EMANUEL SWEDENBORG
but faith springing from God does the work. And so, His will being invoked, His spirit flows into the soul and changes its state, or perfects it; but the work is one of long discipline, if the soul is evil, that it may become good. . . . Hence it is plain how difficult it is to turn an evil soul into a good one, and that this is of the Divine grace alone, though there must be persevering application on the part of man."
What is here described, though in the terms of his Psychology, we cannot fail to recognize as the regeneration of water and of the spirit. The description is that of experience already, we may believe, far advanced. What was yet needed for its completion we are now to see. But we may well pause to consider how little we have ourselves accomplished, even of the reformation of the natural disposition, and how little we know in our own experience of the total regeneration sought by Swedenborg. This deep regeneration, though with his consent and coöperation, was being effected by the Lord for a purpose to Swedenborg unknown. A few years later, he wrote—
"What the acts of my life involved I could not distinguish at the time they happened, but by the
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