful, because 
 it tended to keep fresh in the memory and in the 
 heart, one of the great laws upon which all religion 
 and all true goodness must ever rest, namely, that every 
 thing good is God's, and His alone, and is ours only as 
 it is derived from Him ; and hence again, in some form 
 or other, it was a part of all religions. 
 
 But the human nature, for which this was given, and 
 to whose instruction and elevation it was adapted, stood 
 necessarily in opposition to it. And this opposition 
 produced not an abolition of the practice, but a perver- 
 sion of it into its precise opposite. The evil tendencies 
 of a corrupt nature laid hold upon the rite which war- 
 red against them, and made it their captive, their prey, 
 their instrument. As early as the remotest historical 
 ages, sacrifice was, perhaps everywhere, regarded and 
 practised as a substitute for goodness ; as a vicarious 
 offering to God, instead of that goodness which His love 
 offered to man and urged him to receive. This is almost 
 the only idea of sacrifice which we find in the world. 
 Out of it grew countless horrors and abominations. As a 
 substitute it would more avail, as it was more precious , 
 and hence, after men had thrown their treasures upon 
 their fires, they cast their children into them, and at 
 
182 RELIGION. 
 
 length their brethren. More and worse than this, not 
 life alone, but all that gives it worth and beauty, were 
 offered up ; and prostitution became, and to this day in 
 some countries is, an act of worship. Out of this fal- 
 sity, or in connection with it, grew up the appalling 
 monster, penance. There is quite enough left on earth 
 to tell us what this was, and what it did. By the side 
 of the temples where women worship by public sin, 
 and thronging round the fires which reduce to ashes the 
 dead husband and the living wife, are those who would 
 force their way to heaven by self-imposed and long- 
 continued agonies. In its beginning, and in its essence, 
 their religion tells them to beware of the lusts of the 
 flesh ; and they think they obey these precepts, or 
 rather they do obey them, as they have come down 
 through generations of corruption, when they gash 
 their flesh with burning knives, and waste it away in 
 torments. This terrible mistake was systematized; it 
 gathered collateral falsities about it, and built a mon- 
 strous structure which it called religion. So firmly 
 was this cemented by the evil passions of human nature, 
 that it cumbers the nations with its vast fragments even 
 in our own day. Who has not heard of the car of 
 Juggernaut? And even that appalling horror is but 
 the lingering remnant of a false religion, of which the 
 pictures of ancient eastern literature give, probably, a 
 true representation. A prevailing theme therein is the 
 
KELIGION. 133 
 
 successful ambition of the ascetic, who, like the Ke- 
 hama of Southey's Poem, forced from the reluctant 
 gods, by his terrible penances, a share of their divine 
 power, not only against their will, but in despite of the 
 prescience which told them it was to be used against 
 themselves. 
 
 When we look upon pictures so painful and abhor- 
 rent to all our customary feelings, we turn away with 
 wonder that human nature could ever have assumed so 
 horrible an aspect, — and with gladness that we have 
 nothing within our own experience or observation which 
 could assist us to comprehend a depravity so mon- 
 strous. 
 
 But there are two modes of contemplating this sub 
 ject, which may not be without their use. One will 
 explain it, and show how it arose from the eternal con- 
 flict between the unchangeable purposes of a true reli- 
 gion, and the essential principles of that human nature 
 which it is the function of religion to regenerate and 
 heal. The other will, perhaps, show that the same 
 conflict continues now, and has again destroyed a reli- 
 gion, and again represents itself all around us under 
 analogous falsities. We have not the temples of Jug- 
 gernaut. For the conception and portraiture of such 
 a person as Kehama, the poet was driven to eastern 
 traditions. But the dreadful falsehood so pictured was 
 no casna,l, no local thing. Its roots were as deep as the 
 
134 RELIGION. 
 
 abysses of human depravity. It towered to a height, 
 which wearied even the wing of fantasy, made insane 
 by sin. And its far-reaching shadow darkens our own 
 horizon. 
 
 The purpose of religion is to make men good. It is 
 a necessary thing, because the untaught and uninflu 
 enced nature of man is not good ; universally necessary, 
 because this is true of all men. Between religion, 
 therefore, and that nature which it comes to change 
 and re-create, there is a direct antagonism. Religion 
 and nature not only oppose each other, but have power 
 over each other. And because the essential principles 
 of both remain ever the same, although their aspects 
 and manifestations vary very much in different ages 
 and periods, so their influence and operation upon each 
 other must be always essentially the same, although 
 varying in form and appearance. 
 
 If we remember that the one purpose of religion is 
 to make men good ; and that it is this purpose which 
 human nature at once needs and resists, we may easily 
 see, that the one, the general way, in which man escapes 
 from religion, must be by substituting for its require- 
 ments something which may take the place of goodness. 
 For although the nature of man opposes religion, it 
 cannot destroy this gift of God. It comes from its 
 Divine Source with sanctions too mighty; it speaks 
 with too much power to be wholly disregarded. A 
 
RELIGION. 135 
 
 nation of men professing indiflFerence to religion, has 
 never existed, and cannot exist. All that human na- 
 ture can do, in its most virulent and most successful 
 eflForts against religion, is to falsify and pervert it, and 
 thus escape its requirements. Hence, it learns that 
 religion demands the giving up of that we value most ; 
 and it gladly builds the altar, and lays amid the fires, 
 its food, its treasures, on condition that it may retain 
 what it loves far more, its selfishness and impurity. 
 This delusion grows and ripens, until, man believes he 
 acquires a right to sin, by a bargain with the sinless, 
 which religion sanctifies. And then the power of reli- 
 gion is directed into a channel which leads away from 
 goodness. That power may yet remain vast, awful, 
 overshadowing the earth like a cloud: but the chief 
 evidence of its power is in the torments it inflicts, the 
 destruction it enjoins, until whole hosts are sacrificed, 
 as in Mexico, and the doorways of the temples of the 
 gods are but the narrow beds of streamlets of human 
 blood. 
 
 It is the same with the idea of penance, or sllf- 
 inflicted punishment. The sense of remorse is painful. 
 But the voice of religion cannot be mistaken, when in 
 its uncorrupted tones it denounces sin. As the sinner 
 hears it call upon him to fast — to fast from his wicked 
 indulgences, to abstain from envy and covetousness, 
 and the crimes they breed, — he strives, perhaps, to 
 
136 RELIGION. 
 
 obey, but not enough to overcome his evil impulses. 
 He yields, and when the hour of sin has given way to 
 that of remorse, he inflicts upon himself some punish- 
 ment as a compensation for that pain, — the pain of 
 resistance, — which he would not endure in the hour 
 of temptation. The truth demands repentance ; but 
 penance is far easier. It is thus he endeavors to as- 
 suage the pangs of an awakened conscience. With 
 every repetition the habit is confirmed ; with every new 
 instance it becomes more common ; until the habit as- 
 sumes the sanctity of religion, and is universally estab- 
 lished. Then religion, which asks only self-control, 
 is understood to demand self-punishment ; and with 
 this human nature is satisfied. Let it sin to-day, when 
 pleasure calls and passion urges, and it is willing to 
 pay the debt by the scourge or sackcloth to-morrow, and 
 thus purchase, at a cheap rate, the gratification of its 
 lusts, and the quiet of its conscience. 
 
 Because this dreadful falsehood has its roots in the 
 kindly soil of unregenerate nature, it grows, and 
 spreads its branches in every direction, and bears a 
 fruit more monstrous than itself. .There soon comes 
 the idea, that penance will do more than pay for 
 sin. That it has a power of its own ; and if there be 
 no sin for which it discharges the debt, or if there be 
 more penance than enough to balance the account, it 
 gives a merit whose claim cannot be disputed, and 
 
RELIGION. J 37 
 
 rends from the unwilling deities a portion of their om- 
 nipotence. Thus is the work consummated. For when 
 the abuse of religion has reaehed this point, its use has 
 passed away, and slowly or suddenly it abides its doom 
 of death. 
 
 The perversion of all truth, perhaps, never reached 
 this extreme, or took just this form among the Jews. 
 That peculiar people had a peculiar safeguard in the 
 written Word, which 'exactly defined their religious 
 rites and cer^onies. But it is an instructive fact in 
 the history of this nation, that when they fell into 
 idolatry, they adopted many of these horrors from the 
 surrounding nations. Thus, we read in Jeremiah : 
 " Behold, I will bring evil upon this place, the which 
 whosoever heareth, his ears shall tingle. Because they 
 have forsaken me, and have estranged this place, and 
 have burned incense in it unto other gods, whom neither 
 they nor their fathers have known, and have filled this 
 place with the blood of innocents. They have built 
 also the high places of Baal, to burn their sons with 
 fire for burnt-offerings unto Baal." 
 
