Page:The Other Life.djvu/177

 cision was reached through fancy or prejudice, upon meagre facts and unsatisfactory data. It was frequently made by vote!

The consequence was, that apocryphal books were read in many churches for several centuries, and that the grandest of all the Sacred Books, the Revelation, was for a long time rejected by the highest authorities. A still greater evil resulted, viz., that the whole theory of inspiration was made to rest upon tradition and authority, and the Church bound down to literal interpretations, so that it has never had any worthy conception of what the divinity of the Word is.

Swedenborg comes with a key to the biblical mysteries; a key which he did not invent, but which was given to him. We apply this key to five-sixths of the books bound up as the Word of God, and we find it to draw from them spiritual truths full of wisdom and beauty. We find also that it has no more application to the remaining books than it has to the orations of Cicero. They have no spiritual sense and no human ingenuity can put one into them. The difference between the genuine Word of God and the pious works which have been mistakenly bound up with it, is fundamental, organic and eternal; a difference easily dis-