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How beautifully this order was followed in the creation of the earth and its inhabitants is known to the geologist, even as summarized in the record of Genesis up to the first presentation of man in the Divine image and likeness. And a deeper, higher fulfilment of the same order is found by Swedenborg in the evolution of the spiritual man into this image and likeness, out of the mind formless and void of the mere animal man—represented by the formless and empty earth enshrouded in darkness. And again in the same record is found the order of evolution of the spiritual man out of the natural to all time.

Of the primeval man we can know little. He left no records, no tradition. Of the regenerated heavenly but infantile race represented by Adam and Eve, first reproducing in infantile manner the Divine image and implanting in the inmost consciousness of mankind a foregleam of the ​condition to which it should in the end attain, Swedenborg learned much in the other world, quite in accordance with our traditions of the Golden Age. With this called by him the Most Ancient Church the history of man begins, though in scarce other than mythical form. Of the immediate revelation to it of the Divine will we have intimation in the voice of the Lord God heard by Adam. Of its duration we know nothing, but may conjecture it to have equalled all recorded time. Of its decline, due to the growing child desire to taste and choose for himself what to call good, we have symbolized record in the following of the serpent's counsel and in the decadent generations of Adam. The moral and spiritual desolation at the end of this first church swamped by accumulating falsities is represented by the flood, out of which was Divinely rescued the germ for a new development under the name of Noah [Rest].

The men of this succeeding age, called by Swedenborg the Ancient Church, though no longer to be led by the angels of infancy who do always behold the face of the Father in heaven, were yet willing to be instructed of heaven through their wise men learned in ancient ​traditions. With growing power of thought and imagination their successive generations developed language, song, and art—notably that of building—during thousands or myriads of years, over all central and southwestern Asia and northeastern Africa. Of their religion, at first heaven-derived and spiritual, we have remains in the early Hebrew Scriptures and in the sacred books of India, Persia, Egypt, and Turkestan. On the remains of their language all our modern languages are based. Of their prowess in building, the rock-temples of India and the pyramids of Egypt bear enduring witness, though of the period of religious decadence. Of their art the remains left in Greece by a late offshoot of the same stock, are still unequalled by modern genius. Grecian art and philosophy with Roman statesmanship have furnished the basis of modern civilization, as the Gospel of our Lord has furnished the inspiration—even as we see exemplified in the evolution of the heaven-aspiring Christian cathedral.