 Let us return to that most corrupted condition of 
 religion which we have described, and which prevailed 
 among many, if not most of the nations of antiquity. 
 Many records of this we have, and much indisputable 
 evidence, even without the painful traces which exist 
 in our own times. Nor need they be without instruc- 
 
138 KELIGION. 
 
 tion ; for they should help us to penetrate the disguise 
 under which the same influences have been at work, 
 and the same eflfects produced even to the same final 
 result, in the Christian religion and the Christian Church. 
 This church was for some centuries humble and per- 
 secuted. During this period of adversity, it retained a 
 high degree of purity and truth. But after three hun- 
 dred years of humility and integrity it ascended the 
 throne of Constantine, and no sooner was it allied with 
 the powers of the earth, than the stains of earth were 
 seen upon its vesture, and the poison began to eat into 
 its heart. The emperor summoned the Council of Nice, 
 to put an end to the controversy which had arisen be- 
 tween Athanasius and Arius, and this council established 
 the Tripersonality of God and the doctrine of Imputative 
 Faith ; and about the year 400; St. Augustine earnestly 
 and eloquently advocated the doctrine of Justification 
 by Faith alone, .through elective grace. We may say 
 that he was a good man, if it is possible for any evi- 
 dence to prove such a fact. And he brought for- 
 ward his doctrine to encounter and defeat the heresy 
 of Pelagius, who taught the sufficiency of man to his 
 own salvation. The church had power enough to over- 
 come this heresy, though not to extirpate it, and adopted 
 the doctrines of. Augustine as the means. And soon 
 these doctrines were seized and used by the irreligious 
 tendency of human nature, tuid upon tliem was built a 
 
RELIGION. 139 
 
 substitution of faith for charity ; of believing aright, in 
 the stead of doing good and being good ; and this was 
 the first step taken by Christianity towards its consum- 
 mation. As in earlier churches, sacrifice, ritual, and 
 penance had taken the place of the requirements of 
 religion, so now, naked faith, mere belief, began to as- 
 sume the same place, and do the same work of permit- 
 ting men to be irreligious under the name of religion. 
 But this doctrine never reached its height in the 
 Catholic church. Still other substitutes were sought 
 and found. Substitutes of a lower, more sensual, 
 more grovelling kind, and therefore better suited to 
 the nature of man in that day. The forms of heathen 
 idolatry were adopted, with changes barely sufficient to 
 disguise and adapt them to their new circumstances. 
 Saints were worshiped, and their altars hung round with 
 votive offerings, as had been the gods of Greece and 
 Rome. It is said that the statue of St. Peter, in Rome, 
 which is worn away by the kisses of adoring multitudes, 
 is but an ancient statue of Jupiter. This fact would 
 symbolize and illustrate with great exactness the way 
 in which Christianity was made to adopt, from heathen- 
 ism, the means of escape from religion. So, too, the 
 whole doctrine of penance was received and incorpo- 
 rated. In our own day, it is seldom carried to great 
 excess, although a part of the Roman church wherever 
 that exists. But the monks, in the loneliest retreats, 
 
140 RELIGION. 
 
 macerating their bodies with watching, and fasting, and 
 the scourge ; and the enthusiasts, climbing to the top of 
 a lofty pillar, and abiding there for years, remind us of 
 the self-tormenting penances of the East. One of the 
 doctrines of the Boman church is quite remarkable 
 in this respect ; it is that of Supererogation. This 
 teaches that saints and the very good, may, and actually 
 do, acquire more merit by good works and penances 
 than are needed for their salvation, and the surplus 
 forms the treasury of the church, which she can bestow 
 upon those who need forgiveness. Connected with this 
 doctrine was the sale of "indulgences" and other 
 abuses, which were the immediate causes of Luther's 
 revolt. How close the analogy between this doctrine 
 and the Eastern notion, that penance and good works 
 may more than save, may draw down divine power 
 and make the man superhuman ! It would be easy to 
 illustrate this topic at great length ; to accumulate evi- 
 dence in proo&of the fact, that human nature had con- 
 fronted and attacked Christianity, and wrought upon it 
 changes and effects singularly analogous to those which 
 had been exhibited in earlier ages, as the result of the 
 conflict between the religions of those days, and the 
 human nature which it was their office to heal and 
 elevate. 
 
 And so the work went on. I need only allude to the 
 worship of saints and relics,, to support the assertion 
 
RELIGION. 141 
 
 that the Catholic church became eminently idolatrous. 
 Indeed, idolatry and penance grew and strengthened 
 themselves and spread, until the poison tainted the 
 springs of life ; and then the church died. Always, in 
 every period of Christianity, as doubtless in every the 
 darkest period of every corrupted church, there were 
 individuals who saw and loved the truth, and strove to 
 stay the plague. They were the salt that preserved 
 the dying church from rapid and offensive decay; and 
 had they not been there, fire from above and from 
 below must have swept the doomed nations from the 
 earth, like the Sodom and Gomorrah where no ten 
 just men could be found. Always there were Catholics, 
 who, loving the church as the bride of the Lamb, and 
 as the mother of their souls, endeavored, by whatever 
 efforts, and at whatever peril, to enlighten its dark 
 places, and cleanse it from idolatry. Always there 
 were the simple-minded and good, multitudes we 
 hope, who so passed through their church to heaven. 
 But the work went on, because human nature was 
 battling against the religion which required of it the 
 relinquishment of self and sin. And at length evil 
 had the mastery, and reigned. 
 
 In Luther's day, some three centuries ago, occurred 
 what Papists call the great Schism, and Protestants 
 call the Reformation ; but to which we can give very 
 readily neither name. It was not a schism or division, 
 
142 RELIGION. 
 
 because there was no true church to be divided. And 
 we can call it a reformation, only in so far as it restored 
 the use of the Bible ; because, while it swept away the 
 idolatry of saints and relics, and the delusions of pe- 
 nance, it did not replace in their stead those principles 
 of a true religion which they had expelled, but put 
 there the dreadful doctrine of Salvation by Faith alone. 
 Born long ago, coeval, indeed, with human nature or 
 with the eternal strife between it and religion, the doc- 
 trine of Faith alone, the doctrine that if we think and 
 profess what is true, we may do what we will ; the 
 doctrine that belief will suffice as well as practice, that 
 it is as good, nay, that it is better, — ijow grew into its 
 full stature. The Eeformers placed it in the centre of 
 their religion. It stood there with all its deformity 
 undisguised, all its power to wound and slay, unmiti- 
 gated. It stood there, as the abomination of desolation, 
 in the very sanctuary of the temple. 
 
 To those unacquainted with the history of religion, 
 and accustomed to look upon whatever is brought 
 before them with the careless eye of indifference, — 
 which often loves to call itself charity, — this may 
 seem a harsh judgment. But there is evidence enough 
 to justify it, though it would be a mournful task to 
 array the proof in all its woful fulness. Let it suffice 
 now to refer to the horrors of the Anabaptist sway at 
 Munster, and of Autinomianism wherever it threw off 
 
RELIGION. 143 
 
 all restraint. If these things are to be regarded as 
 convulsive spasms of falsehood and of sin, from which 
 no general conclusions should be drawn, let us think of 
 Luther's own saying, which is of late years coming 
 into a new celebrity, that " the church must rise and 
 fall with the doctrine of Faith alone ; " and of his de- 
 claration that " good works could have nothing to do 
 with regeneration, because any works of a man not yet 
 regenerate were bad, and if he were regenerate, then 
 his good works were not needed for an effect already 
 produced ; " of Calvin's System of Faith, of the creeds 
 and symbolic books and articles of the Synod of Dort, 
 and other similar ecclesiastical bodies, and even of the 
 articles of the Church of England and the Westminster 
 Catechism. And who can then deny that the doctrine 
 of Salvation by Faith alone is the very essence of Pro- 
 testant Christianity? 
 
 The difficulty of judging aright of the quality and 
 influence of this false doctrine, is increased by another 
 circumstance. The Lord deals with a religion or with' 
 a church as with an individual, in this respect, that 
 His infinite love never fails or wearies. Over the evil 
 He watches, to mitigate their evil and its consequences 
 as far as may still be possible. The same divine mercy 
 from which a religion descended, sleeps not as the 
 shades of evening gather about its decline, and still 
 cares for those to whom and for whose good it was 
 
144 RELIGION. 
 
 given. He cannot do more to preserve it in its purity, 
 than may be compatible with the preservation of human 
 freedom. But when corruption has stolen upon it, and 
 its truths are perverted, and its good influences changed 
 as the ivy changes the sweet dew and the pure rain 
 into poison, still. His mercy is unchangeable. Then all 
 is done that can be done to lessen the mischief. The 
 falsities are covered, or qualified by admixture with 
 such truth as may yet be possible, so that their delete- 
 rious influence is diminished, and the" simple seekers 
 after good may be led where they would go, even 
 through these tortuous paths. Hence there has per- 
 haps never been a perversion of religion so absolute 
 and extreme, that it presented itself under no aspect in 
 which the traits of its original beauty could be dis- 
 cerned ; nor was there ever a church so falsified that 
 none could go through it to Him from whom it came. 
 Thus the doctrine of salvation by Faith alone, though 
 when seen in its nakedness it is a mere falsehood, and 
 one of profound malignancy, yet, as it is actually taught 
 and preached, it is often, perhaps generally, disguised 
 and ameliorated. Good men, who clung to it because 
 they believed it to be religious truth, have labored to 
 bend and soften it, and connect it with a good life, in 
 such wise as to make it lead towards, instead of from, 
 vital religion ; and Divine Providence labored with 
 them. Hence, there are doubtless many who hold this 
 
RELIGION. 145 
 
 doctrine, and many it may be hoped who preach i(^ 
 who would be startled and shocked if they saw it 
 in its true and odious deformity. But with them, what- 
 ever they may say and whatever they may think that 
 they believe, faith is not alone. They are rebels, un- 
 conscious rebels against the doctrine, and church to 
 which they adhere ; because they are faithful to Him 
 against whom that church has rebelled. It is not, 
 therefore, of Such as these, or of their necessarily con- 
 fused and inconsistent doctrines that I speak. But of 
 the bare and undisguised doctrine of salvation by 
 faith alone, as it stands in the authoritative creeds of 
 Orthodox Protestantism, no less can be said, than that 
 it is the repetition of the sacrifice, penance, and idolatry 
 of earlier fallen churches, and, like them, a substitute 
 for the requirements of religion, devised and loved by 
 the corrupt human nature which hates these require- 
 ments, and will not hear or obey them. Nor is the 
 whole truth told, until it is added, that this falsehood, 
 not like those of an older time, tangible, sensual, and 
 external, but reigning in the heart, — is even much 
 worse than they. 
 
 Immediately around us there is something more than 
 this ; there is a kind of Protesting against Protestant- 
 ism ; — and we call it Unitarianism. There are traces 
 of it in many parts of Christendom at this moment ; 
 but its chief seat and centre are in our own immediate 
 10 
 
146 RELIGION. 
 
 neighborhood. It is difficult to speak of this as I 
 should. Early and .cherished associations invest it with 
 a charm, which is not diminished by the personal worth 
 of many who profess it. Yet nothing can be clearer 
 than the judgment which must be pronounced upon it, 
 when it is brought to the standard of essential and 
 vital religious truth. It denies and denounces the 
 idolatries of former times as earnestly as Protestantism, 
 and with them the great falsehood which Luther and 
 Calvin substituted for them. But it also denies and 
 disregards that essential element of religion, without 
 which there is no religion. It refuses to give the glory 
 to God. It makes goodness to be man's duty, because 
 man has in himself, and of himself, the full power of 
 goodness. It rests on man, and not on God ; its basis 
 is not the constant mercy of the Lord, but " the dignity 
 of human nature." 
 
