OF THIC 
 
 University of California. 
 
 Received ^^2^^ f --^^^^^ • ^^9.1 • 
 Accession No. ^ (^ Y^i- Class No. 
 
{^^tns^y^^C<^U.^C 
 
The Bible 
 
 ITS TRUE CHARACTER AND SPIRITUAL 
 MEANING, 
 
 Compliments of 
 
 EEV. L. P. MERCER. 
 // 
 
 UMON SWEDENBORGIAN CUUIICH, CHICAGO. 
 
 Without a Parable spake He not unto them.—'M.ATT. xiii, 31. 
 
 ;uiri7iRsiTr] 
 
 JANSEN, McCLUR?r& COMPANY. 
 
 1879. 
 

 <>,c.5('jY 
 
 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1879, oy 
 
 L. P. MERCER, 
 In the Oflace of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 
 
 T 
 
 M^ 
 
 J,vi^ l^^.^lvT')^^' 
 
 STEREOTYPED, PRINTED AND BOUND 
 
 THE CHICAGO LEGAL NEWS COMPANY. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 The object of these Lectures is to present 
 the teaching of Swedenborg concerning the 
 Sacred Scriptures, in a form likely to reach 
 those who might otherwise remain in ignorance 
 of it ; and for this purpose I have used what- 
 ever in the collateral writings of the New 
 Church I have found available for argument 
 or illustration. Whatever has thus been as- 
 similate)^ into the scheme and purpose of this 
 presentation, I of course make myself responsi- 
 ble for; but if credit is to be given, I wish to 
 say it very likely belongs to others. It is 
 only fair to add, that the Lectures, delivered 
 from time to time, which have appeared in the 
 Chicago Times, called forth expressions of 
 interest from various sources, which suggested 
 the probable usefulness of printing them in this 
 
 present form. 
 
 L. P. M. 
 
 Chicago, Advent^ 1879. 
 
Digitized by tlie Internet Arciiive 
 
 in 2008 witii funding from 
 
 IVIicrosoft Corporation 
 
 littp://www.arcliive.org/details/bibleitstruecliarOOrevlricli 
 
IMITBRSIITl 
 
 OONTEISTTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. THE BIBLE A BOOK OF DIVINE PARABLES . 5 
 
 Man Needs a Revelation .... 9 
 It Must Contain a Spiritual Sense . . 12 
 The Claim: of the Scriptures . . ,18 
 The Testimony op Tradition ... 20 
 
 II. THE DOCTRINE OF CORRESPONDENCE : A 
 
 KEY TO DIVINE PARABLES ... 27 
 
 The Need of some Key .... 29 
 
 The Law op Correspondence Stated . . 33 
 
 Its Application Illustrated ... 42 
 
 III. THE LAW OF DIVINE INSPIRATION . . 55 
 
 The Inspiration Common to All . . 57 
 The Inspiration op Prophets and Evan- 
 gelists .65 
 
 The Inspiration of the Writing . . 66 
 The Power of the Word thus Inspired . 70 
 
 (1) 
 
2 . CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 IV. THE HISTORY OF REVELATION ... 80 
 
 The History of Revelation the History 
 
 OF the Church 81 
 
 The Meaning of Creation .... 86 
 
 The Adamic Church 92 
 
 The Noetic Church 95 
 
 The Preparation for the Incarnation . 100 
 
 The Incarnation 104 
 
 The Gospel and the Second Advent . . 108 
 
 V. THE REAL AND APPARENT IN THE SCRIP- 
 
 TURES 118 
 
 The Principle of Adaptation • • . 120 
 Apparent Contradictions .... 123 
 The Wars of the Jews 142 
 
 VI. THE DOCTRINE OF THE SPIRITUAL SENSE : 
 
 AN ANSWER TO SKEPTICAL OBJECTIONS 158 
 
 The Churches Need It 161 
 
 General Answer to Skepticism . . . 175 
 The Question of Authenticity . . . 179 
 The Mythical Element in Scripture . 182 
 The Morality of Scripture .... 188 
 The Real Infallibility . • • ,191 
 
TRUE CHARACTER OF THE BIBLE. 
 
THE BIBLE. 
 I. 
 
 A BOOK OF DIYINE PAEABLES. 
 
 Without a parable spake he not unto them.— Matt, xiii: 34. 
 
 A parable involves jtwo distinct series of 
 ideas ; one pertaining to principles, the other 
 to persons and things . The power of the par- 
 able lies in this, that its distinct series of ideas 
 are related as man's faculties of abstract and 
 sensuous thought are related. It is a series of 
 spiritual ideas clothed in a series of natural in- 
 cidents, which by their dramatic force fix the 
 interest and enlist the sympathies, and yield 
 their inner meaning in the ratio of man's as- 
 cending thought. As the mind is indrawn 
 from sensuous to spiritual thought, the narra- 
 tive loses its incidental character, and becomes 
 simply the mirror in which is presented the 
 image of spiritual principles and their rela- 
 tions. The distinctness of this image will be 
 
 (5) 
 
6 DIVINE PARABLES, 
 
 ill the ratio of man's growing wisdom ; and 
 meanwhile the picture itself is vivified by the 
 principle personified or the truth embodied. 
 Thus it is that the parable speaks at once to 
 the child and the philosopher ; and as the in- 
 dividual ascends the steps of maturer wisdom 
 its meaning opens to his expanding conscious- 
 ness. The divine parable of the Prodigal is 
 to the child, who hears it first at his mother's 
 knee, a simple story, presenting a vivid pic- 
 ture of personal history ; the youth learns to 
 regard it as history teaching by example ; the 
 man perceives that the historical form is only 
 an investiture assumed for the purpose of illus- 
 tration ; and yet, throughout this process, the 
 spiritual interest of the story is developing in 
 clearness, till finally the image of the father- 
 hood, forgiveness and providence of Divine 
 love, which was not wholly absent from the 
 child's first impressions, becomes supreme to 
 the man's thought. 
 
 Now, let us reflect whether it would make 
 any difference in the value or intention of that 
 parable if we were to find it recorded among 
 the chronicles of the Jewish kings, or the his- 
 tories of the Israelitish people. Transfer it to 
 the book of Samuel, give names to the father 
 and sons, think of it as a historical occurrence 
 
BIVIKE PARABLES. 7 
 
 and what is changed by the transference? The 
 object and purpose of its insertion in the his- 
 toric Word, were it found there, would still be 
 the same as of its insertion in the Lord's dis- 
 course. Its exquisite portraiture of the ten- 
 derness of Divine love toward human way- 
 wardness would be the same, and the same, 
 too, the progressive development of its lessons 
 to man's expanding consciousness. 
 
 Has it never occurred to you that since the 
 parables, with their spiritual contents, are so 
 often historic in form, that therefore those nar- 
 rations of the Holy Scriptures which are his- 
 toric in form may be parables in reality, with 
 an equally important spiritual significance ? 
 The proud King Saul, head and shoulders 
 above all the men of Israel, standing in fear 
 with his armies before the giant of Gath, and 
 finally delivered by the youthful David, the 
 ruddy shepherd-boy from the fields of Beth- 
 lehem — is it any less a parable than the story 
 of the lost sheep, or the marriage of the king's 
 son, in the Gospels ? The touching story of 
 Absalom, caught by his hair in the branches 
 of the oak, may be the veriest history, but it 
 is no less a parable than the story of the Prod- 
 igal. They contain the same elements, and 
 serve the same ends ; they appeal to the hu- 
 
8 DIVINE PARABLES. 
 
 manity of the simple and the spiritual intui- 
 tions of the wise, and present their varied 
 lessons to the varied sorts and conditions of 
 men. 
 
 I desire to commend to you this doctrine : 
 That the Bible is a book of Divine Parables ; 
 its early portions are allegory ; its historical 
 records a vast drama enacted by living men as 
 types of spiritual things, with the redemption 
 and regeneration of man for its subject. The 
 advent of the Lord, His sufferings, His death, 
 His gospel, can thus be seen to be in harmony 
 with this drama, which embraces the Deity, 
 and represents the states of every living soul. 
 The Word, teaching us thus, becomes at once 
 spiritual in its subject, in its importance, and 
 in its style ; and is taken out of the arena of 
 controversial criticism, and let out to the high- 
 er faculties of man for investigation and devout 
 contemplation. Simple as this doctrine is, 
 catholic as it is to the wisest thought of the 
 church in primitive and modern times, I am 
 unwilling to trust it to the fate of a plausible 
 conjecture, and, therefore, ask your attention 
 to some of the evidences of its truthfulness. 
 
 It must not be forgotten that the number of 
 persons who feel themselves obliged to doubt 
 whether the Bible is a revelation from God, 
 
DIVINE PARABLES, 9 
 
 daily increases. There may be more than one 
 such among you ; and while there are consid- 
 erations which might be helpful to such minds, 
 which I am obliged, by the limits of this dis- 
 course, to omit, I wish it distinctly understood 
 that I regard such doubts neither with disre- 
 spect nor sentiments of hopeless pity. They 
 seem to me, in a certain sense, natural to the 
 time, and a necessary consequence of the de- 
 clining spirituality of the doctrine and inter- 
 pretation of the Church. The doctrine con- 
 cerning the Inspiration of the Scriptures which 
 is currently promulgated in this day is untrue; 
 and interpretations are taught which it were 
 better to disbelieve. But because the Ptole- 
 maic astronomy is exploded, is there no longer 
 a solar system and a starry heaven ? Surely, 
 the rejection of a false theory of revelation 
 need not necessarily lead to denial of the exis- 
 tence of revelation. It should rather turn the 
 mind to investigation, and dispose it affirma- 
 tively toward the doctrine which announces 
 more rational claims. 
 
 1. I begin then with recalling a truth which 
 seems to be well based in human experience ; 
 Man^s religious instincts lead him to look for 
 and seek a revelation from God. The con- 
 sciousness of a mind and life which is an enig- 
 
10 DIVINE PARABLES. 
 
 ma to himself; the universal intuition of God, 
 which no man loses till it is blanketed by his 
 own fallacious reasonings ; these two felt facts 
 call for revelation from God to man concern- 
 ing himself, and God's will with respect to 
 him. There are powers and faculties of the 
 human mind w^hich are not brought into exer- 
 cise by an exclusive determination of thought 
 to this world of the senses, which will exercise 
 themselves with the problems of existence, and 
 duty, and destiny. These faculties may be 
 more or less developed, but at every stage of 
 their activity they demand a knowledge differ- 
 ent from that which the senses can give. They 
 feel their fitness for a world of thought which 
 the senses do not dirctly open, and they crave 
 its revelation. The skeptic as to the inspira- 
 tion of the Scriptures, if he have still preserved 
 the intuition of God and the hope of immor- 
 tality, will tell you how much he desires a rev- 
 elation in which heart and mind may repose, 
 with confidence and certainty. Many a mind 
 chased by the phantoms of doubt; many a 
 heart tired of following after the fantasies of 
 sense, is crying to-day in your very midst: 
 " As the hart panteth after the water-brooks, 
 so panteth my soul after thee, O God." Even 
 atheism acknowledges the want in ceaseless 
 
DIVINE PARABLES, 11 
 
 attempts and incessant activity to disprove it. 
 Men do not raise armies and keep incessant 
 watch and ward against nothing ; and the 
 very struggle which unbelief keeps up from 
 age to age, is virtually an acknowledgment that 
 the human heart needs, yearns for, and is capa- 
 ble of believing in, a Divine Eevelation. 
 
 2. Now reflect that the Sacred Scriptures 
 claim to be such a revelation, and from age to 
 age have made good their claim to countless 
 multitudes. It is sometimes denied, I know ; 
 but so is the rotundity of the earth, and so is 
 the beauty of art denied by those who have no 
 eye, and the grandeur of music by those who 
 have no ear, and the blessedness of brotherhood 
 by those who have no love. The facts remain; 
 over all the Scriptures is written the name of 
 them, like the name on the vesture of Him 
 whom John saw in vision, "The Word of 
 God." It is the distinct and specific claim of 
 Moses, and the prophets, and the Evangelists, 
 that God spake unto them, and that what they 
 have written is His Word. The claim is plain- 
 ly there ; it is either true or it is not. I con- 
 fess a great deal of respect for the old argu- 
 ment that the effect of these Scriptures upon the 
 mind and life of the disciple is strong presump- 
 tion in favor of their claim. Those who are 
 
12 DIVIJSrJEJ FABABLES. 
 
 really affected by the Scriptures perceive in 
 them a power far transcending that which is 
 felt in any other writing, and such facts of ex- 
 perience are not to be ignored. The simple 
 literal meaning of a verse by no means accounts 
 for the impression it may produce. There are 
 religious faculties in us all, that respond with 
 fear or hope to the statutes and commands, the 
 warnings and promises of Holy Scripture, even 
 though intellectually we profess to believe them 
 the product of men in past time ; there is a 
 Divine power in them which has asserted itself 
 to every generation for ages. 
 
 3. Consider, then, in view of what the 
 Scriptures claim to be, the Word of God, whether 
 they can possibly be such without containing 
 the mind of God in spiritual truths utterly 
 distinct from that which appears in the gram- 
 matical construction of the letter. It must be 
 admitted that a large part of the Bible claim- 
 ing to be the Word of God, is not the Word 
 of God to us unless indeed it be uttered in para- 
 ble and contain secrets within its bosom ready 
 to be unfolded to the teachable mind. But could 
 any of it be the Word of God without a spir- 
 itual sense within the letter? Eationally it is 
 impossible to conceive of a Divine truth descend- 
 ing into the language of men, and taking to 
 
DIVINE PABABLES, 13 
 
 itself an expression in such language without 
 the mediation not of one only but of many 
 distinct series of ideas. If the Scriptures 
 really treated in their letter in all its parts 
 of love and faith, of the Divine Character and 
 human duty, of that which bears directly upon 
 man's spiritual life, and those subjects concern- 
 ing which alone he needs a revelation, it is in- 
 conceivable that such teaching could be given 
 by God to man without containing spiritual 
 arcana, distinct from the series of natural ideas 
 composing the letter. Every writing has the 
 author in it ; all that there is in his mind con- 
 cerning the subject is involved, and possible 
 therefore to be evolved. Thought clothes it- 
 self in speech ; and abstract intellectual truth 
 clothes itself with the images of sensuous 
 thought before it can put on a garment of lan- 
 guage. All our ideas are derived in the first 
 instance from impressions of phenomena ; and 
 the images of these become not only the 
 basis of subsequent thoughts, but their ap- 
 propriate sign and expression. Our intellec- 
 tual conceptions, which are born on the one 
 side of sensuous impressions, must on the other 
 hand think themselves out, or clothe them- 
 selves with sensuous images, before they can 
 find expression. How then shall truth divine, 
 
14 DIVINE PARABLES. 
 
 transcending the faculties of sense, communi- 
 cate itself in the language of menr without first 
 investing itself with angelic ideas, and then 
 with corresponding natural images ? The ob- 
 ject of such a communication being to make 
 known things which " eye hath not seen, nor 
 ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of 
 man to conceive," the human mind w^ould be 
 incapable of apprehending them, except 
 through the medium of sensuous representa- 
 tives and corresponding signs. The language 
 of a Divine Revelation must, therefore, from 
 the nature of its message, be parabolic. Even 
 its natural images of moral righteousness can 
 be only images of spiritual graces and Divine 
 perfections. But much of the letter of Scrip- 
 ture treats of specific events, and is limited in 
 its application to the occasion past. It does 
 not treat of such subjects as man needs to have 
 revealed. How then can it be the Word of 
 God, as it claims, unless it is also, as it claims, 
 '* settled forever in the heavens?" — unless it 
 contains an internal meaning which is appre- 
 hensible to angelic intelligence, or spiritual 
 thought? Possessing at least two distinct 
 series of ideas, as it must thus do to be the 
 Word of God, it is parabolic in reality, and 
 spiritual in its object, and eternal in its inter- 
 
UiritERSITT] 
 DIVINE J^Aff4J&L^sm ^y 
 
 est. Whether couched in IB^^uiiuntfTegory, 
 history, precept, or prophecy, the Word must 
 have the regeneration of man for its one great 
 object. The variety of its immediate subjects 
 must have been selected as adapted to its sin- 
 gle object, the spiritual instruction of man- 
 kind ; and, therefore, whether its form be al- 
 legory or history, must be determined by the 
 adaptability of one or the other to secure the 
 attention and fix the interest of men in time, 
 but whether one or the other, it must contain 
 the secrets of spiritual wisdom in truths which 
 could not be spoken without a parable. 
 
 This we believe, that the AVord of the Lord 
 is so written, and that the Bible is thus a book 
 of Divine Parables, plenarily inspired by vir- 
 tue of the informing wisdom through which 
 as a medium, the very spirit of God vivifies 
 even the letter of its myths, its histories, its 
 statutes and its promises. Its inspiration and 
 divineness are not acquired by the miraculous 
 mode of its composition, and have nothing to 
 do with the infallibility of its science, or its 
 history, or the personal purity of its charac- 
 ters; but by the indwelling spirit of God, and 
 Divine spiritual truth from Him. The inspi- 
 ration of the writers of the Scriptures was tem- 
 porary, and for a specific purpose; the inspi- 
 
16 DIVINE PARABLES. 
 
 ration of that which was written is eternal. 
 It is the indwelling mind of God and Divine 
 truth from Him in all its gradations. It is 
 this eternal and perpetual inspiration of truth 
 in the Scriptures themselves which constitutes 
 them the Word of God; which makes them 
 reach beyond the necessities of the occasion on 
 which they were given ; and by virtue of which 
 they furnish food for the angels in heaven as 
 well as men on earth. The Word in its " be- 
 ginnings " or first principles, is " with God " 
 and " is God ; " but to make itself apprehen- 
 sible to finite minds, it must clothe itself with 
 garments woven from the fibers of angelic and 
 human thought, constituting a spiritual and 
 a natural sense, to suit the states respectively 
 of angels and of men. 
 
 When men on earth rejected Him who was 
 the Word made flesh, they divided His coat, 
 and found a vesture woven from the top 
 throughout without a seam. This essential 
 Word appearing as the Son of Man, clothed 
 with an inner garment, and over this an outer 
 robe, pieced and seamed, represents the Word 
 which is the Divine truth itself, clothed in the 
 vesture of angelic wisdom, which constitutes the 
 spiritual sense of our written Bible, and over 
 this the outer garment of its letter, pieced from 
 
DIVINE PARABLES, 17 
 
 the contributions of human myth and history, 
 that could serve the Word of life for clothing. 
 And like the Lord's vesture, which it really is, 
 the inner spiritual sense of the Word is woven 
 throughout without a seam ; while men dispute 
 and divide the letter, the vesture of angelic 
 wisdom constitutes one harmonious serial and 
 continuous garment of light. Amid all the 
 difficulties which beset literal criticism and the 
 doubts which overhang natural thought, this 
 glorious fabric of spiritual truth awaits man's 
 faculty of perception. It may appear with 
 greater or less clearness as men are more or less 
 instructed concerning it. The more spiritual- 
 ly-minded the reader the deeper and fuller will 
 be his perception of such spiritual signification. 
 The deeps in his own soul w^ill answer back to 
 the deeps in God's word. Space and time and 
 person will recede in the contemplation of Holy 
 Scripture, and spiritual principles, and states, 
 and progression of state will become the subjects 
 of thought. He who thus looks in God's Word 
 for that which is the subject of faith, can real- 
 ize its histories in his own mental progressions. 
 He may learn the stages of his regeneration in 
 the story of creation ; the Divine evolution of 
 spiritual faculties, affections and thoughts, from 
 the chaos of the natural mind. He can read 
 2 
 
18 DIVINE PARABLES. 
 
 the processes of his Spiritual growth in the 
 journey of Israel ; be instructed by the Law 
 in his pilgrimage, and enter the heavenly 
 Canaan under the leadership of a higher 
 Joshua. A greater than David can give him 
 the possession of Mount Zion ; and a more 
 glorious King than Solomon build within him a 
 more glorious temple. 
 
 4. I ask now your attention to the testimony 
 of Scripture, mid the tradition of the Church, 
 to the truth of this doctrine. The present 
 troubles of dogmatic orthodoxy have arisen 
 from ignoring the primitive doctrine of the 
 Word, and insisting upon its literal sufficiency 
 and infallibility, unmindful of the numerous 
 instances in the Bible in which that Word is 
 asserted to be figurative, typical, a collection 
 of parables. 1. We continually find the 
 Scriptures themselves in their very letter, 
 directing the reader to elevate his rnind above 
 the merely literal expression — above the nat- 
 ural ideas and images which compose its out- 
 ward language, and to explore the truly Divine 
 wisdom that is contained within. *'Open Thou 
 mine eyes, that I may behold the wondrous 
 things out of thy law." "The law of the 
 Lord is perfect ; converting the soul." Per- 
 fect in the infinitude of its significance; and 
 
DIVINE PARABLES. 19 
 
 the universality of its adaptability to man's 
 need! Worthy of God and suited to man! 
 "Give ear, My people, to My law; incline 
 your ear to the words of My mouth. I will 
 open My mouth in a parable ; I will utter 
 dark sayings of old." Then follows the sum- 
 mary of the history of Israel ; and what must 
 we infer if not that the whole history is one 
 vast parable; that it was overruled by Divine 
 Providence so that it might be a parable; that 
 because it was such a parable it was therefore 
 written; that because parabolic of spiritual 
 things it has been preserved ; that because 
 those spiritual things have permanence and re- 
 lation to ourselves they may therefore be opened 
 to us? " History is philosophy teaching by ex- 
 ample," says Napoleon ; but this is more. It is 
 spiritual phi losophy teachi ng by sy mbols — a Di- 
 vine drama; God the arranger of the types, His 
 object the spiritual instruction of His children, 
 the tribes of Israel and their enemies only the 
 dramatis personce on the natural stage of ex- 
 terior life, playing symbolic parts, and leaving 
 their memories and their deeds pregnant types 
 for universal man. A literal people, repre- 
 senting the spiritual people of God ; their his- 
 tory, the progressions, trials and conflicts, the 
 triumphs and failures of the soul. " It is the 
 
20 DIVINE PARABLES. 
 
 spirit that quickeneth (saith the Lord); the 
 flesh profiteth nothing ; the words I speak 
 unto you, they are spirit and they are life." 
 " O fools and slow of heart to believe (he said,) 
 ought not Christ to have suflPered these things 
 and to enter into His glory ? And beginning 
 at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded 
 to them in all the Scriptures the things con- 
 cerning Himself." 2. The Apostles recog- 
 nized this character of Holy Scripture. They 
 declare that the deluge, the ark, and Noah 
 and his sons, are "figures," types ; the " Jews 
 after the flesh " were but types of the " Jews 
 after the Spirit ; " the tabernacle and its cere- 
 monies were but "symbols of the true;" Jerusa- 
 lem below the type " of Jerusalem that is 
 above, the mother of us all ;" the earthly Zion 
 the figure of the " Mount Zion, that city of 
 the living God, the Heavenly Jerusalem ;" 
 Abraham and his two sons were " an allego- 
 ry ;" Melchisedec the type of Christ, and so 
 were the high priests. 3. The Fathers in the 
 primitive church developed the idea to great 
 lengths. Mosheim, himself an opponent of 
 allegorical interpretation, is compelled to con- 
 fess that it was predominant in the early cen- 
 turies of the church. 
 
