The opening and rejection of the tenets of the faith of the present Church, and the revelation and reception of the tenets of the faith of the New Church, is meant by these words in the Apocalypse:—“He that sat upon the throne said, Behold I make all things new; and He said unto me, Write; for these words are true and faithful.” xxi. 5. The New Church about to be established by the Lord, is the New Jerusalem, treated of in chapters xxi. and xxii., which is there called the Bride and the Wife of the Lamb.
Such, briefly expressed, are the heads or leading ideas of the little work, “A Brief Exposition of the Doctrines of the New Church,” a treatise which, as Wilkinson truly remarks, “is unequaled among Swedenborg’s works for its destructive logic.”
“The Intercourse Between the Soul and the Body,” is a small treatise designed to illustrate a subject which has puzzled many minds from time immemorial. Various have been the theories of philosophers on this subject; but few could satisfy the intelligent mind, or explain the varied phenomena of being. Swedenborg, in many of his previous works, had, with greater or less fullness, explained the nature of the soul’s union with the body, and this treatise is, to some extent, but a repetition of what he had elsewhere written,—cleared, however, from extraneous matter.
His view of the subject is simple and intelligible, as is all truth. The soul of man is a spiritual substance, of the same form as his body; transfusing all the body’s tissues, and wearing the body as a garment, even as the body wears its clothes. The body lives from the soul. In itself, the body is dead and without sensation, as is evident when the man leaves it at death; it then returns to its inorganic elements. As the body is diseased or injured, the soul is more or less deprived of its power of action in the natural world, but the soul itself is uninjured. We see an illustration of this in the use of spectacles. Man’s external organ of sight is defective, and he cannot see objects distinctly. Glasses are put before his eyes, and he sees as well as ever. Now it is certain the glasses in themselves do not restore his sight. They merely complete the defective organ, and the eye of the spiritual man uses them as a means to look forth into the material world. Observation and meditation will supply a multitude of confirmations of this doctrine of the spiritual body animating and transfusing the material.
At death the spiritual body lays down the material, and makes its appearance in its higher sphere. Whether it is beautiful or deformed, depends upon the man’s conduct on earth. If the soul has loved goodness and truth, it is a beautiful human form, and increases in grace and loveliness to eternity in heaven; if, on the other hand, it has lived in evil and hated truth, it is deformed and hideous, and finds its place in hell, the abode of all that is ugly and abominable.
But from this it is not to be concluded that the soul has life in itself. Like the body, it also is dead, and is only a form receptive of life from the One Only Infinite Life, in whom the whole universe lives, moves, and has its being,—the Lord. The material body is proximately sustained by the light and heat of the material sun. The spiritual body of man is sustained by the light and heat of the spiritual Sun, which is the circumambient sphere of the Divine Love and Wisdom. From this spiritual Sun, our natural sun exists, even as our material bodies live from our spiritual bodies. But all alike exist and subsist from the Lord alone.
Such, in a few words, is the leading idea of this little treatise. For the details, the charming confirmation and the able and simple refutation of the doctrines of Leibnitz and other philosophers, who have treated on the same subject, we can only refer to the book itself. We append the concluding paragraph of the treatise, as a delightful specimen of spiritual analogy:—
“I was once asked, how I, who was previously a philosopher, became a theologian; and I answered, ‘In the same manner that fishermen became the disciples and apostles of the Lord: and that I also from my youth had been a spiritual fisherman.’ On this, he asked, ‘What is a spiritual fisherman?’ I replied,—‘A fisherman, in the spiritual sense of the Word, signifies a man who investigates and teaches natural truths, and afterwards spiritual truths in a rational manner.’ On his inquiring, ‘How is this demonstrated?’ I said, ‘From these passages of the Word: ‘And the waters shall fail from the sea, and the rivers shall be wasted and dried up. The fishers also shall mourn, and all they that cast a hook into the brook shall lament.’ Isaiah xix. 5, 8. And in another place it is said, respecting the sea, whose waters were healed, ‘The fishers shall stand upon it, from Engedi even unto Eneglaim; they shall be present to spread forth nets; their fish shall be according to their kinds, as the fish of the great sea, exceeding many.’ Ezekiel xlvii. 10. And in another place, ‘Behold I will send for many fishers, saith Jehovah, and they shall fish them.’ Jeremiah xvi. 16. Hence it is evident why the Lord chose fishermen for his disciples, and said, ‘Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men;’ Matthew iv. 18, 19; Mark i. 16, 17; and why he said to Peter after he had caught a multitude of fishes, ‘Henceforth thou shalt catch men.’ Luke v. 9, 10. I afterwards demonstrated the origin of this signification of fishermen from the Apocalypse Revealed; namely, that since water signifies natural truths, as does also a river, a fish signifies those who are in possession of natural truths; and thence fishermen, those who investigate and teach truth. On hearing this, my interrogator said, ‘Now I can understand why the Lord called and chose fishermen to be his disciples; and therefore I do not wonder that he has also chosen you, since, as you have observed, you were from early youth a fisherman in a spiritual sense, that is, an investigator of natural truths; and the reason that you are now become an investigator of spiritual truths, is because they are founded in the former.’ To this he added, being a man of reason, that ‘the Lord alone knows who is the proper person to apprehend and teach the truths of His New Church, whether one of the primates, or one of their domestic servants. Besides,’ he continued, ‘what Christian theologian does not study philosophy in the schools, before he is inaugurated a theologian.’ At length he said, ‘Since you are become a theologian, explain what is your theology.’ I answered, ‘These are its two principles, God is one, and there is a conjunction of charity and faith.’ To which he replied, ‘Who denies these principles?’ I rejoined, ‘The theology of the present day, when interiorly examined.’”