 Here, too, not only all that was said of the way in 
 which the doctrine of Faith alone is tempered and mo- 
 dified, is equally applicable, but a specific distinction 
 may be drawn. The late President Kirkland, a name 
 to be uttered with love and reverence, — and let not 
 the recollection of his meridian brightness be dimmed 
 by the thick and heavy darkness which gathered about 
 his way to death, — said to me, about twenty years ago, 
 in a conversation on this subject ; " There are two kinds 
 of Unitarians, and they are very different. There are 
 
KELIGION. 147 
 
 some who cannot comprehend the orthodox doctrine of 
 the Trinity, and are shocked by that of Faith alone, and 
 therefore deny these doctrines. I am one of these ; 
 but I believe there is in the Bible, and in Jesus Christ, 
 and in Grod's dealings with man, a great mystery which 
 I do not pretend to understand, nor expect to under- 
 stand, in this world. But there are Unitarians who go 
 much further, and who have a system of faith about all 
 these things which satisfies them, and they think they 
 understand, and that we ought to understand the whole. 
 I do not agree with them." I cannot now give all his 
 very words ; but of the substance of his remarks and 
 of much of his language I am very sure ; for there 
 were circumstances attending the conversation, and 
 personal applications of it, which fixed it indelibly 
 upon my memory. I have ever since regarded Unita- 
 rianism as negative with some, and positive with others. 
 And we need not look far to find those who, in the 
 midst of its denials, give every evidence of an earnest 
 and constant desire to do all their duty, to cultivate 
 religion in their hearts, and walk humbly before God. 
 But the question, what is positive Unitarianism, re- 
 mains untouched by such examples. 
 
 It is difficult to say any thing of Unitarianism, which 
 may not be rejected at once by one or another of those 
 who profess that system, because it has so little which 
 is distinctly its own. Strictly speaking, a denial of the 
 
148 KELIGION. 
 
 Trinity, and a belief in one God, and that Jesus Christ 
 is not that God, is the whole creed of Unitarianism, 
 So much of this as is denial, is intelligible and clear 
 enough ; but that part of it which is belief, may range 
 from the pantheism of Spinoza, through all possible 
 modes of regarding the deity. One thing only appears 
 to be excluded ; and that is a belief in a personal God ; 
 a belief of Him in any sense which can satisfy a clear 
 understanding, and an earnest heart. And yet, this is 
 the very belief which must be regarded as the centre 
 and life of religion. It was to make this belief clear 
 and permanent, that our Father bowed the heavens 
 and walked among men, clothed with our nature, as 
 one of us. It was to justify that belief, and make it 
 eternal as the life of the angels who live by it, that He 
 glorified that human nature and made it divine, even 
 with his own Infinite Divinity. Previous to His com- 
 ing, the fact that He was to come, was that towards 
 which all prophecy, all hope, all truth, looked. And 
 since his coming, it is in this fact, and in the glorifica- 
 tion of His Divine Human, that the whole heavens 
 find the source and seal of their blessedness. This 
 subject we cannot pursue, because it would lead us to 
 that Doctrine of the Lord, which involves all truth as 
 well as all mystery ; which offers to the humblest and 
 simplest mind plain truths, full of guidance, strength, 
 and consolation, and • yet grows with the capacity of 
 
RELIGION. 149 
 
 comprehension and the sincere love of truth, and con- 
 nects itself with the loftiest thoughts and all sound 
 knowledge of men and angels, transcending them all, 
 ever stretching upwards to guide the soul in its eternal 
 ascent, ever widening all around to fill the whole hori- 
 zon of human or angelic consciousness, and glorify the 
 universe of mind and matter with his unbounded pre- 
 sence. The Doctrine of the Lord was revealed in his 
 own Gospels ; but tempered there by the clouds with 
 which the Divine mercy moderated its effulgence. In 
 these clouds of heaven, He has now come. He has 
 come in the Spirit; by disclosing the spirit of His 
 Word ; by the revelations made from the new heavens 
 for the new earth which is now forming beneath their 
 influence. We can only refer them, who would under- 
 stand this doctrine, to the works of Swedenborg ; here 
 we have but alluded to it,, because it would seem that a 
 system of belief which rejects the divinity of the Lord, 
 cannot admit a personal God, and therefore cannot 
 give to Him the glory of all goodness. 
 
 It may be asked how it was before Christianity ; and 
 the answer is obvious. All nations believed in a per- 
 sonal God, or gods ; their temples, idols, statues, tradi- 
 tions, and mythology, prove this belief, and kept it 
 alive. Mingled with a thousand errors, as this heaven- 
 descended truth then was, it was better than nothing, 
 better than utter darkness. Better tlian a system which 
 
150 RELIGION. 
 
 is Strictly a system of natural religion ; in other words, 
 a system of religion of the natural man ; in yet other 
 words, a religion which would make man moral by 
 appeals to his pride, and bribe him into goodness by 
 the promise that all the credit, and the merit, and the 
 reward, should be his of right. 
 
 As far as we may judge of a system so little defined, 
 and so little capable of definition, we may say that Uni- 
 tarianism acknowledges God as the soflrce of life 
 and power ; holding that He created man and gave him 
 certain faculties, and laid upon him duties to which 
 those faculties were adequate. !Nor is there any thing 
 in this to be condemned as false. But it differs greatly 
 in theory, and far more in influence and effect, from 
 the whole truth. For that tells us, at every moment, 
 that God is with us then ; at every moment creating 
 us ; at every moment giving us his law, writing it upon 
 the willing heart, opening to His Word the willing ear, 
 showing to the willing eye the path of duty, and by 
 his present and continual influence imparting a disposi- 
 tion to obey, with no other limitation or restraint than 
 is necessary to leave us in freedom to choose whom we 
 will serve. The truth tells us, that the same wisdom 
 which prescribes the law, flows with perpetual influx 
 into the mind, and enables it to perceive and under- 
 stand the law ; that the same love from which the law 
 proceeded, as a means of happiness, flows into the will, 
 
RELIGION. 151 
 
 and becomes there, if permitted, a disposition to obey 
 the law and a love of the good for the sake of which 
 the law is given. Therefore, the truth tells us to be 
 humble ; to know our own weakness, our own sinful- 
 ness ; to know whence comes to us any and every dis- 
 position to resist evil and do good ; to know that this 
 support, this help is ever ready, ever solicitous of en- 
 trance, ever uttering those words of mercy : Behold, I 
 stand at the door and knock ! But the door of entrance 
 is opened by us, only when in humility, and in sincere 
 acknowledgement of our own nothingness, we turn 
 away from self and towards our ever-present Father. 
 Nor does it seem that feelings like these can be com- 
 patible with a system which believes only abstractions, 
 which offers to our worsliip a being whose infinity is 
 not brought within the reach of human apprehension, 
 and to our love, only the undefined idea of a vast 
 something which made the world, and impressed upon 
 it the laws of nature, and bade it go forth into being 
 and abide its destiny. 
 
 The Lord alone is Love, is Life, is Being, in Him- 
 self; and all love, and life, and being are derived from 
 him ; not once and at their beginning, but always, inces- 
 santly, and as the perpetual condition of existence. 
 From the whole heavens, as one man, there goes up 
 without ceasing a voice of praise and of ackno wledg- 
 ment; for eveiy angel, whatever be his occupation or 
 
152 EELIGION. 
 
 his blessedness, has deep in his heart a profound con 
 viction and a clear perception, that aU which he has of 
 truth or of love is His perpetual gift ; and that it is the 
 perpetual giving of Himself. In this conviction and 
 perception lie the foundation and assurance of their 
 t)lessedness ; by them it is measured ; and on earth, 
 they indicate the path, the only path to heaven. He 
 who does not learn this truth, and learn to love it here, 
 goes into the other world untaught and unprepared for 
 heaven. 
 
 It is not so difficult to lead a moral life, for the lusts 
 and passions, which tempt to sin, are resisted by many 
 selfish and worldly motives ; the "laws of nature" re- 
 buke them ; and expediency lends to virtue a powerful 
 aid. But a moral life is not enough. If morality only 
 overlies sensuality and selfishness, death rends the veil 
 away. If the devils are cast out by their prince, it is 
 only for his own ends that he does this work. And so 
 too of selfishness. It is easy to resist its grosser temp- 
 tations. Indeed, it is not easy to indulge them in 
 society ; and the avaricious, covetous, and undisguised 
 seekers after their own advantage, without even a seem- 
 ing regard for their neighbor, are comparatively rare. 
 It is more diificult to resist that measure of selfishness 
 which the customs of society justify, and indeed require 
 of "sensible" men. But there are those who do this. 
 Their life is not passed in seeking or improving oppor- 
 
RELIGION. 153 
 
 tunities for personal profit. They give themselves to 
 an exact discharge of duty, to philanthropic services, 
 and the general good. Where, then,, is their selfishness ? 
 If they do good in the faith and hope that it is God 
 who worketh within them to will and to do, their self- 
 love is subdued, and they are in the way of regenera- 
 tion. If they do it in their own strength, then has 
 their selfishness retreated into the inner heart. It has 
 become that stubborn, inveterate, and most deadly self- 
 ishness, which is ready to sell all that it has, and take 
 its pay in self-complacency, and in the consciousness of 
 its own generosity, and its own merit. If, therefore, 
 the first question is, whether the life be good, a great 
 question still lies behind ; and that regards the quality 
 and origin of the goodness. In this respect the con- 
 stant habit of sincere acknowledgement, that all our 
 goodness is from its only source, becomes unspeakably 
 important. We cannot day by day, hour by hour, and 
 at every moment, offer up to God a polluted sacrifice. 
 If we begin by shunning evils, because they involve 
 loss of honor, or property, or pleasure, we shall gradu- 
 ally reach the higher state, in which we resist them as 
 sins against Him, if we continually confess tlj^t the 
 power of resistance comes from Him. Then our evil 
 tendencies are not merely silenced and disguised, but 
 suppressed ; and wlien we reach a world where hypo- 
 crisy is impossibloj, wu sliall be welcomed by those who 
 
154 RELIGION. 
 
 have already aided us in the work of regeneration ; and 
 they will join us in the eternal endeavor to complete 
 that work. But the perception and acknowledgement 
 which are needed for this result must be difficult, not 
 to say impossible, where there is a studied and constant 
 rejection of that work of Divine mercy, of which it 
 was a principal object to make that perception and 
 acknowledgment possible and eflfectual. 
 
