Читать книгу Swedenborg: Harbinger of the New Age of the Christian Church онлайн | страница 4
In the discriminating thought of this Ancient Church at its best estate it distinguished and reverenced divers attributes of the Deity. In its these attributes were personified and imaged, till in its downfall the images themselves were worshipped and idolatry was becoming universal. Then lest the knowledge of the One God and of His laws of life should be lost from the face of the earth, midway in both time and space between the erection of the pyramids and that of the Grecian temples, in the very centre of civilization, a new race was planted, in the land of Canaan—the old home perhaps of Adam and Eve—a race of Shemitic, still Noachian stock, a simple, nomadic race of unequalled persistence, fitting them to receive and preserve in integrity a new revelation of the Creator and His laws in concrete form—even graven in stone. These laws accompanied by many ritual statutes, with remains of the earlier Scriptural records, with the true yet symbolic history of this people, with their songs of prayer and praise, with prophecy from beginning to end of the coming of the Messiah who should bring dire judgment on their nation for their sins while bringing eternal salvation to those who would accept His redemption—all this was the spiritual legacy of this Noachian age to the ages to come. Says Schlegel—
"The significant brevity of the first pages of the Mosaic history involves much profound truth for us in these later ages . . . did we but know how to extract the simple sense with like simplicity. ... In general the whole tenor of the Mosaic writings, like the existence of the Hebrew nation, was formed for futurity. . . . So the whole Hebrew people may in a lofty sense be called prophetic, and have been really so in their historical existence and destiny."[1] "The Hebrew tongue was eminently adapted to the high spiritual destination of the Hebrew people, and was a fit organ of the prophetic revelation and promises imparted to that nation"[2]
The ever deplorable conduct of the Jewish leaders in crucifying Him who came to save them ended the leadership of that church in the spiritual development of mankind. But their traditions, their Scriptures remained to become the framework of the new church of the Lord, itself the prototype of the New Jerusalem, His final tabernacle with men. And we are never to forget the maternal service of the Hebrew Church for the birth of its Lord into the world, first in the written Word and then in its fulfilment in the flesh, our ever present Lord. The maternal office was not more real materially than it was spiritually. It was foretold to Eve with reference to her seed. It was repeated to Abraham who rejoiced to see the day coming. Its fulfilment was the theme of the prophets and was voiced in the Psalms of David. Abraham's obedience, repeated in Mary's Behold the handmaid of the Lord: be it unto me as thou hast said, furnished the fit germ for the human life of our Lord. And Mary said, My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God, my Saviour.