 Indeed, no truth of history is more certain 
 
DIVINE PARABLES. 21 
 
 than this : that for fourteen hundred years few 
 who received the Scriptures at all ever thought 
 of denying that they contain mysteries in their 
 bosom, which do not appear upon their sur- 
 face. In the first three centuries the men 
 most renowned for piety and erudition "all 
 attributed a double sense to the words of Scrip- 
 ture, the one obvious and literal, the other hid- 
 den and mysterious, which lay concealed as it 
 were under the veil of the outward letter. 
 The former they treated with the utmost neg- 
 lect, and turned the whole force of their genius 
 and application to unfold the latter." In the 
 following ages of the church it is true that 
 some were dissatisfied with the interpretations 
 which had been given by others, but the ex- 
 istence of a spiritual sense was not denied, 
 nor the principle of allegorical interpretation 
 abandoned. It prevailed with such constancy 
 and predominance, down even to the fifteenth 
 century, as to justify Bishop Home in stating 
 " that such spiritual method did universally 
 prevail in the church from the heginningr 
 The value of such figurative interpretations as 
 were thus furnished to the church is not the 
 matter on which I would insist, but the cath- 
 olicity of the doctrine of " a double sense." In 
 proportion as this doctrine is denied, faith in 
 
aa DIVINE PAYABLES, 
 
 the inspiration of Scripture has declined. In 
 the ratio of men's belief that the literal sense 
 of Scripture is its only sense, have they denied 
 that it is the Word of God. If it contains no 
 Divine and spiritual sense distinctly within the 
 letter, large portions of it cannot be Divine in 
 any sense. Its mistakes in science and his- 
 tory destroy its claims to infallibility as sci- 
 ence and history ; its contradictions are incon- 
 sistent with its divine origin, except there be 
 an underlying harmony ; and much of it is so 
 obscure in its figures as to elude all the laws 
 of rhetorical interpretation. The fundamental 
 principle of modern Biblical criticism is, that 
 " Scripture, like other books, has one meaning 
 — the meaning which it had to the mind of the 
 Prophet or Evangelist," and "no second or hid- 
 den sense different from that which appears upon 
 the surface." From which it follows : 1. That 
 it has no Divine sense at al], unless that be the 
 same as human sense. 2. That much of the 
 only sense which is contained in Scripture is 
 non-sense. This is very different from the 
 faith of St. Paul, who says, " our sufficiency is 
 of God, who also hath made us able ministers 
 of the New Testament; not of the letter, but 
 of the spirit; for the letter killeth, but the 
 spirit giveth life." The Fathers followed a 
 
DIVINE PABABLES. 23 
 
 better principle when they said, " the law of 
 God is spiritual, and they have not the true 
 law who do not take it spiritually ; " and 
 " that the true meaning of the sacred writers 
 was to be sought in the sense which is within 
 the letter." 
 
 In the development of this subject, I should 
 be obliged next to present and consider the 
 chief objection to the admission of a spiritual 
 sense in the Scriptures, namely, the absence of 
 uniformity among the interpreters ; the great 
 danger of vagaries of our own being foisted 
 upon or pretendedly drawn from them — the 
 lack of any rule of consistent interpretation. 
 It must be borne in mind, however, that this 
 objection applies with equal force to the gos- 
 pel parables themselves, which are commonly 
 esteemed to be the most perfect form of Divine 
 teaching. It no more applies to the difficulties 
 and dangers of spiritually interpreting the 
 narratives, which are historical in form and 
 parabolic in reality, than it does to those con- 
 fessed parables which are the matchless mir- 
 rors of spiritual wisdom. The difference is 
 only one of degree, not of kind. The objec- 
 tion, however, is a valid one, and if the spirit- 
 ual sense of Holy Scripture dwells in its histo- 
 ries as in its parables, there must be some law 
 
24 DIVINE PABABLES. 
 
 of its inhabitation, which being known, would 
 serve as a rule of accurate interpretation. 
 
 We must leave the subject here at this time, 
 with a promise. In my next lecture I shall 
 endeavor to show that there is an exact law of 
 Correspondence between spiritual principles and 
 natural phenomena ; that in this law all lan- 
 guage has its origin and all symbolism its ex- 
 planation ; that the Scriptures are divinely 
 given in accordance with it, and the knowl- 
 edge of the law becomes a key to their heavenly 
 secrets. 
 
 Meanwhile, I wish to leave with you, if I 
 may, an impression of the importance just now 
 of determining the world's thought, away from 
 the sensual criticism that can never enlighten 
 but only confuse and extinguish faith. It 
 seems to me of the utmost importance that 
 faith in the plenary divine inspiration of the 
 Scriptures should be established in reason and 
 based in intelligence ; and I admit indeed that 
 this can never be realized till the old natural- 
 istic doctrine of historical and literal infallibil- 
 ity is destroyed ; and I admit further, that his- 
 torical criticism is rapidly and effectually ac- 
 complishing that result. But when you have 
 razed your old crazy habitation you have not 
 built your new home. There is positive as 
 
DIVINE PARABLES. 25 
 
 well as negative work to be done; construction 
 must follow upon destruction. And it seems 
 to me time that men were encouraged to build 
 a positive faith in spiritual truth as revealed 
 from the Lord. Such a structure of faith can 
 only be permanent, indeed, as it is found- 
 ed upon rational doctrine; but a first and pres- 
 ently important exercise is the determination 
 of thought to divine ideals. Leaving those 
 things which are behind, press forward to those 
 things which are before ; reach out to those 
 grand universal spiritual truths which shine 
 with the clearness of the day-spring in nu- 
 merous places through the veil of the written 
 Word, and resting in these, search for their 
 illustration in the disguises of Scripture history 
 and prophecy and song. Jewish history and 
 Mosaic cosmogony is unworthy of your immor- 
 tal vocation, but search rather for the wisdom 
 of the Son of Man and the illustrations of spir- 
 itual experience in the " parables " and " dark 
 sayings of old." The trials of skepticism, the 
 deeper skepticism which overwhelms the heart 
 in the daily struggles of life when God seems 
 a myth and Providence a cheat, the clouds of 
 sense which close in upon us now and again 
 like the shades of eternal night; these can only 
 be dissipated by lifting our thought up into the 
 
26 DIVINE PARABLES. 
 
 clearer air of spiritual contemplation and look- 
 ing for divine instruction on the other side, that 
 is, the inside of the Divine Parables of Eden, 
 and Canaan, and Egypt, the history of Israel, 
 the life of the Son of Man, and the vision of 
 the Seer of Patmos. Believe me, that as the 
 Scriptures are thus analyzed the function of 
 criticism, important as it has been, will pale; 
 and the obscurities of doubt, dark as they may 
 be, will lift ; and the inquiries of faith, sincere 
 as they are, will yet transcend what it hath en- 
 tered into the heart of man to conceive. God 
 and heaven close into these sacred parables, 
 and as thought is determined from what is in- 
 cidental and dead in itself, the gates will open 
 into the heavenly places which reflect the coun- 
 sels of God. Amen ! 
 
II. 
 
 THE DOCTEINE OF COEEESPOS"D- 
 
 ENOE: A KEY TO DIVINE 
 
 PAEABLES. 
 
 Who is worthy to open the book and loose the seals thereof? 
 
 — Rev.V: 2. 
 
 There are two questions which must inevit- 
 ably come to the front in the theological dis- 
 cussions of the near, future; one respecting 
 the Person of God : the other the existence 
 of a Word of God. In regard to the first, 
 the old theistic argument may for a time be 
 successfully opposed to speculative atheism, 
 but it will never prove satisfactory to its advo- 
 cates, because the God which it postulates is. 
 unknown. If there be a God, the first likely 
 hypothesis is, that He shows Himself exactly 
 to instruct mankind; and the aspiration of 
 theism to a creed of God, must, in proportion 
 as it is earnest, search for Him where per- 
 haps He may be found, in those Scriptures 
 
 which claim to be a revelation from Him. 
 
 (37) 
 
28 ZAW OF INTERPRETATION . 
 
 Thus discussion must, ultimately, pass over to 
 the question as to the existence of a Word of 
 God ; and the real question here, is not as to 
 the truth of the science or history in the Bible, 
 but as to the existence of a Spiritual Sense 
 from which it is divinely inspired and holy 
 in every part. The Bible considered in its 
 letter, and from its letter alone, does not 
 justify the expectations which men have a 
 right to base upon its claim. This has been 
 clearly and repeatedly admitted in the past, 
 and is the present boast of literal criticism. 
 " If we who profess Christianity," said Dr. 
 Wordsworth, *' do not recognize the life-giving- 
 virtue of the Spirit in the Old Testament, we 
 cannot expect to retain the letter of the Old 
 Testament; we shall soon lose our belief in its 
 unity, integrity, veracity and inspiration." 
 The prediction has been verified. There is no 
 intelligible and definite belief in either Old or 
 New Testament as in any real sense the Word 
 of God; neither indeed, can there be, unless 
 the Bible be a book of Divine Parables con- 
 taining a distinct series of spiritual truths re- 
 lated to the ideas of the letter, as the soul of 
 man to his earthly body. If this be denied in 
 the Church, what it calls the Word of God 
 must fall into the hands of the Critics, whose 
 
LAW OF INTERPRETATION', 29 
 
 method is to wrap it in the grave-clothes of 
 literalism, with the fragrant spices of a few 
 fine compliments on its venerable character, '*as 
 the manner of the Jews is to bury." No ex- 
 pedients can prevail to ward off this issue. In 
 the " battle between the Word of God and the 
 Critics" the real question should be distinctly 
 presented. Does the Bible contain an internal 
 spiritual sense distinct from the letter? If 
 not, it will be taken away from the Church 
 altogether; nothing can save it. If it does, 
 there must be some law of its inhabitation, 
 which being known would serve as a rule of 
 accurate interpretation. 
 
 Without any sort of doubt, the master posi- 
 tion in this controversy belongs to that doctrine 
 which shall not merely assert the existence of 
 a sj^iritual sense in the Bible, but prove itself 
 able to expound it. The existence of a spirit- 
 ual sense has been ably asserted in the past; 
 but the want of an adequate and consistent 
 rule of interpretation, the consequent liability 
 to see ones own vagaries and fancies in the 
 mirror of Scripture, and to mistake them for 
 its genuine spiritual truths, has always been 
 urged as an objection to the doctrine. The 
 objection has indeed much force, unless it can 
 be shown that there is a law of Inspiration 
 
30 ZAW OF INTEBPRETATIOJSf. 
 
 which may be known and studied as a rule of 
 interpretation. The results of the spiritual 
 methods of interpretation which have more or 
 less prevailed in the Church from the beginning, 
 have been of unequal value, depending upon 
 the clearness of the interpeter's perception. 
 "These secrets of divine Scripture we trace out 
 as we may," confesses Augustine; "one more 
 or less aptly than another, but as becomes 
 faithful men holding this much for certain, 
 that not without some kind of foreshadowing 
 were these things done and recorded in the 
 Word; and that to Christ only, and His church, 
 the city of God, are they to be referred in every 
 instance." Wanting a strict rule of interpre- 
 tation these men were dependent upon their 
 insight which was more or less clear in the 
 ratio of their sympathy with divine and spirit- 
 ual realities. Wonderful things they have 
 seen indeed, almost justifying Ruskin's saying, 
 that "the Seers of the world are greater than 
 its thinkers." But if this be true at all, it 
 must be true because there is a reality and 
 order in what they "see," capable of being 
 known, analyzed, and brought within the field 
 of systematic thought. What poets and Seers 
 perceive, the thinkers will doubtless sometime 
 reduce to science and doctrine. All spiritual 
 
ZAW OF INTERPBETATIOIsr, 31 
 
 interpretation of Scripture has assumed that 
 there is an analogy between the visible and in- 
 visible worlds; that "the systems of both worlds 
 run parallel," as says an old writer, " so that 
 the realities in the superior have their respec- 
 tive shadows in the inferior, and are fitly repre- 
 sented by them." The perception of this anal- 
 ogy has heretofore depended upon the faculty 
 of imagination and spiritual insight; but if it 
 should be discovered that it is based in a law 
 of creation, that it is accurate and susceptible 
 of analysis, reducible in fact to the terms of 
 rational thought, then would the study of the 
 spiritual sense of the word be based in the 
 clearest rational induction. 
 
 This we affirm is discovered in the Science 
 of Correspondence which is revealed for the 
 Church, and by which it may be demon- 
 strated that Holy Scripture is so written that 
 each expression corresponds to a distinct 
 spiritual idea, and that the series of these 
 constitute its divine content and inspiring 
 soul. 
 
 There is a relation of some sort existing 
 between the objects of the natural universe 
 and the subjects of the spiritual universe, the 
 things seen by man and the thoughts and 
 affections of man. Of this the least reflect- 
 
32 ZAW OF INTERPBETATION, 
 
 irig must be convinced. While common sense 
 looks at things, or visible nature, as real 
 and final facts, imagination sees in them the 
 reflection of our faculties and states of affec- 
 tion and thought, and uses them as types or 
 words for the expression of these. Man sees 
 himself in the mirror of the world. He be- 
 holds his cunning in the fox, his courage and 
 daring in the lion, his innocence in the lamb 
 and dove, his intelligence in the horse, his 
 stubbornness, or as the case may be, liis 
 patient endurance, in the ass, his sensuality in 
 the swine. It is as though each single faculty 
 of his own mind, raying forth from him, 
 had embodied itself as the characteristic fea- 
 ture in some animal form; requiring thus the 
 whole circuit of the animal kingdom to stand 
 as the embodiment and representative of his 
 affections. He beholds his changing moods 
 in tree and flower, and the entire round of 
 phenomena. Daylight and darkness, storm 
 and calm, sunshine and cloud, have all their 
 perfect counterpart in the changing states of 
 the human soul, which, when it would de- 
 scribe its own secret workings, points to these 
 outward and visible movements of dumb 
 nature as the most expressive symbols and 
 shadows of itself. All language is based 
 
ZA W OF INTERPRETATION^, 33 
 
 upon this intimate relation between the inner 
 world of the human soul and the outer world 
 of natural phenomena. Even the abstract 
 terms of language, used purely to express the 
 relations of intellectual ideas, are derived from 
 names of sensible things and their relations. 
 We 8ee truth, we hear laws, we weigh argu- 
 ments, we have mental tastes. We are in- 
 flamed with passion, and chilled by antipathy; 
 we warm to a subject, and are cool toward the 
 disagreeable. We find reproaches cutting 
 and bitter; our feelings are lacerated by sting- 
 ing sarcasms, and we are melted into tenderness 
 by soft compassion. What men value as 
 substance has thus, as Emerson says, a greater 
 value as symbol. "The whole world is thor- 
 oughly anthropomorphised as though it had 
 passed through the mind of man and taken 
 his mold and form; the huge heavens and earth 
 are but a web drawn around us, the light, 
 skies and mountains, are but the painted vicissi- 
 tudes of the soul." 
 
 The doctrines of the New Church show that 
 these relations and suggestions are founded, 
 not in fancy but in fact, in a universal law of 
 Creation. The law is this : that the whole 
 scheme of sensible things is created by Divine 
 Influx through the spiritual world; the beings 
 
 UFIVBRSITT 
 
34 ZAW OF INTEBPBETATION. 
 
 and objects of the spiritual world standing 
 thus in the position of mediate or secondary 
 causes, which are imaged and represented in 
 their effects. This relation between spiritual 
 causes and natural effects we call " Correspond- 
 ence;" anything in this world of the senses 
 being said to "correspond" to the spiritual 
 cause in the world of souls through which it is 
 created or produced. I dislike exceedingly 
 to import philosophical terms into popular 
 discourse; but to grasp this idea with clear- 
 ness and accuracy, the mind must carefully 
 distinguish between discrete and continuous 
 degrees. Current theology shuts its eyes to 
 all such terms ; and current science makes no 
 such distinction; and the expounders of both 
 are likely to declare their indifference. But let 
 him who would be wise learn to think accu- 
 rately. There are continuous degrees which 
 exhibit gradation on the same plane ; as greater 
 or less degree of light, or heat, or pressure. 
 So, likewise, there is greater or less degree of 
 clearness in intelligence or understanding ; or 
 greater or less facility of expression in speech. 
 These degrees exhibit, however, only differ- 
 ences of continuity on the same plane. But 
 the degree which distinguishes the understand- 
 ing from the speech is discrete and not eon- 
 
ZAW OF USTTJEBPEETATIOm 35 
 
 tinuous. The thought does not shade off into 
 the expression. It may be more or less clear 
 on its own plane, and the expression may be 
 more or less clear on its plane ; but the planes 
 are distinct, and that which distinguishes 
 them is a discreet degree. The thought decends 
 into the speech and clothes itself, and takes on a 
 new form and function on a lower plane of 
 existance, without losing its own form and 
 function in the mind itself. It is the efficient 
 cause of which the speech is the effect. The 
 thought is spiritual, the speech is natural. 
 They belong to correlated planes of existence, • 
 which do not shade off one into the other, but 
 are discrete and distinct. Such is the relation 
 of a spiritual cause to its* natural effect ; such 
 the relation of the soul to the physical body ; 
 and such the relation of the spiritual world 
 to the natural world. The spiritual world 
 is in the physical world, and principles 
 are in phenomena, not as one box is in 
 another, or an ether in a vessel, but as the 
 soul is within the body ; corresponding part 
 to part and function to function, yet wholly 
 distinct and discrete as to their planes of exis- 
 tence. Thus God creates the human soul as 
 the recipient of His Divine love and wisdom, 
 and beholds in it His image ; and through the 
 
36 ZA W OF INTERPBETATION. 
 
 soul, as a form receptive of His life, He creates 
 the body, and in this again the soul beholds 
 its image. But the soul is not God, nor is the 
 body the soul. They are related only by 
 Correspondence; but this relation is organic 
 and inherent. In the body, therefore, as to its 
 form in general and in particular, and as to its 
 gestures and play of expression,' the soul may 
 behold its own functions and its varied activ- 
 ities — its understanding in the eye, and intel- 
 lectual perception in the function of the eye ; 
 the will, with its complex emotions, in the func- 
 tions of the heart, and its quickened feelings 
 in the quickened pulse. This is Correspond- 
 ence. As the soul and body thus correspond, 
 so do the principles and objects of the whole 
 world of souls correspond with the things and 
 movements of the external world of the 
 senses. 
 
 If there be any such relation, so organic 
 and necessary as to render the external world 
 of the senses a mirror of the soul, and 
 of the love and wisdom of God, it is 
 manifest that a Science of Correspondence 
 is possible; that is, a specific and sys- 
 tematic knowledge of these relations, and 
 the significance of things. Such a science the 
 doctrines of the New Church offer in evidence, 
 
ZAW OF INTEBFBETATION, 37 
 
 and appeal to its completeness, consistency 
 and adequacy as an explanation of the Word 
 and Works of God. I am aware, of course, 
 that there are those who are called wise who 
 would object to this doctrine on the ground 
 that it rests upon an assumption that is not in 
 the nature of things provable. For while the 
 natural world has from the beginning fur- 
 nished man with images and representatives 
 of his mental processes, there has been no 
 well-based recognition of this truth that they 
 are effects of spiritual causes. Man has 
 rather sought to emerge from the confusion 
 of his sensible ex{)erience by ascribing the 
 phenomena of nature to all sorts of imaginary 
 causes, as atoms and motion — none of which, 
 however, he supposes to be discernible by any 
 of his senses, which only take cognizance of 
 the sensations excited by such supposititious 
 atoms of matter. Strange it seems, that those 
 who have been so loud in denying a God, 
 because his existence was not, as they deemed, 
 susceptible of demonstration, should also have 
 been most positive in maintaining the exist- 
 ence of elemental matter which, upon their 
 own showing, is equally incapable of detection, 
 let alone demonstration. The intuition of 
 God has, however, a wonderful basis in human 
 
38 ZAW OF INTERFBETATION, 
 
 nature; and when men shall turn their 
 thoughts to Him as the perpetual source and 
 center of all substantial being, whose out- 
 flowing life, by the medium of the spiritual 
 world, creates and sustains the entire Cosmos 
 of sensible phenomena, then the law of Cor- 
 respondence will be seen as a grand and com- 
 prehensive generalization, covering fields of 
 study that have not been dreamed of in our 
 philosophy. 
 
