Page:Swedenborg's Doctrine of Correspondence.djvu/12

6 as universal as the antagonism of good and evil, that when the Lord comes to do good, the evil are busy to do mischief, and when He reveals new truths, Satanic spirits are active to instill falsities. "Hell hath enlarged herself to meet thee at thy coming," is the inevitable effect of the inauguration of a new Divine Dispensation. We are living in such a time when good and evil are contending on new terms for the mastery of human minds. The Lord has revealed rational truths in great fulness for the establishment of a New Church and a new religion among men. The antecedent effect of the revelation in the spiritual world, is felt in a new freedom of willing and thinking, and an impulse to work out the old problems on new lines. Meanwhile the new truths are abroad in the world. They press upon all minds, reinforced by a new influx from heaven favorable to freedom and reason. They appeal to reason. They open causes in the spiritual world and in human minds, and impel men to inquire, to know, and to understand. But they are divine from the Lord, and they have but one end, that is to lead men to the Lord and to a higher spiritual life. In the nature of things, this new freedom of willing and thinking lets loose