Page:The Doctrines of the New Church Briefly Explained.djvu/118

112 rising noon a remote posterity will rejoice in; whose central light and life and perpetual inspiration is the Lord in his Divine Humanity; and into which "there shall in no wise enter anything that defileth, or worketh abomination, or maketh a lie; but they that are written in the Lamb's book of life."

One of the distinguishing features of the New Theology, and that which gives color to the entire system, is the kind and degree of inspiration which it attributes to the Sacred Scripture, and the alleged peculiarity in the style of its composition. The New Church maintains its plenary divine inspiration, declaring it to be strictly, and without qualification, the Word of God. Swedenborg says that the Bible was never meant to instruct mankind in natural science, or the laws of the material universe; but that it was given to teach us concerning spiritual things; such as the personality and character of God and our relation to Him; the reality and nature of the spiritual world; the capabilities and wants of the human soul, and the means by which its most perfect state and highest bliss are to be secured. Through the blinding influence of sin, man lost the