Page:Right and Wrong Unveilings of the Spiritual World.djvu/28

16 Christ, the Son of God, and that believing ye may have life through His name," so is it now.

And this is Swedenborg's message. He tells us that Christian doctrine and Christian life had declined through the ages; that gradually its spirit was lost; that the original thought of one God—the Divine foundation which Judaism was established to teach—was lost, so that the thought of the love of Jesus as the supreme power gave place to the thought of a stern Supreme Deity separate from Jesus. The establishment of the doctrine of the Trinity of Persons in God, and of Jesus as a vicarious substitute for the sins of men, and of the church and its head as the Vicar of Christ on earth, and of faith alone or obedience to sacraments as an equivalent for a loving life of obedience to God's commandments of old—all this tended to destroy the real Christian church, and to make another revelation from God necessary to restore and also to unfold more deeply and rationally the teaching of the apostles.

Strange as it may sound, this is Swedenborg's claim, namely, first, to restore the original teachings of Christianity, and, second, to set them upon a new, advanced, and rational basis. He calls himself "the servant of the Lord Jesus Christ." He comes wholly in His name. He speaks by His command. He comes, not to destroy the law or the prophets, but to fulfil them. He comes in the name of the Lord and of His Word of old time, to lead the church back to