Page:The Doctrines of the New Church Briefly Explained.djvu/82

76 only by putting upon it a natural and sensuous interpretation. For it is as contrary to the general spirit and teaching of Scripture, as it is to the dictates of enlightened reason.

Turn now to the doctrine on this subject as revealed for the New Church. Of course in a treatise like the present, we can do little more than exhibit it in a general way—as it were, in brief outline.

The end for which God created man, according to the belief and teaching of the New Church, was, that there might be a heaven of angels from the human race—a countless host of rational, wise and loving creatures, images and likenesses of Himself, capable of receiving his own life, and of being made unspeakably and eternally happy in the mutual and reciprocal impartation of that life. And can we conceive of a more sublime or beneficent purpose, or one more worthy of a Being of infinite wisdom and love? But it was indispensable to this state of highest human bliss, that man should have a selfhood as the basis of his individuality, and should be gifted with rationality and liberty. Without these faculties he would not have been human, nor capable of heavenly blessedness. But these sublime endowments which are man's