Page:A brief discussion of some of the claims of the Hon. E. Swedenborg.pdf/30

 on misinterpretations of sacred passages of the Word of God, afford not the faintest shadow of an objection to the fact, that the second advent of the Lord has actually taken place.

The purpose of such an advent must be to communicate blessings which the world could not otherwise attain. How numerous are the external evidences which the world could not otherwise attain. How numerous are the external evidences which the world exhibits, in proof that now is the time of it! Look abroad into society, and observe the amazing improvements which have been introduced into the arts of civilization and life;—mark also the astonishing rapidity with which they have advanced, and the degree of perfection to which they have attained, within the last half century. These truths are so manifest that the fact has become a proverb in the world. Such circumstances are most clearly the result of a superior state of the natural mind. Whence has it come? Did it make itself? Has chance created it? Certainly not! Intelligence and piety must acknowledge it to arise from some new activity of the Divine mercy, and thus to a spiritual manifestation of the Lord. But what is the purpose of the superior state which the natural mind has attained to, and in which it is still advancing? Is it merely for transitory purposes, that man may for a few years enjoy natural intelligence in the natural world? Alas! such a conclusion would be pregnant with amazing impiety: The condition of the natural mind is progressing, and successfully preparing to become the appropriate plane into which heavenly intelligence may descend. Superior spiritual truths require superior states of the natural mind for their effective reception. Natural intelligence is a due habitation for spiritual wisdom; and the state of society plainly evinces that it is journeying upon a road which leads to deliverance from error. To this end religion has already made a movement, by the circulation of the Bible in nearly all the languages of the earth, in number and to an extent unparalleled in the history of the human race: will any one pretend that this is merely a human work—a device of political ingenuity? Every fact connected with it would refute such an imagination as preposterous. Nothing but a special interference on the part of the Lord Himself is adequate to account for a proceeding so stupendous, pregnant, as it unquestionably is, with such extensive and favourable consequences to genuine religion. No other cause but that of the fulfilment of the Lord's promise, is sufficient to explain