Gold for Brass and Silver for Iron
GOLD FOR BRASS
AND
SILVER FOR IRON ;
OR
A Plea
FOR THE DOCTRIBES OF THE NEW JERUSALEM;
A SERMON,
BY GEORGE BUSH, A. M.
New-York:
PUBLISHED BY REQUEST.
1853.
SERMON.
For brass I will bring gold, and for iron I will bring silver, and for wood brass, and for stones iron.—Is. lx. 17.
In that profound and masterly analysis of the principles of our nature which is given in the revelations made for the benefit of the Lord’s Church of the New Jerusalem, it is stated that religion, or the religious sentiment, occupies the highest seat in the human mind, and sees under it all the civil and secular things which are of the world. It ascends through them, says Swedenborg, as the pure juice ascends through a tree, and mounts to its top, and from that height looks around upon all inferior natural things, like one who, from a tower or mountain, looks downward and around upon the plains below. It is not to be understood from this, that as a matter of fact—of practical life—the religious principle does actually assert for itself this paramount ascendancy in the mind, and exert its legitimate control over the entire man. It is but too palpable, alas! that there are counter influences which tend continually to defeat the operation of this higher principle, but still it is there, occupying the uppermost place in the mental economy, as will be evident upon its being assailed or outraged. Let a positive appeal be made to men upon the question of the comparative value which they place upon their religious and their political creeds, and it will soon appear which sits the loosest upon them. And so of anything else of a purely civil, or worldly character. Nothing enters so deeply into the sanctum sanctorum of men’s interests as those views which take hold of God, heaven, hell, the soul, death, and their related themes. And though it may be said that all this with the majority of men comes rather into the category of sentiment than of principle, yet we see in it evidence that the Lord has determined to establish for himself a testimony in the interior recesses of our being, and to give a clear pre-eminence to those mental workings which relate more directly and intimately to Himself.
There is in fact no possibility of extinguishing or supplanting the religious instinct by any influence ab extra, though a man may do much, by an evil life, towards achieving a fearful triumph over its dictates. God has made it indigenous to the soil of the human mind. Even if you suppose a man intent, like Paine or Voltaire, upon undermining a prevalent faith in Revelation, still it is the religious sentiment, mistaken and perverted, which prompts him to the task. He will strenuously contend that he is battling with human errors for the glory of God. Deism is still the verbal acknowledgment and professed worship of the Deity, though involving the rejection of Christ and the Gospel announced by Him. Indeed the whole history of the race makes it evident that there is no stronger impulse in human nature than the religious, and at the same time none more liable to distortion and perversion, as it exhibits all phases from the rapt and seraphic worship of Gabriel down to the senseless adoration of stocks and stones, and the frenzy of self-immolation in the blinded devotees of Juggernaut. It is, therefore, evermore a weak and mistaken policy of legislators to make light of the religious persuasions of any people, or to suppose that because they may manage to get rid of a sense of religious obligation or deference to a “higher law,” they can therefore bring the mass of any Christian community to go counter to their conscientious convictions. The sentiment strikes too deep into the soil in which it is imbedded to be trifled with, though it is unhappily capable of being warped, and to a degree overborne, by the force of the sensual principle when addressed by its appropriate allurements.
We have, however, a strong ground of appeal when we come to our fellow-men, and sound to them a parley on the subject of religion. We find them, indeed, when thus accosted, cherishing, for the most part, very crude ideas of its nature, and of the requisites to becoming partakers of its priceless benefits. Yet the appeal meets with more or less of a response from the internal voice of the sentiment, notwithstanding the conception is oftentimes so gross that religion is regarded as something that is to be gotten from without, not unlike what befalls a man when he gets or catches the small-pox or the yellow fever. It is a sort of spiritual contagion, though of a very wholesome kind, and a man must put himself in the way of catching it, which it is thought he is in a fair way to do if he can be brought within the range of a revival, when the heavenly malaria is spreading itself around, and the happiest results are anticipated from inhaling it.
But notions like these, the offspring of false dogmas in theology, are bound to give way before the grave truth, that religion is something to be done, and not to be got, much less to be caught. It is at any rate to be gotten by being done. The account given of it by the Apostle James is very sound, and worthy of all acceptation. “Pure religion, and undefiled before God and the Father, is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.” From this it is evident that religion is a matter of life and action, and not of mere passive reception. It is but another name for duty, and the true idea of duty is that of conformity to the eternal laws of order. To cherish the love of good, to connect with it the truth, to put away evil, to deal uprightly, kindly, honestly, honorably, with the neighbor—this is religion, and this is something to be done.