 The knowledge of the correspondence of 
 heaven with earth, was the intuitive posses- 
 sion of the men of the most ancient, or Adamic, 
 dispensation, and was r,etained as a science, and 
 taught by tradition long after that dispensation 
 of the Church had closed. The Divine Mind 
 with its treasures of love and wisdom, was to 
 their preception written out in the forms, colors, 
 motions, sizes, distances, and their endless 
 variations in the Kingdoms of nature. They 
 needed no written Revelation, " for the invisi- 
 ble things of God were clearly seen from the 
 Creation of the world, being understood by the 
 things that are made." The Apostle express- 
 ly says that men originally thus "knew .God," 
 but ceasing " to glorify him as God," and be- 
 coming vain in their imaginations, they grad- 
 ually lost this knowledge, and their hearts were 
 
ZAW OF INTERPRETATION. 39 
 
 darkened. And as man lost the intuitive per- 
 ception of correspondence, he fell into the 
 lower mental state of merely believing on the 
 authority of tradition, that such and such ob- 
 jects had such and such signification. The 
 knowledge of Correspondence being thus, 
 preserved as a science and transmitted by tra- 
 dition, served as a basis for the reception and 
 understanding of a written Word of God ; un- 
 til its spiritual uses were prostituted to pur- 
 poses of magic, and the night of idolatry set in, 
 when men worshipped the shadow instead of 
 the substance. I shall speak again more fully 
 of this matter in tracing the history of Eeve- 
 lation; sufiice it to say now, that it was prima- 
 tively the origin of all language, and in its 
 perversion gave rise to the fanciful mythologies 
 of the ancient nations, while on the other hand 
 the Word of God is given strictly in accordance 
 with it, and is now opened in its spiritual sense 
 by means of it. 
 
 It is enough to ask for this doctrine that it 
 be examined as a hypothesis. Every theory 
 is in supposition till it demonstrates its ability 
 to explain the facts it assumes to cover. We 
 must admit the possibility provisionally or we 
 cannot proceed. This is common to all inves- 
 tigations in which a hypothesis is undergoing 
 
40 ZAW OF INTERPR ETATION. 
 
 trial, or a theory proof, or a truth demonstra- 
 tion. And this doctrine of the internal sense 
 of Scripture as the essential revelation, and 
 the myth, or history, or law as its assumed 
 body in the world, submits itself to be tried by 
 the usual methods for verifying a hypothesis. 
 It is not an arbitrary system, or the substitu- 
 tion of a new dogma for an old, but assumes 
 to rest upon a law of being, and, therefore, to 
 be capable of examination and verification. 
 Whether there is such a spiritual sense in the 
 Scriptures as is claimed, is therefore mainly a 
 question of fact. No one can tell whether it 
 is there or not until he examines them under 
 the guidance of the principles offered, just as 
 he would investigate any claim of science by 
 an examination of the facts under the guidance 
 of the hypothesis proposed. 
 
 We are mainly concerned with the doctrine 
 at this time, as a principle of interpretatioH, 
 and I shall proceed to offer some illustrations 
 of its application. But it must be remembered 
 that this Science, which is to furnish us with 
 the alphabet and grammar for the study of 
 the spiritual sense of the Word, is not to be 
 grasped and mastered in a moment. It is no 
 merely speculative and visionary theory, but 
 a truly consistent and universal system, or it 
 
ZAW OF INTERPRETATION'. 41 
 
 is nothing. The presentation which I have 
 given of its fundamental principles is the 
 merest statement, and an}^ illustrations which 
 can be crowded within the limits of this dis- 
 course will be necessarily crude. It will be 
 easily admitted by most persons that there is 
 some sort of analogy or resemblance between 
 mental and physical things, as between heat 
 and affection, and between light and truth, 
 which common language continually expresses; 
 and many will feel that in passing beyond the 
 bounds of this moderate, common-sense use of 
 analogy, we plunge into folly and mysticism. 
 I am required to caution you against any such 
 conclusion, for the claims of this Science are 
 either true or they are not, and they are alto- 
 gether too pretentious to be set aside by a 
 hasty inference. The doctrine is explicit : 
 God speaks the Word from Himself as by 
 real efflux He makes all things from Himself; 
 and the whole external world, the work of God, 
 presents there a basis for the spiritual interpre- 
 tation of Holy Scriptures, the written Word 
 of God, — the external objects, events, and im- 
 agery of which the letter is composed corres- 
 ponding with the spiritual principles, which 
 are their organic causes, the series of which 
 constitute its spiritual sense. Written accord- 
 
42 ZAW OF INTERPRETATION. 
 
 ing to correspondence with the exactness of a 
 law, by the knowledge of the law it may 
 be interpreted with the accuracy of a 
 Science. In rough statement as a rule of in- 
 terpretation the law may be formulated thus: 
 That the things signified hear the same rela- 
 tion and subserve the same uses in respect to 
 the soul, as do their natural representatives 
 in respect to the body. What the eye is to 
 the body, the understanding is to the soul ; 
 and when, therefore, it is said " the eyes of the 
 Lord run to and fro through the whole earth," 
 His Omnipresence and Providence by virtue 
 of His wisdom and understanding, is the 
 Spiritual meaning. We are taught to pray, 
 "Open thou mine eyes that I may behold 
 wondrous things out of thy law," when the 
 enlightening of the understanding in the 
 truths of the Word, is meant. " Let thine 
 eye be single," or "if thine eye offend thejo 
 pluck it out," is to warn us against the duplic- 
 ity of a perverted understanding, and the 
 necessity of putting away from us those false 
 principles which cause us to offend against the 
 truth. What the ear, in like manner is to 
 the body, the will as a faculty of perception 
 and obedience is to the soul. Wherefore our 
 Lord's words so often repeated, " He that hath 
 
ZAW OF INTEBPRETATIOm 43 
 
 ears to hear, let him hear," mean, whosoever 
 perceives the Divine command let him obey. 
 The unregenerate will, which is averse to learn- 
 ing and obeying the Divine Truth, is de- 
 scribed as the "uncircumcised ear," which 
 "cannot hearken;" and it is said "the Word 
 of the Lord is unto them a reproach ; they 
 have no delight in it." The hands, as instru- 
 ments of bodily energy, denote the ability of 
 the soul; and the "Arm of the Lord" is His 
 Divine Omnipotence; the "right hand of God" 
 is the power of His love, and the protection of 
 His Providence is described by the "Ever- 
 lasting Arms." So the feet, as the support of 
 the whole, denote the lowest principles of the 
 mind and its precepts of life; wherefore, 
 ** washing the feet" signifies the purification 
 and reformation of conduct, and "walk- 
 ing in the Lord's paths" denotes actual 
 external obedience to the literal commandments 
 of righteousness. Bread, as the food of the 
 body, represents the Divine goodness, or right- 
 eousness, for which man should hunger; and 
 it is said "man shall not live by bread alone, 
 but by every word that proceedeth out of the 
 mouth of God," because man is not to yield 
 merely to the impulses of goodness, but is to 
 regulate these by the Divine truth, which is 
 
44 ZAW OF INTEBPRETATION. 
 
 the form of Divine goodness, and which can 
 alone build up the soul in righteousness. 
 Therefore the Lord who was the Word, made 
 flesh, is "the living bread which came down 
 from Heaven," whose "flesh is meat indeed 
 and whose blood is drink indeed," being the 
 actual sensible manifestation of His Divine 
 Goodness and Truth ; and therefore the Lord 
 is really present in the Holy Supper, because 
 the bread and wine correspond to His " flesh 
 and blood," which we veritably eat when we 
 appropriate His Goodness and Truth into our 
 souls. This is felt by every worthy Commu- 
 nicant, and is intuitively perceived and known 
 by many. But the law is universal, and applies 
 as well to the other Sacrament of Baptism ; its 
 whole efficacy is founded in the Correspondence 
 of water and washing, and its perception in 
 heaven. Water is in its various uses, what 
 truth is to the soul. Thus, water in baptism or 
 washing, corresponds to truth purifying the 
 soul; water as drink, to truth refreshing and 
 nourishing the intellect ; water as rain, to those 
 divine truths of living consolation which fall 
 upon the parched soul as dew from heaven ; 
 running waters, to truth seen and accepted as 
 flowing from its divine source ; stagnant water, 
 to truth cut off from its source ; foul and bit- 
 
ZAW OF INTERPRETATIONT. 45 
 
 ter waters, to truth perverted and profaned ; 
 and water collected in seas, corresponds to 
 the vast ocean of external truth, or mere 
 science in the memory, gleaned by the senses 
 from the things that appear, which accumu- 
 late it as we may, still remains but a vast sea, 
 heaving, tossing and leading no whither; but 
 which rightly employed is a vast storehouse 
 from whence the sun of love for wisdom may 
 lift up into the mental firmament the supplies 
 to feed "the rivers that run among the hills," 
 the living streams of truth which bless and 
 fertilize the mind, in the channels of whose 
 thoughts they flow. 
 
 Such analogies may impress you as the very 
 reverse of exact ; but it is not true. They 
 are general and superficial, as I have presented 
 them ; but the exactness lies in this, that not 
 only these general meanings, but the more 
 specific and definite shades of meaning which 
 belong to these symbols, are of universal ap- 
 plication. The key fits, whether applied in 
 Genesis, or Isaiah, or the Gospels, or the 
 Apocalypse. Swedenborg by means of it, 
 and under Divine illumination, opened the 
 Spiritual Sense of Genesis and Exodus, and 
 of the Apocalypse, and in the course of his 
 writings applies it to the various portions of 
 
46 ZAW OF INTEBPBETATION , 
 
 Holy Scripture, with a fullness and consis- 
 tency of results which is the best test of its 
 truth. It is to these results we appeal, and 
 upon a knowledge of these that we base our 
 faith. It is the key that fits. Applied to 
 texts, the meaning of which is perfectly clear 
 in the letter, it reveals a spiritual meaning 
 within them, full of beauty, simplicity, and 
 wisdom, which was before sealed and hidden. 
 Applied to obscure passages, that in their 
 letter teach no doctrine that applies to human 
 duty and righteousness, it will show hidden 
 within them riches of wisdom, of universal, 
 useful application. Applied to contradictory 
 texts, it will show their real harmony under 
 their apparent contradiction, and make one 
 to complement and fulfill the other. All this 
 has been demonstrated in the expositions of 
 the Church, and the demonstrations are capa- 
 ble of unlimited multiplication. Examine 
 in illustration, the declaration, " By the Word 
 of the Lord were the heavens made." Nothing 
 can be clearer in the literal sense than this 
 general truth, that the Lord is the Creator of 
 the Universe: but it concerns us much more 
 to know how the heaven of angels is created 
 and the kingdom of heaven implanted in the 
 soul. It is for this surely that we need a 
 
ZAW OF INTERPRETATION. 47 
 
 Revelation from God, and to this, these words 
 in their spiritual sense must refer. Creation 
 signifies spiritual creation or regeneration ; the 
 " Word of the Lord" denotes all Divine Truth, 
 by which He who is love itself reveals Him- 
 self and His laws to man ; and " the heavens" 
 signify that celestial state of man's soul which 
 is implanted and formed by regeneration. 
 Thus we are taught that it is by the Word of 
 the Lord, or the divine truths which He 
 reveals to man, that His heaven of peace and 
 righteousness is created within us, even as at 
 the first. When the Lord's Word says, " Let 
 this, or let that, be !" " Do this, or shun that !" 
 then if it is so, if we do what He commands, 
 light will appear in our darkness, a firmament 
 in the midst of the waters, all living things of 
 heavenly life, the image of God and heaven 
 itself in the soul. For a mere record of fact 
 in the letter, we have in the spiritual sense a 
 living lesson and promise for every soul who 
 is asking " What must I do to be saved ?" And 
 can we not see that such an interpretation, in- 
 stead of discrediting the letter as some seem to 
 fear, really glorifies it as the soul glorifies the 
 body? Or again, take the expression of trust: 
 " I will call upon God, and the Lord shall save 
 me." In the letter it conveys only a general 
 
48 ZA W OF INTERFRETA TION, 
 
 truth, but in its spiritual sense a most specific 
 discrimination as to the Divine operation in 
 the salvation of man. Every name applied 
 to designate the Lord, has a most distinct sig- 
 nification in respect to man. Thus the name 
 "God," designates the Lord, with respect to 
 His wisdom and power, the Lord, that is, as 
 revealed to the intellect ; and while man loves 
 evil and self above all things, he cannot other- 
 wise apprehend the Lord. He can, in his un- 
 regenerate state, only call upon " God," because 
 he can only understand the Divine as revealed 
 by His power and truth to the intellect; but 
 " Jehovah shall save him." For the name 
 "Jehovah" signifies the Lord as to that love 
 which is the very life and being of God, and 
 though God first appears to us as the Divine 
 Truth, it is Divine Love that must save us- 
 Wlien we call wpon God, the Lord shall save 
 us; or when we trust in the Lord's power and 
 truth, and obey His Divine Commandments, 
 we shall realize that He is Life, and rejoice in 
 His salvation. 
 
 If, then, these plain declarations of the letter 
 of Scripture reveal a spiritual meaning within 
 them, so full of practical beauty and use, how 
 much more shall we need the help of this 
 Science of interpretation in that large portion 
 
LAW OF INTEBPBETATION, 49 
 
 of the Word which is wholly obscure? " The 
 mountains skipped like rams, and the little 
 hills like lambs/' "Let the floods clap their 
 hands ; let the hills be joyful together before 
 the Lord." Such figures not only indicate in 
 general the life and joy which should animate 
 the mind receptive of love and faith, but they 
 specifically and precisely correspond to par- 
 ticular and definite states of the mind. These 
 may indeed be figures, but they are more than 
 figures; and, as every one knows, there are 
 symbolic expressions in all parts of the Word 
 which cannot be interpreted by any rhetorical 
 rules of speech. In illustration, I will cite the 
 Sixth Chapter of Revelations, to which the 
 correspondence of the horse will alone serve 
 as a key. The horse is used as a representa- 
 tive of the intellectual faculty or understand- 
 ing of man to which it corresponds; color, 
 whatever it be, denotes the quality, and the 
 rider or director, the guiding power of the 
 mind. In the Apocalyplic Vision referred to, 
 the opening of the first seal exhibits " a white 
 horse," the symbol of purity of understanding 
 or faith, while " the Word " rules in the mind, 
 crowned as its guide and director, " going 
 forth conquering and to conquer." In this is 
 presented the first state of the church, pure in 
 
50 ZAW OF INTEBPBETATION, 
 
 faith when the Word of God prevails. The 
 second seal opened shows a red horse, repre- 
 senting the deterioration of the understand- 
 ing of truth from the pride of intelligence ; 
 and the Word becomes then a source of con- 
 tention and division. In the opening of the 
 third seal the horse is black, representing the 
 entire darkenins; of understandins; in the 
 church, through the influence of evil. The 
 power of the Word has so far declined that 
 " a measure of wheat " and " three measures of 
 barley" are sold for " a penny," denoting the 
 low estimation in which spiritual good is held. 
 The fourth seal shows the climax of decline, 
 in the " pale horse " whose rider is " death." 
 The understanding is not only darkened, but 
 the Word is perverted ; the Divine Truth, 
 which is " the Sword of the Spirit," is turned 
 into falsity, "the sword of the adversary," 
 with power to destroy. Here the evil princi- 
 ples of the heart have prevailed to turn the 
 powers of the understanding into a curse. 
 
 Thus briefly it may be seen how this Scrip- 
 ture, otherwise meaningless, becomes in its 
 spiritual sense, an orderly, serial and instruc- 
 tive vision of the successive decline of the 
 church as to the understanding of the Word ; 
 while in the nineteenth chapter of the same 
 
LAW OF INTERPEETATIOR. 51 
 
 prophecy, the restoration of understanding in 
 the church is represented by the white horse, 
 whose rider " is faithful and true," clothed in 
 a vesture upon which is written the name of 
 Him, The Word of God. These illustrations 
 are but suggestions of the power and life of 
 the Word in its spiritual sense ; but I shall 
 supplement them with other evidences in the 
 discourses to come. 
 
 One word in conclusion, as to the importance 
 of this Science of interpretation with respect to 
 the thought of our time. The skepticism, the 
 doubt, the perplexity of our day, need for 
 help not less thought, but higher — a rational 
 analysis of the whole character and purpose of 
 the Word. You will discover, that when any 
 one, teacher or disciple, becomes uncertain as 
 to the real presence of a Divine message in 
 the Scriptures, and doubtful of their origin in 
 Divine inspiration, then all his religious 
 thought becomes vague and uncertain. If the 
 Church is to revive with power, if faith is to 
 continue ,to exercise a function in the life of 
 man and of society, the Word of God must be 
 vindicated, not as history, but as a world of 
 truth and spiritual law, with an order and 
 harmony of its own, corresponding to the or- 
 der and harmony of the world of science. This 
 
52 ZAW OF INTERPRETATION', 
 
 is the purport of the doctrine of Correspond- 
 ence to the Church. It resolves the Scriptures 
 into their fundamental principles, and leads 
 directly to unity of faith in the universals of 
 truth respecting righteousness. The grand, 
 universal principles of spiritual life are to be 
 found in the heavenly senses of the Holy 
 Scripture. 
 
 They are shadowed in its letter, it is 
 true, but they are also apparently contra- 
 dicted there. It is in the generalizations of 
 the spiritual senses that they receive their 
 illustration and justification; and thus it is 
 here that the great need of our time and 
 the great heart- wish of the best of men are 
 met and satisfied. "^ 
 
 It is here, also, that partial and antagonistic 
 views of truth are seen to be parts of an harmo- 
 nious whole, and thus it is here that freedom 
 and diversity of opinion become justified in the 
 seen and proven organic unity of all truths. 
 It is here, also, that our conception of Divine 
 Kevelation is enlarged to include all Sacred 
 Scripture whereby God has left Himself a wit- 
 ness among every people of the wor'ld ; and 
 thus it is liere that the argument against the 
 inspiration of the Bible, drawn from the cor- 
 relation of truth in all the great religions of 
 
ZAW OF INTERPRETATION, 53 
 
 the world, receives its owq illustration, is ex- 
 plained and turned to the support of that it 
 would overthrow. Inspiration doubtless needs 
 to have a wider definition than has previously- 
 been given to it; but this will be found in the 
 spirit that quickeneth. It is the generaliza- 
 tions of science which lie back of, and above 
 all specially operating laws, that enlarge our 
 conceptions of the universe; but the wide 
 knowledge of suns and systems does not de- 
 stroy our faith in the planet on which our 
 feet rest, and into which open our daily func- 
 tions. Even so the universal principles of 
 spiritual life, which are opened in the new anal- 
 ysis of Sacred Scripture show us the deeper 
 grounds of faith, and the harmony and final 
 unity of all truths in all religions, at the 
 same time that they justify and fortify our 
 faith in the least commandment of our own 
 Holy Bible. It is here in the spiritual sense 
 of the Word that we come to that universal 
 truth which the best religious sense of our day 
 is seeking to justify, that all in every land 
 who fear God and keep his commandments, as 
 made known to them, shall be saved of him. 
 Merely natural truth has its limitations ; it 
 is partial, and determined to particular times, 
 and places, and persons. 
 
g4 LA W OF INTEBPJRETATION'. 
 
 This is the nature of the literal sense of 
 Holy Scripture and of all doctrine derived 
 from it. It presents an amazing variety of 
 expression, partial and limited appearances of 
 truth, and seemingly contradictory commands. 
 The unity of all these things lies below the 
 surface, in the doctrines of the spiritual sense, 
 which are as true on earth as they are in 
 heaven, in one age as in another, for one man 
 as for another. Presenting everywhere illus- 
 trations of love to God and love to the neigh- 
 bor, as the sum and substance of true religion, 
 in the church and in heaven, the doctrines of 
 the spiritual sense are essentially Catholic and 
 comprehensive; they include and harmonize 
 all truths, and all expressions of truth, and 
 are destined therefore to dissipate the falsities 
 which men have derived from the appearances 
 of the letter of Scripture, to redeem the Church 
 from the schemes of councils, and to restore it 
 in simplicity and unity of faith. Unto this 
 end, so we believe, "the Lion of the tribe of 
 Juda," even the Lord Himself, " hath prevail- 
 ed to open the Book and loose the seals there- 
 of;" that "the Christain Church which is 
 founded upon the word, may again revive and 
 draw breath through heaven from the Lord." 
 Amen. 
 
III. 
 
 THE LAW OF DIVINE IFSPIEA- 
 
 TION ; OE, HOW THE WOED 
 
 IS WEITTEK 
 
 It is the Spirit that quickeneth.- John vi : 63. 
 
 "When our Lord, standing before His dis- 
 ciples in His Risen and Glorified body, would 
 representatively show forth the giving of the 
 Holy Spirit, **He breathed on them and said, 
 receive ye the Holy Ghost." He breathed 
 upon them because breathing was an external 
 representative sign of inspiration ; for the 
 Holy Spirit is the divine principle proceeding 
 from the Lord, which, when it is received by 
 man, is mentally or internally inspired into 
 his understanding and life. Even so, God 
 breathed into man at the first, " the breath of 
 lives ;" and so He continually inspires all men 
 by the influx of His life. It is this Holy 
 Spirit or divine sphere proceeding from the 
 (55) 
 
56 WHAT I^ INSFIBATIOJSr? 
 
 Lord that " quickenetb," both the spirit of 
 man, and the things that are made, and the 
 Word that is written. This breathing forth 
 of His Divine Spirit is real and actual; it is 
 the perpetual influx into angels and men of 
 the truth of His wisdom, in which is life, and 
 whose life is the light of man. Coming to 
 man through the angelic heavens, and finding 
 a reception in his will and -mind, it inspires 
 him with heavenly love and intelligence and 
 power. Coming to the Prophet in its divine 
 mission, not to the individual but to heaven 
 and the church, — with the overmastering pur- 
 pose of revelation, not to the man but to men, 
 — it fills him with the prophetic spirit, cloth- 
 ing itself in the chambers of memory, speak- 
 ing through him what it listeth, and recording 
 by his hand what it will. Coming again in un- 
 ceasing streams of life and truth into that 
 Word which is written, it vivifies and inspires 
 the otherwise dead letter, and makes it to be 
 — not merely to mean, but actually to be — 
 "spirit and life." 
 
