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 But we not only deduce this distinguishing feature of the New Dispensation from the mental and moral economy of our being—it is brought home with most impressive power by the tenor of the revelations of the other life with which we are favored. The life of love, as we have seen, ultimates itself in the works of love, and the works of love are uses or utilities to the neighbor, and to the Lord's Church and Kingdom. Now, as use is the grand end of the Lord himself—as he is perpetually working for use—so his creature man can never attain the end of his being without a dominant regard to use in all the departments of his action. Weigh the following paragraph from our illuminated author on this subject, and say whether he head, if not the heart, do not respond to it as supremely rational, and thence having the highest evidence of truth:—

“That every man is created and born for use, is manifestly evident from the use of all things in him, and from his state after death, when, if he does not perform any use, he is accounted so vile, as to be cast down into infernal prisons, or into desert places: that man is born that he may be use, the life also manifests, for the man whose life is from the love of uses, is altogether different from him whose life is from the love of idleness, by which is meant a life consisting only in conversation, entertainments and diversions: the life of the love of use is the life of the love of public good, and also of love towards the neighbor, and of the love of the Lord, for the Lord does uses to man by man, whence the life of the love of use is a divine spiritual life, wherefore every one who loves good use, and from the love thereof does it, is loved by the Lord, and is received with joy in heaven by the angels: but the life of the love of idleness is a life of the love of self and of the world, and hence is a merely natural life, which does not hold the thoughts together, but diffuses them abroad into every vanity, and thereby turns man away from the delights of wisdom, and immerses him in the delights of the body only, and of the world, with which evils cohere; wherefore after death he is let down into the infernal society to which he addicted himself in the world, and there is compelled to labor through hunger and scarcity of food. By uses, in the heavens and earths, are understood ministries, functions, studies of life, employments, various family exercises and labors, consequently all things which are opposite to idleness and indolence. The same may also appear from the essence of uses: the essence of uses is the public good; the public good, in the most general sense, with the angels, is the good of the whole heaven; in a sense less general the good of the society; and in a particular sense the good of each individual of the society. But with men the essence of uses, in the most general sense, is the good of the whole human race, both spiritual and civil; in a sense less general the good of their country; in a particular sense the good of society, and in a singular sense the good of each individual; and whereas those goods constitute their essence, love is their life, inasmuch as all good is of love, and in love there is life: in this love is every one who is delighted with the use in which he is for the sake of the use.”

This, then, is a view of the practical religion of the New Church, and our hearers will judge, for themselves how far it accords with their own best ideas on the subject. They see from it that the religion of the New Church is a religion of charity, while that of the Old is rather a religion of faith.

4. But in enumerating, as I have now attempted to do, some of the leading features of that New Dispensation which crowns and blesses the current age of the