From the high place assigned, in the structure of our being, to the religious element, it will be of course ever a subject of anxious intellectual inquiry. This inquiry is made at the present day by many earnest minds which are nonplussed by the immense diversity of creeds in vogue, and by the peculiar character of certain dogmas taught in most or all of what are termed evangelical or orthodox churches. It is not needful to specify; but the fact is becoming apparent that multitudes are growing restive under the proclamation of tenets which do not satisfy their reason, however strongly or imperatively urged upon their faith. This unsettled state of mind is not a little promoted by the fact, that it is rather the policy of these systems, or of their patrons and apostles, to frown upon a tendency in the public mind to push research so far into the mysteries of faith as to come back with clear and rational motions of the particulars, as well as the generals of the credenda of religion. But the spirit of free inquiry, evoked by the spirit of the age, will not down at the magisterial mandate of either king or priest, and consequently there is an indomitable prompting to look into the teachings of creeds and systems other than those which are accredited as exclusively sound and safe. Even such as are usually reputed heretical come in for a share of the free investigation which is going on, and that too in despite of the warning voice which would admonish of peril to the soul from the indulgence in daring speculation. Among other systems coming into this category, and eliciting interested inquiry, is that of the New Jerusalem, notwithstanding that the strenuous conservators of sound doctrine would gladly inscribe on the portals of its temple, as Solomon does over the door of the house of the strange woman,—“Her house is the way to hell, going down to the chambers of death. Whoso is simple, let him turn in hither; but he knoweth not that the dead are there, and that her guests are in the depths of hell.”
But, notwithstanding all these solemn caveats, still the haunts of heresy are visited from Sabbath to Sabbath, and multitudes find their way into New Church places of worship, often, it may be, merely to gratify a transient impulse of curiosity, yet often too to seek a solution of the question, What is truth? “Wherewithal shall a man come before the Lord? Wherewith shall a young man cleanse his way?” Now we venture to believe that we have peculiar and pre-eminent advantages for answering questions of this nature—that we are prepared to point out the way to the acquisition of a religious character, and consequently the way to eternal life with more clearness and certainty than is attainable under any other system of theological belief. Those who listen to New Church instructions will find, at any rate, that so far from involving a mere farrago of mystical and visionary crudities, they do actually inculcate the necessity of a practical and life-pervading religion, and that our doctrines are not, as the impression often is, a peculiar mode of dispensing with all religion—a sort of quitclaim to all genuine devotion and piety. On this head, it will not take any candid man long to be corrected in his opinion, if he is willing to be disabused of an error. He will learn that the New Church preaches a religion of the most earnest and exacting kind—a religion founded upon a change of heart, that is to say, upon regeneration; and when strangers drop in from time to time upon our worship, there is no point on which we are more anxious to have them informed, than in regard to the importance which the New Church attaches to the regenerating process. It would fain re-echo the voice of her Lord; “Verily, I say unto you, ye must be born again;” and by this we mean not a sudden flash of conviction, or a sudden sense of conversion, which is apt to be “as the early cloud and the morning dew;” but a gradual, steadily advancing, and permanently enduring change in the dominant loves of the soul, and in the paramount ends of life. It must be a process by which there is a constant progressive elevation from the natural to the spiritual; and, as far as possible, from the spiritual to the celestial. On this theme we are furnished with a world of new light in the revelations of the New Church. We there learn that the necessity of regeneration is not grounded solely in the fact, that man, as a fallen being, needs to have restored, by a new birth, the spiritual life which he lost by his apostasy. It is in this matter very much as it is in regard to death. It was once, we know, universally supposed that physical death was introduced into the world in consequence of Adam's transgression, previous to which time nothing of the kind had been known, either with the race of men or of animals. But of late years science, apart from revelation, has clearly established that death had reigned among the animate orders of creation for myriads of ages before man had been ushered into being and made a denizen of this terraqueous globe. And not only so; we now learn by the light of the New Jerusalem that it is a universal law of being—that all the spirits now in the spiritual world, good, bad, and mixed, were once men in bodies, and have passed out of bodies into the grand receptacle of souls, the world beyond the grave. Consequently, if there are sinless beings of the human race in any of the earths of the universe, they will successfully pass out of their corporeal condition into that of disembodied spirits in the world of spirits. This is then, in one word, the law of development of all created spirits, just as much as it is a law of the vegetable world that a flower shall not be unfolded without bursting its bud, or the chick in the egg be matured into a fowl, without breaking and casting aside its shell.
And as it is with death, so also is it with regeneration. That is the law of human progress. Man is in all cases born natural, or in the natural degree, and thence becomes spiritual. “That is not first,” says Paul, “which is spiritual, but that which is natural; and afterward that which is spiritual.” So in the case of the Most Ancient or Adamic church; even that was not created in the acme of its purity and perfection, but gradually rose to it by regeneration. It took its start from the natural plane, and by successive degrees ascended thence to the celestial.
