“The descendants of this lost church compose chiefly the nationalities of Asia. They have remained for ages and will remain for ages to come in a stationary, semi-petrified condition, possessing no genuine truth, no vital religion, no element of progress; but living upon fables and myths which are the fragments of spiritual truth, whose interior light has long been lost to their understandings.
“For many centuries now of natural time, the Jewish Church has held the centre of the world of spirits. It also has become thoroughly corrupt, and is about to be removed to the circumference. Its great judgment is impending; its destruction approaches; but of this, that church itself is profoundly ignorant.”
During this conversation we had ascended by insensible degrees to the summit of a high mountain. I was astonished at the splendid panorama spread out beneath us. It was the whole land of Canaan, from the Jordan on the east to the borders of Philistia on the west; from Damascus and Antioch gleaming away to the north, down to the great desert that frowned along the southern boundary.
Immediately beneath us was a city of Jerusalem, ten times as large as our earthly capital; and a holy temple of corresponding proportions, all transcending in glory and grandeur anything ever seen on earth.
“Behold,” said my father, “the creation of spiritual fantasy, the imaginary heaven of the Jews, which will [pg 207]pass away like a scroll at the breath of the Lord when He comes in judgment upon them.
“You seem astonished,” he continued, “that spirits should reproduce around themselves these spiritual semblances of the cities and countries they have left behind. Nothing is more simple and rational. These people are gross and sensual in their nature, with little or nothing of the celestial or spiritual about them. They loved material things exclusively; their thoughts never rose above outward, civil, and political affairs. Here their interior life is reproduced in exteriors. Therefore they create around themselves their old homes, cities, and countries; and re-enact, as far as possible, their earthly life, because all their affections and thoughts are earthly.”
“This mountain,” said I, “upon which we are standing puzzles me; for there is no similar elevation in the neighborhood of Jerusalem.”
“This mountain,” answered my father, “is symbolical of the lofty state of spiritual pride and presumption in which the Jewish Church now is—a state of self-glorification which precedes its judgment and final destruction. It is only from this height, corresponding to their own spiritual state, that you can see the holy city and temple as they appear to them.
“Is it strange that a people, so gross, so unspiritual, so near their extinction as a church, should be so inflated with spiritual and theological conceit? They appear in their own eyes to have the most glorious city, the most holy church, and the most august ceremonials that ever existed; accounting all others unfit for heaven and unworthy of the Divine favor.
“It was on the pinnacle of that colossal temple which you now see, that the evil spirit placed Jesus, and attempted to infuse into his heart the arrogant self-glorification of the corrupt priesthood, which imagines itself the special care of all the angels of heaven.”