Page:The Doctrines of the New Church Briefly Explained.djvu/247

Rh shapes the deeds of all around them. Even the gardens, trees and flowers, and all the beautiful objects that greet their senses, are but the embodied forms of the sweet affections and noble thoughts that are poured into their innocent and receptive minds in a constant, fresh and living stream. And recently the heavenly methods of instructing little children, as revealed through Swedenborg, have begun to be adopted by our best earthly educators, and in our most advanced Christian communities. Such is a meagre outline of the doctrine revealed for the New Church concerning children after death. Is there anything unscriptural or unreasonable in it?—anything to awaken a doubt about its truth? Then how does it look by the side of the Old doctrine on the same subject?

Up to the time when Swedenborg wrote, it was a part of the current creed of Christendom, that salvation for any but Christians was quite out of the question; that all in heathen lands, therefore, unless converted to the Christian religion, must perish everlastingly. This belief was one of the legitimate offspring of the generally accepted doctrines of a vicarious atonement and salvation by faith alone. For these doctrines, and even the particular form in which they were held, being