fest at the distance of a thousand miles, in full form, | this excite to further inquiry? And let us recomface and feature, without his removal from the bodily mend the Apocalypse Revealed, as the first work, and personal locality where he is! It must be after this, for the reader to get a full and clear remembered, too, that spiritual qualities do not example of what is meant by the interior sense of diminish by impartation, and are not, like matter, the Word. Let him, after suitable preparation, divisible. I can give to another all my knowledge, and not till then, read that work in course; it may and impart as much as possible of my virtue; in be had in one volume; and then let him, and not other words, I can put forth to any extent, of my till then, pronounce upon the interior sense. He goodness and truth, and still have as much for my- is utterly incompetent until he has at least read self as though I had put forth nothing. Nay, the that work in course. It cannot be judged of by more I give, the more I receive. Spiritual quali- fragments. See what is said of the Arcana Cœlesties are not diminished, or removed from their tia and the Apocalypse Revealed, in the "Life and centre, by putting them forth, as it were, to Wriings" prefixed to this volume. (243, 244, 320.) another place. So the infinite God could put The truth is, if there is any Word of God at forth a sphere or concentration of Himself in ulti-all, worthy to be called His especial Word, in mates, on this planet, and still not vacate the distinction from all mere human or angelic inspithrone and centre of the universe; and if any cannot at first receive this idea, it is because of fixing too crudely and sensuously in the ideas of persons, without regard to the interiors of the spirit. which, even with two or more persons, to appearance, may still be one in interior reality. In short, it is a sensuous mode of thought altogether, and the fallacies of the natural mind, which realize any difficulty in this respect; and after the foregoing observations on the unity of the divine Good and Truth, as the only true, eternal Father and Son, we now dismiss the subject to the contemplation of all interior minds.

rations, and all such confused notions of divine inspiration as prevail in the theories of the old church, it ought to be just as different from man's word or man's writings, as God's works are different from man's works. Now the most striking peculiarity of God's works, in which they differ from all the works of man, is their interior structure. In a statue, or painting, or piece of machinery, when we have seen the surface, we have seen all. Even the interior of the most complicated piece of machinery, in each of its separate parts, depends upon its surface alone. And, from a statue, or painting, or piece of human mechanism, We must now pass to a brief notice of the break off a piece of the surface, and all is muddy nature of the Divine Word. Let us ask, simply, sup- confusion. Not so in God's works. Not only the posing the reader to have read the selections given whole, but every part, has an orderly interior from our author in the following pages, Is it not structure. The nerves, sinews, and organic apwonderful that there should be such an account of paratus of the animal, or even the fibrous and a Word, so artless, so masterly? How impossible crystalline structure of the vegetable and mineral, to be invented! Suppose, even, that there may all proclaim the supereminent value of the intebe some slight mistakes, or imperfections, or rior, and the dependence of the exterior upon it. errors in translation; yet what a whole! What Such are God's works. Now, his Word, if he has man could do it? And let it be observed here, any in particular, must be analogous to his works. for reasons before stated, that we could give but The mark of the Divinity must not only be upon very small portions of Swedenborg's connected the face of it, but most conspicuously in its interiexpositions of the Sacred Scripture. Yet in what ors. And in fact, it must be interminable to us, we have given of his teachings on the Divine in its depths of interior wisdom. The Word of Word, the principles of its composition, its force God should be a Work, as strikingly declarative and virtue in the heavens and on earth, and its of a divine hand, as any work of nature in diswonderful consistency and persistency, how is it tinction from a work of human art. Now, is such possible to gainsay the main drift of the teaching? the case with the Christian Scriptures? On the But yet the natural mind will find it hard to mas-principles and by the interpretations given through ter; and only little by little, with greater or less Emanuel Swedenborg, such is the case; but on recipiency, will this divine secret find admission no other theory of inspiration whatever.

to the soul.

It should be observed here, that, necessarily limited as we have been in connected expositions of Scripture, yet a great proportion of the matter we have given is professedly derived from the Word, and could not be elicited from any other source. How wonderful that matter! How manifestly lucid, important, and divine, much of it is, even at first sight! What must be the nature of a Word which affords such wisdom? Should not

In short, if any Word at all, why not precisely such a Word as is here represented? Why should not God's writing be threefold, a sense within a sense, and a sense within that, corresponding to the trinity in every perfect divine work? Let the reader consider deeply; also upon the necessity of such a Word if it could be given; and with prayer and study may his eyes be opened to behold wondrous things out of the Holy Scriptures.

