Next, "The Angelic Wisdom Concerning the Divine Love and Wisdom" throws a flood of light on the origin of the material universe and all created things. In this work we are clearly shown that the Lord is Love itself, because He is Life itself: and "that angels and men are recipients of life;" and "that all created things in a certain image represent man," and "that Love is the life of man."
But Swedenborg's "Apocalypse Revealed" was one of the most satisfactory works I ever read. It opened up to me a new world of thought, of expectation, hope and joy. The reading of this work and the first volume of his "Arcana Celestia" satisfied me that the Sacred Scriptures are divine or a special revelation from God to man, and differ from all merely human writings as much as a living man differs from a statue; for they are filled with a Divine spirit. The Lord says: "My words are spirit and life."
The Sacred Scriptures are written in accordance with the law of correspondence between spiritual and natural things. The spiritual is the cause, the natural is the effect; and effects must correspond to their causes in every particular. The Lord is the sun of the spiritual world and the creator of all things: consequently our natural sun corresponds to the spiritual sun, or the Lord. From the Lord, or the spiritual sun, love and wisdom proceed, and give life to man's spiritual body; from the natural sun flow natural heat and light which enable the natural body to live; natural heat and light therefore correspond to spiritual heat and light, or to love and truth, which are heat and light to the spirit of man. Through the natural clouds and atmosphere which surround the earth we receive natural heat and light from the natural sun, as we receive spiritual heat and light or love and truth from the Lord through the literal sense of the Sacred Scriptures; Consequently the clouds of heaven in which the Lord was to come are the literal sense of his holy Word, unfolding its spirit and life and manifesting the Father clearly to His children. The sun which was to be darkened was not the natural but the spiritual sun, or the Lord obscured to man's spiritual perception. When men in their creeds separated the Lord into three persons, and framed doctrines in accordance therewith, which, in their estimation, would enable them to reach heaven by believing certain dogmas, instead of by a life according to the Divine Commandments, then was the sun indeed darkened in the minds of men. Then a true faith or knowledge of the Lord was destroyed and the moon became as blood. A true faith reflects the light or wisdom of the Lord upon man, as the natural moon reflects the light of the natural sun. Water corresponds to truth upon the natural plane of the mind, for it cleanses the natural body as truth cleanses his spirit; it also circulates throughout the natural body, conveying nourishment to all the structures of the body as truth circulates through the spiritual body, conveying that which is good and true to strengthen and develop the spiritual body. It is owing to this correspondence that water is used in the ordinance of baptism, for it performs the same office for the natural body that truth does for the spiritual body; it cleanses and conveys nourishment; and therefore baptism by water signifies that man is to be regenerated by receiving and living according to the truth. It is also the Christian sign—a sign that one baptized is of the Christian Church, or professes the Christian religion.
The "Fruit of the Vine," or pure unfermented or unleavened wine, has been organized by the Lord in the vegetable kingdom; it therefore not only contains water, but also organized nourishment for the structures of the body, which supply in a most remarkable degree the wants of the body, like a mother's milk to her infant child; it therefore most beautifully symbolizes blood, and corresponds to spiritual truth, united with good from the Lord, which nourishes and builds up the spirit of man, when he drinks or appropriates it, or when he lives as divine truth teaches, shunning evils as sins against God. It is consequently used appropriately in the Most Holy Supper.
It has been my aim above to simply give the reader a glimpse of this most wonderful and beautiful of all sciences, and really the foundation of all sciences-the science of correspondence between natural and spiritual things. He who reads carefully and without prejudice the "Apocalypse Revealed" and the "Arcana Celestia," with a desire to know and live according to the truth, cannot fail to see that the Sacred Scriptures are plenarily inspired, and are a special revelation from God to man; and that, different from all merely human writings, they contain within the letter a connected spiritual sense. That the science of correspondences was once understood by the inhabitants of our earth, is to be seen in the relics which remain in a more or less perverted form in the hieroglyphics of Egypt, the idolatry among many nations, and sun-worship, where the spiritual signification has often been lost and men have come to worship the natural objects instead of the spiritual, which they represent. The mythological writings of many nations, and even Masonry, contain remains of this once well known science. The first chapters of Genesis and the entire Word are written in strict accordance with this science. The first chapters of Genesis, like the Parables of our Lord, were not intended to be understood literally; the very names therein show this clearly. A tree of life, a tree of knowledge of good and evil, a talking serpent, how can any man for a moment suppose these to be natural trees and a natural snake? Do serpents ever talk? the garden eastward in Eden, and an Ark which would not hold the hides and teeth of all the animals on earth—were these to be understood literally?
CHAPTER VI.
A NEW DAY TO OUR EARTH.
"'Behold He cometh with clouds,' signifies that the Lord will reveal Himself in the literal sense of the Word, and will open its spiritual sense at the end of the church."—A. R. 23.
A church, we are taught, comes to its end when the true doctrines of the Word are falsified by its members, to justify evils of life; or when the members of a church who are in the love of ruling over others in civil and ecclesiastical affairs, for their own aggrandizement, or for vain show, or who love money or sensual gratification without regard to use, strive to justify the gratification of their perverted loves and appetites by an appeal to the Sacred Scriptures, and thus frame creeds and doctrines which exalt faith and ceremonials above a life of charity, and when men come to live in accordance with such false doctrines the church comes to its end. At the same time, there remain some who are still in the good of life, or striving to live good lives in obedience to the Divine commandments. Such comprise the common people who receive the Lord with joy at His coming, and follow Him, among whom a New Dispensation of Divine Truth commences. Such may be found both among the clergy and laity. The end of the world is the end of the Dispensation or Age, and not of the material earth—"The earth endureth forever."
We are told by Swedenborg that the angels rejoiced greatly that it had pleased the Lord to reveal a knowledge of correspondences so deeply concealed during some thousands of years; "and they said it was done in order that the Christian Church which is founded on the Word, and is now at its end, may again revive and draw breath through heaven from the Lord."—Conjugial Love, 532.