 In this general statement you will perceive 
 the promise of a more definite and discrimi- 
 nating doctrine of Inspiration than that which 
 is current. In general. Inspiration is the 
 influx of the Holy Spirit of Wisdom and 
 
WJIAT IS INSPIBATIONf 57 
 
 knowledge, which gives light to the human 
 understanding, and life to all men ; but its 
 operations and results are different, according 
 to the specific end it seeks, and the conditions 
 which prevail. We are to make a distinction 
 between (a) the Inspiration which is common 
 to all good men, and {b) the Inspiration of 
 Prophets and Evangelists, and (c) the Inspira- 
 tion of the Word written through them. The 
 confounding of these things, which are distinct, 
 is as hurtful as it is common ; and we can have 
 no true doctrine of the Inspiration of the 
 Word of God until these distinctions are made 
 clear. 
 
 1. Inspiration can not be understood, not 
 even the inspiration which is common to all 
 men, excepting as life is understood; for In- 
 spiration proceeds in all its forms and under 
 all conditions from the influx of Divine life. 
 It can not be at all understood except as we 
 apprehend the two fundamental facts of human 
 life. Of these, the first is, that our life is 
 God's life, given to us and received by us. 
 The second is, that the Divine life is so given 
 to us that it appears as our own life, and really 
 abides in us as our own, and is used as our 
 own, and becomes what it is in us by our free 
 determination. And we may reconcile these 
 
58 WHAT IS IJSrSPIBATION? 
 
 two facts in the single proposition : tliat__inaii. 
 is a substantial form, receptive of Divine life 
 JB such a way that he may voluntarily use it. 
 The Lord is the only life. He is the cause of 
 causes, and by real efflux makes all things, 
 not from nothing, but from Himself; and by 
 real and constant influx into the things made 
 He sustains and moves them. He is life in 
 Himself, and life proceeding. Speaking truly 
 and absolutely according to the fact, there is 
 no more self-existent, independent life in the 
 highest angel, in man nor animal, than there 
 is in a block of granite. All that is created, 
 all that is not God, is mere form and effect; 
 and the only respect in which one created form 
 differs from another is wholly a difference of 
 form, or capacity to receive life and determine 
 it to uses. All motion, all activity, whether of 
 planet, plant, man or angel, all thought, all 
 aflection, is caused by the influx of the divine 
 of the Lord into forms. The life is one; the 
 manifestations differ with the differences in 
 the receptive forms. In learning this funda- 
 mental truth, however, we have not reduced 
 the mystery of life. Its manifestations present 
 all the variety that they did before; we have 
 only learned to refer this variety to difference 
 of organization. This is a truth which science 
 
WITAT IS INSPIRATION f 59 
 
 in its own way, and in its own field, recog- 
 nizes; which it applies in the whole realm of 
 sensible things. It is the combination and 
 relation of molecules of a definite structure 
 which constitutes the difference between char- 
 coal and the diamond. It is the combination 
 and relation of cells, of a definite structure 
 which governs in the manifestations of plant- 
 life, and, in a still higher degree, in the man- 
 ifestations of animal life. And this relation 
 between the structure and quality of sub- 
 stances, and between the organic form and the 
 quality of life manifested, is more perfectly 
 developed with advancing discovery. 
 
 We shall be prepared to learn, then, what 
 science, from the nature of its plane and 
 methods of investigation, could never teach 
 us ; — that there are spiritual forms of various 
 orders and degrees, capable of receiving and 
 manifesting Divine life in love, intelb'gence 
 and use, in the ratio of their perfection ; and 
 that man as the complex of these, is a spiritual 
 organic form in the image and likeness of God. 
 The doctrines of the New Church teach that 
 spirit is as real and substantial as matter is, 
 but on a prior and superior plane of existence. 
 It has corresponding attributes* on its own 
 plane, and is as capable of organization as 
 
60 WHAT IS IJSrSPIBATIOJSr? 
 
 matter is. The spiritual world is a world of 
 spiritual substances, organized in forms, capa- 
 ble of variously receiving and manifesting 
 spiritual life. Man as a spiritual being, is an 
 organized form of spiritual substances, corres- 
 ponding in functions with the complex organ- 
 ism of his physical body. He has successive 
 degrees or planes of faculties corresponding 
 with the successive degrees of Divine love and 
 wisdom emanating from God, and receptive of 
 them; and he has in each a will and under- 
 standing receptive of love and wisdom as such; 
 and this complex organism is so adjusted to the 
 reception of influx, that the life flowing in ap- 
 pears to be in him as his own, and becomes in 
 him voluntary life. Divine life, which is love 
 and wisdom itself, flows into the human will 
 as love and there becomes the man's own, and 
 is whatever love, desire, affection, or impulse, 
 good or bad, it must become by his own deter- 
 mination of it to ends. So it flows as wisdom 
 into his understanding, and there becomes what- 
 ever of thought, opinion, belief, or imagination, 
 true or false, it must become by his own use of 
 it. Thus man, as a spiritual being, is such an 
 organic form, that life flowing in from above 
 becomes his to use, and is thereafter, in the 
 will, and in its activity, voluntary life. Thence 
 
W^AT IS IJSrSFIBA TI02^ ? 61 
 
 is man's freedom; which it is not'easy to define. 
 That he has it we know ; and that it is insep- 
 arable from the appearance that life is his own 
 to do with as he will, we know. This appear- 
 ance is the very groundwork of individuality, 
 fundamental to all spiritual development, and 
 carefully protected in the order of Divine Prov- 
 idence. It is a wonderful effect produced from 
 the fact that life appears only where it is re- 
 vealed, and it is revealed only where it is re- 
 acted. It enters man altogether unperceived> 
 because it enters by his unconscious higher de- 
 grees. Those degrees previous to their develop- 
 ment are like the unoccupied apartments or 
 stories of a house; man does not live in them, 
 nor has he any practical knowledge of their 
 value. Life enters man by his inmost or su- 
 preme degree, in which not even the celestial 
 angels are conscious, and is therefore un per- 
 ceived in its entrance and descent until it comes 
 into the plane of his conscious and voluntary 
 life. This at first is the very lowest plane of 
 his natural faculties; and being there first 
 manifested, that appears to be its origin, and 
 it appears to be his own, and he is free to use it 
 as his own. Every impulse of affection and 
 every thought of truth which is inspired into 
 man is so presented as to respect and conserve 
 
62 WHA T IS INSPIRATION f 
 
 this freedom ; for, by means of it alone can 
 man acquire by his affections and thoughts 
 and deeds, any moral or spiritual character 
 whatsoever. 
 
 The Inspiration of Divine life into every 
 man, is, therefore, of two kinds. First, im- 
 mediate, sustaining in him the faculty of will- 
 ing and thinking ; and second, mediate, pre- 
 senting emotions and thoughts accommodated 
 to his voluntary reception. The first com- 
 municates the life by which he lives, and is 
 free to direct his living. The second inspires 
 him with good emotions and true perceptions, 
 and thus assists his freedom. Having made 
 this distinction, we shall be prepared to see 
 something of the nature and method of that 
 inspiration by which every man who will, 
 may rise into goodness, intelligence and heav- 
 enly usefulness. 
 
 The Holy Spirit of truth comes down 
 through heaven into man's conscious and 
 Yoluntary life, and is there presented as emo- 
 tion and thought, which are perceived no 
 otherwise than his own ; because it has been 
 finited and humanized by its descent through 
 those who are above man and nearer to God. 
 These are the angels, who also exist in suc- 
 cessive heavens, according to the faculties 
 
WJB:AT is inspiration ? 63 
 
 which are opened in them corresponding to the 
 discrete degrees of Divine truth from the 
 Lord. Some are higher than others, and 
 nearer to God ; some are lower and nearer to 
 man. Those who are his-hest and nearest to 
 God first receive the Divine truth as it flows 
 forth from Him into forms receivable by 
 them. It clothes itself in their minds with 
 thought and becomes their wisdom ; and thus 
 mediated it is perceptible to angels lower 
 than the highest; and by a similar process, 
 through the successive planes of being, the 
 truth becomes the thought and wisdom of 
 those in the spiritual world, who are low- 
 est among the good and wise there, and 
 nearest to man. In their minds it has become 
 such that it may descend into the thought of 
 man, and be given up to his faculties and his 
 freedom to be used as his own thought and in- 
 telligence. This is " the light which coming 
 into the world enlighteneth every . man.'' 
 From this is all of man's thought, invention, 
 imagination and reason, greater or less, higher 
 or lower, according as he, in his freedom, re- 
 ceives it and uses it. He may turn it into 
 darkness, misapply it, and pervert it into fool- 
 ishness; or he may receive it with joy, use it 
 with diligence, and rise by its means above 
 
64 WHAT IS IJSrSPIBATIOJSr? 
 
 his ordinary level of preception and wisdom. 
 It is this inspiration which lifts the poet above 
 his knowledge, and the preacher above his 
 own wisdom, and shows to both worlds of 
 truth which they have never explored in act- 
 ual experience. It is this insj)iration which 
 fills the mind of ithe inventor with forms he 
 has never seen, and enables him to copy that 
 in his mind he could never create unaided. It 
 is this which illuminates our minds at all 
 times, combining new forms of thought, and 
 increasing our intelligence and wisdom in pro- 
 portion to our dutiful and orderly use of it, 
 without compulsion, freely and in the full 
 sense that it is our own. 
 
 This inspiration can only minister to the 
 development of character and latent possibili- 
 ties of intelligence as it is thus freely received 
 and determined to the uses of life ; and, there- 
 fore, man is always kept unconscious of it as 
 inspiration. The nearest aproach to a con- 
 sciousness of it which he ever has is when he 
 perceives unwonted light and mental activity; 
 and then when he reflects about it and com- 
 pares this illumination with his customary 
 obscurity he calls it inspiration. That it is ; 
 and the light of it waxes and wanes according 
 to his voluntary discipleship and obedience. 
 
WjETAT IjS IJSr^PIBATIOJSr f 65 
 
 2. But the Inspiration of Prophets and 
 Evangelists is different from this. That kind 
 of Inspiration comes when the Divine wisdom 
 flows into the understanding of the man, but 
 does not become his own. AVhen God would 
 reveal His truth in its own correspondent im- 
 ages, He clothes it ^s before in its descent 
 through the heavens of angels with the 
 thoughts and perceptions apprehensible to them, 
 and thus accommodated enters into the under- 
 standing of one whom He has chosen for an 
 especial instrument, and of whom He takes 
 possession. The influent wisdom, then, so far 
 as its purposes require, uses the senses, the 
 mind, the memory, the thoughts, the habits of 
 thinking, the beliefs and the imaginations of 
 the man; but uses them all to eflect its own 
 purposes. These purposes respect the good of 
 men, and not of the individual ; and the reve- 
 lation is made, not to him, but through him, 
 by an Inspiration that controls him. And be- 
 cause all lower and sensuous knowledges, 
 thoughts and images correspond to those which 
 are higher, the influent wisdom uses whatever 
 it finds in the man's mind to express higher 
 and spiritual truths. And every thought and 
 word thus selected and adopted is such as to 
 be exactly Correspondent with the divine 
 
66 WHAT IjS IN&PIBATIONf 
 
 truth within. So that the form given to the 
 truth in heaven, the thoughts which it put on 
 in the minds of the angels, and the senses in 
 which they understand it, and the truth itself 
 as it is in God, are all within the literal ex- 
 pression furnished from the mind of the hu- 
 man instrument. Thus the Holy Scriptures 
 were written, and when the record was made, 
 or any part of the record at any time, the 
 prophetic spirit was withdrawn, and the pro- 
 phet remanded into his own voluntary life. 
 His inspiration was miraculous, if you please; 
 it was at least special and for a specific pur- 
 pose, controlled by the will of God, and not his 
 own will. What he w]?6te under such Inspi- 
 ration is verily the Word of God, and is itself 
 Inspired. 
 
 3. This brings us to speak of tlie Inspira- 
 tion of that which is thus wintten; which is 
 too often overlooked because of failure to 
 distinguish between the inspiration which 
 is common to all, and that which is 
 peculiar to the sacred penman. When the 
 inspiration of the Scriptures is spoken of, it is 
 commonly meant simply that thej^ were writ- 
 ten by inspired men ; and the inspiration of 
 the writers is not regarded as different in kind 
 from the inspiration of teachers and commenta- 
 
WHAT IS INSPIRATION? 67 
 
 tors. Bat it is different in kind ; and the In- 
 spiration of the Scriptures is a Divine fact, su- 
 perior to either of the other kinds of inspira- 
 tion, for it is plenary and complete. If we 
 say, then, the Word of God is Inspired, we 
 say what we mean — that the thing written is 
 Inspired, independently of the mind of the 
 penman who wrote it. The Inspiration of the 
 Word results from the peculiar Divine control 
 of the writer, and consists in the Divine wis- 
 dom it contains, which alone giveth spiritual 
 life. " The words that I speak unto you they 
 are spirit and they are life." This is the real 
 principle of their inspiration. It does not de- 
 rive its Inspiration from the writer, but from 
 the Living AVord Himself, who is thus able to 
 impart to this last and ultimate expression of 
 His truth, this letter of Scripture which may 
 be read and heard of man, certain qualities 
 that make it the basis and foundation of heaven, 
 and the means of inspiring all men with light 
 divine and life eternal. 
 
 Of these the first is, that this literal word 
 is a body, a definite expression of Divine 
 wisdom, and an adequate instrument of 
 Divine life. It is not merely a writing, but 
 a creation, an emanation from God proceed- 
 ing by discrete degrees of the spiritual world 
 
68 WJIAT IjS INSPIBATION f 
 
 and the mind of man, and res'ting in repre- 
 sentative histories and images, which also by 
 its presence it makes Divine. Even that side 
 of revelation which is formally human is es- 
 sentially divine because of the presence of the 
 divine and spiritual within it. ^'Although its 
 literal form is molded by man's state, it is 
 not determined by his will. The materials 
 for this temple of the Divine presence have in- 
 deed been supplied by man, but its Maker and 
 Builder is God. The stones may have been 
 rough-hewn in the quarry of the human mind, 
 but no sound of huni^n hammer or axe has 
 been heard in the sacred edifice while build- 
 ing. No doubt the Scriptures are different in 
 their outward form and appearance from what 
 they would have been if the state of mankind 
 at the time had been less degraded. The let- 
 ter would then have been a more perfect im- 
 mage of its spirit ; would have contained no 
 indications of an angry God ; no command to 
 slaughter nations and seize upon their herit- 
 age; no sanction of concubinage ; no worship 
 of God by offering Him the blood of 
 slain beasts. " These things, however, 
 only show the condition of those to whom 
 it was first accommodated ; and are evi- 
 dences of its perfection, if so be even these con- 
 
WITAT IjS INSPIBATION f 69 
 
 tain within them a spirit as pure and holy 
 as the most perfect form of revelation could 
 contain. We shall consider hereafter the prin- 
 ciple of adaptation and accommodation to 
 human states upon which the letter of theWord 
 is necessarily selected; but it concerns us now, 
 mainly, to observe that because it is selected 
 through man and not by the will of man, and 
 because whatever its outward appearance, it is 
 correspondent with and representative of the 
 truths of Divine wisdom, it therefore necessa- 
 rily contains them and is inspired by them. 
 It is because it is inspired with a distinct 
 spiritual sense that its essential life is able to 
 descend to man while reading it devoutly in 
 the letter, and thereby to bring him into con- 
 junction with heaven. Without a spiritual 
 sense, without the living Word Himself pres- 
 ent, the written Word could not, indeed, have 
 this conjoiniug power; but, inspired as it is, 
 its conjoining power is not dependent upon 
 man's ability to enter into the spiritual sense 
 by the Science of Correspondences, or any 
 other means of mere study. It is rather in 
 this, that as man devoutly reads the letter, the 
 angels enter into the ideas to which the letter 
 corresponds. The letter of the Word, its his- 
 tories, images, symbols, precepts and com- 
 
70 WMAT IjS inspiration f 
 
 mandments, when read by man or entertained 
 in his thoughts, forms in his mind that basis 
 and foundation for heaven which his natural 
 mind, perverted as it is, could in no other way 
 present to the Lord. Into this orderly recep- 
 tacle the Divine influx of life and spirit, which 
 is personal to every man, can be imparted, 
 and the man be led into vital communion with 
 angels and conjunction with the Lord. 
 
 The literal sense and the spiritual sense are 
 one, as body and soul, because they corres- 
 pond; and therefore when man devoutly 
 reads the Word in its letter, " internal truth 
 flows in and is conjoined with external, man 
 being ignorant of it." This is the source of 
 that peculiar power in the Word, of which 
 every devout reader is sensible, which can 
 not be accounted for by the ideas of the let- 
 ter alone, and which, therefore, the infidel 
 ridicules as superstition. It is by this com- 
 munion with heaven, which the Word effects 
 through its double sense, that those occasion- 
 al perceptions of the interior significance of a 
 simple story or an obscure symbol in the 
 Scriptures, which every humble student of 
 the Bible, as God's message, has experienced, 
 are effected. The influx of good entering 
 from the Lord into the interiors of the mind, 
 
WJBTAT IS IJSrSPIBATIOJSr f 71 
 
 inspires and gives life to the truth which en- 
 ters from without, and becomes perceptible as a 
 holy consolation, a refreshment, an impulse 
 of good, a strengthening of faith, an illumin- 
 ation of thought. By the method of its com- 
 position, and consequent inspiration of Divine 
 wisdom, so holy, so perfect, so exactly corres- 
 pondent with spiritual truth, is the letter of 
 the Word, that it continually bears the life of 
 the spirit and the bread of heaven, down, even, 
 to the natural man. 
 
 This power of the Word, by virtue of its 
 double sense, to conjoin heaven and the church, 
 and bring down spiritual life and knowledge 
 to man, is a matter of very great practical im- 
 portance and comfort. But we must not over- 
 look the great and important use of the spirit- 
 ual sense of the Word as revealed and entered 
 into in some degree by men on earth. Its 
 value, together with the Science of Corres- 
 pondence, is not in substituting a merely in- 
 tellectual study of correspondences for the 
 devout reading and contemplation of the 
 Holy Word in its letter; for there can be no 
 substitute with men on earth for the Divine 
 Life and power of truth in its own Holy ulti- 
 mate. But the value of the revelation of the 
 spiritual sense of the Word is, first, that we 
 
72 WITAT JS INSFIRATIOJSr f 
 
 may know what Scripture is really Divine 
 from plenary inspiration ; and second, that we 
 may have the genuine doctrines of truth by 
 which as a lamp to read the letter. The letter 
 of Holy Scripture has been separated from its 
 spirit in the Church; the very existence of a 
 spiritual sense has been denied; and there is 
 consequently no vital doctrinal belief, and very 
 little practical belief in the Divinity of the 
 letter. It is when it is so regarded, apart from 
 its Divine origin, and in its own light, that 
 "the letter killeth." What the Science of 
 Correspondence does for the man of the 
 Church, therefore, is, to furnish him with the 
 internal evidence of the Divine Inspiration of 
 the Word, and to supply him with a principle 
 by which to test the Canon of the Word in- 
 dependently of any authority of tradition. 
 Only that Scripture is plenarily Inspired 
 which contains an internal sense, and the doc- 
 trine of Correspondence in its application to 
 the Canon reveals what books have such a 
 sense. These are the five books of Moses, 
 Joshua, Judges, the two books of Samuel, the 
 two of Kings, the Psalms, all the Prophets 
 from Isaiah to Malachi, the four Gospels, and 
 the Book of Revelation. These books are 
 written according to the law of Correspond- 
 
WHAT IS INSPIRATION f 73 
 
 ence, containing an internal sense, and effecting 
 an immediate communication with heaven; 
 but the Epistles and other Scripture, though 
 written by inspired men, do not contain an in- 
 ternal sense, and do not claim to be the Word 
 of the Lord. The inspiration of the Apostles, 
 was inspiration of the kind that is common to 
 good and holy men, and their Epistles con- 
 tain the doctrine of the Gospels; but contain- 
 ing no internal sense they do not possess that 
 23lenary Inspiration which belongs for instance 
 to the Gospels themselves. If this division of 
 the Canon seems to you arbitrary, and obnox- 
 ious to your pious traditions, I beg of you to 
 remember that it rests upon internal evidences 
 which are verifiable, and that it in no way de- 
 grades the Epistles, but only exalts the Plena- 
 rily Inspired Word, which is seen by Corres- 
 pondence to possess an Internal Sense. We 
 hold the inspiration of the Epistles and the 
 book of Proverbs, for example, as high as any 
 doctrine of Inspiration current in any school 
 of theology ; but we place the Inspiration of 
 the Pentateuch, and the books of Joshua, 
 Judges, Samuel and Kings, and the Psalms, the 
 Prophets and the Gospels, inconceivably high- 
 er than any doctrine of the church has ever 
 been able to place it. The revelation of the 
 
74 WITAT IjS IJSTjSJPIHATIOJV f 
 
 spiritual sense enables us, then, to know what 
 books are the Very Word of God, why and in 
 what manner they are Divine, and that by 
 them the Lord immediately quickens the souls 
 of men. The knowledge of the existence of 
 a spiritual sense is like a vision of Jacob's 
 ladder ; for so do men behold the Holy Word, 
 its foot resting on the earth, its top reaching 
 to heaven, and angels ascending and descend- 
 ing thereon between God and the human soul. 
 "If man w^ere* aware of the existence of a 
 Spiritual Sense, and when reading the Word 
 were to allow his thoughts to be influenced by 
 his knowledge of it, he would come into inte- 
 rior wisdom, and into a still closer conjunc- 
 tion with heaven, because he would thus enter 
 into ideas similar to those of the angels." 
 
