Page:Swedenborg's Doctrine of Correspondence.djvu/32

26 development, or abnormal attachment to nature. They could form no conception of an outbirth of ideal forms in any other than a material pabulum, the soul being considered incapable of substantial organization.

The problem descending to later times was taken up by Christianity. The doctrine of the Resurrection, the Transfiguration of Christ, the vision of Moses and Elias, and of the angels at Bethlehem and at the sepulchre, the post-resurrection appearances of the Lord, imparted to the early disciples the conception of a spiritual body. Subsequently the Christian Fathers, Origin, Tertullian and others, made the application to the visions of the Seers, maintaining that the soul is the man himself in a perfectly organized spiritual body. But unfortunately, perhaps unavoidably, these simple and elevating truths of the early faith were soon obscured, and the Fathers treated with neglect. The philosophers overlaid the experimental evidence of the gospel with the traditional speculations which it was intended to supersede. In the darkness which fell upon the Church, the opinions of the pagan world not only divided the schools among themselves, but were discussed with scarcely more regard to the