But the truth is, the naturalists and so called

tirely. And every one may see, that, admitting Swedenborg's principles, both the matter and the composition may be inspired of God, and yet the writer know not of the deep meaning therein contained. Even then, the varying 'peculiarities of

giving to each writer some fashion of his own, yet still the One Almighty Lord may have control of all the selfhood of the man, and produce a composition, both mentally and verbally, framed upon the laws of eternal correspondence between spiritual and natural things. It is this nature of inspiration, and of interpretation accordingly, which makes the interpretations of the New Church so uniformly consistent and harmonious. (See "Life of Swedenborg," Nos. 243, 244, 320.) For there is, in the science of correspondences, an almost

spiritualists of our day, believe in no Word above | former being the archetype of the latter. What a that of men, spirits, and angels, or what comes sight it must be, for many a genuine Christian from the God of nature through them, of promis- who shall attain to it, to see, in the clear vision of cuous truth and error, according to human devel- his regenerated soul in eternity, the connected, opment, because they believe in no personal Lord. systematic, interior sense of the Word, in all the The God they worship is the God of Nature, if beauty of its relations to these great themes! not, closely scrutinized according to their prin- And now we may assert the whole question, conciples, the God identical with Nature. Now, the cerning the nature of Divine Inspiration, to be alLord God is the God of nature; but He is so dis- most entirely cleared of the difficulties which beset cretely personal, insomuch that He could appear it, by preserving this simple distinction between in human form upon our earth, that He could give the inspiration of the writer, and the inspiration of a Word essentially and infinitely different from the thing written. They are distinct questions enthe word of any man or angel. We have not space here to go into particulars, or to enlarge philosophically. We refer the reader to the testimony. With this view of the Divine Word, we may also advert to the true nature of its inspiration, in distinction from the prevailing theories on this sub-style resulting from character may be regarded, ject. How various and conflicting, and withal how loose, are the opinions of the old church on this important subject! Some contending that the matter of revelation is inspired, but that the composition is human; each writer being left to his own selection of terms; - others contending that even some of the matter is uninspired, the progress of natural philosophy making it impossible that any thing but blind superstition should claim the character of inspiration for certain physical facts, especially for certain statements contradicted by science; others contending that all historical mathematical accuracy; there is quite, in the scifacts could as well be left, and probably were ence itself; though from the imperfection of huleft, to the knowledge of the writer, the Divine man language, and its variations, and the mistakes Spirit only interposing to prevent errors ; others of transcribers and translators, there is of course again supposing that all the statements of the sa- some liability to slight errors. But the great princred writers may have been inspired, but the rea- ciples of interpretation by this science, make the soning left to the writers themselves; — while others meaning of the inspired Word in the New Church, are for cutting out whole chapters on account of a very different thing from the confused jargon of some supposed lack of evidence, either of an his- the old church speculators. So that, even in the torical or philosophical nature; and still others, minutiæ and particulars of the Word, there is a deeming the whole a matter of human composi- wonderful harmony and consistency in all lands tion, though more or less inspired by spirits and and among all expositors and readers. It is only angels. And then again as to how we are to know necessary for one to become understandingly acwhether the Book is inspired at all, whether by quainted with the system of scriptural interpretainternal evidence, or external, or by tradition, or tion which prevails in the New Church, to see by its effects upon the mind, or by supernatural at once that the New and the Old are at immeasdictum, or by all these combined. In short, the urable odds apart, and that while with the one, the whole subject of inspiration in the old church is Word of God is the Word of God indeed, as strikone mass of confusion. It is no wonder that the ingly and distinctively characteristic of Him as his faith of many is shipwrecked, and that naturalism, Works are plainly declarative of a divine hand; and "science falsely so called," begin to take pre- with the other, there is not only the most marked cedence so largely, and to inundate the church. absence of all systematic analogy, but the most Now, Swedenborg has shown how all these errors heterogeneous and confused mingling of the human, have arisen from a tendency in the church to the insignificant, the contradictory, and the divine. merely carnal and natural principles; and when If now, there is a proper Divine Word, we we consider the vast amount of merely natural must raise the question here, Why not an authorapplication which the church gives to the histories ized expounder of that Word? Especially when of the Bible, we can but be struck with the sub-man has run so low in materialism, as to be wholly lime simplicity of the fact asserted by him, that insensible of interior things. Divine Truth is he two things to which the internal sense of the surely too important to be without it. If it could Word refers, are the Glorification of the Lord's be, it would be. And could it not be? The reader Humanity, and the Regeneration of the Soul; the must see, admitting the premises, that the Lord

Almighty could make use of his creature man, to standing.
produce a Word unlike to all human or angelic
inspirations, full of divine and infinite truth, and
could raise up a human expounder of it.

