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EDITOR'S PREFACE.
"THE time has come," says an English author of rare breadth and insight, "when every enlightened man and woman ought, for their own sakes, to know Swedenborg and his pretensions." It is mainly with the view of facilitating this knowledge, that The Swedenborg Library is published.
The present volume opens with a frank avowal of the great seer's claim,—a claim so bold and startling, that some, perhaps, may be inclined to close the book as one unworthy of their serious attention, before they have finished the first chapter. The Editor would respectfully invite the attention of this class of persons to the following considerations:
1. Saying nothing of Swedenborg's personal character—a character known to have been exceptionally upright, truthful, pure and noble—consider, first, that the Bible teaches the doctrine of man's immortality. It tells us of a spiritual world, and describes the denizens of heaven as in the human form; and records the fact, also, of their occasional appearance to
