edge of the things which it most deeply concerned him to know. He lost all knowledge of his inner and superior life—all perception of the laws, capabilities and undying needs of his own soul. It was this loss, therefore, which rendered a Divine Revelation necessary.
What else, then, but spiritual things—God, the soul, immortality, redemption, regeneration, retribution, sin, holiness, heaven and its blessedness, hell and its misery,—can the Bible, when rightly understood and interpreted, have been given to teach us? Yet we know that it treats or appears to treat much of natural and temporal things. We know that it abounds in the mention of times, places, persons, things and events belonging to this, natural world. But according to Swedenborg all these natural and temporal things are but symbols of something spiritual.[1] They all have a
- ↑ The doctrine, so much insisted on by Swedenborg, that the Bible is a book of Divine symbols, is recognized by many Biblical scholars and pious Christian authors. In an interesting article on "Symbols of Thought," by the late Rev. E. E. Adams, D. D., we meet with such passages as the following:
"The Bible is a book of symbols,—not word-symbols only, but types, scenes, visions, and life-symbols. As a whole it expresses the love and wisdom and purpose of God." "The Tabernacle was a symbol of God's presence and dwelling-place. The Temple, with all its varied, spacious, rich apartments, and its furniture, was a sublime symbol of heaven and its worship. The bondage of Israel, their release, their march through the Red Sea, their wanderings, their miraculous supply of manna from heaven, and of Water from the smitten rock, their passage over Jordan and entrance into Canaan, prefigured, symbolized a grand spiritual history—the rise, progress and completeness of the Christian Church.