 I cannot leave this topic without confessing that its 
 weight and solemnity oppress me. I feel painfully 
 my inability to comprehend it in its true worth, and 
 the inadequacy of my words to present it even as I 
 perceive it. What else is it than the life of heaven ? 
 To receive from the Lord of His Love and Wisdom, 
 and to render them again to Him in acknowledgment 
 and in love, these two, as one, constitute all there is in 
 heaven of life and joy, and all there is on earth of 
 heaven. We have in this an unfailing and universal 
 standard of character. It measures the bliss of the 
 archangel nearest the throne ; and through all the 
 realms of heaven, down to this lower world, and in all 
 the stages of progress here, the same unerring test is 
 applicable. We have the command to love the Lord 
 our God with all our soul and all our strength, and to 
 love our neighbor as ourselves. We may view this as 
 a command, but we shall err if we look upon it as the 
 command of one who stands aloof, content with pro- 
 
RELIGION. 155 
 
 mulgating his law. It is not so. The same Divine 
 Love which uttered those words, is ever striving to 
 enter into our wills, and become the very love which 
 these words require. And these words should teach 
 us, that there is no genuine love of the neighbor which 
 is not derived .from and filled with a love to the Lord. 
 If we would have and cultivate in ourselves that love 
 of the neighbor which is the beginning of heaven, and 
 which binds all in heaven into oneness, with the cords 
 of love, we must endeavor, first, most, and always, to 
 have and cultivate ip ourselves a love to the Lord. 
 There are those, and it may be hoped there are many, 
 whose denial of Him is only an ignorance of the truth and 
 a denial of the false ; or, so far as it is a denial of the 
 truth, it is of the lips only, and not of the heart. But 
 woe to the heart upon which falls the withering, blast- 
 ing touch of Actual Wilful Denial. For him, our Lord 
 and Father came down to earth in vain ; for him He 
 comes again in the Spirit, in His Word, in all the in- 
 fluences which breathe from His heavens, in all the 
 providences which gather about our cradle, and watch 
 our going forth and coming in through all the ways of 
 life, and hover on angels' wings over the last struggles 
 of mortality, — all, all in vain. 
 
 The New Jerusalem differs from the churches which 
 have preceded it, not in declaring that man must be 
 good and give the glory of his goodness to G(jd. For 
 
156 RELIGION. 
 
 this has been the constant declaration of all true reli- 
 gion. But this truth is now revealed with far more of 
 its original splendor. It stands now, not isolated ; not 
 claiming its own department of thought and of affection, 
 and leaving broad realms of knowledge and of motive 
 independent and uninfluenced. But it is revealed as 
 the centre of a system of universal truth. When it 
 shall prevail among men, religion will be at once the 
 whole earth on which man stands, the sky which holds 
 all being in its wide embrace, and the sun whose 
 winged messengers of heat and light fill earth and sky 
 with life and beauty. From it will proceed principles 
 which will lead to all possible improvement of the will 
 or the understanding ; and science, and art, and virtue, 
 and happiness, will come back to it with their willing 
 homage. The prophecies of the Spriptures, which tell 
 us that when Jerusalem is restored, all nations will 
 flock thither with their riches and their glory, and that 
 all the kings of the earth will bring to her their tribute, 
 mean precisely this. And Jerusalem, the city of God, 
 is now rebuilding ; or, in the only appropriate words, 
 " That great city, the holy Jerusalem, is descending out 
 of heaven from God, having the glory of God ; for the 
 glory of God lightens it, and the Lamb is the light 
 thereof. And there shall in no wise enter into it any 
 thing which defileth, or worketh abomination, or a lie ; 
 but they which are written in the Lamb's Book of 
 Life." 
 
THE NEW JERUSALEM. 
 
 If I have succeeded in giving to the readers of the 
 preceding Essays any idea of the doctrine of Degrees, — 
 of the three degrees which belong to all existence, 
 because primarily in the Source of all existence, — it 
 will be easier for me to Ulustrate the character and 
 office of the New Church, by a reference to the churches 
 which have immediately preceded it. There is a dis- 
 tinct relation between this Church, the First Christian 
 Church, and the Jewish Church, which being under- 
 stood, illustrates them all. 
 
 The Jewish. Church was established in Judea, and 
 Jerusalem was its capital and head, its Holy City. It 
 was there, also, that our Lord was born in the human- 
 ity which He assumed ; there His earthly life was 
 passed, His miracles wrought, and His instruction 
 given ; and from Jerusalem, as a centre, came forth the 
 Christian religion. The Apocalypse of St. John, which 
 
158 THE NEAV JEKUSALEM. 
 
 relates, in its spiritual sense, the decline and death of 
 the First Christian Church, and the birth and establish- 
 ment of the Second, describes this as a " New Jerusa- 
 lem.'' Thus, these three churches have this point in 
 common ; they all refer, in one way or another, to the 
 Holy City of Judea. 
 
 Let us endeavor to explain this ; and, beginning with 
 the remark that the object of all religion, and there- 
 fore of every church, is to inculcate and produce good- 
 ness, we may infer that one way to comprehend the 
 character of a church, is to determine the character of 
 the goodness it seeks to teach and to confirm. 
 
 Now all the various kinds of goodness, which difier 
 among individuals indefinitely, may be classed under 
 three heads ; or, in other words, there are three generic 
 kinds of goodness, which form a regular series, being 
 successive in their order of development, and in the 
 degree of their elevation; and these three are entirely 
 distinct, one from the other. In the works of Sweden- 
 borg, and in the language of the New Church gener- 
 ally, these three are called, as has been said in former 
 Essays, natural good, spiritual good, and celestial or 
 heavenly good. 
 
 Natural good is the first and lowest form of good- 
 ness. It is the good of external life only. It is such 
 good as a man may do without religion, or such as he 
 may do when moved by the terrors or the hopes of a 
 
THE KEW JERUSALEM. 159 
 
 religion whicli does not leave the earth. This was the 
 good of the Jewish Church. In many of the passages 
 in which Swedenborg speaks of the Jews, he uses the 
 phrase Jewish or Israelitish Church ; but in most of 
 them he denies that it was a church, and calls it merely 
 the representative of a church. It was, in fact, a 
 church, or not a church, according to the aspect under 
 which it is viewed ; precisely as natural good is or is not 
 good, according to its origin, character, and effect. He 
 who obeys the laws of God and of man, merely from a 
 refined selfishness, may lead a life of entire external 
 good ; and in speaking of it under some points of view, 
 we may call his life a good life. Yet there is no gen- 
 uine goodness in him ; and his life, accurately speak- 
 ing, is only the form, the representative of a good life. 
 Just so it was with the Jewish Church. It was the 
 exact representative of a perfect church. Its foundar 
 tion was, in the first place, the ten commandments, 
 which prohibit all evil ; and in the next place, the 
 ritual law. The rites and ceremonies of the Jews, 
 their tabernacle and temple, and all things that belong 
 to the observances of their worship, and the facts of 
 their history as related in the Bible, were representa- 
 tive. That is, they indicated some things true or good, 
 some things of a moral quality, some things of internal 
 life, which were requisite to the complete expulsion of 
 evil and establishment of good ; or, in other words, to 
 
160 THE TSEW JERUSALEM. 
 
 the complete regeneration of a man ; or, in yet other 
 words of the same meaning, to the formation of a true 
 church within a man. Hence they are, in their spirit- 
 ual sense, of eternal obligation ; and therefore our 
 Lord said : " Verily I say unto you, no jot or tittle of 
 the law shall pass away." 
 
 But the Jews were unacquainted with the meaning 
 and purpose of the things they were commanded to do ; 
 for if they had known what lay within them, their 
 character was such that they would have profaned 
 them. From such a nation no other church could be 
 formed than a merely natural church ; and thus they 
 were exhorted to obey on merely natural, earthly 
 grounds. The motives held out to them were all from 
 this side of the grave ; to their eyes no light from the 
 life beyond its dark precincts streamed across the 
 gloom. Bread and oil and wine, earthly dominion, 
 prosperity and peace, were all that were promised 
 them ; and captivity, pestilence, and famine all that 
 were threatened ; and this, too, was because higher 
 motives would not have suited a people capable only 
 of merely natural good. The dominion, prosperity, 
 and peace ; the bread, the oil, and the wine ; the capti- 
 vity, the plague, and the famine, which allured or terri- 
 fied them, and which did indeed reward and punish 
 them ; and the Holy City, which was the centre of their 
 worship and national existence, — all had infinitely 
 higher meanings than they knew of; but their literal, 
 
THE NEW JERUSALEM. 161 
 
 earthly senses were all that were suited to the Jewish 
 mind, because that was a merely natural mind. 
 
 We may thus understand what is meant by the 
 repeated declaration, that the Jews were "a chosen 
 people." Good men, in every age, have been dis- 
 turbed and pained, that such a people as the children 
 of Israel should have been " chosen " of God as the 
 object of His peculiar favor. But it is now made 
 known for what they were chosen. It was for a use 
 which required a peculiar people, but not a peculiarly 
 good people ; nor were any peculiar favors intended 
 for them or granted to them. They were, by heredi- 
 tary character, a singularly natural people ; or, as it 
 may be otherwise expressed, a singularly external peo- 
 ple. They were less disposed than any other to see 
 or know, or wish to know, or be moved and influenced 
 by, truths which were more than sensual. Their cha- 
 racter was earthly, and altogether earthly. They 
 alone among men had a religion given them, entirely, 
 or with few exceptions, without spiritual sanctions ; and 
 it was no harm to them, but their greatest good, be- 
 cause they were incapable of receiving any thing more. 
 The precepts of religion, armed with the terrors and 
 promises which they could feel, protected them, as far 
 as possible, from the evils of idolatry, and required of 
 them that external goodness of which alone they were 
 capable. 
 
