Page:Swedenborg's Doctrine of Correspondence.djvu/192

186 ought to know that the whole doctrine of Correspondence and Influx is against this notion. It is a law of divine order "that the Lord acts from inmosts and from ultimates at the same time, because only thus are all things held together in connection." It is shown by Swedenborg throughout that the operation of divine and spiritual forces is simultaneously from centre and circumference to order intermediates; not therefore by virtue of interior will and thought without outward obedience, much less by influx without instruction in truths, is man healed as to his spiritual character. Any secret influence exerted "unconsciously to the individual" if it were allowed, would only be an obsession of his will, which no angel would attempt, which evil spirits dare not, and which men ought not to practice.

A true Christian Science will assert the cause of all disease as spiritual; but it will not ignore its organic and functional effects in the disordered forms it induces in the spirit first, and thence by correspondence in the body. It will rightly refer the root and origin of all that afflicts man in mind, body or estate, to man's evil will and way; but it will not ignore its actual reality and infernal