Page:The Doctrines of the New Church Briefly Explained.djvu/88

82 meaning of, many passages in the New Testament, which speak of demoniacal possession, and of Christ's casting out the devils by his word. (See Matt. viii. 16, 31; ix. 32, 33; xii. 28; xvii. 18, 19; Mark i. 34; ix. 25, 26; xvi. 9; Luke iv. 35; xi. 20; xiii. 32.) The evil spirits could not—they never can—endure the Divine sphere. The light and warmth of the spiritual Sun are painful to them, and they flee from it. (See Mark i. 23-26; Luke iv. 33-35.) And this shows us how the Lord, by his advent in the flesh, restored the equilibrium between heaven and hell, by so resisting and keeping within due bounds the sphere of the latter, as to maintain man's freedom and rationality unimpaired. Redemption, then, according to the New Theology, was a purely divine work, wrought by God himself in the spiritual realm. It consisted in overcoming the gigantic power and threatened preponderance of the hells, by bringing the Divine life nearer to them—bringing it down through the humanity assumed, and thus conquering them, or compelling their retreat, as creatures of the night are compelled to retire to their dens when the light of day appears. And the Heavenly Father himself, and not any second person in the Trinity, is declared to be the Redeemer.

And the effect of the redemption wrought by God in Christ, was to preserve mankind in a state