 11 
 
162 THE NEW JERUSALEM. 
 
 The land of Canaan, which was to become the Holy 
 Land, was at that time filled with nations or tribes of 
 the most depraved character. There, the Philistines 
 and others, represented, in their ruling affections and 
 the principles of their life, (and signify, wherever men- 
 tioned in the Word) those principles hostile to all good, 
 which infest the natural man. These must be extir- 
 pated, before genuine good can be received into the 
 heart and life. These nations, therefore, the Jews 
 were commanded to attack and destroy with merciless 
 severity ; for this formed a part of the representative 
 and significant history of this representative of a church. 
 The savage cruelty of the Jews was permitted, be- 
 cause it was their natural disposition. It was not 
 checked, because so far as the Jews were concerned, it 
 could not have been without doing violence to that 
 freedom which is always regarded by Divine Provi- 
 dence. So far as the heathen were concerned, they 
 had reached a fulness of wickedness, which made it 
 well that they should cumber the earth no longer. So 
 far as the whole race of man and the whole future 
 were concerned, a series of facts thus took place ex- 
 ternaUy, which being recorded by inspiration, describe 
 the eternal conflict, bet ween good and evil, and, in their 
 spiritual meaning, give, with infinite fulness and detail, 
 instructions to all who tread or ever shall tread the 
 painful path, the strait and narrow way of regenera- 
 tion. 
 
THE NEW JEHUSALEM. 163 
 
 For all these purposes the Jews were "a peculiar 
 people, chosen of the Lord." And they were chosen 
 because they could perform these uses, without injury 
 to themselves, while at the same time they were brought 
 under the influence of a religion better suited to them 
 than any other which could be given. 
 
 God is Infinite ; and in all His Providence hath 
 respect to the Eternal ; and the religion thus given to 
 the Jews, and in its External form thus adapted to 
 them, has in its bosom truth and good for far higher 
 states and qualities ; even for the highest. It is, there- 
 fore, an infinite and everlasting religion ; and the 
 Scriptures which contain it, are the Word of God. In 
 whatever stage of being they are who seek His face, 
 to these Scriptures they go as the panting hart to the 
 water-brooks, and find there the ever-flowing river of 
 life. They who are highest among the angels of His 
 presence, who in their purity, and wisdom, and love, 
 are nearest Him, find their intenser light and their 
 most fervent love kindled and fed by the same "Word 
 which comes down to our dark earth, to teach the igno- 
 rant, to heal those sick with sin, and bind up the 
 broken heart. 
 
 When the Jewish Church had come to the time of 
 its end, our Lord, whose name is Emanuel, God with 
 us, came down to earth in a new way and form ; He 
 assumed our nature, was born of a virgin, livnd and 
 
164 THE NEW JERUSALEM. 
 
 taught and did the works of God among men ; and hy 
 His divine life on earth, and by His Gospels, which 
 were written under His full inspiration, He established 
 Christianity, 
 
 I endeavored to explain the Jewish Church, by 
 showing that it inculcated natural good. To explain 
 the First Christian Church, we must consider the na- 
 ture of spiritual good. 
 
 He who begins the work of improvement, begins by 
 obeying. He learns the laws of religion, sees what 
 things they prohibit, and them he avoids ; and what 
 things they require, and them he endeavors to do. To 
 this obedience he is moved, according to his character, 
 by various motives. But he makes a step decidedly 
 in advance of the first or lowest, when he seeks to know 
 what is right, and to do what is right ; because he loves 
 to know and to do the truth. For this is a step towards 
 spiritual good. He might have acted before, just as he 
 acts now. Fear, or hope may have led him to a perfect 
 obedience, and if the fear which moved him was the 
 fear of God, it was the beginning of wisdom. But if he 
 before avoided the evils which beset him, because God 
 would punish them, and now avoids them because the 
 truth tells him that they are sins against God, though 
 his outward life be not altered, yet has he become a 
 better man. From one good he has advanced to a 
 higher good. From a natural man he has become, or 
 is becoming, a spiritual man. 
 
THE NEW JERUSALEM. 165 
 
 The First Christian Church was a Spiritual Church. 
 The first miracle which our Lord wrought was decla- 
 ratory and descriptive of the change from the one 
 church to the other. This was the miracle wrought at 
 the marriage in Cana of Galilee, recorded in the second 
 chapter of John. Water, wine, and oil, signify through- 
 out the Scriptures, natural truth, and spiritual truth, 
 and heavenly truth. Had I space, it might be interest- 
 ing to illustrate the grounds and character of this cor- 
 respondence, and its bearing upon the natural qualities 
 and uses of these substances ; but I must content my- 
 self with stating it. At this marriage, wine being 
 wanting, our Lord took the vessels filled with water, 
 " after the manner of the 'purifying of the Jews" and 
 converted the water into wine. Thus He began his 
 work by doing symbolically, what the whole work was 
 intended to effect, so far as it related to the First 
 Christian Church. He did the same thing, when he 
 said ; " Ye have heard that it was said by them of old 
 time, Thou shalt not kill ; and whosoever shall kill 
 shall be in danger of the judgment; but I say unto 
 you, that whosoever is angry with his brother without 
 a cause shall be in danger of the judgment ; and who- 
 soever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger 
 of the council; but whosoever shall say, thou fool, 
 shall be in danger of hell-fire. Therefore, if thou 
 bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that 
 
166 THE NEW JERUSALEM. 
 
 thy brother hath aught against thee ; leave there thy 
 gift before the altar, and go thy way ; first be recon- 
 ciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift." 
 Here, too, by these words, and all similar words, he 
 converted the water of purification of .the Jews into the 
 wine of Christianity. 
 
 It was said, that he who is in natural good may not 
 alter his life when he comes into spiritual good. This 
 is possible ; because perfect natural good is a perfect 
 external. But it is, nevertheless, true, that the higher 
 motives of spiritual good open the mind to higher and 
 clearer truths. They supply us with more universal 
 principles of conduct; with rules of life which rest 
 upon a basis at once broader and firmer, and which 
 enable us to detect and to resist the promptings of evil 
 in their more obscure and insidious forms, and there- 
 fore they have far greater power over the life. The 
 difference between the instruction and commands of the 
 Old Testament and of the New Testament, may serve 
 to illustrate this. In general, it may be stated that 
 while the Law delivered to the Jews prohibits, in its 
 literal sense, all sinful acts, the law of Christ forbids 
 every look, or thought, or feeling which may lead to 
 sin. 
 
 But if spiritual good be far more than natural good, 
 there is yet something higher, far higher than this ; 
 and it is heavenly good. Obedience to the Divine 
 
THE NEW JERUSALEM. 167 
 
 Law is good, if it be sincere, however low may be 
 the motive which prompts that obedience. And an 
 endeavor to conform to the truth from a love of the 
 truth, is still better, and it opens the heart to still higher 
 influences. Better yet, and best of all, is the doing good 
 from the love of good. When this is the established 
 condition of the mind, there is no more of effort, no more 
 of conflict ; for in their stead has come the peace of God. 
 In the wholly unregenerate man, impulses to evil, wrong- 
 ful desires, selfish motives and' lusts, compose the web 
 and woof of life. "With them he contends when he 
 endeavors to obey the commandments; and if he ad- 
 vances so far as to resist them from a love of the truth 
 which forbids them, from a sense of right, the conflict 
 is yet more severe. That truth upon which he calls 
 reveals to him more of himself; it shows him daily, 
 and hourly, that self is an ever-present fOe, wearing 
 every disguise, calling itself by every name, assuming 
 the voice of every virtue. If he be faithful to the 
 better influences which guide him upwards, his warfare 
 is incessant ; whether hope and joy bring upon the 
 mind the brightness of day, or sorrow and humiliation 
 cover him with darkness, he must still be watchful and 
 steadfast against an enemy whose name is legion. 
 But, if this warfare be accomplished, if the victory be 
 won, that enemy retreats and is silent and powerless. 
 Then is the good which the truth requires, loved for 
 
J 68 THE NEW JERUSALEM. 
 
 its own sake ; he need no longer call upon his reason 
 to control his will, for his will itself is regenerated, 
 and while he does only what he loves to do, he leads a 
 life of purity and safety. The innocence of infancy 
 has come back filled with the wisdom of maturity, and 
 with the blessedness of them who see their Father's 
 face. 
 
 Such is heavenly good. To be imagined here, and 
 that but faintly ; to be seen only above. Earth is as 
 yet too full of evil to become the abode of happiness 
 like this. And yet this is the end to which all good- 
 ness would lead, towards which it strives. 
 
 As there are three distinct kinds of good, so, as I 
 have already said, there are three heavens. In the 
 one, are those who in this life rose no further than to 
 seek and know the good of an honest obedience, and 
 this is called by Swedenborg the natural heaven. In 
 the next, are they who have ascended so far as to love 
 the truth of God's words, and sincerely endeavor to 
 obey them ; and this is the spiritual heaven. In the 
 third and highest, from which, or rather through which 
 from the Lord, the others derive all life and happiness, 
 are they who love, earnestly and sincerely love, the 
 good which His law inculcates, and deplore the oppos- 
 ing evils within them as their worst enemies and sorest 
 pains ; and this is the heavenly or celestial heaven. 
 They are in it, — not who have completed the work 
 
THE NEW JERUSALEM. 169 
 
 they had begun on earth — but who have so learnt to 
 love good and to hate evil, that they have entered upon 
 this eternal path. 
 
 Having stated that the good of the Jewish Church 
 is natural good ; while that of the First Christian 
 Church is spiritual good ; I may now add, that the 
 good of the Second Christian Church, called in the 
 Word the New Jerusalem, is heavenly good. 
 
 It should be remarked that the Jewish Scriptures, or 
 the books of the Old Testament — the Law and the 
 Prophets — do indeed teach and inculcate all good and 
 the highest good. This they do everywhere in the 
 spiritual and heavenly senses ; and not unfrequently in 
 the literal sense of passages where the internal senses 
 come to the surface, and the letter is translucent, and 
 shines with their light. But nevertheless, as a whole, 
 it taught to the Jews and required of them only natural 
 good. They might well have believed, — and they 
 now whose minds adhere exclusively to the literal 
 sense of those Scriptures, may believe, — that natural 
 goodness, or mere obedience, fulfils their law. 
 
