Page:The Doctrines of the New Church Briefly Explained.djvu/222

216 the light of Scripture and reason and human experience and the accepted laws of our moral constitution, to be thoroughly convinced of both their truth and origin.

We are aware that Swedenborg's claim to have so long enjoyed open intercourse with spirits and angels, and to have been divinely commissioned to reveal what he did concerning the other world, is discredited by many honest and intelligent people. This was to have been expected. And it is no more to be wondered at, than that the mass of the Jewish people should have discredited and rejected the Messiah whose advent their own prophets had foretold. Swedenborg himself foresaw that he would be discredited;—that his alleged mission and professed converse with spirits, would encounter the derision of some, the disbelief of more, and be set down by not a few as the impudent claim of an impostor or the hallucination of a fanatic. Thus he says near the commencement of his first published volume:

"Many, I am well aware, will insist that it is impossible for any one to converse with spirits and angels during his life in the body; many, that such intercourse must be mere fancy and illusion; some, that I have invented such