The fall, however, has superinduced an enhanced necessity of the process of renovation, inasmuch as the natural principle, which was designed to be a ministering servant to the spiritual, has aspired to the mastery and affected to lord it over the superior. And it is in this that the process in great measure consists, viz., the subjugation of the rebellious natural, and the bringing it into harmony with the internal and spiritual.
But we commenced with saying that we deemed ourselves, in the New Church, possessed of peculiar advantages for addressing our fellow-men on the subject of religion, and it is but reasonable that we state the grounds of our claims on this head; for “he that boasteth of a false gift is as a cloud without rain.”
1. We would say then, in the first place, that we may lay claim to a system of religious doctrine which avoids all those conflicts with reason and science that create an exceeding difficulty in the case of other creeds. It is one that brings into harmony all departments of truth, scientific, theological, and rational, and requires no man to hold his intellect in abeyance while receiving the dogmas propounded to his faith. A thousand problems are solved on the ground of this system which defy solution on any other, and especially do all those stumbling-blocks disappear which the mere literal sense of Scripture presents to its readers, and which have had the effect to drive thousands into the cheerless regions of skepticism. Nothing is more common among those who have received these doctrines than the confession, that they were saved, by the adoption of them, from the abyss of infidelity; for viewed in the light which the New Church throws upon it, they found the Bible every way worthy the Wisdom and Love of its Author.
But to speak less vaguely on this subject, I will advert to some few points on which the teaching of the New Church differs essentially from that of all the other churches with which we are familiar at the present day. I will begin by stating briefly what the New Church does not hold and inculcate on these points.
It does not teach that men are condemned for Adam's sin imputed to them, as though their head was upon his shoulders—it does not teach that God is angry or vindictive, or that He does all things for His own glory as a final end—it does not teach that He has predestinated or foreordained a portion of the human race to final salvation, and passed by the rest—it does not teach that the Lord punishes or casts into hell by His own positive act, but simply that men cast themselves thither as the normal and inevitable result of the violation of the laws of order—it does not teach that the body cast off at death and mouldered into dust is ever again resuscitated and reunited to the spirit—it does not teach that men are at once assigned to heaven or hell as soon as their breath leaves the body, and are thence called forth to be tried and sentenced thousands of years afterwards at what is called the Judgment of the Last Day—it does not teach that there are three Persons in one God, though it does announce a threefold distinction of essential principles in the Deity termed Father, Son, and Holy Ghost—it does not teach that the innocent Son of God died to make a vicarious atonement to the Father as a distinct person in behalf of the guilty race of men, and only of a chosen part of that—it does not teach that the short-comings in our own righteousness are eked out by the imputed merits of the Saviour, although at the same time, it denies the least particle of merit to man.
Now these are among the fundamental tenets of the old creeds. They are among the points, and the principal points, which occasion the difficulties and dissatisfactions above alluded to,—difficulties and dissatisfactions which are happily avoided in the system of the New Church. The precise manner in which this avoidance occurs, on the ground of these doctrines, it is not our present purpose to state, but we appeal to the whole tenor of the writings on which we build, for evidence on this head, and our grand object is to attract attention to these documents of our faith. But several counter-presentations will occur in the sequel of our remarks.
2. The New Church system has the merit of establishing a substantial uniformity of doctrinal belief among its espousers. Upon the grand and radical tenets of the Christian faith it utterly and absolutely precludes that endless diversity of creed which has split up the body of Christendom into conflicting and belligerent sects. All this gives place in the church of the New Jerusalem to a beautiful prevailing unity of doctrine founded upon a fundamental unity of principle in the interpretation of the sacred oracles. Having one and the same key to the meaning of the Word, they come to the same result. The law of correspondence, according to which its language is constructed, is universally accepted by the men of the church upon evidence that is perfectly conclusive to their minds, and this can lead but to one mode of interpretation. It needs but a moment's reflection to see what an immense gain to the cause of Christianity is secured by this unanimity—what a mountain load of reproach is rolled from the profession of a religion of love and charity by the harmonious faith of its disciples. We do not of course affirm that on minor points there may not be shades of difference of opinion, for an absolute identity of understanding or will, of charity or faith, of operation or form, does not exist in the universe. But on the distinguishing doctrines of the church it is impossible that there should be any material diversity of views, and if any particular text of the Scriptures be submitted for interpretation to four individuals of the church from the four quarters of the globe, they would assign to it the same sense. And as to doctrine, even granting that slightly varying shades of opinion exist, yet they occasion no separation among brethren where charity conjoins, and where true charity exists it will infallibly conjoin.
