Page:The Doctrines of the New Church Briefly Explained.djvu/136

130 the ruling purpose of his life; and this, again, depends on the measure of his fidelity to duty, or the degree of his obedience to all known truth.

So often is the supreme importance of right living, or religious obedience to all the known laws of heavenly charity, insisted on by Swedenborg, and the relative insignificance of everything else, that it would be easy to fill a volume with passages similar to those here cited.

Prior to Swedenborg's time, it was an established tenet in all the churches of Christendom, that religious doctrines were not to be scrutinized by the eye of reason; that they (some of them at least) were profound mysteries which people must not expect to understand, and should not, therefore, "pry into;" that they were to be accepted blindly, not rationally; that, in such matters the understanding was to be held in complete subjection to faith. And there was good reason for this; for the generally accepted beliefs of that day, were not such as would stand the test of rational examination. Therefore it became the habit of religious teachers, when closely questioned about their doctrines, to deny the lawfulness or propriety of exercising one's reason in matters of religious belief, and to seek shelter behind that much abused but very convenient word, mystery.