Page:The New View of Hell.djvu/15



HE theological writings of Emanuel Swedenborg are regarded by many—by all, indeed, who have read and studied them with care—as a new revelation. They boldly claim for themselves this distinction, and challenge a candid examination of their claim in the light of Scripture, reason, philosophy, history, and all human experience. They are held to be (and this, too, is their own claim) a new Dispensation of spiritual truth: that Dispensation referred to in the Apocalypse under the symbol of the New Jerusalem which John saw coming down from God out of heaven. They are believed to contain, not merely the reasonings and conclusions of a great and pious mind—not a theological or doctrinal system wrought out by patient labor and hard study, but a system of spiritual truth so luminous in its nature and so grand in its proportions, as to be itself the fulfillment of the prophecy concerning the second coming of Him