. evil, and examination is made whether he is affected by truths, and in what manner; and whether and in what manner he is affected by falses. 4. If he is affected by truths, he is withdrawn from evil societies, and introduced into good societies, and also into various ones, until he comes into a society corresponding with his own natural affection, where he enjoys the good corresponding to that affection; and this until he has put off his natural affection, and has put on a spiritual affection, and then he is elevated into heaven." He then proceeds to describe the wanderings from one evil society to another, and at length the everlasting confinement in caverns or workhouses, of all those who have been affected by "falses," especially those "who have confirmed themselves in doctrine and life, in faith alone unto justification."* These and other similar "relations" read like a record of distempered visions which sometimes haunt the mind of a deranged man, or mono-maniac. They are strikingly analogous to the messages which some, in our day, profess to bring from the world of spirits, only that they have the advantage over the latter of having proceeded from a man of greater genius and erudition, than has yet been found in the ranks of our "spiritualists," so-called. Precisely that explanation which is adapted to the Apocalypse Revealed, vol 1., § 153. reveries of Emanuel Swedenborg is applicable to all the professed revelations connected with the modern delusion.* God has revealed to us in His Word the condition of departed souls. It is a more reliable testimony (Luke xvi. 31), as might easily be shown, than could be gathered from one professing to have returned from the invisible world, appearing visibly to us, in the house, or by the way. The spirits of the righteous dead have a nobler and more dignified employment than to be returning, at the beck of mortals, to this world, to give them information, or receive information from them. "Who are these that darken counsel by words without knowledge?" With the partially extinguished lamp of revelation, giving to the shadows of the night only a more bewildering mockery, they stumble, they wander from the path, and perish. Yes; give us back the Bible-the whole Bible-the * Compare Judge Edmonds's account (Christian Spiritualist, November 4, 1854) of the interview he says he had with the spirits of some of those lost in the Arctic, with the above extract from the "Apocalypse Revealed." The Judge is only another Swedenborg with less learning, less consistency, and less reverence. Swedenborg represents himself as trying to convince Aristotle that the earth is round, when that old Greek in his work (De Coelo, ii. B. xiv. c. 8,) had by the same arguments, as are now employed, proved it to be a globe. Edmonds represents himself as conversing with the spirit of John F. Lane, the hero of a fictitious story. uncorrupted Word of God. It is too much to ask us to surrender this Book, or to substitute any other in the place of it. We need it to enlighten our way through this world. Without it, not a single star dawns on man's sombre pathway. We need it to enlighten our steps through the valley of the shadow of death. The light of that city beyond the grave, shining like a sun, but without a sun, having the glory of God, like the Shekinah which rested between the golden cherubim, pierces even the gloom of the grave, and falls like sunbeams, through the rifted cloud, on this side the Jordan. Welcome, thou Book of God! Welcome, light of heaven! Welcome, divine philosophy! "A perpetual feast of nectared sweets, There are several points, in the false views of heaven now presented, in striking contrast with the heaven of the Bible. 1. The conscious state of happiness to which the most enlightened Pagan nations are looking beyond death, is represented as impure, and one in which they have no security against a return to the earth, to transmigrate through the bodies of insects, animals, and men. How absurd to look for happiness in a world *Milton. where the fires of the worst passions and lusts burn and rage! What better than a pandemonium, though called heaven, and located in a cloud, or the brightest star that gems the evening sky! But even in this they have no security against a return to the poverty, and pain, and miseries of earth. They may be again cast out, to wander hundreds of years, in the bodies. of swine, of dogs, or of cattle, until, permitted once more to enter a human body, they have another opportunity, by self-inflicted tortures, or bodily austerities, to prepare themselves for their celestial pandemonium. How unlike the "rest" which remaineth for the people of God; in which by His power, through the perfect mediation of Christ, they will be confirmed in holiness and happiness, for ever! "And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain; for the former things are passed away." "They are before the throne of God, and serve HIM, day and night in His temple," and "shall go no more out."* 2. The only state of future happiness, known to the most intelligent heathen, in which they are not exposed to apostasy, and a return to all the miseries of earth, and even to the miseries of hell, is a state of unconsciousness in which, without ideas, they lose their individual existence, and are as if they had Rev. iii. 12; vii. 15; xxi. 4. never been. But, in the heaven to which Christians aspire, the soul not only retains its personal identity and consciousness, but enters on a state of higher knowledge, and of endless progress in knowledge, and assimilation to the Lord. "And the glory which THOU gavest ME, I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one; I in them, and THOU in ME, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that THOU hast sent ME, and hast loved them, as THOU hast loved ME. Father, I will that they also whom THOU hast given ME, be with me where I am, that they may behold my glory." "Now we see through a glass darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then I shall know even as also I am known.” * 3. And what was the elysium of the great mass of the polished nations of Greece and Rome, as embodied by their poets, of the Scandinavian warrior, and of the Aborigines of our own forests, but a reproduction, upon another theatre, of the very pursuits of this world? In bloody battles, or in light and airy sports, or in sensual and inglorious repose, they found the very archetypes of the heaven for which they longed. They looked for war-charriots, for wild adventures, for sumptuous banquets and couches, in that spirit-land. How dark were our prospects! did not our religion assure us of something better, beyond * 1 Cor. xiii. 12; John xvii. 22-24. |