Page:Swedenborg's Doctrine of Correspondence.djvu/188

182 with heaven and the Lord, but falls back upon itself and perishes. Contrast with this the teaching of any and every work on Christian Science that you can find, and you will see that its "absolute truth" concerning God is just this which Swedenborg declares to be no truth, and which he says every naturalist and denier of God shows himself in the spiritual world to have confirmed in his life on earth. The idea of God with which Christian Science expects to "renovate the spiritual character as surely as it remodels the physical system," is the thought of a universal Spirit, proceeding from no Divine Person, and omnipresent by virtue of its ideal presence as the central and pervading life of all persons and all things. All its reasonings play hide-and-seek around two notions: God as the spirit in man; and man as the thought and manifestation of God. This, then, measured by the doctrine revealed for the use of those who will be of the New Church, will not answer as the absolute or genuine truth; and in the light of Swedenborg's revelations of the future life, a man would refuse such medicine at any price.

Other factors of Christian Science are