influx. Such may be regarded as a general view of the distinction between the state and function of the prophets and evangelists by whom the Word was written, and the state and function of him by whom the Word was explained. They gave the sign, he gave the signification; they gave the letter, he gave the spirit. His state and function were thus the complement of theirs.

66

Another similarity and difference of state and function between these servants of the Lord we have to notice. Both were seers as well as teachers. But their state and function in this respect were different. The prophets of the Old Testament, and especially the Revelator of the New, saw in vision, their spiritual sight being opened to see into the spiritual world. But the objects which they saw were for the most part representative, and were not intended so much to give a knowledge of the nature of the spiritual world, and of the future life, as to supply materials for the literal sense of the Word; and being representative of the states of the Church, require them. selves to be explained in order to be understood. This was the case, too, with Peter, when in vision he beheld the sheet let down from heaven, containing all manner of four-footed beasts of the earth, and wild beasts, and creeping things, and fowls of the air; and even with Paul, when he was caught up to the third heaven, and heard unspeakable words, and things which it is not possible for a man to utter." It is remarkable that neither of these communicates any information respecting the nature of the spiritual world or of its inhabitants. Our Seer's state was different from theirs, and, indeed, different from that of any others. "The views of the spiritual world," he says, “ordinarily vouchsafed to me are not visions, properly so called, but scenes beheld in the most perfect wakefulness." His intromission into the spiritual world, and his ability to be with the inhabitants as one of them, was for the twofold purpose of enabling him to make known the nature of heaven and hell and the intermediate region, and the life and experience of those who are in them, and to know the nature of the connection that exists between the two worlds, the spiritual and the natural, and to learn the origin and nature of correspondence, by which the two worlds are joined, and according to which the Word is written, as the uniting medium between the natural and spiritual worlds, and between them and the Lord.

The two functions of teacher and seer are frequently mentioned by our Author together. The most full and precise statement of them combined, and that which gives at the same time the most particular

account of the office to which he was called, is that in the True Christian Religion, No. 779: "The Second Coming of the Lord is effected by the instrumentality of a man, before whom He has manifested Himself in person, and whom He has filled with His Spirit, to teach the doctrines of the New Church by means of the Word.” On this proposition he proceeds to say: "Since the Lord cannot manifest Himself in person, and yet He has foretold that He would come and establish a New Church, which is the New Jerusalem, it follows that He will effect this by the instrumentality of a man who is able, not only to receive the doctrines of that Church into his understanding, but also to make them known through the press. That the Lord manifested Himself before me, His servant; that He sent me on this office, and afterwards opened the sight of my spirit, and so led me into the spiritual world, permitting me to see the heavens and the hells, and also to converse with angels and spirits, and this now for many years, I attest in truth; and further, that from the first day of my call to this office I have never received anything appertaining to the doctrines of that Church from any angel, but from the Lord alone whilst I was reading the Word.

"To the end that the Lord might be continually present, He revealed to me the spiritual sense of His Word, in which sense Divine Truth is in its light; and in this light He is continually present, for His presence in the Word is only by means of the spiritual sense, through the light of which He passes into the shade, in which is the sense of the letter, just as it happens with the light of the sun in the daytime by the interposition of a cloud." Let us examine this statement in its several parts.

No mere man could make a higher claim than this. Yet high as is the claim, it is stated with such serenity of mind, with such exactness of statement, and with such distinctness of utterance, that no one on the affirmative side of the question of Swedenborg's being a Divinelyappointed and enlightened messenger, can fail to be impressed with a sense of its absolute truthfulness. What, then, does it amount to? In what state does it place him, in relation to the Lord on the one hand, and to us on the other?

The great event of the Lord's Second Coming has been effected through him. What is the Lord's Second Coming? The Lord promised to come as the Son of Man. The Lord is the Son of Man as Divine Truth. He made His first advent in this character. But then He came as Divine Truth, such as it is in the letter of the Word, which

is Divine Truth clothed with appearances, such as it assumes in the mind, not merely of finite but of fallen man. The Lord comes the second time also as Divine Truth, but as Divine Truth such as it is in the spiritual sense of the Word, and as capable of being perceived by the spiritual mind of man.

But while the Lord comes as Divine Truth spiritual, He comes in Divine Truth natural. He comes with power and great glory, but He comes in the clouds of heaven. He comes with the power and glory of the spiritual sense, but He comes in the cloud of the literal sense. But the cloud of the literal sense is now made lustrous by the light of the spiritual sense shining into it. The shining of this inward light into the literal sense of the Word there divides the light from the darkness; it brings to view that grand distinction in the letter of the Word between real and apparent truth. And it is in the real, not in the apparent, truths of the letter that the Lord appears a second time. The real truths of the literal sense are those from which the doctrines of the Church are drawn, and by which they are confirmed. These doctrines therefore differ as widely from those of the first Church, as the real truths of the letter differ from its apparent truths; and they not only differ from, but are opposed to, most of the doctrines of what has now come to be the old Church, which are a strange mixture of the real and apparent truths of the Word.

