Page:Swedenborg's Doctrine of Correspondence.djvu/19

Rh, "to open all the doors that lead to her, and at length by the divine permission, contemplate the soul herself." He did not succeed. He came instead to the inner parts of the living body, but not to the soul. The doctrine of Correspondence as he held it at this time, could not reveal it. It needed the opening of spiritual sight to see the soul in its own spiritual body in its own spiritual world; then Correspondence with two experimental terms two visible things, might show their relation and intercourse.

It was at this time while still engaged upon the "Animal Kingdom," at the ripe age of fifty-six, in the full maturity of his powers, that Swedenborg was called, as he declares, "to a holy office by the Lord, who most graciously manifested Himself to me in person and opened my sight to the view of the spiritual world, and granted me the privilege of conversing with spirits and angels." "From that day forth," he says, "I gave up all worldly learning, and labored only in spiritual things, according to what the Lord commanded me to write."

The work of the remaining years of this remarkable life is accessible in English in some thirty volumes of his theological