3. The dispensation of the New Jerusalem, whose character and genius we are now unfolding, has also the merit of making life its great distinguishing feature. Without at all disparaging the theoretical element of religion, it still gives a paramount place to the practical, and it does this too on such grounds—grounds laid in the very structure of our being—that no one who is at all conversant with the system can fail to see that the love-element is the nethermost stratum in the geology of our nature, and that from love flows charity, and from charity good works or neighborly uses. There is little danger, therefore, of splitting on the rock of Antinomianism, or of sitting down at ease in our evils, under the flattering unction applied to our souls, that Christ has made an atonement—that is, purchased an indulgence—for our sins, while we are exempted, by a wondrous stretch of grace, from all active warfare with them. The New Church is as far as possible from giving a quietus to the conscience in this way. It plants the essence of religion, not in a faith of imputation, but in a life of genuine charity and active use. If this be not the actual form which the principle assumes—if it do not ultimate itself in a pure, upright, exemplary deportment on the part of the professors of these truths; the fault is theirs, and not that of the system itself. It is because they are unfaithful to its teachings. The system makes the most ample provision, by its innate principles and its superadded revelations. I say by its innate principles, for, according to these we are taught, that love or affection is the ground-element of our being, and that the outward works are, in all cases, when free and unconstrained, the expression of the inward moving power of the love. But the love is the life. If you would know what a man's life is, you have only to learn what his ruling love is, and you have an infallible clew to it. Now, as all true religion demands a good love, it must demand a good life of course, for the life is merely an exponent of the love. But the life which a man possesses here is the life, which he carries with him into the other world, and unless that life has been the native product of a pure and heavenly love here, it can by no means be a source of blessedness hereafter. It is immaterial how much faith he may have, or how much righteousness he may have imputed to him on the ground of his faith, his heaven is a delusion so long as he is lacking in a life's love that is in accordance with the Divine precepts, which are themselves an expression of the Divine love. To say that the works and fruits of a good life are, in the first instance, the effect of faith, is completely to reverse the true order of things, and to put the effect for the cause, and the cause for the effect. It is love that produces faith, and not faith that produces love; for faith pertains to the understanding, and the understanding is evermore secondary to the love, as light is to heat.
The paramount importance of a good life, therefore, as the essential element of a man's hope of eternal blessedness, is a necessary result of the constitution of our being, and there is nothing arbitrary about it. Nor is the doctrine liable to the charge of establishing human merit as the basis of salvation. The New Church disavows every claim of merit in its good works, while at the same time it insists upon the works as a sine qua non. But, together with this, it assures us that our loving, willing, working power is not our own, but the Lord's, though we are still to be active and co-operative, as if the ability were inherent in us.
But we not only deduce this distinguishing feature of the New Dispensation from the mental and moral economy of our being—it is brought home with most impressive power by the tenor of the revelations of the other life with which we are favored. The life of love, as we have seen, ultimates itself in the works of love, and the works of love are uses or utilities to the neighbor, and to the Lord's Church and Kingdom. Now, as use is the grand end of the Lord himself—as he is perpetually working for use—so his creature man can never attain the end of his being without a dominant regard to use in all the departments of his action. Weigh the following paragraph from our illuminated author on this subject, and say whether he head, if not the heart, do not respond to it as supremely rational, and thence having the highest evidence of truth:—
“That every man is created and born for use, is manifestly evident from the use of all things in him, and from his state after death, when, if he does not perform any use, he is accounted so vile, as to be cast down into infernal prisons, or into desert places: that man is born that he may be use, the life also manifests, for the man whose life is from the love of uses, is altogether different from him whose life is from the love of idleness, by which is meant a life consisting only in conversation, entertainments and diversions: the life of the love of use is the life of the love of public good, and also of love towards the neighbor, and of the love of the Lord, for the Lord does uses to man by man, whence the life of the love of use is a divine spiritual life, wherefore every one who loves good use, and from the love thereof does it, is loved by the Lord, and is received with joy in heaven by the angels: but the life of the love of idleness is a life of the love of self and of the world, and hence is a merely natural life, which does not hold the thoughts together, but diffuses them abroad into every vanity, and thereby turns man away from the delights of wisdom, and immerses him in the delights of the body only, and of the world, with which evils cohere; wherefore after death he is let down into the infernal society to which he addicted himself in the world, and there is compelled to labor through hunger and scarcity of food. By uses, in the heavens and earths, are understood ministries, functions, studies of life, employments, various family exercises and labors, consequently all things which are opposite to idleness and indolence. The same may also appear from the essence of uses: the essence of uses is the public good; the public good, in the most general sense, with the angels, is the good of the whole heaven; in a sense less general the good of the society; and in a particular sense the good of each individual of the society. But with men the essence of uses, in the most general sense, is the good of the whole human race, both spiritual and civil; in a sense less general the good of their country; in a particular sense the good of society, and in a singular sense the good of each individual; and whereas those goods constitute their essence, love is their life, inasmuch as all good is of love, and in love there is life: in this love is every one who is delighted with the use in which he is for the sake of the use.”
