Page:Swedenborgs Maximus Homo.pdf/97

 the New Church whereof he wrote, was or was to be a visible body. The passage occurs in his True Christian Religion (307) where the author is unfolding the heavenly sense of the fourth commandment of the Decalogue, and reads:—

"In the heavenly sense, father means our Lord Jesus Christ, and mother the communion of saints which means the Lord's church spread throughout the whole world."

Now, according to the doctrine of the New Church, the Lord Jesus Christ is the heavenly Father; and it is He who is to be understood by father in the heavenly sense of the word. And all who do so regard Him, are to regard, as their heavenly Mother, "the communion of saints, which means the Lord's church spread throughout the world." This, surely, is not a sect. It is no visible body of people; no distinct and separate communion; no humanly but a divinely organized church, embracing all who are conjoined to the Lord by love, and whose internals are known only to Him. They may be wide asunder naturally—far apart in space, and unknown to each other; but internally and spiritually, as viewed by Him who looks at men's hearts and never at their professions or external church relations, they are seen to be in closest sympathy and fellowship—joined together as