Page:On the Phenomena of Modern Spiritualism.djvu/79

Rh the student of New Church theology, except as confirming general principles therein disclosed. It may possibly turn out to be in the world of theology and religion what the French revolution was in the world of political institutions,—a breaker up and tearer down of mouldering forms and decaying systems of the past; thus perhaps performing a highly important and even necessary preliminary work,—but is of itself far too chaotic, fragmentary, variable, and contradictory in its elements to constitute or to contribute the positive, organizing, and reconstructive principle of the future.

That principle is to be found in a church suited to the epoch; a church in a great measure new and distinct from preceding ones; possessing and based upon a centralized, complete, self-consistent, and logically harmonious system of revealed doctrines; disclosing all the required truths in regard to the other world, the modes of life there, and man's eternal destiny; and coming down from a point far above man, and far above the world of spirits.

The necessity for some such revealed standard, acting as a test to which to bring all the variant and conflicting teachings now flowing in from the other world and springing up in this, must we think become apparent, as the subject is contemplated in the full light of history and of fact.

With these preliminary observations therefore, going, as we conceive, to evince an antecedent probability that there would at this day be accorded a new divine revelation, we are prepared to advance to the more specific question,—Why are the revelations made through Swedenborg entitled to more implicit belief, or worthy of greater credit, than are the