This, then, is a view of the practical religion of the New Church, and our hearers will judge, for themselves how far it accords with their own best ideas on the subject. They see from it that the religion of the New Church is a religion of charity, while that of the Old is rather a religion of faith.
4. But in enumerating, as I have now attempted to do, some of the leading features of that New Dispensation which crowns and blesses the current age of the world, I would by no means overlook that great fundamental tenet which regards the Divine Being Himself, the proper and only object of worship to the universe of intelligent creatures. In presenting this point, I shall vary a little from the direct argumentative treatment of the subject, and suppose myself to be interrogated by a candid inquirer somewhat as follows:
“You are assuming to proclaim to your fellow-men what you term a New Dispensation—the Dispensation of the New Jerusalem—and I would fain learn what it is precisely that we are to understand by this Dispensation.”
Our answer is, that we mean by it a purer and more perfect order of life, doctrine, and worship established among men on the earth, in accordance with the express predictions of holy writ to that effect.
“But in what respect does this hold good? How will this order of things differ specifically from that which has hitherto prevailed in the Christian world?”
In greater purity of doctrine and superior sanctity of life.
“Your reply is still vague. Please be more explicit.”
The doctrine taught in the New Church makes known to us that one God is to be believed in and worshiped, in whom is a Divine Trinity, and that Jesus Christ in his glorified or Divine Humanity is that God. According to this doctrine the Creator and the Redeemer of the world, are not two persons, but one, and consequently, that the Tripersonality of the Godhead is nothing but a fiction, and a phantasy, while yet the doctrine of a Trinity, true and Scriptural, is most emphatically maintained.
“But how does this differ from the commonly received tenet? Does not that also affirm that there is but one only God, while in the Godhead we are to recognize the Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost?”
Still there is a radical difference between the old and the new doctrine. This difference will be more palpable if we contrast the two systems in respect to a single point. The so-called orthodox theology teaches that Christ possessed a true human soul, as well as a true human body. But this the New Church denies from the fact that our Lord had no human father, while he had a human mother, and it is one of the authoritative teachings of the church that the soul is, in all cases, derived from the father, while the body in which it is clothed is from the mother. As then our Lord had no human father, that inmost essence which, in all other men, is from a paternal origin, was derived from Jehovah himself, and as the divine nature is incapable of division, this is but saying that his soul or the inmost element of his being was Jehovah. This of course lays a foundation for the claim of absolute and essential divinity in the nature of Christ, which, in every other system, is virtually withheld from him, though nominally conceded, as the ascription to him of a human soul necessitates the inference that the Divine element was merely adjoined to the human, instead of constituting the central and paramount principle of his being. His soul was in fact the essential Divinity itself, and this is but another name for the Father, or, which is equivalent, the Divine Love. This is the first essential in the Divine nature, often erroneously termed the first person. The second is the intellectual, or Wisdom, or Truth principle, as contradistinguished from the affectional. In the incarnation it was this principle which was more especially manifested, and termed the Son, though the Divine Love was not separated. The third is the Divine operative energy proceeding from the Father and the Son, as a man’s operative act proceeds from his soul and body conjointly. This is the Holy Spirit, thus forming a trine which is at the same time a one. That this is the genuine doctrine of the Word is evident from our Lord’s own language when he says, “I am in the Father, and the Father in me.” “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father.” So if Philip were now to make the same request in heaven, he would receive the same answer, for heaven neither knows nor shows any Father out of the Divine Humanity of the Son. The Father is in the Son as the soul is in the body, and in neither case is the one to be sought apart from the other. This doctrine, which is peculiar to the New Church, and fundamental in the system, derives its importance from the fact, that it pervades the whole as a vital element, and gives character to the entire fabric of a man’s faith. “The idea of God,” says Swedenborg, “enters into every thing belonging to the church, religion, and worship; and theological matters have their residence above all others in the human mind, and among these the idea of God is the principal or the supreme; wherefore if this be false, all beneath it, in consequence of the principle from whence they flow, must likewise be false or falsified; for that which is supreme, being also the inmost, constitutes the very essence of all that is derived from it; and the essence, like a soul, forms them into a body after its own image; and when in its descent it lights upon truths, it even infects them with its own blemish and error.”—Brief Expos., No. 40.
“But,” says the inquirer, “in what consists the peculiar claim of the New Dispensation on the score of life and conversation?”
