of revealing God to man, and of raising man towards God.

43. Leaving now the views of those who may be said to constitute the extreme left, let us shortly consider the various opinions held regarding a future state by those who yet rank themselves within the pale of Christianity. Not a few who revere the sacred writings, believe nevertheless that the descriptions of the unseen world contained therein are purely allegorical.

They do not believe in the existence of evil spirits exercising an influence over the mind of man. Satan is regarded as a personification of evil (4áóños, the accuser, Devil's advocate) rather than as possessing a real objective existence. Having thus got rid of the worst half of the unseen world, the other half follows in due course. They do not believe in the unseen presence of angels ("Ayyeλos, messenger); and in fine they conceive there is nothing above man but the Deity, who always acts according to rigid law. It is a step from this to believe in the futility of prayer, which is looked upon as devoid of any objective influence, although the practice of it may be regarded as possessing a beneficial subjective effect. A future life is believed to be conceivable, but only under conditions and in a universe about which we know nothing. At this point, however, the views of what may be called the left centre come into contact with those of the extreme left.

44. But there are others quite disposed to believe in the existence of the unseen world, who yet regard as figurative a large part of the Biblical descriptions. Some, like the Church of Rome, consider the separation of the souls of men after death into two categories, and only two, as insufficient and unsupported by the spirit of Scripture; while others

cannot imagine the eternity of punishment, but believe that the most reprobate will ultimately be brought back and elevated into the regions of bliss.

Others again, arguing from some expressions in the Bible, regard immortality as a boon reserved only for the good, believing that the wicked will be annihilated, both soul and body, in hell. No doubt by an energetic nature such a fate would be regarded as even worse than endless punishment :

Sad cure! for who would lose,

Though full of pain, this intellectual being?
Those thoughts that wander through eternity
To perish rather, swallow'd up and lost
In the wide womb of uncreated night,
Devoid of sense and motion.

So speaks Milton, putting the idea into the mouth of
Belial, the fallen spirit, when addressing his peers.

45. These are a few of the ways in which the statements of Christ and his Apostles regarding immortality have been interpreted by those who call themselves Christians. But amid this great diversity there is yet one principle common to all. It is imagined that something peculiar in the history of the world took place at the coming of Christ, which has not since been repeated. Communications were then made to mankind which are regarded as unique, and the truth of which it is held will only be verified in the case of each individual when he has passed into that country from which we receive no travellers' tales.

Notwithstanding this general belief, not a few have arisen pretending to have received a new and supplementary revelation. In most of these cases the scientific his

torian may at once come to a conclusion without any violation of his impartiality,-they are so manifestly the products of delusion if not of imposture. There is however one system which merits fuller treatment, inasmuch as it has led to a mode of viewing the spiritual world which has many followers at the present day.

46. Emanuel Swedenborg, the apostle of this system, was in many respects a remarkable man. Living more than a century ago, and during the time when Science was pausing for the spring she has since made, he seems to have foreshadowed, if he did not anticipate, many of the doctrines of the present day. We are not however now concerned with his purely physical speculations.

Swedenborg has written at great length regarding the nature and destiny of man, and the constitution of the unseen world into which he asserts he had the power of entering.

He assumes the existence of a human or semi-human race before Adam, of which he remarks that they lived as beasts. Man," he tells us, "considered in himself, is nothing but a beast. . . . Man's peculiarity over animals -a peculiarity they neither have nor can have consists in the presence of the Lord in his will and understanding. It is in consequence of this conjunction with the Lord that man lives after death; and although he should exist like a beast, caring for nothing but himself and his relations, yet the Lord's mercy is so great, being Divine and Infinite, that He never leaves him, but continually breathes into him His own life, whereby he is enabled to recognise what is good and evil and true and false."

Regarding man's mortal nature we are told by Swedenborg that "man at birth puts on the grosser substances

of nature, his body consisting of such. These grosser substances by death he puts off, but retains the purer substances of nature, which are next to those that are spiritual. These purer substances serve thereafter as his body, the continent and expression of his mind."1

"A man at death," he tells us again, "escapes from his material body as from a rent or worn-out vesture, carrying with him every member, faculty, and function complete, with not one wanting, yet the corpse is as heavy as when he dwelt therein."

Regarding the spiritual world, he tells us "that the whole natural world corresponds to the spiritual world collectively and in every part; for the natural world exists and subsists from the spiritual world, just as an effect does from its cause." He also tells us "that if in the spiritual world two desire intensely to see each other, that desire at once brings about a meeting. When any angel goes from one place to another, whether it is in his own. city, or in the courts, or the gardens, or to others out of his own city, he arrives sooner or later, just as he is ardent or indifferent, the way itself being shortened or lengthened in proportion. . . . Change of place being only change of state, it is evident that approximations in the spiritual world arise from similitudes of mind and removals from dissimilitudes; and thus spaces are merely signs of inner differences. From that cause alone the hells are

altogether separated from the heavens."

Of God he says: "The Divine is incomprehensible even by the angels, for there is no ratio between the finite and the infinite.

"No man or angel can ever approach the Father and

1

Life and Writings of Swedenborg, by William White.

immediately worship Him; for He is invisible, and being invisible can neither be thought of nor loved."

Of God's Providence he says: "As in the Lord we are and act, His Providence is over us from birth to death, and even to eternity. . . . To talk of the Lord's Providence as universal, and to separate it from particulars, is like talking of a whole in which there are no parts, or of something in which there is nothing. Consequently it is most false, a mere picture of the imagination, and downright stupidity, to say that the Lord's Providence is universal, and not at the same time in the minutest particulars; for to provide and rule in the universal, and not at the same time in the minutest particulars, is not to rule at all."

Swedenborg likewise believed in an intermediate state analogous to purgatory, although he objected to the name. This was called by him the world of spirits, after staying in which, for a longer or shorter time, the souls of the departed were drafted off to heaven on the one side, and to hell on the other.

47. We have now said enough to give our readers some idea of Swedenborg's spiritual system. Unquestionably it is the system of a profound thinker, and many great men have not hesitated to express their admiration of Swedenborg and his works. It is one thing however to admit the beauty, the philosophical completeness, and even the possible truth of many of his statements, and another thing to believe that he actually conversed with the inhabitants of another world in the way in which one man converses with another.

But, after all, suppose that the everyday experience of men is that only he who lives in the world as not of the