faith. And as being the dictate of one per-
son abiding in the mind of another, it is an his-
torical faith [or a faith that depends on the author-
ity of the relater.] This is not spiritual faith.
Genuine faith is an acknowledgment that a
thing is so because it is true. . . . Spiritual
truths are as capable of being comprehended as
natural truths; and when the comprehension of
them is not altogether clear, still, when they are
advanced, they fall so far within the perception
of the hearer, that he can discern whether they
are truths or not; especially if he is a person who
is affected with truths.
The reason that
spiritual things admit of being comprehended,
is, because man, as to his understanding, is capa-
ble of being elevated into the light of heaven, in
which light no other objects appear but such as
are spiritual, which are trutns of faith. . .
Faith, and Truth are a one. This also is the
reason that the ancients, who were accustomed to
think of truth from affection more than the mod-
erns, instead of faith used the word truth and
for the same reason, in the Hebrew language,
truth and faith are expressed by one and the same
word, namely, Amuna or Amen." Swedenborg on
Faith, F. 1-3, 6.

In regard to Swedenborg's authority, we may be permitted to say one word, on our own responsibility. We consider it immense in one sense, and unimportant in another. His authority becomes immense when we consider him as the especially appointed herald of the New Church, in respect to which, to doubt his mission would be as absurd as to doubt the mission of John the Baptist in respect to Christianity. No truly enlightened mind can peruse his pages, and understand the immense amount of truth which he has been made the instrument of revealing, and the near intimacy to which he has been admitted with the Lord, and with the heavens, and with the whole spiritual world, and especially in reference to unfolding the true meaning of the Divine Word, without according to him an authority which is great indeed, which fixes upon him at once, the truth of the great and general claim he has made, and which is such, that around him, as the divinely illuminated centre of all human teachers, the Christian world will. eventually gather by spontaneous consent. In this respect, his authority is immense and unparalleled. To Swedenborg we shall have Surely, Swedenborg will not object to being tried to go, for the sublimest help to all theological by his own principles, and received or rejected problems, and for the most powerful light upon accordingly. But it is be noted again what he the Divine Word. He will stand for THE great says further. "If any one thinks with himself, expounder of Christianity, when all other teachers, or says to another, 'Who can have that internal at least all of previous ages, and for long time to acknowledgment of truth which is called faith? come, shall have dwindled to a comparative in- I cannot ;' I will tell him how he may: Shun evils significance. But even in this respect, he nowhere as sins, and apply to the Lord; then you will have asks us to surrender our own reason, but to see the as much as you desire." F. 12. truth, and understand it, as well as believe it.

Thus much on the matter of Swedenborg's authority. It is, as we think, immense in one sense, but unimportant in another. Let none disparage the proper authority of Swedenborg, as an especial harbinger of the Lord's New Church, raised up and qualified for the purpose. To doubt this, would be only to argue our own ignorance.

But in another sense, we do not regard his authority as important. We refer to that almost verbal, particular infallibility, which some may have a disposition to claim for him. In short, we do not consider him as infallible authority. He may have committed some errors. His mind may not have been, at all times, equally clear, when he Let us, in passing, briefly direct the reader's wrote. It would be surprising, perhaps, if this attention to the subject of Regeneration, as unwas not the case. But we do not know of any folded in the following pages. This also is a material errors. We do not, however, speak for matter entirely overlooked by the naturalists and the New Church, or as an accredited organ of any "spiritualists" of our day, and by many professed department of the so called New Church. On Christians. How vastly beautiful is it here unthis subject, there are different opinions in the folded! How divine and searching, how systemChurch. We have our own opinion, and are per-atic and momentous, how imperious and necessary! fectly willing that every one should have his. What we say here, is said for the promiscuous world at large, that is, the more prepared classes of minds, for whom this book is especially designed. "Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind." (Rom. xiv. 5.) "The idea attached to the term Faith, at the present day, is this: that it consists in thinking a thing to be so, because it is taught by the church, and because it does not fall within the scope of the under

We would now call attention to another feature of the philosophy of Swedenborg's disclosures, and that is, the objective scenery of the other life. It is frequently objected by the novitiate in spiritual things, that the system of Swedenborg is a sort of material spiritualism, that what he says of the other life is so crude and gross, so much like the world we live in, that it cannot be admitted to the mind of the truly spiritual man. Most especially is this the case in reference to so many articu

"Though what if Earth

lars, the descent into which, by this famous Seer,!
is felt to be both wearisome and repulsive; mani-
festing altogether too great a familiarity with
things necessarily placed beyond the province of And from Wordsworth thus:-
human curiosity or knowledge.