 Moreover, the doctrines of the Christian 
 churches have really falsified the letter of the 
 Word by confirming its apparent truths as 
 genuine truths ; they have taken away " the 
 key of knowledge," and perverted the genuine 
 Divine truth which shines through its letter 
 in places like a face through a veil. The 
 Spiritual Sense of the Word was therefore re- 
 vealed, that the man of the Church might 
 have the genuine doctrines of truth as a lamp 
 by the light of which to read the Word in its 
 
WHAT IS INSPIRATION? 75 
 
 letter. Thus the doctrine of Correspondence, 
 and the Spiritual Sense of the Word as opened 
 by means of it, are needed in the- Church for 
 the development of a spiritual reason in man, 
 the cultivation of a rational faith, and the tri- 
 umphant vindication of the Divine authen- 
 ticity of the Scriptures; and all this, if for 
 nothing else, that men may approach the Word 
 of God devoutly, in prayer and faith, to re- 
 ceive through its very letter the spiritual sus- 
 tenance which flows down into the minds of 
 those who so approach it. 
 
 Another quality which is given to the letter 
 of the Word, by its inspiration and dictation, 
 is that the truths, or appearances of truth, in 
 the letter, are expressed " in such a way that 
 the simple may understand in simplicity, 
 and the wise in wisdom.'' In many places, for 
 example : anger, wrath and vengeance are at- 
 tributed to the Lord ; and it is said that He 
 punishes, casts into hell, tempts, and such like 
 things. He who believes this in simplicity, 
 and on that account fears God and guards 
 himself from sin against Him, will by that 
 very faith and obediance be brought into a 
 vital realization of the genuine truth that the 
 Lord is love itself, and the appearances ofanger 
 and wrath are the only reflection of man's 
 
76 WHAT IjS IJSrSPIBATIOJSr ? 
 
 own opposition to goodness and truth. And 
 thus it is with the truths of the letter of the 
 Word both genuine and apparent; they are 
 precisely those, which being, obeyed if they 
 be command, or learned, and made fertile by 
 meditation, if they be instruction, will gradu- 
 ally lift up the mind to a perception of the 
 higher truths within. 
 
 It may be asked why need the written Word 
 be so given, with its essential meaning obscur- 
 ed in literal appearances? Why was it not 
 composed in such a manner that the genuine 
 truth could be perceived by everyone ? And I 
 might ask in return, why was not this natural 
 world so constituted that everyone could com- 
 prehend it at a glance? Why do so many 
 things in the world around us appear different 
 *from what they are ? Why does not the flash 
 of the lightning reveal to the wondering savage 
 the science of electricity? Why should the 
 God of nature delude His intelligent creatures 
 with such fallacies as are everywhere insepar- 
 able from the senses ? 
 
 The answer to these questions is the answer 
 to the other. We have learned that the fal- 
 lacies and appearances of nature are insepera- 
 ble from the senses, and that their underlying 
 principles are only discoverable by experience, 
 
W^AT IS INSPIRATION f 77 
 
 observation and reason ; and a revelation which 
 is to reach the sensual mind of man must ob- 
 serve the same law. Just as the senses refuse to 
 see things in nature otherwise than as they ap- 
 pear, and, however exalted and extensive the 
 cultivation of science, still maintain the im- 
 pressions of phenomena as presented to the 
 merest child ; just as all the truths of science 
 subsequently learned, serves only to explain 
 the impressions of the senses, and see them- 
 selves imaged therein, and rest firmly in 
 them as their eternal foundation; so the re- 
 ligious impressions derived from the letter of 
 the Word, remain through all our develop- 
 ment of a rational theology ; and all our 
 knowledge of spiritual realities neither re- 
 moves them nor weakens them, but converts 
 them into a mirror wherein it sees itself re- 
 flected. Because the Word of our Written 
 Bible is, in itself a series of related adaptations 
 of divine wisdom to angels and men, extant 
 an open book in all the heavens and on the 
 earth, we may take hold of it anywhere, and 
 find the Lord there. In simplest precept, or 
 or in figure or song, whatever appeals to our 
 state, and impresses our religious faculty, there, 
 with humility and love, or with shame and 
 fear, as the case may be, we may rest in a be- 
 
78 WJETAT IS INSPIRATION 1 
 
 ginning of obedience, and find the Lord of all 
 life. !For he dwells by influx in all its forms 
 and appearances, to operate our regeneration, 
 and '^ open our eyes to behold the wonderful 
 things in His law." 
 
 And now, in conclusion, let us turn once 
 more to the representative act of the Lord 
 with which we began. The disciples on whom 
 he breathed represent these inspired truths of 
 His Word and doctrine ; and the breathing 
 forth of His holy spirit represents that common 
 influx through heaven into the mind of man, 
 by which these truths become "teachers taught 
 of Him'' are sent forth into his mental world 
 to convert and turn it unto rightousness. 
 Whosesoever sins they remit are remitted; 
 that is, whoever submits to their guidance in 
 the shunning of evils, is delivered from the 
 power of his sins. Whosoever will not yield 
 to their guidance in the shunning of evils be- 
 cause they are sins, then are his sins retained. 
 Such is the commission and power of the Word 
 of God even in its letter. Its truths are 
 Divine and infallible teachers and judges of 
 men, because they are mediums of that Spirit 
 of wisdom and knowledge which is able to 
 "guide into all truth'' and "convince the world 
 of sin, of rightousness and of judgment." But 
 
WIfAT JaS' INSPIBATION f 79 
 
 this infallibility of which we speak is not that 
 which men oppose and defend in their debates 
 concerning the authenticity of the history or 
 science in the Bible. The Word is infallible 
 for its own purposes, which are divine and 
 eternal. It has nothing to do with history or 
 science except to use them, or to use men's 
 impressions of them, so far as they can be used 
 in the giving of an ultimate body to revelation 
 in the world. The infallibility of the truths 
 of the Word, is not therefore, as teachers of 
 natural wisdom, but as quickeners of eternal 
 life in whosoever will obey; as teachers, "able 
 to make men wise unto salvation." Amen. 
 
IV. 
 
 THE HISTOET OF EEVELATION; 
 OE, THE SUCCESSIVE DIS- 
 PENSATIONS OF 
 THE CHUECH. 
 
 The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.— John 1, 14. 
 
 The internal sense 'of the Word opens to 
 thought the organic nature, and the needs of 
 the human soul ; the nature and consequences 
 of evil ; the nature and progress of regener- 
 ation ; the augumentation of blessedness in 
 heaven, and the insane delights of the wicked 
 in hell. It opens, also, the spiritual history 
 of the race, the successive states of the Church, 
 and the corresponding Divine dispensations of 
 truth, or the degrees and modes of Divine 
 revelation and manifestation. The race has 
 had its well defined periods of progress, cor- 
 responding to infancy, childhood, youth and 
 manhood, in the individual. These are its 
 Ages with respect to its successive states : its 
 (80) 
 
HISTOB T OF BE VELATIOJST, 81 
 
 Dispensations or Churches, with respect to the 
 manifestation of the Word and Providence of 
 God. The Spiritual history of these dispen- 
 sations or Churches, and the corresponding 
 adaptations of "the Word," which "was with 
 God, and was God," constitutes what may be 
 called " the internal historical sense" of Holy 
 Scripture ; and I propose in this discourse to 
 present a summary view of this history of 
 revelation and the corresponding dispensations 
 of the Church, as it is expounded in the doc- 
 trines of the New Church. The scope of the 
 subject is so vast, that I must of necessity 
 speak dogmatically and in general terms ; but 
 it is, also, of so great importance to the whole 
 subject before us, that the barest statement 
 will be found of use in a judgment of the 
 doctrine of the Sacred Scriptures here advoca- 
 ted. I may remind you that the means of 
 verification are at hand, within easy reach of 
 every sincere student. 
 
 Revelation necessarily has a history, and 
 its history is at the same time the history of 
 the Church. We may be sure of this, if we 
 remember (a) that the Revelation of the Word 
 is God's manifestation to finite men of the 
 infinite things of his own Wisdom, [b) that 
 nothing can be given to men which cannot be 
 6 
 
82 HISTOE Y OF BE VELATION. 
 
 received by tliein, and [c) that ages and races 
 differ indefinitely in their capacity of reception. 
 As ages succeed, or as the states of men change, 
 the manifestation of the Word, which is the 
 light of infinite life, must change its form in 
 adaptation to this varied receptivity. Other- 
 wise it could not be recieved, and the light 
 would shine in darkness, uncomprehended. If 
 for this reason Kevelation is multiform, the 
 order and succession of changes in its adapta- 
 tion, must correspond with the order of the 
 spiritual progress of mankind. The history 
 of the one is the history of the otlier. 
 
 Another preliminary statement of import- 
 ance is, that the individual is the image of the 
 universal man. Beginning in the innocence of 
 infancy and progressing through, the simple, 
 open, sincere, affectionate confidence of child- 
 hood, and the restless, willful self-assertion of 
 youth, the individual develops gradually to 
 manhood. With continual fluctuations, these 
 successive stages in the life of man mark a 
 gradual development of science, and a strength- 
 ening of the powers of the natural man ; but 
 on the other hand there is a spiritual declen- 
 sion from the affectionate docility of infancy 
 and the faith of childhood, to the self-will and 
 pride of intelligence which mark the natural 
 
JSI8T0B Y OF BEVELATIOm 83 
 
 man. As it is, thus, with the individual, so 
 has it been with the race — the larger man. 
 
 So far as natural science is able at all to 
 read the history of the race, it has been with 
 all its fluctuations a substantial progress in 
 civilization and natural knowledge. The 
 spiritual sense of the Word, however, discloses 
 to us the other side of this development, show- 
 ing a spiritual declension, marked by a suc- 
 cession of Divine dispensations and Churches, 
 in which the Heavenly Father adapted His 
 Word to the changing conditions and successive 
 spiritual deflections of His children. 
 
 Now, it is important to remember that in 
 both cases the end is an angelic maturity. 
 Both with the individual and with the race, 
 spiritual preparation is made in the successive 
 declining stages, for subsequent redemption 
 and regeneration ; while on the other hand 
 the progressive natural development is becom- 
 ing a prej)ared foundation for the subsequent 
 activity of redeemed and quickened spiritual 
 powers. The innocent states of infancy, the 
 pupilage of childhood, and the discipline of 
 youth are internally stored away, and "re- 
 main," to be again vivified and developed in 
 the time of man's mature rational regenera- 
 tion. Though seemingly forgotten, while man 
 
84 HISTORY OF REVELATION, 
 
 is developing as a social and civilized natural 
 being, tliey return with multiplying power in 
 the spiritual states of his religious maturity. 
 In close analogy with this progress of man, 
 the successive Divine dispensations or churches, 
 from Adam to the coming of the Lord, fur- 
 nished a necessary preparation for the Incar- 
 nation and Redemption in Jesus Christ. The 
 Word was not immediately " made flesh," but 
 mediately through a succession of Divine dis- 
 pensations. 
 
 The internal . sense of the Word presents 
 five general dispensations of the Church. The 
 word Church is used in this connection, not to 
 indicate sects, organizations or establishments, 
 ' but the mode of Divine revelation, and the 
 form of religious life in man. The church is 
 the Kingdom of God on earth ; it is the reve- 
 lation of Divine truth and goodness, and on 
 man's jjart it is the way of apprehending tlie 
 truth and the degree of obedience to it. On 
 its Divine side the Church, therefore, is one 
 in all time, for it is the giving forth of that 
 Word, which is with God, and is God ; but 
 on its human side, it varies according to man's 
 capacity of understanding and doing the 
 Word. In either view, it is a Kingdom of 
 God within man, and not a thing of outward 
 
HISTORY OF BEYELATION. 85 
 
 observation. It is proper enough to call our 
 organizations and instrumentalities which are 
 derived from the Word and Church in man, 
 churches ; but this is not the primary sense 
 of the word Church. It is not the sense in 
 which we use it it in this present connection ; 
 and when we speak of dispensations or Churches, 
 the degree and mode of Divine revelation, and 
 the corresponding forms of the religious life 
 in man, are to be understood.- Using the word 
 in this sense, the Holy Scriptures present, as 
 I said, five general dispensations of the Church; 
 — three preceding the Incarnation, one inau- 
 gurated by it, and the fifth predicted, and now 
 beginning to be realized. Those which pre- 
 ceded the Incarnation, mark the successive 
 stages of the Divine adaptation of truth to 
 man's " fall," even till it was manifested to his 
 sensuous perception " in the flesh," to work in 
 the plane of his natural life a plenary redemp- 
 tion. We shall see that " the fall of man" 
 was gradual, and the coming of the Lord into 
 the world w^as progressive ; and, in the whole 
 wonderful history, we are to behold a steady 
 evolution of the Divine purpose to become 
 Himself, the Rock against whicli the gates of 
 hell should not prevail, and have to Himself 
 a Cliurch which shall be indeed the Bride, the 
 Lamb's wife. 
 
86 HISTORY OF REVELATION. 
 
 . The first state of the Church, and the Gold- 
 en Age of the race, is set in Holy Scripture 
 under the allegory, or "composed history" of 
 Adam and the Garden of Eden. In the spirit- 
 ual sense of the first chapters of Genesis, we 
 have a very full and explicit showing of the 
 innocent, artless, infantile character of the 
 Most Ancient Church. Under the symbol of 
 creation is portrayed the development of the 
 celestial man by the Spirit of the Lord ; not 
 the creation of the outward phenominal heav- 
 ens and earth and moving things, but the de- 
 velopment of the intei'nal spiritual earth and 
 heavens of the soul ; the orderly regeneration 
 of primitive men; the formation of their will 
 and understanding, with their affections and 
 perceptions, by and under the moving Spirit 
 of God. The Garden of Eden, the paradise 
 of God, is the resultant state of mind and 
 heart; with the Lord and the perception of 
 His life ever present, and all heavenly growths 
 of affection and thought springing up in the 
 soul, from the heat and light of His immanent 
 Spirit. 
 
 Let us pause for a moment upon this won- 
 derful story of Creation. There is just now 
 in the Churches a revival of the attempt to 
 harmonize the first chapter of Genesis with 
 
HISTORY OF REVELATION. 87 
 
 current science, and by a skillful, and doubt- 
 less innocent, reading of the truth of science 
 into the narrative, the attempt is attended with 
 a measure of apparent success. But the result 
 is quite disproportionate to the labor expended, 
 and can scarcely be called satisfactory. The 
 general truth that God is the Creator of the 
 universe, is a truth of revelation, which science 
 cannot discover, but which it may confirm. 
 Beyond this the attempt to read the lessons of 
 observation into the story of Creation issues 
 in nothing; it results in no other important 
 contribution to either natural or spiritual 
 knowledge. When all is done that can be 
 done in that direction, we still feel that there 
 must be some other worthy spiritual revelation 
 for us in the wonderful details of the narrative 
 in Genesis. The Science of Correspondence 
 in opening to us the spiritual meaning of this 
 Scripture justifies this feeling, and vindicates 
 the Word of God as such. The structure of 
 the narrative, which has been a source of such 
 infinite trouble to the literal interpreters, is 
 seen to have a divine cause in the message and 
 meaning it bears; and to yield an orderly 
 serial and instructive description of the pro- 
 cesses and progressions of God's spiritual Crea- 
 tion, or regeneration of man. The " Creation" 
 
 ,ITHI7BRSIT71 
 
88 HISTOBY OF REVELATION. 
 
 described is regeneration ; the active agent is 
 the Word, the Spirit of God ; the field of oper- 
 ation is the heavens and earth within man, or 
 what the apostle calls, the internal and exter- 
 nal man ; the six days are the successive states 
 of spiritual development; and the Sabbath of 
 rest is the resultant concordance of human 
 nature with the Divine nature, when all in 
 man is God's in him, and " very good." 
 
 Regeneration is the birth, or development 
 of the Spiritual nature in man, and like all 
 birth it is orderly and progressive. 
 
 The natural mind,-^hich is born from the 
 world, from the impressions of the senses, and 
 habits of systematic thought in regard to those 
 impressions, is first formed in man before the 
 spiritual planes of his nature can be developed 
 in the least. But in this state of the natural 
 man, preparation is made for their develop- 
 ment. Some knowledge of spiritual things 
 can be laid up in the treasure-house of his 
 memory. He can be taught that there is a 
 God, and a spiritual world, and that realities 
 which transcend the senses have claims upon 
 his attention ; and in the learning of these 
 things, in his infancy and childhood, certain 
 afiections of delight in them are stored away 
 in the, as yet unconscious, interiors of his soul. 
 
HISTOE T OF BE VJELATIOJST, 89 
 
 But darkness broods over the sea of worldly 
 knowleges and possibilities; what he has 
 learned of spiritual things, is chaotic, and 
 without power to reduce the things of his 
 consciousness to order and endow them with 
 heavenly life. To quicken all these possibili- 
 ties, the Spirit of God moves in him, and the 
 Living Word comes to him with its " light."" 
 Then begins with man a second state, in 
 which he finds that he has two natures ; an 
 inward and an outward man; and that, there- 
 fore, there are two spheres of knowledge, one 
 pertaining to the outward world, and the 
 other to God and immortal life. The knowl- 
 edge of God and his law, now stands apart in 
 awful distinctness and clothed with its own 
 authority ; not to be confounded with the 
 mere natural knowledges which come through 
 the avenues of sense. If it has slept inopera- 
 tive, the breath of God may vivify it, and dis- 
 criminate it from our own will and thought, 
 and lay a solemn interdiction upon our evils 
 and errors. Then comes in a third state, in 
 which man begins, from the Lord, to talk 
 piously and devoutly, and to do good actions ; 
 but which, nevertheless, are not living or sav- 
 ing, because they are supposed to originate in 
 himself. The outward and inward man are 
 
90 HISTOB T OF BE VELATION; 
 
 not only separated by the firmament ; but 
 tliey are placed face to face, and in opposition 
 to each other. Man obeys the Lord's truth, 
 but it is a forced obedience, rendered in oppo- 
 sition to inclination. In the first place, truth 
 was only something learned; in the second 
 state, it was seen to be from the Lord, and in- 
 vested with his Divine authority ; but in this 
 third state, it comes out with its reasons and 
 the commands of conscience. It brings re- 
 pentance and self-denial; and must continue 
 until we are subdued, and our moralities are 
 fixed in habit. When this state is full, and 
 its work completed, still our evils are not re- 
 moved. 
 
 But they have been silenced, and self-love 
 loosened in all its intrenchments ; and then at 
 last, the Lord will come into the heart, and 
 take up all its room, dimly at first, full-orbed 
 at last. This fourth state is that in which man 
 receives from the Lord the sun of spiritual 
 love, and the moon of living faith, and the stars 
 of heavenly knowledge, all set in the firmament 
 of the internal mind, to shed light and quick- 
 ening into the reformed earth of the external 
 man. Man is moved with new impulses, and 
 thinks and acts from the Divine will as his 
 central and controlling motive. The old lusts 
 
iris TOUT OF REVELATION, 91 
 
 and persuasions are not merely loosened, but 
 they move out, even beyond the region of the 
 consciousness, as this new and mighty love 
 for goodness and truth for their own sake be- 
 comes the very life of man's affections. We 
 not only believe the truth but see it and feel 
 it. Our moralities become spontaneous, the 
 outbursting of the soul's unfailing love. They 
 are living and life-giving; and the following 
 states of the regenerate life, are only the ulti- 
 mations of this new will and faith, in all the 
 living forms of regenerate natural affection 
 and perception. When the love of the Lord 
 has become fixed in the heart, and burns there 
 as an eternal sun, it not only transfuses all our 
 beliefs and runs them into celestial moulds, 
 but all our knowledge is exalted into the ser- 
 vice of the new man. Then finally the cen- 
 tral Divine love flows forth into all our deeds; 
 they are duties no longer, but delights. This 
 is the sixth day in which God makes a man in 
 His image and likeness ; it is the end of the 
 states of labor, for the Sabbath comes, the 
 golden dawn of God's eternal rest in the soul. 
 Primeval men, though free from the tenden- 
 cies and proclivities to evil which we inherit 
 as the result of a tainted ancestry, were, never- 
 theless, merely natural men, needing to be re- 
 
92 HISTOB Y OF BE VELATIOW. 
 
 born, or developed as spiritual beings into the 
 imaofe and likeness of God. With them the 
 processes of regeneration were free from the 
 throes of spiritual temptation, which men at 
 this day encounter on account of inherited 
 evil, but the succession of states and order of 
 development was the same as it is with us, and 
 as it will always be. This, of which we have 
 given only the most general statement, is pre- 
 sented in the Story of Creation. Every detail 
 of the narrative is pregnant with the most en- 
 lightening doctrine as to the'progressive devel- 
 opment of the spiritCRil nature of primeval 
 men, even to the establishment with them of 
 the Celestial Church. Like a garden planted 
 by the Lord, was the Most Ancient Church in 
 the perfection and beauty of its first estate. 
 It pulsated with the Divine life, and was irra- 
 diated with its light. The natural history of 
 this age is not preserved, but every item in 
 the Bible Story of Adam is replete with sig- 
 nificance as to its celestial state ; and some- 
 thing of the same Allegory is preserved in 
 the traditions of all peoples. The men of this 
 age were simple, open, sincere, affectionate and 
 true. They acted from impulse ; but their 
 impulse was derived from the Lord. The 
 Word which "was with God, and was God,'' 
 
HISTOBY OF BEYELATIOm 93 
 
 flowed into them as a stream from the Divine 
 fountain; indeed as the very Divine life itself, 
 and thus a living light. The Lord walked 
 and talked with them in the midst of the gar- 
 den ; they were capable of holding Commun- 
 ion with God by means of His love and wis- 
 dom " written on their hearts." They were 
 capable thus of loving what he loved, and lived 
 in open perception of His wisdom. Heaven 
 and earth were united in them ; the will of God 
 was done in earth as it is in heaven ; and the 
 whole phenomenal world was a mirror of 
 Divine intelligence, wisdom peace and love. 
 They had no need of external verbal revelation 
 of truth to guide them into the apprehension 
 and perception of it. Instead of the command 
 to love the Lord with all the' heart, or the 
 teaching that they should do so, with the rea- 
 sons for so doing, they had this truth inspired 
 through the heart and revealed to them in 
 affection to do so. They needed no instruction 
 from without, no authority to coerce, and no 
 reasons to persuade ; for to what is good they 
 had a " yea " implanted in the will, and to 
 what is evil a " nay," with none of that stub- 
 bornness of will which requires more than these. 
 They needed no compass to shape their course, 
 for the truth was in their wind and tide. As 
 
94 mSTOB Y OF BE VELATION, 
 
 they received light from the life within, their 
 inclinations and appetites were of the truth, and 
 were true. 
 
