Page:The Doctrines of the New Church Briefly Explained.djvu/36

30 in a sentence; you cannot so teach it to yourself. Go constantly, habitually, to the life of Christ for your conception of God. . . . Worship only the God you see in Christ."

Here we have the frank confession of honest and intelligent men, long and still connected with the orthodox school. And what is it? Why, that the "generally accepted" doctrine of to-day concerning God—the doctrine which "most Christians believe," is "the error of Tritheism, the doctrine that there are three Gods." And that this conception or misconception of the supreme object of worship, "is so pervasive of Christian literature and Christian teaching, that it poisons minds least aware of it." And Dr. Bushnell. (who certainly ought to have known) declares that this "generally accepted" doctrine "often produces a painfully bewildered state," involving the mind of the believer "in a dismal confusion which we cannot think of without the sincerest pity."

Such a confession as this from distinguished ministers of the orthodox school, is valuable as showing the need there was of a New Theology at the time Swedenborg wrote—a need that still exists, and grows more and more imperative with the increase of intelligence and the progressive development of the human mind. If an error so fundamental as the one here confessed respecting the supreme Object of worship, early invaded the