Page:A Compendium of the Theological Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg.djvu/71

Rh at the present day to convince men of this; but any one of a sound understanding may be confirmed by the testimony of my writings, and especially by the Apocalypsis Revelata. Who has heretofore known anything about the spiritual sense of the Word; and about the spiritual world, or heaven and hell; or about man's life after death? Should these, and many other things, be perpetually hidden from Christians? They have now for the first time been disclosed for the sake of the New Church, which is the New Jerusalem, that they [its members] may know them; others indeed shall also know them, who yet do not know them on account of their unbelief." The Apocalypse Explained was discontinued at the tenth verse of the 19th chapter of the Apocalypse, for reasons never explained. This and the Apocalypse Revealed give what purports to be a complete exposition of the interior or spiritual significance of the one book of the Bible which, if Swedenborg's attempt was not a success, has most effectually defied all human interpretation. Whatever may have been the source of his light, his exposition is certainly the most intelligible, complete, harmonious and self-demonstrating of which I have any knowledge. The three works I have named, embracing in all thirteen quarto volumes in their original Latin editions, contain incidentally, besides the explanation of the books to which they are immediately devoted, an exposition of a large part of the other books of the Sacred Scriptures, and the key, moreover, which, according to Swedenborg, will unlock the hidden treasures of the Word, and without which they might have remained for an indefinite period, if not forever, inaccessible.

There will continue to be differences of opinion among men in regard to the sources of Swedenborg's authority for what he tells us about the spiritual world, the Internal meaning of the Word, and the principles upon which it was written; just as there will continue to be differences of opinion in regard to the sources from whence the writers of the Pentateuch, the Prophecies, the Gospels and the Apocalypse, received what they left us. When our Lord was walking among men. His pretensions to speak