 In time, for reasons into which we cannot 
 enter particularly, the people of the Most An- 
 cient Church fell away from this single- 
 minded communion with the Lord. The rea- 
 sons, indeed, are not easy to give. In what 
 the fall of man consisted we shall see; that it 
 came in the exercise of his implanted freedom 
 we may believe ; but how the first impulse 
 and enticement grew upon him, when all was 
 " very good," it wouM be more difficult to 
 show. Perhaps we shall see an image of this, 
 but only an image, in the transition of the in- 
 fant to the child with its more pronounced 
 willfulness. Its senses are more and more 
 developed; and with their advance toward 
 supremacy there comes in something of self- 
 assertion, and self-confidence.' This was the 
 fall of the people of the Most Ancient 
 Church, however it may have come about — 
 a yiekling to the suggestions of the serpent, the 
 sensual principle, with its persuasion that all 
 thin git were not from the Lord, that they them- 
 selves were really good and wise, and might 
 of themselves judge of good and evil. Then 
 began the decline of that Church ; and then 
 
SISTOB Y OF BE VELATIOW. 95 
 
 was given the promise of the Messiah. The 
 progress of its consummation was gradual; 
 and under the names of the posterity of Adam 
 is detailed the various sects into which it di- 
 vided, and by which preparation was made 
 for a new Church and a new dispensation of 
 the Word, when the consummation of that 
 should have fully come. 
 
 At the end of everv Church, the Lord saves 
 a remnant, with whom may be established a 
 new dispensation ; or what is the same thing: 
 He provides that the new shall be established 
 with the few who abide in faith and hope to 
 the end of the old. The Golden Age passed 
 away, and the Adamic Church was s^wallowed 
 up in a flood of evil practices and false doc- 
 trines. The Silver Age followed, and a new 
 Church was established, the spiritual history 
 of which is set forth under the story of Noah 
 and his posterity. It is in this change that we 
 shall see how the Lord, or the Word, follows 
 man, with adaptations adequate to his new ne- 
 cessity. 
 
 The men of the former age acted from im- 
 pulse*; and, while their impulses were good, 
 all was very good. But when, from the 
 deflection of the will, their impulses were 
 turned into evil, they still followed them. 
 
96 HISTOB Y OF BE VELATIOJST, 
 
 " Every imagination of the thought of their 
 hearts was only evil continually ; and how 
 was it possible for the Lord to reclaim them ? 
 How, indeed, but by bringing the race to a 
 halt, and giving it a new start, and this in a 
 new direction ! When He could no longer 
 lead man by his affections — when every influx 
 of the Divine Life into man's will was turned 
 into evil desire, and this in turn presented it- 
 self in his thought in the form of falsity — 
 the Lord interposed by presenting His Word 
 to the thought first through an external rev- 
 elation. Thus, by a -^dically new disj^ensa- 
 tion of the Word, in an entirely new way, the 
 Lord inaugurated a new state of the Church. 
 With the Noetic Church a new mode of 
 life was introduced ; by external revelation it 
 was made possible to think and reflect concern- 
 ing the truth as something apart from that 
 which the heart loved. The understanding 
 could be elevated above the will, and truth 
 learned as doctrine, could be acknowledged as 
 duty, and finally loved for its own sake. The 
 Adamic Church had only perception of truth 
 from love, and when the love was evil the truth 
 was turned into falsity in the thought, but the 
 Noetic Church was endowed with conscience 
 formed by a new manifestation of the Word 
 
HISTORY OF REVELATION. 97 
 
 through an external revelation which could be 
 learned, understood and loved. The Adamic 
 Church beheld heaven in the earth ; they per- 
 ceived without reflection the Divine and heav- 
 enly things in their earthly Correspondences. 
 The Noetic Church, on the other hand, was 
 taught intellectually to see spiritual things in 
 natural things. The knowledge of Correspond- 
 ences was given as a science in the form of 
 doctrine; and the Divine truth was externally 
 revealed by means of a written Word com- 
 posed exclusively according to the correspond- 
 ence of natural with Divine things. Kepre- 
 sentative worship was instituted in which the 
 places, the sacrifices and symbolism, were all 
 significative of spiritual things ; and the sig- 
 nification was communicated to Novitiates by 
 instruction, and preserved by tradition. The 
 references in the Bible to the book of Jasher, 
 the Wars of Jehovah, and the Enunciations 
 confirm the existence of an ancient Word ; 
 and Swedenborg teaches us that the first chap- 
 ters of Genesis, which treat of Creation, of 
 Adam and Eve, of the Garden of Eden, and 
 of their sons and posterity down to the flood, 
 and also, of Noah and his sons, were tran- 
 scribed from that Word by Moses. (T. C. E, 
 279.) 
 7 
 
98 HISTORY OF BE VELATIOJST, 
 
 The Christian world has come to recog- 
 nize that there was an Old Testament before 
 the Pentateuch was written, and that traces 
 of these lost works are to be found in the 
 actual text ; and it ought to be well disposed 
 therefore, toward the further teaching that it 
 was continued in use among some of the nations 
 of the East, down even to the time of the Jew- 
 ish dispensation. And from the character of 
 the early chapters of Genesis, which are gener- 
 ally believed to have been copied from more 
 ancient documents, it may easily be confirmed 
 that the earliest written revelation was given in 
 the pure language of Correspondences. It was 
 because that Word was full of Correspondences 
 which signified celestial and spiritual things 
 remotely, and consequently began to be falsi- 
 fied by many, that in Divine Providence it dis- 
 appeared, and another Word was given, writ- 
 ten by Correspondences not so remote. For in 
 the course of time, the Ancient Church also 
 fell away, as had the Adamic Church before 
 it. Noah became drunken with the wine of 
 his own vineyard ; that is to say, the people 
 of the Ancient Church began to pervert the 
 doctrines of spiritual truth to the feeding of 
 their pride and self-gratification. They began 
 to consult their own intelligence regarding 
 
HISTOR Y OF BE VELATIOJST. 99 
 
 Divine things, to be deceived with their own 
 conceits, and confused with their own reason- 
 ings. They aspired to build a Tower which 
 should reach to heaven ; and instead of one 
 speech and language as at first, their doctrines 
 became confused and divided ; they gradually 
 lost their knowledge of Divine language, be- 
 came Idolaters, Magicians and Sorcerers, and 
 in their dispersion lost their written Word 
 itself. The partial and vitiated doctrines of 
 its Divine wisdom were preserved in the tradi- 
 tions, and written in the sacred books of the 
 various nations ; but no longer possessing the 
 key to the ancient Correspondences and repre- 
 sentatives, their worship soon descended into 
 one form or another of polytheism and idol- 
 atry. 
 
 In natural knowledge and civilization the 
 race was advancing. The rise of empires 
 began — Egypt, Nineveh and Babylon — the 
 foundations of which outstretch even the 
 farthest reach of tradition. But on its spir- 
 itual side the race was declining, and God 
 following it. "When the Celestial perception 
 of the Adamic Church was destroyed, the 
 Lord invested Himself as the Word with the 
 Spiritual doctrines of truth revealed to the 
 understanding of the Noetic Church; and 
 
100 IIISTOUY OF BEVELATION, 
 
 when tins also failed, He called Abraham, and 
 inaugurated a new dispensation of the Church 
 with the Hebrew and Jewish people, and led 
 them by means of direct commandments, 
 wonders, and threats and promises. First, to 
 Abraham and the Patriarchs, by Angelopha- 
 nies, and such direct supernatural revelation 
 as they were able to receive, and afterward to 
 the Jews under the leadership of Moses, and 
 through the word of the Prophets, the Lord es- 
 tablished a representative of a Church, unto 
 the time when He must needs come in the flesh, 
 and put forth the miglit of His Divine truth 
 in a humanity of His own. 
 
 The idea to be sustained is, that from the 
 fall of Adam to the time of the appearing of 
 Jesus Christ, the Church gradually declined 
 from its primeval simplicity ; man receding 
 further and further from the interior love of 
 God and the perception of his wisdom ; that 
 the Lord as the Word successively accommo- 
 dated His Divine Truth to this declining per- 
 ception ; and that when the children of Israel 
 were chosen to represent a " holy nation," 
 and a " royal priesthood," man had arrived at 
 a most external state in regard to religion, in 
 which the things of the Word could only be 
 believed so far as they vrere presented to the 
 
HIS TOR Y OF BE VELA TION, 101 
 
 outward senses. The Church of heavenly im- 
 pulse passed awa}^ and the Church of faith 
 succeeded; this declined, and the Church of 
 mere external obedience followed, and as this 
 declined the semblance of a Church was main- 
 tained through the miraculously enforced obe- 
 dience of Israel. In all this time, and by suc- 
 cessive accommodations to these states of de- 
 cline in human perception, the Word was 
 being made flesh, and the Lord was descending 
 with His children into the plane of sensuous 
 life. In man's innocence the Lord walked 
 and talked with him in the garden of his soul. 
 In man's state of spiritual charity, the Lord 
 revealed himself to the understanding through 
 the natural representatives in which man 
 could perceive the spiritual subjects. In the 
 obscuration of charity He kept alive some 
 faith in his Word, and some knowledge of 
 Himself as God-man, through the manifesta- 
 tion of the Angel of His presence. In man's 
 natural rebellion and worldliness He followed 
 him with wonders, and punishments and re- 
 wards, and kept him in a sort of enforced obe- 
 dience. And when man became wholly car- 
 nal, so that even Divine truth addressed to the 
 natural mind lost its power over human con- 
 duct, through the separation of his heart 
 
lOa HISTOBY OF BEVELATION, 
 
 from Divine goodness, the Word was made 
 flesh, and exhibited in the form of man, and 
 in the Divine conduct of human life before the 
 very senses of men. 
 
 In each of these successive manifestations 
 of the Word it had been invested with some- 
 thing of man, clothed with forms derived from 
 the state of human reception, until in the 
 Jewish church it was so accommodated to 
 their " froward " hearts, that they were al- 
 lowed to think of God as altogether such an 
 one as themselves ; of His law as arbitrary 
 command, obedience to which was only to be 
 inspired by fear, or hope of temporal pros- 
 perity. 
 
 In such a state, so clothed and so regarded. 
 Divine Truth is shorn of its power over the 
 lives of men. They soon began to stone the 
 prophets, and kill those that were sent unto 
 them ; till the Divine communication died out 
 in Malichi with the promise of the Lord's com- 
 ing, with ^* glad tidings " to those who looked 
 unto Him and hoped in Him for deliverance, 
 and with woe to those who feared Him not. 
 When that night also reached its culmination 
 in the perversion of the law through tradition, 
 then He did come«by another, and the lowest 
 and the purest revelation of Divine Truth 
 
HIS TOR Y OF BE VELA TIOJST. 103 
 
 then possible. He raised up, when " there 
 was no man/' a man of His own by immedi- 
 ate impregnation of a virgin, and Divine Con- 
 ception ; and manifested the Word in the flesh 
 for the redemption promised from the begin- 
 ning. 
 
 Thus, through all the dispensations of the 
 Church it was the Father following the prodi- 
 gal, working and waiting in Divine patience 
 till he came to the swine-husks ; where and 
 when, for the first time mightily. He could 
 reach forth His hand to help. When man, 
 therefore, had put darkness for light, and per- 
 verted even the precepts of the Decalogue till 
 they reached no real plane of human life, it 
 was time for the Lord to reveal Himself anew. 
 When there was no medium by which the 
 Divine love could reach the corrupt heart to 
 quicken it, it was necessary for the Lord to 
 assume a new medium by which to dispense 
 His life and light with power. This was the 
 occasion of the Incarnation. Divine truth 
 was well nigh lost to human apprehension in 
 the external rites and ceremonies, which from 
 merely sensual perception in the Church were 
 loved for no significance of their own, but 
 from an idolatrous, sensuous devotion. Lower 
 than this the Divine • truth with men cannot 
 
104 JIISTOR Y OF BE VELATIOI^, 
 
 exist, and profaned in the Church it was shorn 
 of its power. The ends of salvation required 
 a Divine revelation which should under-reach 
 man's rebellion, and dispense the Divine truth 
 with power of help to his very lowest sensuous 
 state. 
 
 The Lord as the Word was made flesh, and 
 addressed Himself to this sensual intellect in 
 man; and thus came into the world to be seen 
 with the eyes and heard with the ears, so that 
 if only through the medium of the senses 
 mankind might learn anew to comprehend 
 something of the Divine love and wisdom, and 
 from understanding progress to love and do 
 His precepts, and live. The spirit of the Most 
 High clothed itself in with humanity in the 
 womb of a virgin, and took human nature 
 into conjunction with His invisible and unap- 
 proachable essence, and thus stretched forth 
 an arm into the natural world by which to sub- 
 due man's enemies and mediate to his lowest 
 necessities, the Divine spirit of life and all 
 might. This was that coming of the Word 
 for which preparation had been made from 
 the first; for this, all who loved God, and 
 hoped in his redemption, in every dispensation 
 of the Church, were taught to look ; and unto 
 this end they were preserved in the world of 
 
HISTOB Y OF BE VELATIOK, 105 
 
 spirits, to be delivered when He should come 
 in the fullness of time. This manifestation 
 of the Word by Incarnation was more than a 
 manifestation; it was an ultimate exercise of 
 Divine power for the conversion of the race ; 
 a conflict and a victory. 
 
 Whatever difficulties may belong to your 
 idea of the^ Incarnation and the glorification of 
 the Lord's humanity, it is sufficient to observe 
 that His first advent was His manifestation 
 through the medium of the humanity assumed; 
 and that it was required by, and was adequate 
 to, the sensuous state of mankind. Men had 
 lost the power to conceive spiritually of the 
 Divine truth ; they perverted every command- 
 ment of God to the favoring of their own 
 councils, and there was among them no me- 
 dium of Divine help. Then the Lord raised 
 up a manhood of his own which should reveal 
 His Divine goodness and wisdom to disciples 
 and enemies, and thus came into the world. 
 His coming, because it was a revelation of His 
 truth and power to the lowest, and even to de- 
 mons, brought judgment and redemption. 
 Judgment to evil men and evil spirits; redemp- 
 tion, not from the price and penalty of sin, but 
 from the compelling power of our spiritual 
 enemies, and from the hand of them that hate 
 
106 HISTORY OF BEVELATIOJST, 
 
 us. Seeing Him they saw the truth of Divine 
 love as no words could present it to them. He 
 brought the Father forth to view, and mani- 
 fested the begetting and sustaining love of 
 God in the begotten and sustained righteous- 
 ness and power of His own personal presence. 
 The result was twofold : deliverance and sal- 
 vation to them that received Him; judgment 
 and subordination to them that worshiped 
 the prince of this world. He " cast out the 
 spirits with His word," that men, " being de- 
 livered from their enemies, might serve Him 
 in righteousness and ItA^liness before Him all 
 the days of their life." What He came to do 
 He finished ; and did it perfectly. He came to 
 manifest Himself to the sensuous thought of 
 men by appearing bodily before th'eir senses, 
 and working before their eyes the works of 
 God, and exerting in the plane of the natural 
 mind, upon both the willing and the unwilling, 
 the power of God unto judgment or salvation. 
 For this His incarnation was necessary; this, 
 in His incarnation, He perfectly accomplished. 
 This was the beginning of a New Church. 
 The Lord provided in His manifest personal 
 advent for the perpetuation of its revelations 
 and benefits. The withdrawal of the sensuous 
 image of His presence was a necessary part of 
 
HISTOB Y OF BE Y ELATION, 107 
 
 the work ; it was necessary that the power of 
 His spirit might be felt "calling all things to 
 their remembrance," whatsoever they had seen 
 and heard. The disciples gradually and 
 privately gathered together and commenced a 
 new Church movement on the basis of these 
 remembrances. They preached the Gospel 
 and established Churches. They based their 
 convictions of the truth of Christianity upon 
 what they had seen of the Lord in His mani- 
 festation to their sensuous perceptions, and 
 what they had realized of his promises in the 
 experiences ^of their natural religious life. 
 This was the dispensation of the first advent 
 — the acknowledgment of Jesus Christ as the 
 Son of God — confession of all the facts of 
 the Incarnation as the Gospel of redemption, 
 and salvation through obedience to the Lord's 
 precepts of life. As its first fruits under the 
 inspiration of the Holy Spirit of Christ, there 
 grew up the Gospel, as the means of transmit- 
 ting its benefits to all generations. And in 
 the Gospels we have " God manifest in the 
 flesh," as to all the benefits of such a manifes- 
 tation. In the recorded life of Christ the 
 Lord makes His first advent to us also. He 
 is personally manifest to our sensuous thought 
 therein, and no other such advent or manifes- 
 
108 HISTOB Y OF BE YELATION. 
 
 tation is needed. If He were here, present in 
 the flesh, He Would show us no other than that 
 which is shown in the record of the life on 
 earth whereby he glorified His humanity, and 
 made it to have life in itself as the Father hath 
 life Himself. If we had reclined with John 
 on Jesus' breast, or washed His feet, like the 
 woman, with our tears, we would have been no 
 better disciples than it is possible for us to be 
 now. With the Gospel of His first advent we 
 have that advent and need no further such 
 manifestation, nor could we be benefited by 
 such. If we see no beauty in Him to desire 
 Him now, we may know we would have been 
 among those who said, "Thou art mad, and 
 hast a devil." If we find no power of healing 
 in His Divine precepts, neither would we were 
 He bodily present, and should we follow in the 
 throng and touch the hem of His garment. 
 No ! the Lord makes His first advent to every 
 man to whom the Gospel of His Incarnation 
 comes ; and the way in which we treat Him in 
 this, precisely corresponds to the way in 
 which we would treat Him if He should reveal 
 Himself again in the flesh. 
 
 But it was part of the Gospel of the Incarna- 
 tion that the Lord should come again ; that the 
 Christian Church should fall away, and its un- 
 
BISTORT OF REVELATION, 109 
 
 derstanding of the Word fail, and its love wax 
 cold, and then He would come as the Son of 
 Man in the clouds of heaven. The twenty- 
 fourth chapter of the Gospel by Matthew sets 
 forth, under the symbolism of war, conflict 
 and distress of nations, and commotion in the 
 heavens and the earth, the gradual decline and 
 corruption of the Church of His first coming. 
 The symbolism used is the common and sug- 
 gestive imagery of the old Prophets, and can 
 only be misunderstood by a blind determina- 
 tion to literalism. Literally understood, it 
 cannot be understood at all. Spiritually un- 
 derstood, these predictions show : First, that 
 the Church would begin not to know what was 
 good and true, and be filled with disputations ; 
 second, that it would come to despise good and 
 truth in its thirst for dominion ; third, that in 
 heart it would deny and profane them. 
 
 To any one at all familiar with the contro- 
 versies that came in with the third century, 
 and the subsequent history of sophistries and 
 corruptions of doctrine, even to the time of 
 the Protestant Reformation, and with the vin- 
 dictive debates and persecutions which followed 
 that crisis, there is needed no further illustra- 
 tion of the prophecy than the facts furnished. 
 In the symbolic language of the prophecy it 
 
110 HISTORY OF BE VELATION. 
 
 is said, " Immediately after the tribulation of 
 those days the sun shall be darkened, the moon 
 shall not give her light, and the stars shall 
 fall from heaven." The same thing was said 
 by Joel of the state of the Church at the time 
 of the Lord's first coming, and Peter, as we 
 know, applied the prophecy to the Jewish 
 Church. It was the sun and moon of the 
 Church that were darkened then ; and this is 
 the meaning in the second prophecy. Not the 
 dissolution of the heavens, but the wreck of 
 all that is good and true — love, faith and 
 knowledge of heavenly mysteries — when the 
 Church is in ruins, is what is meant by these 
 signs. When the "Sun of Righteousness" 
 sheds the light of His countenance in vain up- 
 on an apostate Church, the thick clouds of its 
 sophistries and perversions of truth intercept- 
 ing its quickening heat and light ; when the 
 moon of true faith cannot penetrate the intel- 
 lectual obscurity with its reflected light ; when 
 the stars of heavenly knowledge are no more 
 lights in the firmament of the Church, then 
 must the Lord come with a new manifestation 
 of His goodness, and put forth with new power 
 the activities of His spirit. 
 
