EMANUEL SWEDENBORG
of God, under the guidance of the inner heavenly content revealed to him by the Holy Spirit. There is nothing new or strange in the doctrine, for it is simply that of our Lord Himself, as recorded in the Gospel, now first clearly and rationally understood. The difficulty with the common interpretations of the Gospel has been the lack of clear distinction between that in our Lord which was of man and that which was of God. This distinction is rightly understood only with experience in ourselves of the distinction between the natural man, which is of self and the world, and the spiritual man, which is of God and of heaven—a distinction of which Paul well warned us. The life natural to man, into which he is born, is centripetal, self-centred. The life of God which man is to receive for his own, in coming into the image and likeness of his Creator, is centrifugal, giving forth of itself endlessly for the blessing of others. Our Lord taught plainly the absolute necessity of conversion from the one life to the other in order to enter the kingdom of heaven. What has not been well understood is that within or above man's natural mind, with its necessary concern for himself, he has an inner or superior spiritual mind,
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