Page:Swedenborg, Harbinger of the New Age of the Christian Church.djvu/32

 new charity now prevailing between one sect of the Church and another and between Christian and pagan. Never before since the angels' song was heard on the hills of Judea—Peace on earth and good-will toward men—has its accomplishment seemed so near. Year by year, day by day is the evidence accumulating that the crisis is past and the new coming of our Lord begun, and this dating from about the middle of the eighteenth century. But where and how was the vision to John fulfilled?

No one answers but Swedenborg, who in his Apocalypsis Revelata describes the fulfilment, clause by clause, of the whole of this vision—not in this world, but in the vast spirit world, where were gathered an innumerable multitude, good and bad together, awaiting the judgment that the new coming of the Lord in His Word would effect. Were this conception of the judgment mere imagination, instead of the stern reality which Swedenborg affirms, how sublime! Judgment of scores of generations in place of the one or two possible on earth, without limit of space or time; judgment of the inner souls and tenets of men there revealed; overthrow of spirit