 Catholics will not own it of themselves that 
 such things were ever true ; nor will Protes- 
 
HISTOB Y OF BE YELATION. Ill 
 
 tants own it ; and it is very natural that they 
 should not. But Catholics assert it of Protes- 
 tants ; and Protestants assert it of Catholics ; 
 and very eminent theologians of each school 
 have proved the corruptions of faith and char- 
 ity in the other. No unprejudiced man of this 
 day need fear to look back into the past and 
 see that what each said of the other was true 
 of both. In the Church, both Catholic and 
 Protestant, at the middle of the eighteenth 
 century, we behold a Christianity paralyzed in 
 its most vital part ; even the activity of con- 
 troversy died out save as to its political signifi- 
 cance. The people debased and misguided ; 
 the courts vicious and sensual ; the priests sunk 
 in a godless epicureanism, or an equally god- 
 less intellection ; religion almost non-existent 
 apart from the drowsy formalism that had 
 usurped the holy place. Surely such a state 
 of things answering to the spirit of the pro- 
 phecy, was an occasion in the Church for the 
 Lord's coming, or for a new manifestation of 
 Himself. 
 
 What the manifestation'of the Word in the 
 flesh could not prevent, its repetition could not 
 cure. What was needed, then, for the revival 
 of the Christian Church, was not a second 
 personal appearing of the Lord, but such a 
 
112 IIISTOB T OF BE VELATION', 
 
 revelation of the Word as would fulfill and carry 
 forward the work of His first advent. It 
 needed that the Lord should, as He promised, 
 open the things which He had said and done in 
 parables, and " show us plainly of the Father." 
 In His first coming He gave us the letter. His 
 second coming was to give us the Spirit of 
 Truth and reveal His genuine glory and power 
 in the clouds of the letter. And the event has 
 proved the Apocalypse in the revelation at this 
 day of the Spiritual sense of the Word. The 
 glory of genuine truth shining through the 
 types and appearances.of the letter of the Word 
 is "the glory of the Son of Man in the clouds." 
 The clouds of earth are not the Lord's chariot, 
 any more than the " white horse," upon which 
 be is said to come, is a charger of earthly stock ; 
 these are signs. They signify the literal im- 
 ages and representatives by which the divine 
 truth is mediated and embodied in earthly lan- 
 guage. The types and symbols in the letter 
 of Holy Scripture are called" clouds of heaven," 
 because they are taken up out of the natural 
 mind of men, as the clouds are lifted from the 
 earth — and because they veil, while they con- 
 tain, the heavenly meaning of the Divine Word, 
 and thus mediate its light to the natural mind. 
 It was thus that the phraseology of the old 
 
fairiviiisiTT] 
 
 HISTORY OF BE^^XAild^^, li; 
 
 prophets hid from the eyes of the Jews what 
 to the apostles they revealed ; and it is on ac- 
 count of this peculiar quality of the letter of the 
 written Word, as veiling deeper things within 
 it, that it is in all the Scriptures compared to a 
 cloud. " It was symbolized by the cloud which 
 rested upon Mount Sinai, concealing the 
 Lord from their view, up into which Moses 
 w^as called when the Word of the Old Testa- 
 ment began to be revealed. A similar cloud, 
 infolding a fire within itself, was shown to Eze- 
 kiel in holy vision as the Word of the Lord 
 first came to Him. And the same thing was 
 signified by that cloud which received the Di- 
 vine form of the Savior out of the sight of the 
 apostles, as they stood, being in vision, gazing 
 up into heaven, as he ascended from them on 
 the Mount of Olives." The clouds represent- 
 ed the letter of the written Word unto which 
 they were remanded when He withdrew from 
 them His visible presence. It was the visual 
 image of Him which they retained, and the 
 remembrance of His words and works, which 
 under His inspiration, they wrote, and testified 
 in the Gospel for us — this image of His life 
 with them and among men, together with all 
 the Word which testifies of Him, was repre- 
 sented by the vision of a cloud in which they 
 8 
 
114 HISTORY OF BE VELATIOW. 
 
 saw Him ascend, and in which in like manner 
 it was said they shouki see Him come again. 
 
 Now the Lord makes His appearance in 
 these clouds, the types and symbols of the 
 letter of His Word, as soon as the heavenly 
 meaning of the symbols are made clear, and 
 they all are seen to relate to Him. In the 
 revelation of the spiritual sense of the Word, 
 which is everywhere veiled in its letter, every 
 type, every figure, and every circumstance, in 
 history, or psalm, or prophecy, is seen to relate 
 to the Lord, and represent His work for and 
 within human souls.^ And it is in the accom- 
 plishment of this purely Divine work of open- 
 ing the Holy Scriptures, and revealing for the 
 Church the existence, nature, and particular 
 truths of their spiritual sense, that the Lord 
 comes in the clouds of heaven. He comes, for 
 the whole Word reveals Him, and His work. 
 He comes in the clouds because it is the images 
 of the letter of the word, which, being inter- 
 preted, reveal Him. This is known because 
 it is an accomplished fact, and the event, as I 
 said, has explained and proved the Apocalypse. 
 
 This spiritual coming of the Lord, and rev- 
 elation of the spiritual and eternal glory of the 
 written Word, as containing the living Word 
 Himself, has been accomplished by means of 
 
HISTOB Y OF RE YELATIONi 115 
 
 a man, called and prepared to receive and ex- 
 pound the Science of Correspondences, the 
 genuine doctrine of the spiritual senses of the 
 Word, and the laws of life in the spiritual 
 world. Being accomplished, it carries its own 
 evidences within itself, and appeals not to hu- 
 man evidence, but to its own light and power, 
 for the authentication of its genuineness. The 
 giving of the "Word was accommodated to 
 lower and lower states of humanity till man 
 reached his lowest perversity; then it put 
 forth its power for his redemption, converting 
 and turning the spiritual course of the race. 
 In the Gospel of that work and the prophecy 
 of its fulfiUment in the full and crowning man- 
 ifestation of the Divine meaning in all the 
 history of the Church, the literal Word was 
 complete and the books closed. When there- 
 fore there was need of light and doctrine for 
 the guidance of rational thought, and prepara- 
 tion in natural science and reason for the rev- 
 elation of that light, the Lord, by his own 
 mercy and wise means, " loosed the seals and 
 opened the book." Now it is allowable and 
 possible in the Church " to enter intellectually 
 into the mysteries of faith," and to confirm 
 the doctrines of the spiritual sense of the word 
 in reason and life. . 
 
116 HISTOE Y OF BE VBLATIOJST. 
 
 The Paradise which man lost is to be re- 
 gained in the New Jerusalem, which comes 
 down from heaven, in the heavenly doctrines 
 of truth and principles of life revealed for 
 men on earth. The Holy City or Divine sys- 
 tem of doctrine contained in and revealed from 
 the internal senses of the Word is with men ; 
 they may study and understand its truths; 
 and receiving and loving them, and living ac- 
 cording to them, abide in the city by its river 
 of the water of life, healed with the leaves of 
 the Tree of Life, and sustained by its fruits. 
 
 If this general outline of the history of God's 
 Word to man has presented anything with 
 clearness, it is this : fii'st, that the Lord always 
 reveals His Word in forms adequate to meet 
 the spiritual states of men as they change; and 
 second, that any and every form of revelation 
 must be such as to respect the freedom of man. 
 ''There is not, there never was, and never will 
 be, any religious truth ever given to man which 
 was not and will not be so given that, while 
 lie who loves it may be convinced of its truth 
 on rational grounds, they who have no love 
 for it may reject it on grounds which seem to 
 them equally rational." And it will be so 
 with the last and crowning revelation of all; 
 while it is the manifestation of genuine spirit- 
 
HISTOE Y OF BE VJELATIOJST, 117 
 
 ual truths to spiritual reason in man, it can on- 
 ly commend itself " to whosoever will take the 
 water of life freely. ''^ It comes to bless ; not 
 to curse, as it must do with all who should 
 accept its teachings for any other reasons than 
 those of love for the goodness to which its 
 truths lead. The revelation of the spiritual 
 sense of the Holy Word does not abrogate its 
 literal sense, but vivifies and fills it with new 
 meaning and power ; it comes, opening in all 
 the Scriptures the things concerning the Lord's 
 work of redemption, regeneration and salva- 
 tion, in all dispensations of the Church, in all 
 planes of human life ; it comes as the crown 
 of all forms of revelation to gather them into 
 its light and open their true character and 
 spiritual meaning. It comes, therefore, to 
 bless and do good, to enlarge men's views of 
 truth, their experience of goodness, their 
 sphere of use, and their capacity of enjoyment; 
 and to all ^who love these things, it is able to 
 authenticate its Divine mission, to justify the 
 Providence of God in the past, to gather into 
 its embrace the good and the true of all for- 
 mer dispensations, and open out into a career 
 of illimitable progress. Amen ! 
 
THE PEIKOIPLE OF ADAPTA- 
 
 TIOl^: OE THE EEAL AJ^B 
 
 APPAEEET IlSr THE 
 
 SOEIPTUEES. 
 
 With the pure thou wilt show thyself pure ; and with the froward 
 thou wilt show thyself froward.— Ps. xviii: 26. 
 
 If we admit the principle that every Di- 
 vine communication to man must be adapted 
 in its forms of expression to the states of life 
 and thought of those to whom it is given, we 
 shall see in the text the explanation of many- 
 literal peculiarities of Holy Scripture. We 
 are perfectly familiar with the law that ob- 
 jects of thought, quite as much as objects of 
 sight, must appear according to the intellect-, 
 ual training and spiritual attitude of the per- 
 cipient. Each man can see only what his 
 previous course of life and habit of thought 
 enables him to see. Whatever lies wholly 
 above and outside of this previous preparation 
 (118) 
 
FBINCIPLE OF AI>APTATION, 119 
 
 is lost to him. Whatever comes, by symbol 
 and accommodated expression within his range, 
 must at first show itself, according to his own 
 state — that is, the total resuft of his previous 
 life and habit. " That only can we see which 
 we are," says Emerson, " and which we make. 
 The weaver sees gingham; the broker sees the 
 stock-list ; the politician, the ward and county 
 votes ; the poet sees the horizon, and the 
 shores of matter lying on the sky, the inter- 
 action of elements — the large effect of laws 
 corresponding to the inward laws which he 
 knows, and so are but a kind of extension of 
 himself." This is the law for a generation as 
 well as the individual ; it sees according to its 
 prevailing life and habit of thought. In the 
 childhood of the world, the wise taught the 
 mysteries of life in myths; in an evil age of 
 prowess and physical strength these degener- 
 ate into heroic stories; in times of popular 
 sensuality, the remains of wisdom are veiled 
 and preserved in a spectacular ritual. The 
 intellectual vigor of New England in the old 
 days exercised itself in the severe logic of the 
 Puritan divines ; an enervated society to-day, 
 used to sensational novels and plays and news- 
 papers, demands a sensational pulpit. With 
 a sense of freedom it asks deep questions ; but 
 
120 PRINCIPLE OF ADAPTATIOJST, 
 
 unused to application, it will not weigh deep 
 answers. It demands what lies within the 
 range of its habit ; even the new in science 
 must be "popularized/' and the plausable 
 often answers all the purposes of demonstra- 
 tion. Thus it is that every generation, as well 
 as every individual, must see with its own 
 eyes ; and that which would lift it up, must 
 come down within the range of its vision. 
 Even then it will not see that which ig pre- 
 sented as it is ; but at first according to its 
 previous habit of thought and coarse of life. 
 The actual must so appear, however, to be 
 acknowledged at all ; and if so appearing, it 
 brings to the observer changes of life, it may 
 in that way prepare him to behold the real. 
 The law is universal and necessary in the 
 nature of man. 
 
 Now apply this principle to the explanation 
 of God's verbal revelation in the Scriptures, 
 and we shall see at once why with the pure He 
 must show Himself pure, and with the fro- 
 ward He must show Himself froward. God 
 is what He is, and Divine Truth is one thing 
 and not another ; but every manifestation of 
 God, and every communication of truth, must 
 be accommodated in its forms of expression to 
 the state of life and habit of thouQ-ht of those 
 
PlilNCIPLE OF ADAPTATIOJSr. m 
 
 to whom it is given. The ISTew Church ap- 
 plies this principle to the interpretation of the 
 Bible, and thus disarms skepticism of its 
 objection. For, in addition to the general 
 modifications in the form of revelation which 
 we recognized in a glance at the history of 
 the successive dispensations of the Church, it 
 is apparent that all revelation must have its 
 human as well as its Divine side, and its 
 apparent as well as its genuine truths. It is 
 to be expected, therefore, that much of the 
 letter of Scripture, being an accommodation of 
 truth to the " froward '' heart of man, will 
 present only appearances of truth. In itself 
 it is what it is, divine from heaven; but in its 
 letter it is what they were to whom it was 
 given. Written otherwise at the first it would 
 have been written to no one, and could not 
 have insured even its own preservation. On 
 the one hand it is truth, as the Jews and early 
 disciples of the Lord could alone apprehend 
 it ; on the other, it is truth as apprehended by 
 angels. Outwardly it is, much of it, froward 
 to the froward ; inwardly it is pure to the 
 pure. 
 
 To the eager waking child, all alive with 
 the new discovery that it is growing light, and 
 plying you with questions as to whence it 
 
122 PRINCIPLE OF ADAPTATION 
 
 comes, you show the rising sun. You tell 
 him that every morning the sun climbs up 
 the eastern sky and rides through the heavens. 
 This is only the appearance of the fact ; but 
 there is a reality within the appearance, and 
 truth in what you say. So you teach the 
 vicious, lying boy that it is wicked to do so, 
 and that God is angry with the wicked, and 
 punishes them. It is not the real truth ; but 
 it is the best expression of the truth for the 
 boy. It is the clearest presentation of the 
 whole certainty of moral retribution you can 
 make to him. What you say will not bear 
 rational criticism, but there is a trutli within 
 and back of what you say, that no criticism 
 can dislodge, just as the law of planetary 
 motion is really involved in the apparent sun- 
 rise. 
 
 So we say of all Holy Scripture as the verbal 
 revelation of Divine truth to man's froward 
 state. It is adapted to the mental vision and 
 moral position of those to whom it was given. 
 It takes on, therefore, in much of its teach- 
 ing, a like froward form ; but the" it " back of 
 the form is genuine truth. The Spiritual real- 
 ity is hid in the appearance. And the same 
 law which rules of necessity in the giving of 
 revelation, rules also in man's understanding 
 
PRINCIPLE OF ADAPTATION, 123 
 
 of it. To the pure, that pure and holy wisdom 
 which lies back of the froward showing is 
 revealed. ' It is not innocence, but the lack of 
 innocence which sees only immorality in the 
 Bible ; and it is not wisdom but empty con- 
 ceit which finds only foolishness in it. This 
 law. would still be in force if the pure Divine 
 truth that is in the Bible were revealed to us 
 afresh in Nineteenth Century English, and 
 according to the habit of thought of this gen- 
 eration. It would still be froward to the fro- 
 ward and pure to the pure. Men's difficulties 
 might be different, but they would not be less 
 great. The genuine truths and laws of Spir- 
 itual life, are already within the appearances 
 of Holy Scripture; just as the truths of science 
 are in the apparent order, and equally appa- 
 rent disorder of nature ; just as the laws of life 
 and providence are hid in the involved and per- 
 plexing but steadily advancing drama of his- 
 tory. 
 
 Now I wish to illustrate this principle of 
 Divine adaptation in the explanation of (a) 
 the apparent contradictions of the Bible, and 
 (5) the representations of God's part in the 
 wars of the Jews. 
 
 1. The apparent contradiction in the rep- 
 resentation of the Divine Character. It is 
 
124 PBIJSrCIPLE OF ADAPTATION 
 
 said of the Lord : " Fury is not in me " (Isa. 
 xxviii:4); and again, ''God is angry with 
 the wicked every day" (Ps. vii:ll). Here 
 is a direct contradiction as out of the mouth 
 of God; and everybody knows these are not 
 exceptional texts. We are told that God is 
 angry and that He is love itself; that He is 
 wrathful and kind ; revengeful and merciful ; 
 provokable and unchangeable ; that He re- 
 pents and repents not; that He curses His 
 people and punishes them, and that He is 
 kind to the unthankful and the evil, and His 
 tender mercies over all his works ; that He 
 forms light and creates darkness ; makes peace 
 and creates evil ; that " He hath mercy on 
 whom He will, and whom He will he harden- 
 eth." One great question in to-day's relig- 
 ious inquiry is, whether or not there is an order 
 underlying this apparent confusion. How are 
 these contradictions to be harmonized with the 
 Divine Inspiration of the Scriptures ? Is there 
 a necessity in the nature of things connecting 
 them with a Divine revelation to man on earth? 
 Or does their existence in the Bible vacate its 
 claim to Inspiration? 
 
 Modern criticism has brought these contra- 
 dictory representations in regard to the Di- 
 vine character into sharper outline, showing 
 
PRINCIPLE OF ADAPTATION', 125 
 
 their connection with the ages in which they 
 were written, and with subsequent dogma. 
 But beyond this it has done nothing whatever, 
 except to deny in the name of reason that a 
 Divine and Infallible God can be both love 
 and wrath, or mislead His children by repre- 
 senting Himself in contradictions. This, 
 however, is only a negation ; and true progress 
 never ends in denial. It never closes its 
 eyes and returns to its ignorance ; but pushes 
 on to a new and higher affirmation of sufficient 
 breadth to illustrate its difficulties. The his- 
 tories of nations carry us through no period 
 when there was not universally the idea of 
 God, and a consciousness or a belief, both in 
 His pleasure and displeasure, in His disposi- 
 tion and power to reward and punish. And 
 this universal fact exalts the statements con- 
 cerning the love and wrath of God, in our 
 own Scripture, above the accidents of nation- 
 ality, and shows them to belong to universal 
 religious consciousness. We may deny the 
 apparent contradiction as a reality, but we 
 cannot deny it as an appearance. And its 
 universality as an appearance should encour- 
 age us to believe in some underlying law and 
 necessity, and to seek for its discovery. 
 
 We have the help of analogy here. Con- 
 
126 PRINCIPLE OF ADAPTATION, 
 
 traductions are not peculiar to the Bible. 
 Nature is full of paradoxes. There are com- 
 plications, and what appear to be contradic- 
 tions, everywhere. All knowledge that the 
 apparent is not the real, is a discovery. It took 
 long, very long, to find out that natural phe- 
 nomena are not the result of the capricious 
 tricks of pleased or insulted deities. And 
 when the old philosophers began to deny su- 
 perstitions, founded on the appearances of irreg- 
 ularity and disorder, their first impulse was to 
 say ^* that nature is seen to do all things of her- 
 self, without the interference of the gods." It 
 took long, very long, to learn the laws which 
 are the principles of order underlying the ap- 
 parent disorder of the universe of forces and 
 things. Very gradually, as facts accumulated 
 and confronted one another, it became possible 
 for a great mind here and there to grasp the 
 whole in its connections, and announce a uni- 
 versal principle including the eccentricities, 
 exceptions, and contradictions in their relations 
 to the accustomed order of things. Only in 
 our day has it become known that human 
 society also may be studied in the same way ; 
 that the apparently irregular and incalculable 
 movements of human free agents, in their drift 
 and results, are subject to laws so universal and 
 
PRINCIPLE OF ADAPTATION-. 127 
 
 constant that they may be estimated at long 
 range with astonishing accuracy. Such has 
 been the progress of science, a constant dem- 
 onstration of the play of law amid seemingly 
 chaotic and accidental facts, and successively 
 broader and more comprehensive generaliza- 
 tions of law, as exceptions were noted and 
 known. And so completely has the principle 
 become established, that nature is one orderly, 
 continuous, and progressive whole, that the im- 
 pulse of science is to, amass facts as discordant 
 and contradictory as possible, that they may 
 open the way to wider and ever-widening gen- 
 eralizations of natural law. No one feels any 
 uneasiness because half the scientific fraternity 
 are searching with microscope and telescope 
 for unknown facts. No one fears that their 
 discovery will either do injury to science or 
 disprove the existence of the universe. And 
 this confidence rests simply on the conviction 
 that in all, under all, over all, are universal 
 principles of order. 
 
 So must it be, and so will it be, in theology. 
 What we ought to expect, and what we ought 
 to push forward to, is the discovery of the 
 universal spiritual truths and positive laws 
 that are back of and constant in the appear- 
 ances of revelation and the facts of religious 
 consciousness. The historical criticism of our 
 
128 PBINCIPLE OF ADAPTATION, 
 
 day which looks so threatening, which brings 
 to light such apparently mischievous and de- 
 structive facts, has only served for the most 
 part to bring out the irregular, inconstant, and 
 contradictory things of Divine revelation, and 
 set them in most damaging antagonism. Shall 
 we refuse to look at the facts? No, for along 
 that way lies relapse into ignorance. Shall 
 we deny all revelation, and rest there? No, 
 for there is no rest. Revelation itself is a fact 
 that will not be denied any more than the out- 
 ward world of the senses. What, then, should 
 we do but reach out to, and pray for, those 
 Divineand spiritual unities which comprehend 
 and harmonize all seemingdiscrepenciesinthe 
 revealed and recorded ways of God to man. 
 This we must do. 
 