 So of the Gospels. In their literal sense they some- 
 times command and enforce the highest good. Where 
 our Lord tells His disciples to love the Lord with the 
 whole heart and the neighbor as one's self, He laid bare 
 the inmost secret of the heavens. But as a whole it is 
 still true, that it teaches and requires only spiritual 
 
170 THE NEW JERUSALEM. 
 
 good. It appealed to motives far higher than belonged 
 to the Jewish dispensation ; it placed the eternal above 
 the transient ; it drew its sanctions from that other life 
 which it brought forth to view ; but, it is still true, that 
 in its literal sense, it makes religion rest upon the basis 
 of reward and punishment. The New Church has the 
 same Scriptures. The "Word of God is hers as it was 
 theirs, and more, far more. She clings to the literal 
 sense as the law of life, as the foundation on which the 
 very heavens rest ; but the Word is transfigured before 
 her, and its fece shineth as the sun ; for to her are 
 given also the spiritual and heavenly senses, and in 
 them she finds only Love. 
 
 To illustrate this position at any length, would require 
 an examination of all religious doctrines ; for. there is 
 no one of them wMch is not presented now as it has 
 nev^r been before. But to do this work, or any large 
 portion of it, now, is obviously impossible. And even if 
 I selected but one, if it were of sufiicient worth and sig- 
 nificance to illustrate the whole, wider space and a very 
 different mode of treatment would be requisite to do it 
 justice. And yet, as all that I can do, I will endeavor 
 to present a very few of the doctrines which are deemed 
 central in all religions, somewhat as they are viewed in 
 the New Church. For this purpose I will select — 
 The Doctrine of the Lord, and The Doctrine of For- 
 giveness of Sins, and of Rewards and Punishments. 
 
THE NEW JERUSALEM. 171 
 
 Among heathen nations, the idea of God was and is 
 very obscure. Idolatry of some kind was and is uni- 
 versal ; and the popular belief generally regards God 
 as a mighty man, subject in a greater or less degree 
 to human passions and infirmities. In ancient times, 
 there probably prevailed among most nations a dis- 
 tinction similar to that which we know to have existed 
 in Egypt, and in the earlier philosophies, and in the 
 Eleusinian and other mysteries ; that is, a distinction 
 between the inner and the outer doctrine, between that 
 which was secret and that which was published. And 
 there are traces of very just and clear ideas of the 
 Godhead, to be found in the fragmentary records of 
 most of the earlier religions. But to the children of 
 Israel, Jehovah was revealed. He stood before them, 
 defined and illustrated by His own Word. Still, only 
 the letter of that Word was for them ; and that letter 
 represents him as a jealous God, avenging iniquity, 
 uttering terrible threats, and true to His promise of 
 punishment. Clouds and darkness were round about 
 him. In the literal sense of the Gospels, these fea- 
 tures are softened. God is there represented as our 
 Father in heaven, who loveth all, and maketh His sun 
 to rise and His rain to fall upon the good and the 
 wicked. Still He calls upon men to be good, that they 
 may escape the worm that never dies, the fires that are 
 never quenched. The suffering Lazarus may hope to 
 
172 THE NEW JERDSALEM. 
 
 rest upon Abraham's bosom when the rich man is tor- 
 mented in hell. It is still, as it was before, a religion 
 based upon promises and threats ; and they are but the 
 more powerful because they are drawn from a life that 
 knows no end, but the more awful because they mingle 
 with the shadows of the valley of death. This was as 
 near an approach to the truth, or rather it was the 
 truth as little veiled, as was good for that age and 
 church. In the New Jerusalem, the Lord is revealed 
 as Love alone. In His essence immutable, but in His 
 manifestation and in His operation exquisitely accom- 
 modated to the wants and capabilities of all races, ages, 
 and individuals. 
 
 The idolatry of the world had reached an extreme 
 in the days of Moses, which required the establishment 
 of a religion among men which should declare most 
 distinctly and most emphatically the Unity and Spirit- 
 uality of God, and surround this central truth with the 
 most powerful sanctions. But at the close of the Jew- 
 ish Church, the powers of hell had gained such an 
 ascendency upon earth, that even within the shadow of 
 the temple of the Most High, they could take posses- 
 sion of the very bodies of men. Death was at war 
 with life, and gaining the victory. The destruction of 
 the race, soul and body, was impending ; and to meet 
 this great exigency, and avert more terrible calamities 
 than had ever fallen upon mankind, our Father iu 
 
THE NEW JERUSALEM. 173 
 
 heaven assumed our nature, and dwelt on earth as a 
 man among men. And not for this cause only. In 
 the condition of the Jews and of mankind at that pe- 
 riod, a reason may he found for the precise time of the 
 occurrence of this infinite event. But its effect, its 
 good was also infinite and universal. Having assumed 
 our nature by being born of woman, he had therewith 
 all the tendencies to sin, which, by a lengthened inheri- 
 tance, had, in the fulness of time, filled and composed 
 that nature. These tendencies, all the evil influences 
 of all the hells were permitted to awake and excite : 
 " He was tempted as we are tempted ; " but never 
 sinned, and always by His Divine power overcame all 
 evil, and thus so reduced into obedience and subjection 
 the powers of hell, that the powers of heaven again 
 brought man into freedom, and gave to him full power 
 of turning whither he would ; — of rising or of falling. 
 And this was the great Act of Redemption. 
 
 These victories over evil were perfect and were 
 constant. The Gospels speak only of the temptations 
 in the wilderness, in the garden, and on the cross. 
 These are themselves true, and are symbols of the 
 rest. For His life on earth, from the cradle to the 
 cross, was one incessant and profound temptation, one 
 constant, perfect victory. By this victory evil was 
 expelled from His human nature ; as it passed away, 
 good from the Divine within, took its place, and thus, 
 
174 THE NEW JERUSALEM. 
 
 by a gradual procesi5, the external was made one with 
 the internal, the human was made divine ; and in this 
 Divine Humanity He dwells forever. 
 
 We are commanded to follow Him in our regenera- 
 tion ; because the regeneration of man must be an 
 image of the glorification of our Lord's humanity. It 
 can be efiected only in the same way; only by the 
 resisting of evil through the strength of God within. 
 But with man, it can go no further than regeneration, 
 nor can that work be perfect ; in our Lord Jesus Christ 
 the work proceeded until the human became absolutely 
 divine, absolutely one with the Divine within. To this 
 result this work cannot go with man ; but in this direc- 
 tion it must go ; and at every step the Lord is with us. 
 Because tempted as we, tempted as the whole human 
 race ever were or ever can be, — He walks with every 
 man in the da.rkest paths of danger and distress, and 
 from the treasures of His own Divine Human expe- 
 rience, gives always and to all who will receive, sym- 
 pathy, and help, and the bread of life. For He is 
 Perfect God and He is Perfect Man. 
 
 " Philip saith unto him. Lord, show us the Father 
 and it sufficeth us. Jesus saith unto him, Have I been 
 so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known 
 me, Philip ? he that hath seen me, hath seen the Fa- 
 ther ; and how sayest thou then. Show us the Father? " 
 And how else could the Father be seen but in the Son, 
 
THE NEW JEKUSALEM. 175 
 
 and as the Son presented Him to view ? It is written 
 that no man can see God and live. And it is plain 
 that no man, no finite perception can be adequate to 
 the perception or comprehension of His unaccommo- 
 dated Infinity. But that He might be seen and known 
 among men, He came and dwelt with us, speaking as 
 no man ever spake, doing the works which no man 
 ever did. And now He has come in the revelations 
 which disclose the inner truth and good, the wisdom 
 and the love, of His works and words. They may now 
 be seen in the light of heaven ; in their own light. 
 And they are thus seen to be divine and infinite ; ever 
 opening new wisdom as the mind forever expands to 
 comprehend it, ever wider and warmer in their love as 
 the heart grows larger to receive it. It may be now 
 seen, that to the thirsty and to him perishing with 
 hunger, they offer the water and the bread of life, 
 while to angelic life in its highest exaltation, they give 
 support and nutriment and the means of eternal pro- 
 gress. 
 
 The mystery of a Divine Humanity is great. But 
 we are not left without a key that may unlock it. In 
 the Gospels our Lord speaks often, as if other than the 
 Father, and far from the Father. He prays to Him 
 for strength ; he calls upon Him in agony. But often 
 also he speaks of Himself as one with the Father ; as 
 the Father Hims.elf. There is a seeming contradiction 
 
176 THE NEW JERUSALEM. 
 
 in this ; a mystery which it is hard to fathom. But 
 these different words were uttered in the course of that 
 glorification, of which all regeneration is an image 
 and in all regeneration there is also an image of the ' 
 same contradiction, the same mystery. 
 
 No man can begin this great work without discover- 
 ing that his external nature resists his internal nature, 
 and must be made to obey if there is to be reform. 
 Thus he finds that he is, as it were, two men ; one ex- 
 ternal, one internal. In the external man there are 
 lusts, passions, selfishness ; and in the internal man 
 there is reason, and conscience, and religious principle , 
 and these rebuke the former. Sometimes, in moments 
 of struggle and resolute resistance to urgent tempta- 
 tion, the conflict is as great as it could be between any 
 two parties. The external man feels the excitement 
 and seduction of the evil which tempts, and feels also 
 its own weakness ; and calls earnestly upon the inter- 
 nal man, upon the conscience and the reason and the 
 religion within, to awake and save. If they do awake 
 and save, if the temptation be overcome, that disposi- 
 tion to evil is weakened and suppressed; the conflict 
 terminates ; in its stead there is, at least for a season, 
 peace and tranquillity ; the external is glad that it 
 chose good rather than evil ; the internal is glad that 
 the truth and right prevailed ; and in their gladness 
 and peace they are one. In this separation and con- 
 
THE NEW JERUSALEM. 177 
 
 flict on the one hand, and in this conjunction and unity 
 on the other, we have an image of the two states of 
 the Lord. It is a very exact image, because it is the 
 very effect, and, as it may be called, the reproduction 
 of the Lord's experience. Infinitely less in degree, it 
 is, nevertheless, a true image in its own degree, and 
 therefore the less is explanatory of the greater. So is 
 it, also, even to the end. "With the Lord, that end was 
 the perfect. glorification of the Human, which was thus 
 made perfectly divine. With man, it is only that mea- 
 sure of regeneration to which he may attain. But 
 this regeneration consists of the unity of the internal 
 man and the external man in good. Just so far as this 
 goes, just so far there is peace ; just so far there is au 
 absence of all the elements and causes of conflict ; just 
 so far there is good within, in the form of truth and 
 excellent desires and purposes, and without, in the form 
 of good conduct and a pure life. This good, descend- 
 ing from God into the inmost of the mind, and thence 
 coming forth into goodness of life, is one throughout 
 its course ; and unites into one man the external and 
 internal, which evil had divided, and conjoins this man 
 with the Source of Good. Then is His will done in 
 earth as in heaven ; in the earth, or lower and visible 
 regions of the mind and life, as in their heavens. Then 
 is the sabbath of the soul. We are no longer led into 
 temptation, but delivered fiom evil without tempta- 
 12 
 
178 THE NKW JERUSALEM. 
 
 tion, because we have given ourselves Op to God, and 
 the kingdom, the power, and the glory are His alone. 
 Hitherto, the Lord has labored with us and within us, 
 through the six days of our internal creation, from the 
 first hour when His Spirit brooded over the heaving 
 watersj to that in which man was made in His image 
 aiid likeiiess. Now He rests from His labors ; not that 
 His life-giving influence and operation ceaSes, but it is 
 no longer a labor, because it is no longer opposed and 
 resisted ; and He hallows this day. 
 