We reply, that the cordial reception of the above great doctrine of the Lord will naturally lead to a closer conjunction of life with Him who has said, “Abide in me, and I in you,” because it will lead men to approach the Lord immediately in his Divine Humanity, as the only God of heaven and earth, and to approach him, too, as a God of boundless and unfathomable love, as a God who has loved the race of men with a love so intense, that instead of desiring an atonement or mediatorial sacrifice to render him placable or accessible, he himself assumed our nature, and came down to the lowest depths of our necessities, in order to raise us to his own paternal bosom. Is it not obvious that here is a powerful attraction to a pure and holy life, which does not exist under any other form of doctrine? Do we not learn a new lesson of love here? Is it not cause of everlasting gratitude to be freed from the perplexity which is felt in addressing worship to three persons instead of one, and then making use of one of the three as a medium, mediator, or intercessor, through whom to approach another? Is it not ineffably more simple and more delightful to recognize Creator, Redeemer, Regenerator, and Sanctifier, all in one Being, and one Person? Will not the amazing love which he has manifested kindle ours? Shall we not enter upon a community of spirit with the Lord himself? Shall we not live in his life, love in his love, and thus walk in his name? Can it be otherwise than that a higher form of spiritual life shall develope itself under these circumstances?
But again, the claim of the New Dispensation to a greater purity of life as well as of doctrine, is substantiated by the prominence given to charity as compared with faith in the circle of Christian virtues. Its profound philosophy discloses the love-element as the very esse of our being, and the prompter of our acts, and wherever this principle has received a right set, it will not fail to go forth in the form of use or works of charity towards the neighbor. From the necessary relation between the affectional and the intellectual principles of our nature, or the heart and the head, it makes faith entirely subordinate to love, and stamps as worthless a religion which does not distinguish itself by a life of charitable uses. It is in this that the essence of the religious character consists, and no salvo is found in a fancied provision made in the gospel for a dispensation from the stringent demands of the decalogue. Life, life, and not opinions or faith, is the grand criterion of admissibility to heaven. Indeed, as heaven is a state and a character, rather than a place, it were in the nature of the case simply impossible that one should receive an entree into its joys on any other basis than that of a life formed according to its spirit and precepts.
Such then is a brief and compendious view of some of the leading features of that new and glorious dispensation which has opened upon us. They would admit of indefinite expansion, in a variety of particulars, but our present limits will allow but a cursory survey. The system opens a boundless range of doctrinal and ethical truths, and our object will be answered if we can succeed in attracting attention to the works in which it is embodied. We are well aware of the prejudices which array themselves against the candid investigation of the claims of this system. The very name of Swedenborg, the distinguished medium through whom these precious revelations of doctrine and life have been made to the world, has the effect with multitudes of minds, to transform the whole at once into an incoherent medley of visions and vagaries. The plea of ignorance, on this head, we are disposed to admit as far as it will avail, but we see not that it can cover the whole ground. A false estimate of character ceases to be innocent when the means of forming a true one exist, and at this day no man can urge a dearth of data relative to the illustrious Seer of the New Jerusalem, or justly assert a lack of motive to an examination of his claims. The New Church would be grossly recreant to her own spirit and genius to pay undue reverence even to a messenger from the Lord of hosts, but it does not hesitate to honor, in his measure, the instrument whom the Most High has especially raised up to serve as the herald of that sublime dispensation that is now entering upon its interminable career. She would fain endeavor to conciliate regard to his person for the sake of his teachings, and with a paramount view to the spiritual behoof of our fellow-men.
We have often imaged to ourselves the effect produced upon an ingenuous mind by a perusal of Swedenborg's writings by the supposition of a somewhat parallel case. We have supposed, as we will now suppose, with a direct reference to our hearers, that an angel in the guise of a grave, venerable, and attractive personage should be introduced into a company in which we were present. Suppose, that on entering into conversation with him we found ourselves in the presence of one who was perfectly at home on every subject that should chance to be broached—who was conversant with all science, history, philosophy, and religion—and who, without assumption or magisterial dictation, but in a clear, luminous, and engaging manner would dispel the mystery from every theme on which he was interrogated. Suppose, farther, that, as the conversation proceeded, and higher and more sacred topics were gradually broached, and inquiry pressed upon the borders of the world unseen, he should discover an equal familiarity with that as with the natural world, even to the minute details of its phenomena and laws—that the heaven and the hells, angels and devils, and everything of this class with which the human mind intensely yearns to be acquainted, were evidently within the compass of his amazing intelligence. Suppose all this, and at the same time that a certain ineffable light and demonstration went with all that he uttered—would not the suspicion, ere long, creep upon us that we were in the presence of a superhuman being? Could we resist the belief that such knowledge, such wisdom, such weight must pertain to the tenant of another sphere? And as this conviction grew upon us, should we not draw closer and closer to him, and drink in with more entranced ear every word that fell from his lips—lips touched as with a live coal from off the altar—and with every new disclosure would not admiration, wonder, awe, delight grow till they scarce knew bounds? How would the soul swell under the undoubting assurance that an angel stood revealed in the venerable Mentor to whom we had been listening? What an era in our existence should we count the interview, especially if it were a transient one and not to be renewed?