Be but the shadow of Heaven and things therein,
Each to the other like, more than on Earth is thought?"

"Of all that is most beauteous, imaged there
In happier beauty. More pellucid streams,
An ampler ether, a diviner air,

And fields invested with purpureal gleams;
Climes which the Sun, that sheds the brightest day
Earth knows, is all unworthy to survey."

is that the true Seer is ever the greatest poet, and as Emerson says truly, "Melodious poets shall become as hoarse as street ballads, when once the key note of nature and spirit is sounded."

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As to this latter assertion, it needs no particular refutation. Universals are made up of particulars and the wonder might as well be, perhaps, why no more particulars were not revealed to us by the same agency. If there is another But it took Swedenborg to see the actual and world, doubtless the particulars are in much greater substantial source of all this poetry. And thus it multiplicity than in this comparatively crude sphere of materiality. And as to any repulsion felt at the particular mention of them, the cause of this is more readily found in human ignorance, than in any antecedent improbability that a Seer of suffi- If we would look a little into the philosophy of cient capacity should not be able to see and re- this variegated existence of substantial forms in veal them. The mass of men have so accustomed the spiritual world, we may find it in the fact that themselves to the limits of their own blindness matter itself is nothing but the crude outbirth, and ignorance, that it is thought presumption to sediment, or precipitate of spirit, from God through pretend to any more knowledge of the future life the spiritual spheres, by discrete degrees. (See than the general thick mist that prevails in Chris- COMPENDIUM, Nos. 40, 41.) And all our gold and tendom. To all this, there is an effectual fore- silver, vegetable substance, and animal composistalment of objection and all unpleasantness, in tion; yea, all the countless variety of existence in the admission of a Seer who had his eyes open. earth, and sea, and firmament; all vales, and "Hereafter, ye shall see heaven opened," said plains, and towering mountains; thick forests and Christ; and in many more cases than one, doubt-flowing streams; fish, and bird, and insect, and less the truth will appear more and more manifest, flower; all are but outbirths and formations of and the particulars grow and multiply upon us that variously endowed spiritual substance which with all the interest that attaches to a world far has become fixed in this world of matter. Why more real and substantial than the shifting and then should there not be, in the spiritual world, fading panoramas of earth. gold and silver and precious stones, and vast As to the other part of this objection, that scenery of mountain, plain, and dale; shining Swedenborg's system is a sort of material spirit-fish in limpid waters; birds of plumage flitting ualism, altogether too objective, and too like this through spiritual firmaments; animals of all kinds; world of crude materiality to gain admission to spiritual minds, this comes from the dense darkness of the men of this world in reference to spiritual things. Christians call it refinement, to do away with all form and objectivity of spirit. Unhappily, it is a kind of refinement that verges to annihilation. If there is any thing at all left of the human spirit and its world after death, there must be the form and the distinct outline of the inward essence. There can be nothing without a form, neither spiritual nor material. All outward forms are simply the effects of interior essences as their causes. If, then, there is one form, (and surely no Christian will carry his refining process to such a length as to annihilate all form, both general and particular,) upon the same principle there must be an infinity of forms, varying from the most stupendous and glorious scenery of the heavens, with all the colors too of that superior world, to the most minute and characteristic outlines and shapes of spiritual creations. This 1s to make the other world quite natural, in a spiritual sense, and altogether familiar to our earliest faith. The natural inspiration of men in every age has recognized the truth here expressed. breaks forth from the poetry of Milton thus:

vast architecture of nature and art; yea, vcry thing there that there is here, only spiritua. instead of material, and in greater multiplicity and variety? To us, it follows as a necessary conclusion from effect to cause, and from cause to effect.

But we must pay a more particular attention to the moral character of this scenery, as set forth and described by Swedenborg. In heaven, he says, it is with all variety of beauty; in hell, with all variety of deformity and ugliness. He affirms that the very animals and vegetables and minerals, which surround the inhabitants of the heavens, are the outbirths of their own spiritual states; and so also of the inhabitants of the hells. Why should it not be so? Must not causes act and shape themselves there as well as here? Must not inmost essences clothe themselves in outward forms? This is the law of creation through. How is the outward world of heaven or hell created, but by or through a more interior spiritual essence? And what can that essence be, proximately considered, but the spirits of the men and women who compose it? Swedenborg constantly It tells us, and with all the familiarity of one who has been admitted to the truth and actuality of these

