Page:The Life and Mission of Emanuel Swedenborg.djvu/441

 the consummation of Divine Revelation in itself becomes also the consummation of religion, and therewith of humanity. This perfective process is carried into effect first of all in One who, as absolute God-man, is both the Revealer in the absolute sense and the Man embodying God's perfect image, while at the same time bringing about the consummation of the world.

"The meaning of the text is, that neither the form nor the content of Revelation attains its perfection and the goal which Revelation cannot but propose to itself, until it has passed into Incarnation. On God's side, the purpose of His love from the beginning is perfect self-communication; the form and contents of Revelation. . . . The most perfect organ of Revelation can only be the man who, from the first moment of his existence, in his entire person lives in a sphere of being pertaining to Revelation and never separated from God. But in the circumstance of his entire person being made an organ of Revelation, is given at once in inseparable unity external as well as internal revelation and the completion of both. For now the Divine life itself enters into a human life; it assumes a shape that embodies and manifests the Divine life in human form, and is therefore Divine-human. In the God-man the inner spiritual miracle is so united with the outer world-reality, that the union of the Divine and human life, implied in the idea of inspiration without measure, forms a man who in the midst of the world is a personal miracle,—the God-man who, possessed of absolute worth in himself, fully answers to the communicating will of Divine love, and is withal destined both in himself to give perfect expression to human nature, and outside himself to consummate human nature."

The views of Dr. Dorner are not precisely those of Swedenborg, whom he treats with respect, but without accepting his direct antagonism to Calvinism. Dr. D, is the greatest exponent of the effort in this new age to find a philosophic basis and interpretation of the old Christian theology; and the approach to the doctrines of Swedenborg is a sign of the times.

"The history of the English Deists of the eighteenth century is indeed a very singular one. At a time when the spirit of the