The Author's function as a teacher consisted, then, in explaining the Word as to its spiritual sense, and drawing and confirming the doctrines of the Church from the genuine truths of the literal sense. One who was qualified to perform this great work, and so to be the instrument of effecting the Second Coming of the Lord, must indeed have been filled with the Lord's Spirit. And we have now to inquire what we are to understand by his being filled with the Spirit of the Lord. Our Author explains what is meant by being filled with the Spirit of the Lord. 66 Man," he says, "is of such a quality as to his interiors, which belong to the thought and will, that he can look downwards and can look upwards. To look downwards is to look outwards into the world and to himself, and to look upwards is to look inwards to heaven and to the Lord. Man looks outwards from himself, which is called looking downwards, since when he looks from himself he looks to hell; but man looks inwards, not from himself, but from the Lord, which is called upwards, because he is then elevated as to his interiors, which are of the will and understanding, by the Lord to heaven, thus to the Lord. The interiors also are actually elevated,

and in this case withdrawn from the body and the world. When this is effected, the interiors of man come actually into heaven and into its light and heat; hence he has influx and illustration. The light of heaven illuminates the understanding, for the light of heaven is the Divine Truth which proceeds from the Lord as a sun; and the heat of heaven enkindles the will, for that heat is the good of love which together proceeds from the Lord as a sun. Since in such case man is amongst the angels, there is communicated to him from them, that is, through them from the Lord, the intelligence of truth and the affection of good. This communication is what is called influx and illustration. But it is to be noted that influx and illustration are effected according to the faculty of reception with man, and the faculty of reception is according to the love of truth and good. They, therefore, who are in the love of good and truth, as ends, are elevated; but they who are not in the love of good and truth for the sake of good and truth, but for the sake of self and the world, inasmuch as they continually look and gravitate downwards, cannot be elevated, thus cannot receive influx out of heaven, thus cannot be illustrated " (A. C. 10,330).

This explanation of the scriptural meaning of being filled with the Spirit of the Lord is that which it has in all ordinary cases. But our Author's was not an ordinary case. What, may we conclude, was the difference between his elevation and illustration and those of others? It could not have been merely a difference in degree, for there is nothing peculiar in this: he who is most highly regenerated is most highly elevated and most clearly illustrated. His must have been different in kind as well as in degree from that of ordinary experience.

In all ordinary cases the person whose interiors are elevated into heaven and into its light and heat, and hence has influx and illustration, has no consciousness of his actual elevation, nor of the influx which gives him perception. Our Author's case differed from that of all ordinary men in this respect. He had a distinct consciousness of the elevation of his interiors, and of the influx of which he was the subject. The difference of these two states is very great. So long as we live in this world, the seat of our consciousness is in the natural mind. And however elevated our interiors, or clear our perception, still, as, while we think from the spiritual mind we think in the natural mind, all our thoughts are relatively obscure and general compared with those of the angels, and what ours will be when we

become, if we become, angels. Our Author was able to think not only from the spiritual mind, but in it. He therefore saw the truth, not as in a glass darkly, but face to face. He saw it, not merely as a man on earth, but as an angel in heaven. As he himself tells us, he thought with the angels. He was, no doubt, when he received the revelation of the internal sense which he embodied in his expositions of the Word, and in the doctrine of the Church as drawn from and confirmed by its literal sense, in a state similar to that of the angels. Angels possess the Word as well as men, but they have it and read it in its spiritual sense. He who was amongst the angels as one of them could understand its spiritual sense abstractly from its literal sense. But as an expositor of the Word to men he had to enter into the literal sense. It was while he was reading the Word in its literal sense that he received from the Lord the light which explained it. In this respect it may seem that he was on the same level with ordinary human beings. But there was, I conceive, this great difference between his state and that of others-others look from the literal sense up to the spiritual; he looked from the spiritual sense down into the literal others enter into the spiritual sense through the literal; he entered into the literal sense through the spiritual. Our process is analytic; his was synthetic. There was, however, a necessary and intimate connection in his mind, as in his teaching, between the spiritual and the literal, between his intuition of the spiritual sense and his knowledge of the literal sense. His higher spiritual gift did not enable him to dispense with the lower natural acquirements. And in this he is remarkably distinguished from the whole tribe of fanatics and enthusiasts, who give forth their oracular utterances with a characteristic contempt for all the outward means of forming a sound judgment and rational conviction. From his earliest years, he tells us, he was prepared by Divine Providence for the office he was to fill and the function which he was to exercise. Like Moses, he was instructed in all the learning of Egypt. Science, as it then existed, was familiar to him; and in his mind it was much more than a record of facts, or the foundation of a system of natural philosophy. With a firm belief in and a profound reverence for the Deity, he looked through nature up to its Divine Author. He studied physiology with a view to psychology, and scaled the heights of science for the purpose of reaching the human soul. When he found that all the riches of human science cannot enable a man to enter the kingdom of heaven-that the camel of scientific knowledge cannot go through the