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Benjamin Worcester
Swedenborg: Harbinger of the New Age of the Christian Church
Published by Good Press, 2022
EAN 4064066443610
Table of Contents
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The Consummation of the Age
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The Christian Church recognizes that it is entering upon a new stage of life, with promise of a freer, more spiritual, and more beneficent existence than it has yet known. Of the immediate cause of this new development, and of its place in fulfilment of the predictions of our Lord, the Church at large has little or nothing to say. Only in the inner content of these predictions, as unfolded by Swedenborg, is the light now breaking from the east even unto the west plainly seen to be that of the Lord's Second Coming, with His Holy Spirit, calling all things to our remembrance whatsoever He has said unto us and guiding us into all truth. For clearer apprehension of this epoch in men's spiritual development let us take a rapid glance, approximately from Swedenborg's own point of view, over the course of this development from its inception.
Our highest conception of the Creator is of Infinite Love, Infinite Wisdom, Infinite Power. Man's creation into the Divine image and likeness means therefore the form and capacity with which he is endowed to receive and live his measure of this Love, Wisdom, and Power. For the basis of his existence he has a material, animal nature, with its instincts and inflow of life from the Only Life. For development into the image and likeness of the Creator he has an inner organism, consisting of heart to receive and give forth love and of understanding to receive and utter wisdom, with liberty and power to act therefrom. The handmaid of the understanding is observation, the master of the house is reason—the power of collating ideas and drawing conclusions. To the handmaid the universe unfolds itself in which as in a mirror may be seen the Divine purpose, creating an infinity of organisms for mutual ever-ascending service, with man himself at the head, anointed with the high mission to aspire to the Divine image, and to accept the Divine will for his own. But the fulfilling of this mission depends on his accepting with heart and reason the Divine guidance, which at all times and under all conditions is provided in such form as can be in freedom accepted—in the "still small voice," in inspired words, or in portentous signs.