Page:Swedenborg, Harbinger of the New Age of the Christian Church.djvu/187

 the dust beneath his feet. The liberal charm of his rhetoric is put off, never to be resumed. . . . It is a clear instance of disembodiment—of emancipation from a worldly lifetime; and we have now to contemplate Swedenborg, still a mortal, as he rose into the other world. From that elevation he as little recurred to his scientific life, though he had its spirit with him, as a freed soul to the body in the tomb: he only possessed it in a certain high memory, which offered its result to his new pursuits."

All his mental labors had served as efficient training for the work now laid out for him. But what he had begun to find even in philosophic study—the need to lay down all thought of himself—became imperative, the sine qua non for submitting wholly to the guidance of the Holy Spirit in unfolding the true inner meaning of the Scriptures. He never forgot that the Lord alone could unloose the seals of the Book, and reveal Himself therein. He had already gained the truth that the material things of the body correspond in their use to the spiritual things of the soul, and that herein was the key to the true understanding of the Scriptures. But what