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THE MIRACLES OF ELIJAH AND ELISHA, OR THE ORIGIN, NATURE, AND USES OF THE MIRACLES RECORDED IN THE WORD.

THE miracles of Elijah and Elisha form a very important part of the historical Word. The Lord in the Gospel refers to some of these miracles, and shows their divine importance. Thus He alludes to the miracles of "drought and famine," (Luke iv. 25.) to the "widow of Serapta" (verse 26), to the "healing of Naaman the Syrian" (verse 27), and on other occasions (Luke ix. 54.) these miracles are noticed in the divine Gospels.

These miracles shall first be mentioned before we enter, in this and in other papers, on a specific exposition of their divine meaning and practical importance to the church in the aggregate, and to the everyday life of man in his individual character as a member of the church. The miracles of Elijah were as follows:

I. The withholding, or prevention of rain; (1 Kings xvii. 1.) II. The ravens feeding the prophet with bread and flesh at the brook Cherith; (verse 6.) III. The prophet sustained by the widow of Zarephath; her barrel of meal not wasting and her cruse of oil not failing; (verses 9 to 16.) IV. The resuscitation of the widow's son; (verses 17 to 24.) V. Fire coming down from heaven and consuming the burnt sacrifice, the wood, the stones of the altar, and the dust, and licking up the water in the trench; (1 Kings xviii. 30 to 40.) VI. By prayer he obtaineth rain; (verses 42 to 46.) VII. Comforted and fed by an angel when under the juniper tree; (chap. xix. 5 to 8.) VIII. He bringeth fire twice from heaven and consumeth two companies of fifty men with their captains; (2 Kings i. 10 to 12.) IX. Why the third company was not consumed; (verses 14 to 16.) X. His striking the waters of Jordan with his mantle, and Enl. Series.-No. 55, vol. v.] 20

dividing them; (chap. ii. 8.) XI. His being taken up into heaven by a whirlwind in a chariot and horses of fire. (chap. ii. 11.)

The miracles of Elisha are equally striking: I. His dividing the waters of Jordan with the mantle of Elijah; (2 Kings ii. 14.) II. His healing the waters by casting salt into them; (verse 21.) III. By the prophet's curse two she-bears out of the wood destroyed forty and two children; (verse 24.) IV. The valley filled with waters; (chap. iii. 17 to 20.) V. The widow's vessels filled with oil; (chap. iv. 1 to 7.) VI. The son born at the time predicted, the husband being old; (verses 8 to 17.) VII. He raiseth her son from death; (verses 18 to 37.) VIII. The healing of the deadly pottage by casting meal into the pot; (verses 38 to 41.) IX. He satisfieth a hundred men with twenty loaves; (verses 42 to 44.) X. He healed Naaman of his leprosy; (chap. v. 8 to 14.) XI. His servant Gehazi smitten with leprosy; (verse 25.) XII. He causeth iron to swim; (chap. vi. 5 to 7.) XIII. The eyes of his servant being opened, he saw the mountain full of horses and chariots of fire, &c.; (verse 17.) XIV. He smote the Syrians with blindness, and led them to Samaria; (verses 18, 19.) XV. He predicted the dispersion of the Syrians, and a great plenty; (chap. vii. 1, 6, 18.) XVI. The man who touched the bones of Elisha in the sepulchre revived and stood on his feet. (chap. xiii. 21.)

These are the miracles which these two prophets performed, and a general view of them plainly shews that they are of the utmost importance, involving, when seen with spiritual discernment, (2 Cor. ii. 14.) volumes of instruction for the spiritual life of man. From the letter only not much of this instruction can be seen. An acknowledgment of the Lord's power and providence by means of His Word can indeed be gathered from the literal sense; and all who read these miracles with a devotional spirit can feel, in some degree, the sanctity and power of the Word. Young people may be deeply interested in the simple narrative of these divine miracles, and adults may meditate upon them with great benefit to their minds; thus the Word, when devotionally read, has the power, by virtue of its correspondences and representatives, of opening heaven to the soul, and of conjoining man with the Lord, although the reader may not at all times be conscious, in his merely natural state, of this wonderful and most blessed result. When, however, the mind is instructed to see somewhat of the spiritual instruction involved in these miracles, "wings" (Jer. xlviii. 9.) are supplied to our meditation, and we rise to higher states of knowledge and perception as to the meaning of these divine records. The more interiorly or the more spiritually the Word is discerned, the more effective it becomes as a medium of conjunction with the Lord, the more interiorly is the mind introduced into the heavenly world, and the richer in consequence are the blessings which hence result. But the doctrines of the New Church, and the system by which it interprets the Scriptures, enable us, if we cultivate

our privileges, to know the nature of these miracles, to see their application to the mind and the life, and thus to acknowledge them as lessons of revealed wisdom from the Lord for the good of man in all ages and in all states, but especially during his progress in the regenerate life. Nothing, then, can be more valuable to man than the opening of the Word, the "fountain of living waters," and the allowing of its blessed streams of Truth to flow freely through our minds, to purify, to refresh, and to sustain and encourage us in the life we must lead to be truly happy in this world, and to be prepared for eternal happiness in heaven.

