Page:The Doctrines of the New Church Briefly Explained.djvu/90

84 With this idea the teachings of the New Church are everywhere and perpetually at war. According to these teachings salvation is a thing of degrees—a certain advanced spiritual state—a more or less perfect, orderly and healthy condition of the human soul. A man is saved in the degree that his natural hereditary and selfish proclivities are brought into subjection and due subordination to the higher and truly human faculties, and the Divine Wisdom and Love are so enthroned within him that he finds his chief delight in learning and doing the will of the Lord. So that the higher his wisdom and the purer his love, that is, the more closely he is conjoined to the Lord through a life of obedience to revealed truth, so much the more orderly and healthy is his soul, so much the more blissful his state, and in so much higher degree, therefore, is he saved.

And this blessed, orderly or saved state, is not one to be instantaneously or suddenly attained. It is reached only through a long and brave conflict with the selfish propensities of the natural man—the foes of each one's own household. It is a state that one grows into gradually, as we grow from infancy to manhood, from a state of ignorance to one of intelligence. The means by which this state is reached, or salvation achieved, are the natural and spiritual truths we learn, our, trials and disappointments, our Joys and sorrows,