 As the First Christian Church adopted and embraced 
 the Jewish Scriptures, so the New Jerusalem embraces 
 these two churches, and all other forms and modes of 
 truth aiid good. Considered in reference to thein, she 
 has her distinctive principles ; but these are not exclu- 
 sive of theirs, nor opposed to them. All modes and all 
 degrees of goodness will find her their nursing-mother. 
 Earnestly desirous to lift up all to the highest plane of 
 spiritual life, she still offers her hand, her help, her 
 light, her love, to all upon the lowest step of the lad- 
 der of life, whose faces are turned upward by the wish 
 to ascend. 
 
 Ifl no true doctrine of the Lord is there found any 
 thing of vengeance^ any thing of offended mercy, any 
 thing of punishment to satisfy the demands of vindictive 
 justice ; nor is aught else found there but love. Not 
 the heavens only, but earth and hell are pervaded, 
 
THE NEW JERUSALEM. 179 
 
 penetrated, and governed by this essential element of 
 the Divine Being. 
 
 Eeligion has, hitherto, required obedience under the 
 threat of punishment The degree and nature of this 
 punishment, and the means of avoiding it, have been 
 very variously presented, and have constituted some of 
 the principal differences between religions. Mistakes 
 and perversions, on this point, have led to infinitely 
 diversified forms of idolatry and penance ; but differ 
 as they might, they agreed in this, that they were 
 viewed as means of propitiating an angry God. The 
 literal sense of the Gospels, in many passages, calls us 
 to repentance and reform, that we may flee from a 
 wrath to come. This view of the relation between 
 God and man may be characterized, not as false, but 
 as imperfect and partial ; and yet as the highest and 
 purest for which mankind was prepared ; as that which 
 they required to turn them from evil, because it was 
 more powerful than any thing else which could be 
 presented to them. In taking this view of it, we must 
 be careful not to confound the truth as it was accom- 
 modated by Providence to men, with the direful per- 
 versions of it wrought by sin and foolishness. There 
 was nothing in any revelation, or in any dealing of 
 God with men, which ever justified the terrible idola- 
 tries of earlier ages, or the milder idolatry which has 
 made Eoman Catholicism but a new form of heathen- 
 
180 THE NEW JERUSALEM. 
 
 ism ; or the doctrine of Protestantism, that one person 
 of a Divine Trinity suffered infinite punishment to 
 satisfy another divine person, and that faith in the 
 sufferer imputes to the believer his righteousness, and 
 imparts the benefits of his satisfaction. These are 
 men's devices, not God's gifts. From the day of that 
 Nicene Council, says Swedenborg, which established 
 over the Christian church a tripersonal Trinity and the 
 doctrine of imputative Faith, the corruption and decay 
 of the Christian church began. 
 
 And yet the New Church teaches that there is a 
 Hell, -as there is a Heaven ; or, rather, many hells and 
 many heavens. But as heaven is not a reward, so 
 neither is hell a punishment. Both are the free, un- 
 fettered choice of those who have them. Both are the 
 modes of life, which they who lead them love. Both 
 are the modes of life, to which the character and will 
 formed here lead. Both are the growth of the seed 
 that is sown in the fields of life. 
 
 The very effort to state in few words a doctrine like 
 this, to the elucidation of which a volume might well 
 be devoted, is somewhat embarrassing. But I will 
 endeavor to do this. 
 
 God is Love. He therefore seeks to give to His 
 children the best thing He can give or they can re- 
 ceive. This best thing is the free love of good ; for 
 from this flows His own perfect blessedness and all 
 
THE NEW jp;rusai.em. 181 
 
 inferior happiness. It must he free ; this is the primal 
 and continual condition ; for take from love the idea of 
 freedom, and you take away its essence, and its life. 
 If free, that is, if man is free to receive it, he must be 
 free to reject it. And, therefore, some do receive it, 
 and some do reject it. They who receive it, find it the 
 source of all blessing, and are in heaven, and are an- 
 gels. They who reject it, choose in its stead the love 
 of self and of evil ; and they are in hell, and are dev- 
 ils. But are they, then, without the infinite mercy of 
 God ? Not so ; not so in the least degree. They are 
 permitted to live as they love to live ; they are allowed 
 the delights they desire ; with no other qualification, 
 no other restraint, than is necessary to prevent their 
 making each other more miserable. They wish to do 
 this, and they are prevented. Never punished for the 
 sins they have committed here, and never punished for 
 their love of a sinful life, becEiuse punishment for these 
 causes must now be ineffectual, they are punished only 
 as it becomes necessary to prevent their molesting and 
 tormenting each other. They are still the objects of 
 His constant care and mercy ; of a love so vast, that 
 no sin can exhaust it; so pure and perfect, that no 
 created mind can for a single moment imagine it. 
 
 The worm that never dies, and the fire that is never 
 quenched, are not literal torments. Nor are they con- 
 science and remorse, and a sense of their condition j 
 
182 THE NEW JERUSALEM. 
 
 for their conscience is suflfocated ; they cannot feel 
 remorse, and their condition is precisely what they 
 love. The worm and the fire are their lusts and evil 
 affections ; these are riot permitted to die, or be ex- 
 tinguished, because they are their life, their joy, and 
 the only life and only joy of which they are capable. 
 They are in their heaven ; in the only heaven they 
 can appreciate, or desire, or imagine, or enjoy. 
 
 The Lord condemns no one. He who occupies a 
 place in hell, seeks that place because it is suited to 
 his life ; and he is permitted to occupy it, by the mercy 
 which provides for him all the means of happiness he 
 may enjoy, and protects him as far as possible from 
 suffering. No one goes to hell whom the Lord can 
 preserve from it, consistently with the man's own free- 
 dom. No one goes there, who has not so insisted the 
 divine influence as to have confirmed himself in the 
 evils which that influence resists. Hence we may 
 understand one delightful doctrine of this church. It 
 assures us that all who die in infancy and childhood, 
 become angels. At their tender age, and before the 
 full development of reason, they could not extinguish 
 its light, or seal their hearts against the entrance of 
 mercy. They arise from the dead body, stiU infants, 
 or children ; and grow to maturity in that world as in 
 this ; and during that growth are nursed, and educated, 
 and prepared for lieaven. Yes, the babe who dies 
 
THE NEW JEKCSALEM. 183 
 
 upon his mother's breast, wakes in the arms of an 
 angel-mother, and never learns the sad lessons which, 
 in the world he has left, so soon soil the opening blos- 
 soms of life. The beloved child, that leaves the circle 
 his innocent happiness filled with gladness, forgets not 
 in his new home his sweet smile ; all beautiful things 
 cluster around him, and his soft bright eye reflects 
 their beauty; and the lovely brow where joy and hope 
 sat together, expands into the fulness of manhood, un- 
 ruffled and unstained. 
 
 There is yet another doctrine connected with this 
 subject, which may be mentioned. None, or very few, 
 go from this World altogether good or evil. The best 
 man carries with him some false persuasions, some 
 dispositions to evil, not yet suppressed. The worst 
 man conceals his depravity from the world, and per- 
 haps from himself, by many false pretences. From 
 this inconsistency there comes conflict. It is well for 
 both classes that they should be better prepared for 
 their final destiny. For this purpose they pass a time, 
 which varies greatly with different persons, in a state 
 which is intermediate between heaven and hell. Into 
 this men enter at once, upon rising from the dead body. 
 As they carry with them their common thoughts and 
 affections, they are at first surrounded by a world quite 
 similar, in all particulars, to that they leave, so that 
 they scarcely perceive the difference. And the reason 
 
184 THE NEW JERUSALEM. 
 
 has already been suggested ; it is, that spiritual sub- 
 stance yields perfectly and constantly to the plastic 
 power of the internal. It becomes a surrounding world 
 into which the life of man flows forth and is received. 
 It becomes a world of external forms which corre- 
 spond to and represent the powers and states of thought 
 and feeling in the internal man. In that world they 
 are instructed and disciplined ; not, as upon earth, for 
 the purpose of changing the ruling principles of the 
 character, but to develop, confirm, and liberate them 
 from opposing qualities. While this discipline is going 
 on, they are neither angels nor devils, but good or bad 
 spirits. They are said by Swedenborg to be in the 
 " World of Spirits." A very large proportion of his 
 relations of things heard and seen by him when his 
 spiritual senses were opened, relate to this world, and 
 describe its scenes, and doings, and inhabitants; and 
 must be referred to these, and not to the permanent 
 and abiding life or homes either of the blessed or the 
 unhappy ; of heaven or of hell. 
 
 Let me now speak of the different evidence on which 
 the three Churches I have considered, rest; for the 
 difference in this evidence grows directly from the 
 essential, difference between them, which has been. 
 already stated. 
 
