“Is tale bearing a great sin? Answer—Yes;
supported by a text of Scripture.” Now, we cannot think that tale-bearing is necessarily a great sin, or even that it is generally so.
“What is the Eucharist made from? Answer—From wheaten bread and the wine of the grape.” This, in our eyes, as a matter of taste, if for no other reason, is very objectionable.
We confess that much of what we have found fault with is not of great moment, but in a work of this kind we have the right to demand the strictest care and accuracy. We have no desire to be severe in our criticism, and gladly bear testimony to evidences of talent in the author, who, with greater pains, would have given us, we doubt not, a very excellent catechetical text-book.
Outlines of the Religion and Philosophy of Swedenborg. By Theophilus Parsons. Boston: Roberts Brothers. 1876.
Philosophy of Swedenborg! That is a desideratum which we have looked for in vain some twenty years or more. We have read a considerable number of volumes of the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg and much that has been written on their contents, conversed with not a few of his prominent followers, and yet we have failed to obtain from them all a clear and philosophical statement of the doctrines which he taught. Here, however, is a volume written expressly to give to the world such a statement.
But, alas! we are again doomed to disappointment; for nowhere do we find in it, in precise terms, the nature of this new revelation. The nearest we come to it is in the following passage: “If a new revelation was to be made through him, if it was to be made by his statement of spiritual truths, they should be not merely new, but so entirely distinct from all that was ever before known, so well adapted to send the mind forward on a new path and from a new beginning, so able to supply new motives and incentives to a new moral and affectional as well as intellectual progress, and new instruction to guide this progress, as to justify and authorize this large claim.”
The first pretension made in this paragraph for the new church is “new motives and incentives to a new moral and affectional progress.” Neither Swedenborg in his life nor his followers in theirs have yet made this title good. Nowhere
have they shown the signs of a higher spiritual life or of a greater self-sacrifice. When they shall have given us a St. Charles Borromeo, or a St. Vincent de Paul, or the heroism displayed by a Sister of Charity, then, and not till then, will there be reason to investigate their claim of a revelation which is superior to that given by Christ himself.
The next assertion in this paragraph is that this “new revelation” is a source of “new intellectual progress.” Swedenborg revolted at some of the grossest errors of Protestantism, and, in repudiating them, seems to have been entirely ignorant of Catholic theology. The author supposes Swedenborg’s opposition to the errors of Calvinism is the cause of its decline; seemingly, he is unaware of its refutation centuries before Swedenborg lived, and the statements of the truths opposed to it, by the Council of Trent. What is true in Swedenborgianism is not new, and what is new is not true.