What, then, in the first place, are miracles? Miracles were peculiar to the church of Israel. The Mosaic dispensation commenced with miracles, and throughout its entire history, as recorded in the Scriptures, from the call of Moses during its deliverance from Egypt to to its first establishment in Canaan, and afterwards to the commencement of Christianity, miracles are the principal events and phenomena of which we read. The entire Word, indeed, is a Miracle. For what can be a greater miracle than the inspiration and dictation of the Word by Jehovah Himself? The Word has come down from the Lord through the heavens, (John i. 1—14.) and is in its internal nature adapted to the angels of heaven, whence they derive all their intelligence and wisdom; and in its external character it is adapted to man, yea, even to children; it is the only ladder of ascent from earth to heaven; (Gen. xxviii.) he who will not ascend by the steps of this ladder, must remain grovelling in the dust of mere sensualism, and cannot rise to his proper and glorious destiny in heaven. Hence the importance of understanding and of loving as much as possible, the revealed truths of the Word. After the new tables on which the commandments were written had been prepared by Moses, the Lord said—“Behold, I make a covenant; before all the people I will do miracles, such as have not been in all the earth." (Exod. xxxiv. 10.) In explaining these words Swedenborg says

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The wonderful things which the Lord was about to do, mean the giving of such a Word as that there might be effected by it conjunction of Heaven and the Church, and universally conjunction of the Lord with the human race. That the Word is so wonderful is not apprehended by those who do not know something concerning the correspondence of natural things with spiritual, and who do not know something concerning the spiritual thought in which the angels are principled. Such persons do not know that there is given somewhat within every particular of the Word in which is Heaven, thus in which is divine life, when nevertheless all the expressions of the Word are by correspondences perceived spiritually by the angels when seen naturally by

men. Hence, and from no other source, the Word is Divine, and so wonderful that nothing is more so." (A. C. 10,634.)

The nature of the Jewish dispensation will shew us the nature of miracles. The church of Israel was not a true church, nor were its members real members of the true church. The entire Mosaic dispensation was not a real church, but the type of a real church. It was strictly the representative of a church, and not a true church itself. This is plainly declared by the apostle, when he says "that all the statutes and rituals, even the Sabbaths, were a shadow of the things to come, the body of Christ, or the real substance, being that which they shadowed forth." (Col. ii. 16, 17.) Again, all things of the church of Moses "were types and shadows of heavenly things." (Heb. viii. 5.) The Jewish dispensation, therefore, was at all times of its existence, in the same relation to the true church as a shadow is to its substance. Now, to mistake a shadow for the substance, is indeed a great blunder. The apostle, in other words besides those of a shadow in relation to a substance, guards us against believing that the outward church of the Jews was a real church, when he says "He is not a Jew who is one outwardly; neither is that circumcision which is outward in the flesh; but he is a Jew which is one inwardly, and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter; whose praise is not of men but of God." (Rom. ii. 28, 29.)

But not only were all the statutes and rituals of the Jewish church shadows or types; but the prophecies, in like manner, are types or representatives of the true church, and of its enemies. . All the prophecies, from Isaiah to Malachi, are given on the same typical principles as the statutes and rituals of the Jewish church itself. For all the prophecies, in like manner, are representative. Of these prophecies it may also be said in the same language of the apostle, that they are not outwardly prophecies, according to the gross apprehensions of the merely natural or carnal mind, but "inwardly in the spirit, and not in the letter." The true accomplishment of these prophecies is, consequently, not to be found in the history of the nations and peoples, such as the Egyptians, Assyrians, Moabites, &c., of whom they apparently treat in the letter; but in the fulfilment of events and prophetic declarations relating to the church. These events and declarations relate to the church; 1, in its states of happiness and glory, when the wolf shall lie down with the lamb," &c. ; 2, in its states of devastation and misery, when the cities of the land are laid waste, and its inhabitants destroyed either by the plague, by famine, or by the sword, and the altars are broken down, &c.; 3, in its states of temptation and

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suffering, thus in the progress of its regeneration, as—“ When thou passest through the waters I will be with thee, when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burnt," &c. (Isaiah xliii. 2.)

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If the prophecies had been considered according to the spirit, as the apostle says, and not according to the letter, much injurious controversy, as to whether the Jews will again be restored to their own land, and the nature of the millennium, &c. would have been avoided, and the members of the church would have become "spiritually minded," and have enjoyed life and peace." It is true that there are many coincidences between the fulfilment of prophecy spiritually understood, or "according to the spirit," and the fulfilment literally understood, or "according to the letter," as in the prophecies respecting Babylon, (Isaiah xiii. xiv.) and especially respecting the final destruction of the Jewish church and the city of Jerusalem by Titus. But these coincidences are in many respects very doubtful, and commentators are not agreed among themselves as to the entire fulfilment of prophecy on this ground, but that some ulterior sense must be adopted in which the true fulfilment of prophecy can be satisfactorily understood. This ulterior sense is what we understand by the spiritual sense, in which the real fulfilment of prophecy can be satisfactorily understood, as is abundantly demonstrated by Swedenborg in his Exposition of the Apocalypse.

Seeing, then, the true nature of the Jewish church as the type or representative, or the shadow of a church, and not a true church itself, we are in a right position to see the true nature of miracles, and also the laws by which they are effected, and likewise the cause and the necessity why they were performed in the dispensation by Moses, and why they are so abundantly recorded in the Divine Word.

As the church of the Jews was the type, or representative, or shadow of a church, and not a real church, it follows that it was from its beginning to its end a divine system of types and representatives, which should, according to certain fixed and immutable laws, shadow forth and represent the spiritual and the heavenly things which constitute the real church. Thus Moses constructed a tabernacle and furnished it according to the pattern which he saw on the mount or in heaven. This tabernacle, with all that it contained, the ark, the altar, the candlestick, &c., was representative of "heavenly things," (Heb. viii. 5.) or of the real things of heaven and the church. There was a fixed relation of correspondence between the heavenly things themselves and the pattern or type by which they were represented.

Now as the Word, as we have seen above, came down from

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