Have I not in this described what would be the thoughts and emotions of the mass of men in view of the privilege supposed to be accorded? Imagine now, on the other hand, a person listening to the same marvellous utterances, and yet evincing little or no interest in them. Imagine him saying that the speaker, for aught he knew, might be an angel, or he might be a mere babbler, and that he regarded it of no particular consequence whether he were the one or the other. What idea could you form of such a listener? Would he not be nearly as great a wonder in the contrary direction as the illustrious stranger himself? Would he not strike you as a moral monstrosity? Could you draw any other inference from the slighting estimate formed of the speaker, than that he attached no value to the communications delivered? No other conclusion could be drawn from the indifference supposed, than that either the subject matter of the discourse were utterly distasteful and repulsive to him, or that he looked upon the discourser as pouring out a stream of empty garrulity.
The supposition now made may be applied to Swedenborg and his revelations. With all the evidence at this day accumulated of a divine mission entrusted to his hands, we must deem a practical unconcern and apathy in regard to them as arguing the same moral state as that we have now depicted. If you feel, however, that this would not apply to you—if you are conscious that you would listen, holding your breath, to the utterance of a celestial messenger, and would draw nearer and nearer, and press up to the oracle, the more you were convinced of its divinity, how can your deportment be different, provided Swedenborg is regarded as a commissioned legate of heaven, qualified and appointed to lay open the arcana of the macrocosm and the microcosm—of the larger and lesser universe? Indeed, if one is not fully assured, but has only a shrewd suspicion, that such is the real character of this remarkable Seer, even that suspicion, we think, carries with it a degree of moral obligation to investigate his claims. You know it is often said in reference to Christianity itself, that if there be but a bare possibility of its being true, no man can justify himself in waving a thorough examination of the subject. So in the matter before us. When you consider the stupendous nature of the disclosures, doctrinal and psychological, which he has made, it implies a most culpable indifference to stand aloof from the inquest demanded. As then my hearers would be faithful to the behests of the moral instincts—as they would desire hereafter to face with confidence the tribunal of truth—we would urge them to the investigation proposed. Enter upon it with a free and candid spirit—prosecute it with a single eye to the validity of the claims set forth—and I can venture to promise the most gratifying results. I can assure you of finding something richer than the mines of California or Australia. With no reserve do I say, that you will find yourselves introduced to the very treasures of heaven, and will feel that a shadow has fallen upon the glories of earth. But in all fidelity I must at the same time forewarn you, that the issue personally will be far from slight or trifling. You will find yourselves searched and sifted and scanned and explored as with a lighted candle. You may possibly shrink from the ordeal, and thus be speedily repulsed at the outset. But allow me to express the hope that you will not be, deterred by any moral repellency of this kind. Let the searching process go on. It will be merely the kind severity of the surgeon, who probes a wound with the single view of healing it. Why not submit then willingly to the healing hand, and let it, as the instrumentality of the great Physician of souls, restore you to life, health, and happiness unalloyed.
SWEDENBORG THE USHERER IN OF A NEW DISPENSATION.
“It has pleased the Lord to manifest Himself to me, and to send me to teach those things which will be of his New Church, which is meant by the New Jerusalem in the Revelation; for which end He has opened the interiors of my mind or spirit, by which it has been given me to be in the spiritual world with angels, and at the same time in the natural world with men, and this now for twenty-seven years. Who in the Christian world would have known anything concerning Heaven and Hell, unless it had pleased the Lord to open in some one the sight of his spirit, and to show and teach? That such things as are described in the Relations appear in the heavens, is manifestly evident from the like things which were seen by John, and described in the Revelation, as also which were seen and described in the Word of the Old Testament by the Prophets.”—True Christian Relig. 851.
“Men are enlightened variously, every one according to the quality of his affection and consequent intelligence: those who are in the spiritual affection of truth, are elevated into the light of heaven, so as to perceive distinctly what comes from the Lord, and what from the angels; what comes from the Lord is written [or given in my writings], and what from the angels is not written. Moreover it has been given me to discourse with the angels as man with man, and likewise to see the things which are in the heavens, and which are in the hells: the reason was, because the end of the present church approaches, and the beginning of a new one is at hand, which will be the New Jerusalem, to which it is to be revealed, that the Lord rules the universe, both heaven and the world; that there is a heaven and a hell, and what is the quality of each; that men live also as men after death, in heaven those who had been led of the Lord, in hell those who have been led of themselves; that the Word is the Divine [Principle] itself of the Lord in the earth; also that the last judgment is passed lest men should expect it in this world to eternity; besides many other things which are effects of the light now arising after darkness.”—A. E. 1183.
