Page:The New View of Hell.djvu/28

 and modes of worship as are best suited to the wants of each, to lift them up into clearer light and a higher life—into fuller communion and sweeter fellowship with itself. It is full, therefore—this New Dispensation—of the all-embracing and all-reconciling spirit of the Lord.

The following extracts—and a volume of similar ones might be quoted from the writings of Swedenborg—will exhibit something of the large and catholic spirit of this New Dispensation:—

"Notwithstanding there are so many various and different doctrines [believed by Christians], still, if all who hold these doctrines did but acknowledge charity as the essential of the church, or what is the same, if they had respect to life as the end of doctrine, they would together form one church; . . . for every one in the other life is gifted with a lot from the Lord according to the good of his life, not according to the truth of his doctrine separate from that good."—Arcana Cœlestia 3241.

"If charity were in the first place and faith in the second, the church would have another face. For then, none would be called Christians but they who lived the life of charity. Then, too, there would not be many churches distinguished by their different opinions concerning the truths of faith; but the church would be called one, containing all those who are in the good of life."— Ibid. 6761.

"Schisms and heresies would never have arisen if