Page:Swedenborg, Harbinger of the New Age of the Christian Church.djvu/126

 the human understanding than what at the same time is really present to it; and that nothing is more present to it than what is universal, prior, and superior, since this enters into every particular and into everything posterior and inferior. What is more omnipresent than the Deity—in whom we live and move and have our being—and yet what is more remote from the sphere of the understanding?

"The more any one is perfected in judgment, and the better he discerns the distinctions of things, the more clearly will he perceive that there is an order in things, that there are degrees of order, and that it is by these alone he can progress, and this step by step from the lowest sphere to the highest, or from the outermost to the innermost. For as often as Nature ascends away from external phenomena, or betakes herself inward, she seems to have separated from us, and to have left us altogether in the dark as to what direction she has taken. We have need therefore of some science to serve as our guide in tracing out her steps, to arrange all things into series, to distinguish these series into degrees, and to contemplate the order of each thing in the order of