Page:Swedenborg, Harbinger of the New Age of the Christian Church.djvu/17

 plant, in which in new form its life is continued. The leaf falls after having formed in its axil the bud for a new shoot, and in decaying furnishes food for the new growth. Last in order, we learn that man in the image and likeness of his Creator is the first and final purpose in all creation.

How beautifully this order was followed in the creation of the earth and its inhabitants is known to the geologist, even as summarized in the record of Genesis up to the first presentation of man in the Divine image and likeness. And a deeper, higher fulfilment of the same order is found by Swedenborg in the evolution of the spiritual man into this image and likeness, out of the mind formless and void of the mere animal man—represented by the formless and empty earth enshrouded in darkness. And again in the same record is found the order of evolution of the spiritual man out of the natural to all time.

Of the primeval man we can know little. He left no records, no tradition. Of the regenerated heavenly but infantile race represented by Adam and Eve, first reproducing in infantile manner the Divine image and implanting in the inmost consciousness of mankind a foregleam of the