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scenes, that the outward objects of the whole spir- the whole outbirth of those deformed souls is as itual world are but the appearances of the thoughts deformed as the interiors from which it all emafrom the affections of the angels and spirits of nates. The evil spirit is surrounded with his own that world. But these are real appearances, that dark and sin-smitten world. His dwelling is amid is, actual, objective existences, or outward forms wild beasts of every description, the exact forms or investments of interior essences. And they and embodiments of his own evil affections; come and go, and vary their appearances, with bears, wolves, and all ravenous and destructive the changing states of the inhabitants. Is not animals; snakes, crocodiles, and all noxious and this a most vital and highly interesting and im- venomous reptiles; owls, bats, and all birds of portant truth? darkness, the spiritual creations of his own evil But how, says one, can a certain affection, and thoughts; with a sterile and poisonous earth, and thought thence, take the form of a horse, or lamb, a gloomy and threatening sky, and a tempestuons or eagle, or tree, or any such thing? To which sea; even as the Scriptures say of Babylon, with we reply, are not all forms of animals in the mate- a meaning grounded in these same correspondrial world just such outbirths? Did they not ex- ences: "Wild beasts of the desert shall lie there; ist in thought first? Were there not divine ideas? and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures; Did not Plato conceive a great truth? What is and owls shall dwell there, and satyrs shall dance a horse but a certain spiritual entity or thought there." (Isaiah xiii. 21.) And again in the Revof God, first, afterwards embodied in its necessary elation "Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and appropriate matter? Just so in the spiritual and is become the habitation of devils, and the world; only there, these creations are immediate, hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unnot fixed as they are here, yet lasting so long as clean and hateful bird." (xviii. 2.) These dethe state lasts, and ever varying with that varying scriptione refer to the spiritual world. So also we state. Hence there are always earths and waters, read of "outer darkness,” “miry places,” “ caves skies and stars, and a substantial, familiar dwell- and dens of the earth." All these appearances ing-place, (that is, the real appearance of place) with are real in the spiritual world, and we are no the whole animal, vegetable, and mineral world, longer in doubt as to their meaning. The diabolvarying more or less frequently, according to the ical spirit has his own universe around him, and prolongation of the varying states. And how im- there are in his view, as the immediate outbirth mensely important is all this, in a moral and re- of his dark and s'aful spirit, dark and doleful tributive point of view! In heaven there are caverns, that lead down to still lower deeps and beauties unnumbered and indescribable, and we more fearful perdition; à barren earth, a rank and are no longer at loss to comprehend the glowing poisonous vegetation, dire forests and vast deserts; and forcible, yet truly correspondential, language filthy cities and dwellings; stagnant ponds; "lakes of Scripture. It is no longer a merely figurative of fire and brimstone;" and an atmosphere foul speech. The pen is inadequate to describe the and pestiferous with the breath of every evil passurrounding scenery of the good spirit, who dwells sion. And here, living and walking among these in the Eden of his own regenerated affections. scenes, are most miserable beings, whose faces There is the renovated and refined Earth; palaces bid defiance to every attempt at reformation, and of splendor, and houses of visible joy; ever- who are themselves the very forms of evil, or evil in blooming gardens of delight, forests of grandeur, its external impersonation, which is deformity itgroves of quiet beauty, vocal with the songs of self. Moreover, their bodies are frequently disbirds whose clime is the genial sphere of those eased, and there is the actual appearance of heavenly inhabitants, and whose every note is of "wounds, and bruises, and putrefying sores." We intelligence and love; doves, swans, eagles, birds are drawing no fancy sketch. These are the verof paradise, rich in the colors of those heavenly itable outbirths and realities of hell. They are tropics; all the noble, good, gentle, and useful no more pictures of the imagination than the dingy animals; fountains of pure and crystal water; and dread aspect of the habitations and persons seas of majestic grandeur and quietness, which are the boundaries of those heavens; skies of surpassing glory and loveliness, beaming with the pure, white, silvery light of Divine Truth, or with the softened, flame-colored, golden light of the Divine Love, which pervades the celestial heavens with a holy warmth, and from which are visible the stars of other and far-off angelic societies; and yet higher and holier than all, the angels themselves, who are the very forms of charity, or goodness in its external, which is beauty itself.

of the vicious in this our world. They are far more real, because exactly correspondent to their spiritual state. They are in real reality subjective. but they appear in all the substantiality of ob jective realities. Heaven is all beauty and har mony, and "without are dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and whatsoever loveth and maketh a lie." (Rev. xxii. 15.)

So much for the philosophy of Swedenborg's disclosures respecting the objective scenery of Such is a faint description of the objective the other life. It is founded in the eternal and scenery of heaven. Turn we now to hell, and inevitable laws of spiritual nature, and it is no