 The Jews were an external people. Among them 
 
THE NEW JERUSALEM. 185 
 
 an external church, or the external of a true church, 
 was to be founded ; and as its witnesses, all the visible 
 powers of the elements were summoned. The plagues 
 of Egypt; the terrors and the consolations, and the 
 miracles of fear and mercy which attended the forty 
 years of wandering ; the trumpet voices, the thunders 
 and lightnings, and earthquake, and thick smoke of 
 Sinai ; these were the appropriate witnesses that Je- 
 hovah had come down ; and through the eyes and ears 
 of that people, they endeavored to reach their hearts. 
 
 Next comes a true, a spiritual church, intended for 
 spiritual men. It was far higher than the other, as 
 long as that other was understood only in its literal 
 sense, because it was, in fact, a revelation of a sense 
 which lay within that letter. It calls upon men to 
 obey the truth ; to compel their lusts to be silent before 
 the voice of truth, the sense of right. It awakens, 
 instructs, and invigorates that sense of right, to which 
 it appeals. What, therefore, are the appropriate evi- 
 dences of this religion? They are such as may con- 
 vince and persuade ; but they do not come clothed with 
 terror, or with angry power. They were not thunder 
 and lightning, nor earthquakes, nor trumpet tones 
 pealing from the horrors of thick darkness, nor de- 
 struction in any form. But they were miracles of 
 love, of power exhibiting itself in mercy. They were 
 words of a higher authority than ever before spake 
 
186 THE NEW JERUSALEM. 
 
 ■with human utterance. They were works which, with 
 calm omnipotence, confronted hell and bade the devils 
 flee, and the stormy soul and the stormy sea be still. 
 They were works and words of the very utmost power 
 as evidence ; but of none as threat or earthly terror. 
 They were all that his mind could ask or can ask now, 
 who seeks only a reason for his faith, sincerely willing 
 to see that reason, devoutly willing to cherish and obey 
 that faith which it illustrates and confirms. 
 
 Again, another church, a New Church, is to be estab 
 lished, and the former has passed away. It appeals,' 
 not to the mind of man, but to his heart ; or rather, 
 not to the mind first, but to the afiections, and through 
 them to the mind. It awakes, invigorates, and purifies 
 all the love he has for good; it offers to make this 
 more ; to guide it, to gratify it, to bless it. And what 
 is its evidence ? If we remember that it appeals only 
 to the love of being good, and the hatred of self and 
 sin, and only where there is this love and this hatred 
 can it be present, only to them can it speak, we shall 
 see that it could not possibly admit of any other evi- 
 dence than the fact that it is able to strengthen and 
 illuminate the affections and principles to which it ap- 
 peals. In other words, any evidence other than the 
 perception of its reality and its powers, would be no 
 evidence to them to whom it comes ; no evidence to 
 help forward the work which it comes to do. Here, on 
 
THE NEW JEKtJSALEM. 187 
 
 its own ground, its evidence is plenary and perfect. 
 He who seeks this Church for any other purpose than 
 to become better and wiser than he is, seeks it for a 
 purpose which does not belong to it, but is without and 
 below its sphere. He who seeks it for this purpose, 
 finds in its every word that which he seeks. It reveals 
 to him the true relation of God to man, of heaven to 
 earth. It opens the mysteries of life, and glorifies 
 duty into love. It shows .him whence goodness' is, and 
 what it is, and pours the light of a revealed wisdom 
 upon its long pathway from the source of good, through 
 all the heavens, filling them with light and joy, through 
 the mind of man, bringing that into oneness with the 
 heavens, through the fealms of nature, coming forth as 
 the laws of the material universe, and forming all things 
 into shapes which mirror its higher creations in the 
 universe of spirit. His eye is opened by his wish to 
 see; and in the instinct of animals, the growth of 
 plants, the energies, and forces, and forms of matter, 
 he sees the One Life, which seeks to fill his own heart 
 with itself, that he may be one with the whole, and 
 rest forever under the brooding wings of Universal 
 Love. His ear is opened by the wish to hear; he 
 listens to that Hymn of praise, which all the voices of 
 nature are ever singing, which mingles with the sweet- 
 est tones of the heart, and is in harmony with the 
 music ever sounding from all the spheres of being. 
 
188 THE NEW JERUSALEM. 
 
 What, to him, would be the Sinai of the Jews ? What, 
 to him, a miracle which opened the eye or the ear of a 
 disordered frame ? Miracles as much above these as 
 the soul is above the body, are all around him, ever 
 before him; and well he knows that they are ever 
 pressing to repeat themselves, upon his own eye, and 
 ear, and heart. 
 
 It may be useful to remark that the appropriate evi 
 dence of any dispensation, is necessarily ineffectual and 
 insufficient with those who are able to judge of it only 
 in the spirit of one that has passed by. Thus the 
 Jews expected their Messiah with an intensity of hope 
 which has no parallel in the history of mankind. Yet, 
 when he came, they rejected him and crucified him. It 
 was because they supposed that his reign would be but 
 a restoration and confirmation of former glories. They 
 expected from him dominion and prosperity like that 
 of their early kings, increased a thousandfold. And 
 therefore they looked for magnificent displays of power 
 as the first signal of his presence. They thought that 
 the wonders of Sinai would be repeated with augmented 
 splendor ; that the advent of Shiloh would convulse the 
 world. WofuUy were they mistaken. At this distance 
 we wonder at their obstinate incredulity. We think 
 they resisted the force of evidence, which, to an open 
 mind, would have come with resistless power. But 
 
THE NEW JERUSALEM. 189 
 
 we judge of this in our own mood and not in theirs ; 
 they saw and disbelieved, because they were Jews, 
 and Jews only. 
 
 The very same thing is repeating itself now. Per- 
 haps the most common remark respecting the New 
 Church, is that which denies its reality, because a dis- 
 pensation of Divine Truth can be proved only by mir- 
 acles, and must therefore be proved by them, and this 
 Revelation appeals to no such testimony. If, instead 
 of this, it were said that every Revelation must be 
 established by sufficient evidence, this would be true. 
 And the next step for a fair and rational mind would 
 be to the conclusion that the evidence of every Reve- 
 lation must be specifically appropriate to that, and to 
 no other. This results not from Divine order only, but 
 from Divine mercy. They who are so thoroughly im- 
 bued with the spirit of a church that is passing away, 
 that the dispensg,tion which comes to take its place 
 must needs be nothing to them, are protected by the 
 very feeling which prompts them to demand a repeti- 
 tion of the evidence, which was once appropriate and is 
 not now. This is a general law ; and its application to 
 the New Church admits of many illustrations. Look 
 at the effect of miracles upon the mind. Those of 
 Sinai overwhelm it and beat down all resistance. Those 
 which attended the First Christian Church were of a 
 milder character, but still they compel belief. It is this 
 
190 THE NEW JERUSALEM. 
 
 ciroumstanoe which not only makes them inappropriate 
 but would render them injurious at the present epoch. 
 The New Church can be received only in freedom, and 
 with the full and deliberate assent of the reason. It 
 can be seen only by its own light. That desire for 
 moral and spiritual purLQcation to which it appeals, 
 permits and prompts the reason to investigate its 
 claims, and perceive its means of purifying the heart 
 and elevating the mind. If there be this perception, 
 no other evidence is waoting ; or, rather, external evi- 
 dence would be injurious, because it would prevent the 
 wholesome discipline of investigating and adopting the 
 truth for the sake of the good to which it leads. And 
 where there are not this desire and the perception that 
 springs from it, miracles would be the more injurious, 
 because they would compel the belief of truths which 
 would afterwards be neglected or renounced. Not 
 only are there no miracles to compel or facilitate be- 
 lief, but the^e aie obstacles in the way of new inquirers, 
 which we cannot, at times, but lament. We do not 
 always remember that it was mercy, not anger, which 
 excluded our irst parents from Paradise when they 
 were unable to obey its laws, and guarded the entrance 
 with a sword of flame. 
 
 Eationality and freedom, led by a love of good fw 
 its own sake, are the appropriate guides to the gates 
 of the Mew Jerusalem. All other motives and means 
 
THE KEW JERUSALEM. 191 
 
 only prompt us to " climb up some other way." It is a 
 profound conviction of this, which has helped to lead 
 the members of this Church, in their fear of proselyt- 
 ism, to go perhaps to the opposite extreme of doing 
 less than a loye of the neighbor should prompt them 
 to do ; of being less earnest and active than they should 
 be in diffusing a knowledge of the truth. At least, it 
 has brought upon them a frequent charge of coldness 
 and indifference, a part of which may be deserved. 
 
 The absolute universality of the truths of the New 
 Jerusalem, expose it to a singular diversity of accusa- 
 tions. With some, especially in Germany, it has been 
 a fashion to call it a merely " mathematical " religion, 
 because Swedenborg was himself one of the first mathe- 
 maticians of his age, and the system which he reveals 
 is precise and definite in its principles and conclusions, 
 a/nd uses a rigorous logic, and tests its truths by the 
 universality of their application. By others it is called 
 a "beautiful imagination,'' which is constructed of no 
 better material than mere fantasy,- and takes captive 
 only those minds which fancy rules. The answer to 
 both of these objections is, that it is at once in the 
 highest degree mathematical, and in the most beautiful 
 way imaginative. There are some who love to present 
 it, or to perceive it, under one aspect, and some under 
 mother ; and it is ready to give all what they ask ; it 
 is glad to come and offer its gifts to all in their own 
 
192 THE NEW JERUSALEM. 
 
 homes. For it reveals to mankind, that between reason 
 and imagination there is no discrepancy, no antagonism. 
 All the powers of the mind are brethren ; and it is 
 only error — never truth — which kindles hostility 
 among them. 
 
 It has been also said, that there is nothing new in it ; 
 that every one of its doctrines may be found some- 
 where, in some one or other of the religions which have 
 dwelt upon earth ; and the vast and various learning 
 of Swedenborg is supposed to explain this fact. In 
 this, also, there is some truth ; for every religion was 
 the gift of God, given because it contained some saving 
 truths. But these truths were partial, imperfect, and- 
 isolated. Now, however, they have come together. The 
 central principles which confirm and illustrate them 
 all, and give to each the strength of the whole, are 
 now brought within the reach of the human intellect. 
 The scattered gems are gathered, and set as in a golden 
 crown, where every one is brighter for the light of all 
 the rest ; and the crown is placed upon the Head of 
 Him who is Himself the Head of the Church, the 
 Source of all Being and all Good, Lord over all.