Page:The Last Judgement and Second Coming of the Lord Illustrated.djvu/330

 cluded the necessity for Paul, who was not among them. Nor is there any evidence to show that the Lord would not employ other instruments in later times, if the necessity of His Church should require it. We believe, as we have endeavoured to show, that such a necessity had arrived towards the middle of the last century, and therefore we believe that such an instrument must have been provided. We accept Swedenborg as that instrument; we do this, after having carefully examined his claims, and found that his expositions of the Word, and his philosophy concerning the spiritual worlds, are such as to commend themselves to our reason, judgment, and conscience.

It is admitted, even by those who deny his mission, that he was a most extraordinary man, one whose capacities are not to be measured by any common standard of intellect: but it is objected that he was a visionary. We answer that we are not aware there is anything very odious in seeing visions. When they were enjoyed by holy men in ancient times they were regarded as a privilege, and we do not see why that privilege should be considered any disparagement in modern days. Paul saw visions, and so did some other of the apostles. When the Lord said that "young men should see visions," He surely did not intend that the fulfilment of it should be considered as a discreditable circumstance; on the contrary, He must have designed it as the means for imparting information concerning the spiritual world. Men may ridicule such means of instruction, but they cannot refute the fact of its necessity. And it is an indisputable truth that the illustrious person to whom we are alluding, has made known a spiritual sense of the Word, and shown the philosophy of it in a way that was never known before: his teachings are perfectly consistent with the high purposes of revelation and the re-