Page:Swedenborg, Harbinger of the New Age of the Christian Church.djvu/164

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EMANUEL SWEDENBORG

and a deeper consciousness that all the power of deliverance is from Him alone. All this is learning to understand and to be aided by our Lord's victory over the weakness of human nature—in fact, to see His face in the clouds of heaven.

How deeply this was impressed on Swedenborg's heart and soul we learn from his Diary:—

"This have I learned, that the only thing . . . is in all humility to thank God for His grace and to pray for it, and to recognize our own unworthiness and God's infinite grace. . . . The sum of all I found to be this, that the one thing needful is to cast one's self in all humility on our Lord's grace, to recognize one's own unworthiness, and to thank God in humility for His grace; for if there is a feeling of glorification contained in it, the tendency of which is toward our own honor—whether it is a glorification of God's grace or of anything else—such a feeling is impure. . . . I found that I was more unworthy than others and the greatest sinner for this reason, that our Lord has granted me to penetrate by thought into certain things more deeply than many others do; and the very source of sin lies in the thoughts I am carrying out, so that my sins have on that account a deeper

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