Page:The Doctrines of the New Church Briefly Explained.djvu/20

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For this purpose a human instrument was needed; and such an instrument was provided in the person of Emanuel Swedenborg. This man, it is believed, was providentially raised up and prepared for his sublime mission, which was to lay open the spiritual meaning of God's written Word, and to reveal at the same time the grand realities of the spiritual world—the state of man after death, the time and manner of the last judgment, and the real nature of heaven and hell. He was not inspired as were those who wrote the Word, but he was illumined in an extraordinary degree. He was gifted with extraordinary spiritual insight. His spiritual senses (such is the claim) were opened, so that he was enabled to see and converse with spirits and angels as man with man, and to describe with accuracy and minuteness the condition of things in the spiritual world. At the same time his understanding was so illumined that he could discern the spiritual meaning of all he saw, as well as of all that is written in the Divine Word.

But Swedenborg's writings are to be regarded merely as human compositions. They are not, and do not claim to be, divinely inspired; for they are not written like the Sacred Scripture according to correspondences, and have no internal