“The Lord our Saviour manifested himself to me in a sensible personal appearance, and has commanded me to write what has already been done, and what I have still to do; and he was afterwards graciously pleased to endow me with the privilege of conversing with spirits and angels, and to be in fellowship with them. It is not in my power to place others in the same state in which God has placed me, so as to be able to convince them, by their own eyes and ears, of the truth of those deeds and things I publicly have made known. I have no ability to capacitate them to converse with angels and spirits, neither to work miracles to dispose or force their understandings to comprehend what I say. When my writings are read with attention and cool reflection (in which many things are to be met with as hitherto unknown), it is easy enough to conclude, that I could not come to such knowledge but by a real vision, and by conversing with those who are in the spiritual world. This knowledge is given to me from our Saviour, not from any particular merit of mine, but for the great concern of all Christians’ salvation and happiness.”—Letter to the King.
“I am well aware there are few who will believe that any one can see the things which exist in another life, and in consequence thereof be enabled to give any account of the state of souls after death, because few believe in a resurrection, and of the learned fewer than of the simple; they profess indeed with their lips that they shall rise again, because it is agreeable to the doctrine of faith, but still they deny it in their hearts; nay, some even openly confess that if any one should rise from the dead, and they should see, and hear, and touch him, they would then believe, but not till then: supposing however this to be the case, and that one should rise from the dead, still not a single person who in heart denies a resurrection would be thus persuaded, but a thousand objections would arise in his mind, which would confirm him in the negative. Some profess to believe that they shall rise again, but not till the day of the Last Judgment; and the notion they have conceived of that day is, that then all things appertaining to the visible world are to be destroyed; and inasmuch as that day has been expected in vain for so many ages, they have still their doubts. Hence it may appear what sort of persons there are at this day in the Christian world; the Sadducees spoken of in Matt. xxii. 21, openly denied a resurrection, yet they did better than those at this day, who profess not to deny, because it is an article of faith, and yet deny in their hearts, so that they profess contrary to what they believe, and believe contrary to what they profess: but lest they should any longer confirm themselves in that false opinion, it has been granted me, by the Divine mercy of the Lord, during my abode in this world in the body, to be in the spirit in another life (for man is a spirit clothed with a body), and there to discourse with souls which have risen again not long after their decease, yea, with almost all those with whom I was acquainted in the life of the body, who have died, and also daily now for some years with spirits and angels, and to see there stupendous sights of such things as have never entered into the idea of any person, and this without the least fallacy. And whereas several say that they would believe, if any one should come to them from another life, it will now be seen whether they will be persuaded contrary to the hardness of their hearts.”—Arcana Cœlestia. Gen. xvi. Pref.
“The state of the world hereafter will be quite similar to what it has been heretofore, for the great change which has been effected in the spiritual world does not induce any change in the natural world as regards the outward form; so the affairs of states, peace, treaties, wars, with all other things which belong to societies of men, in general and in particular, will exist in the future just as they existed in the past. But as for the state of the Church, this it is which will be dissimilar hereafter; it will be similar, indeed, in the outward form, but dissimilar in the inward. To outward appearance divided Churches will exist as heretofore; their doctrines will exist as heretofore; and the same religions as now will exist among the Gentiles. But henceforth the man of the Church will be in a more free way of thinking in matters of faith, that is, in spiritual things which relate to heaven, because spiritual liberty has now been restored to him. I have had various converse with the angels concerning the state of the Church hereafter. They said that things to come they know not, for that the knowledge of things to come belongs to the Lord alone; but that they do know that the slavery and captivity in which the man of the Church was formerly, is removed, and that now, from restored liberty, he can perceive interior truths, if he wills to perceive them, and thus be made more internal if he wills it; but that still they have slender hope of the men of the Christian Church.”—Last Judgment.
REMARK.
If then we have arrived at the epoch when a new dispensation was to be ushered into the world, there is nothing incredible in the idea that a human instrument should be raised up and supernaturally endowed to disclose the character of that dispensation, especially by unfolding the interior sense of the Word, which must constitute the nourishment of the life of the Church of the latter day. That Emanuel Swedenborg possessed in a pre-eminent degree all the requisites to qualify such an instrument for such a work, will appear beyond question to any one who shall take sufficient interest in the subject to acquaint himself with his life and character. So far as moral and intellectual attainments are concerned, we see nothing wanting to the fullness of his accomplishments. And if the Second Coming has thus, like the first, stolen upon the world unawares, we perceive nothing unreasonable in the idea, that its appointed harbinger may have come equally incognito, and that the Elias—the John the Baptist—of the new economy, may have ushered in the footsteps of his Lord, fulfilling his ministry as a kind of “Veiled Prophet,” shrouded in an obscurity which is destined ere long to break away, and to be succeeded by a flood of light that shall illuminate the earth.
This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.
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