 Coming, then, to the contradictions of the 
 Bible concerning the character and disposition 
 of God, let us rise from the letter to the spirit, 
 and inquire what is the whole purport of the 
 revelation. The truth, that God is love is 
 really the teaching of the whole of Divine 
 revelation, when direct teaching respecting 
 God is given. For the Scriptures are not 
 merely a revelation of God. They are also a 
 revelation of man ; of the states of good and 
 evil in man, and their consequences. But the 
 
PRINCIPLE OF ADAPTATION. 129 
 
 whole spirit of the Word breathes one truth, 
 with respect to God Himself and His altitude 
 toward man, namely, that He is love itself — 
 pure, perfect and unselfish love. And this is 
 what reason demands. It refuses to believe 
 that there can be in the Divine nature any- 
 thing answering to anger, hatred and revenge. 
 It refuses to believe that he is changeable or 
 swayed by likes and dislikes. However men 
 may feel toward Him, or however they may 
 feel and act towards each other, it is not in the 
 nature of God possible that He should feel 
 anything but the most unselfish and constant 
 love toward them. We may hate Him and 
 His laws, but He never hated nor desired to 
 punish us. His laws are only the wise ways 
 of His love with us. They are the ways of 
 His infinite wisdom, and are good for us, and 
 necessary for us, because they are the true 
 order of our life, the only means to the per- 
 fection and happiness His love has ordained 
 for us. And because His laws are laws of love 
 they change not. They are the eternal order 
 of spiritual life, revealed and written in the 
 Word only that we may know them and do 
 them. All the precepts and laws which are 
 summed up in love to God and the neighbor, 
 are enjoined upon us, simply because they are 
 9 
 
130 PBINCIPLE OF ADAPTATION. 
 
 laws, that is, the ways or true methods of 
 spiritual life. They are commanded because 
 they are written in our spiritual organism, and 
 are the only ways by which we may grow into 
 harmony and conjunction with God and enter 
 into His joy. They are the ordinances of 
 infinite wisdom for the ends of infinite love. 
 
 Such is the love of God and the wisdom of 
 His laws on the divine side and to the spiritu- 
 al view ; but how must they appear to the 
 diseased and abnormal vision of disobedience ? 
 "To the pure thou wilt show thyself pure; 
 to the froward thou wilt show thyself fro- 
 ward." It is an unfailing law that the appear- 
 ance of spiritual truth, and of spiritual things 
 generally, is and must ever be in perfect cor- 
 respondence with the states of the percipient 
 subjects. If that is a state of order, of good 
 disposition, and rational honesty, spiritual 
 things will be seen and appreciated, when re- 
 vealed, in their own light. If this state be 
 one of disorder it will reflect itself back upon 
 God and spiritual laws, and see in them only 
 hatred and vindictive punishment. The world 
 is full of illustrations of this law, and like 
 every true generalization it solves mysteries. 
 
 Take, for example, the laws of physical 
 health. The man who is wise to learn them 
 
PRINCIPLE OF ADAPTATION. 131 
 
 and obey them, and has become through obedi- 
 ence healthy and vigorous, not only appreci- 
 ates those laws, but rejoices in their benifi- 
 cence. He sees that they are wise,and ordered for 
 comfort and use. He sees that even the pain 
 that follows disobedience is part of their be- 
 nificent order to save the reckless from self-de- 
 struction. But the man who has broken all 
 the physical commandments, and become a 
 body of disease, looks upon nature as a hard 
 mother, and her laws as a very arbitrary set 
 of regulations. This is only saying, what we 
 have seen to be true, that every one sees the 
 wisdom and benijficence of a truth, according 
 to his own state with respect to it. The same 
 truth does not appear the same to persons in 
 different states. To one it stands out clearly 
 and defined in its grandeur and relations ; he 
 is delighted with it. Another only dimly ap- 
 prehends it. To another it has no signifi- 
 cance; it has neither form nor comeliness that 
 he should desire it. To another, who has 
 been acting or believing contrary to it, it is 
 positively hateful. It does not appear to him 
 as truth, but as a falsity. It is really the 
 same truth that presents such various aspects 
 to different individuals; the cause of the vari- 
 ous appearances is not changes in the truth, 
 
132 PRINCIPLE OF ADAPTATION, 
 
 but the reflection of their different mental 
 states. 
 
 Now, if this be a law of the human under- 
 standing with respect to truth, and of the 
 human will with respect to goodness, it ex- 
 plains the contradictions of the Bible. For 
 the Bible is a revelation of God and the laws 
 of spiritual life, and the consequences of obe- 
 dience or disobedience, to all sorts and condi- 
 tions of men; and the truths respecting these 
 things to reach them at all must appear vari- 
 ously to their different states, and quite oppo- 
 sitely to the evil and the good. Accordingly, 
 there are in the Word both genuine truths 
 and apparent truths. Truth as it is, and is ap- 
 prehensible to enlightened reason ; and truth 
 as it appears, as it can only appear, to sensu- 
 ous thought. That "God is good to all, and 
 His mercies over all his works'' is a genuine 
 truth. That He is angry with the wicked and 
 punishes them, is an apparent truth. God is 
 goodness itself, and truth itself; He desires 
 the spiriutal regeneration and happiness of all 
 His children; He has so created man that he 
 may by orderly and obedient observance of 
 the laws of his spiritual nature, become con- 
 joined to Him in reciprocal love and use. 
 These are genuine truths. They are abund- 
 
PRINCirLE OF ADAPTATIOW. 133 
 
 antly taught in plain declarations and precepts. 
 They are satisfactory to enlightened reason. 
 They are the very spirit and life of the Word; 
 and its spiritual or internal sense teaches 
 nothing contrary to them. But how would 
 they appear to an idolatrous, self-seeking, 
 sensuous people? How would they appear 
 to a people who had no conception of love 
 but as self-love; no idea of happiness but 
 lust; no idea of law but as license to do 
 their own sweet will ? If Divine love would 
 reach and restrain such a people, and lead 
 them to compel themselves to obey even the 
 very lowest forms of the laws of their spiritual 
 life, must He not appeal to their self-love and 
 to their sense of pain ? The first truth for 
 such to learn, the first truth for us all to learn, 
 is that the laws of God are the laws of man's 
 life ; that they are all keyed to beneficent re- 
 sults ; and that if they are disobeyed they will 
 work most terrible spiritual mischief. The 
 punishment which attends the violation of 
 spiritual laws is not less beneficent than the 
 pain that attends the violation of physical law. 
 It is itself a revelation of Divine mercy. But 
 if denounced against the wicked, how should 
 they perceive it other than as a threat of anger 
 and wrath. If not made to realize it, they 
 
134 PBINGIFLE OF ADAPTATION, 
 
 would not heed it ; and if brought clean home 
 to them, they could not understand it as any- 
 thing but the punishment inflicted by an of- 
 fended Deity. How is it with ourselves? When 
 we have broken the sum of the commandments, 
 and have not done to men as we would they 
 should do to us, is not the first keen pang of 
 remorse a sense of Divine displeasure ? How 
 is it in the whole course of our experience of 
 the consequences of disorder ? Do we not con- 
 tinually complain that the laws of Providence 
 are unjust; that the ways of God are not 
 equal? In this is latent the whole appear^ 
 ance of the anger of God. God is good, but 
 He is true ; His truth is the law of human life 
 and happiness, and it is good. This is the 
 reality. But the appearance is, to those who 
 obey the law of life, that God is gO(3d and His 
 ways merciful ; to the evil and disobedient, 
 that God is kind only to those who fear and 
 obey Him, and is angry with, and punishes 
 those who do not. 
 
 Can we not see, therefore, that the con- 
 tradictory representations concerning God's 
 character, have their ground and necessity in 
 the spiritual law that men must severally see 
 truth according to their state ? To reveal 
 Himself and His laws to all men, the evil as 
 
PBIJSrCIPLE OF ADAPTATION'. 135 
 
 well as the good, the sensual and depraved as 
 well as the rational, God must necessarily be 
 represented variously and even oppositely. 
 There have been whole generations of people, 
 there are now in our own cities whole classes 
 of people, to whom the revelation of the real- 
 ity of God, and of spiritual law could be 
 made no otherwise. If the selfish man resists 
 or punishes any one, it is from anger ; he is 
 furious and acts wildly from revenge. If he 
 have an idea of God, he can only conceive of 
 Him as enraged and punishing men, as he 
 himself would do if they had transgressed 
 his law. Fear is the only sentiment in such 
 a man open to the Divine appeal. To fear 
 accordingly the Lord appeals; if by any 
 means the disobedient may be led to observe 
 the laws 6f righteousness and begin the work 
 of reformation. The fact is, that we are de- 
 pendent upon God, and our happiness depend- 
 ent upon obedience to His spiritual laws. 
 This eternal necessity appears to obscure, sen- 
 suous and wicked minds as the Divine om- 
 nipotence, pleased or displeased, rewarding or 
 punishing. The appearance is the necessary 
 aspect of a reality. It is not, therefore, to be 
 destroyed with the simple-minded; though it 
 is to be avoided as a doctrine of the Church. 
 
136 PRINCIPLE OF ADAPTATION, 
 
 We do very well to say the sun rises and sets. 
 We cannot very well say otherwise. It is not 
 the fact, but the appearance of the fact. It 
 will always be true to the senses. And so 
 forever, and forever, it will be true that " the 
 fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." 
 
 2. Another class of apparent contradictions, 
 is illustrated in the representations of moral re- 
 sponsibility. It is said in the decalogue, " I 
 the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting 
 the iniquity of the fathers upon the children 
 unto the third and fourth generation of them 
 that hate me" (Ex. xx 5) ; and again, " The 
 soul that sinneth it shall die. The son shall 
 not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall 
 the father bear the iniquity of the son." 
 These seemingly contradictory texts are ex- 
 plained in the truth which lies back of both, 
 and which can only be overlooked by an ex- 
 clusive attention to one or the other. 
 
 Nothing can be more obvions than the axiom 
 that no man is guilty for what took place be- 
 fore he was born. Whatever the truth may 
 require us to believe, it certainly does not re- 
 quire us to begin with an absurdity. "In 
 Adam's fall we sinned all," is a sentiment that 
 is repugnant to all rational thought. The 
 Scriptures teach that " the iniquity of the 
 
PRINCIPLE OF ADAPTATION', 137 
 
 fathers is visited upon the children," and by a 
 very curious perversity of understanding, the 
 word "iniquity" has been read to mean pre- 
 cisely as though it were " guilt " or " punish- 
 ment." It is, however, nothing of the kind. 
 Guilt is not transmissible ; and it is only a 
 gross caricature of Divine justice to repre- 
 sent it as demanding the punishment of count- 
 less posterity for the sin of a single progenitor. 
 We are to put utterly away all such ideas of 
 " original sin " as define it to be the entailed 
 guilt of a transgression over w^hich we had no 
 control, and in which we could have no moral 
 responsibility. But then, we are not to con- 
 clude, on the other hand, that there is no 
 hereditary transmission, and that the iniqui- 
 ties of the fathers are in no way carried over 
 to the children. 
 
 There is a great deal of erroneous thought 
 upon this subject from the profound and gen- 
 eral ignorance as to the substantial and organic 
 form of the human soul. Man is not an ab- 
 straction, but a spiritual, organic form. And 
 the effect of disobedience to the laws of spiritu- 
 al life, is the perversion of the organic func- 
 tions of the soul, and consequent deterioration 
 of its substantial form. Sin is a spiritual dis- 
 ease ; a disease of an immortal organism. And, 
 
138 PBIJSrCIFLE OF ADAPTATION. 
 
 therefore, as it becomes deep-seated and eronic 
 by disobedience, and is not brought to the heal- 
 ing touch of the Divine Physician by repent- 
 ance, it issues in confirmed spiritual death. 
 Every one writes the record of his own sin, 
 and lays up his punishment in his own soul in 
 its perverted spiritual forms. Hereditary sin, 
 or transmitted guilt, is an idea therefore which 
 cannot be expressed except in terms of self- 
 contradiction. But hereditary evil is a differ- 
 ent thing. It is the transmitted deterioration of 
 the substantial human form, the transmission of 
 a perverted spiritual organism. It is thus that 
 the iniquity of the fathers is visited upon the 
 childen. ** Transmissive dispositions and pro- 
 clivities to evil, coming down a long line of 
 tainted ancestry, and gathering strength and 
 volume on their way by every generation that 
 transmits them, is a fact that is universal, and 
 so an irreversible law of human discent." This 
 is illustrated not only in that the race lies in 
 spiritual darkness, each generation receiving 
 from the past its gloomy superstitions and pre- 
 dispositions to evil, but also in the persistency 
 with which nations and families perpetuate 
 their characteristics. Time and culture and 
 physical environment exert their modifying 
 influence within a certain range, but " during 
 
PBINCIPLE OF ADAPTATION. 139 
 
 three or four generations, and, indeed, during 
 any known historical periods, they never break 
 up the type." Types of character, and the 
 image of these in the physical form, are trans- 
 mitted with such constancy and tendf^icy to 
 accumulation, that the J^rained observer, as soon 
 as he looks on the human form, though it be 
 that of the sleeping child, knows the race and 
 sometimes the tribe and family to which it be- 
 longs. Every fact of observation and exper- 
 ience, every truth of the Word of God, confirms 
 the doctrine that the fathers transmit to the 
 children, not character, but modifications of 
 substantial organic form, which qualify the 
 inflowing life and create propensities and pro- 
 clivities which had been confirmed in the vol- 
 untary lives of the progenitors. The whole 
 subject is illustrated in hereditary predisposi- 
 tion to diseases of body. Disease is not trans- 
 mitted ; but a perverted organism, which under 
 the excitement resulting from carelessness, or 
 from favoring abuses, is felt as a propensity 
 and developed in disease. And every confir- 
 mation of the disease results in the still further 
 deterioration of the organism and its trasmis- 
 sion to its own offspring. A nd this is the real 
 image of the corresponding spiritual fact. 
 When evil has become fixed in mind and will 
 
140 PRINCIPLE OF ADAPTATION, 
 
 and life, and thus perverted the function and 
 form of the soul, that determination of the sub- 
 stantial spiritual form is carried over to the 
 oflPspring ; and under the excitation of influx 
 from attendant evil spirits it is perceived as a 
 propensity. And if its transmission is not ar- 
 rested by regeneration, through the shunning 
 of evil because it is sin, the propensity is trans- 
 mitted with accumulated power to the next 
 generation. It is thus that we bear in us the 
 marks of our lineage in general and in particu- 
 lar; thus, that the fathers' sins have impress- 
 ed upon our spiritual organism such abnormal 
 bent and perversity as had resulted in them- 
 selves, and which are felt by us as propensities 
 to evil. The Lord is said to visit the iniquity 
 of the fathers upon the children in accommo- 
 dation to the universal appearance to the nat- 
 ural and sensual man, that the consequences of 
 his own depravity are visited by omnipotence. 
 The real truth which thus appears is, that they 
 are actually and necessarily carried over. 
 
 But this is only one side of the truth. If 
 this alone were known, it might seem just to 
 say, " The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and 
 the children's teeth are set on edge." But 
 this proverb of Israel the Lord declares to be 
 a very foolish meditation for the children. It 
 
PBIJSrCIPLE OF ADAPTATION'. 141 
 
 is true that the iniquity of the fathers is 
 visited upon the children as predisposition and 
 propensity to evil. But the truth is worth 
 more as a warning to parents than as an ex- 
 cuse for children. For this also is true, that 
 those propensities are balanced by angelic and 
 Divine influences, so that every soul is free to 
 resist them and turn from them. A pro- 
 pensity is not a sin ; there is no transmission of 
 guilt ; there is no punishment except for the 
 evil that passes into deed through our volitions. 
 In some sense it is true that we inherit the 
 consequences, in a deterioated spiritual or- 
 ganism, of the sins of our forefathers. But 
 that neither increases nor diminishes our re- 
 sponsibility an" iota. It has no bearing on 
 our eternal destiny unless we are indifferent. 
 It may increase the severity of our tempta- 
 tions ; but the omnipotence of the Redeemer 
 is ours if we choose to resist the propensities 
 which we inherit. "Now, lo ! if one beget 
 a son that seeth all his father's sins which 
 he hath done, and considereth, and doeth not 
 such like, he shall not die for the iniquity ^of 
 his father — he shall surely live." You must 
 see, therefore, that these two texts are only 
 apparently contradictory ; they are harmon- 
 ized in the light of a higher law superior to 
 either, and immanent in both. 
 
142 PRINCIPLE OF ADAPTATION. 
 
 II. We come iiow to examine in tlie light 
 of the principle of adaptation, the Bible record 
 of the wars of extermination against the 
 Canaanitish nations, instituted and carried on, 
 it would appear, by express command of God. 
 The strongest objections are urged against the 
 Inspiration of the Mosaic Scriptures on the 
 score of these wars. They are denounced as 
 measures of enormous cruelty and the most 
 indefensible injustice; and the inspiration of 
 the record which appears to ascribe them to the 
 command of God, is repudiated as impossible 
 of Christian belief I hope to show the value 
 of the doctrine announced in making some 
 helpful and necessary discriminations here 
 also. 
 
 (a.) Consider the human side of these 
 wars. As facts of history, the wars of the Jews 
 were no more pleasing to God than any other 
 wars. God is not the author of war. That 
 He is so is only an appearance to selfish man, 
 in obedience to the universal law of " froward 
 to the froward." The devil is universally the 
 presiding genius in the declaration of war, and 
 field-marshal in its conduct. This is admitting 
 all, and more than all, that objectors to revela- 
 tion urge against the wars of the Jews. But 
 it is admitting only the truth. Every war, in 
 
PBINGIPLE OF ADAPTATION'. 143 
 
 common with every murder, every lie, every 
 slander, every vice of every hue, is instituted 
 at the express command of self-love, whose 
 essence is the love of evil. It is the " I, my- 
 * self," principle of the depraved heart that does 
 all the wrong and mischief, that incites every 
 strife and quarrel, large or small, the world 
 over. This is just as true of all the wars per- 
 petrated in the name of Christianity as it is of 
 the wars of the Jews in the name of God 
 Almighty. It is just as true of wars waged 
 in the name of freedom as it is of the wars 
 of empire. Search throughout universal his-- 
 tory, and you will find that latent in every 
 war as the instigating and controlling motive, 
 has been some form, or other of the lust of 
 dominion or greed of gain. The wars of the 
 Jews had no other origin and inspiration ; 
 and in this were essentially like all other wars 
 whatsoever. 
 
 You are ready, perhaps, to dispute this, not- 
 withstanding all that you know confirms it. 
 Out of war has grown progress and the devel- 
 opment of human interests; and how is this 
 fact to be reconciled with its infernal origin? 
 By remembering another fact, that is often 
 forgotten, namely, that the devil is not the su- 
 preme ruler of the universe, and that his per- 
 
144 PRINCIPLE OF ADAPTATION, 
 
 mitted existence brings him within the police 
 regulations of the kingdom of God. You will 
 remember that it is written of God, "If I make 
 my bed in hell, behold thou art there." You 
 will remember that it is elsewhere said of His 
 government, that "He will make the wrath 
 of man to praise Him, and the remainder of 
 wrath He will restrain." He who put free 
 will into the making of man knew the issues 
 of it. He knew that man would fall into 
 self and separate himself from God; and 
 creation was prepared for the event as if it had 
 already happened. The eternal, inherent, and 
 organic laws of the Divine government cover 
 not only its provisions, but its permissions 
 also ; and are controlling always. They not 
 only lead on to the good provided, but they 
 follow into the evil permitted. Yea, they are 
 there beforehand, and the limit is set precisely 
 at that line where are evolved great, good and 
 sublime issues, more than the wit of man con- 
 ceived or his motive of self-interest intended. 
 There has rarely been found a power of 
 holy fervor strong enough to cope with the 
 ambition of dominion. In the drama of his- 
 tory, the saints have never been able to as- 
 sume the leading role. They have rarely had 
 the skill, energy, intelligence, force of will, to 
 
PRINCIPLE OF ADAPTATION'. 145 
 
 cope with the ambition of dominion, and keep 
 it even out of the institutions of the Church. 
 The ardor of genuine goodness in men is to the 
 fiery zeal of self-love, as the heat of kindling 
 embers to that of a seven -times heated fur- 
 nace. And this fire of self-love evolves gigan- 
 tic powers. The strongest motives sharpen 
 wit and concentrate ability ; and the ambition 
 to be greatest, richest, or most honored for 
 brilliant achievement, is the impelling force 
 that develops strength in the complicated ma- 
 chinery of government, commerce, and organ- 
 ized industries. The faint, feeble beginnings 
 of goodness in men are inadequate to kindle 
 an}' such force of character, sagacity, and per- 
 sistency. The children of this world are wis- 
 er and more efficient in their generation than 
 the children of light ; and God turns to use the 
 most effective instrumentalities. But the laws 
 are ordained beforehand in the constitution of 
 man, and of society, which alone can conser- 
 vate those fiery impulses and struggling antag- 
 onisms, and outof individual self-seeking volve 
 the common good. In the permitted existence 
 of every evil, and selfish espousal of every 
 cause, is set its limit : " Thus far shalt thou go, 
 but no farther." 
 
 You must work out for yourselves the ap- 
 10 _ 
 
 :tjhi7iesiit] 
 
146 PRINCIPLE OF ADAPTATION. 
 
 plication of this suggested key to history, for 
 we must not suiffer, ourselves now to be drawn 
 too far from the main theme. But they only 
 read history aright who thus see God in it ; 
 not providing wars and cruel wrongs and in- 
 vasion of personal rights, but setting them off 
 one against the other, and working out pur- 
 poses of which the actors had no conception. 
 And this, which is true of all history, is 
 especially true of the Cliildren of Israel ; for 
 the Mosaic dispensation was essentially dra- 
 matic and representative. The Israelites were 
 chosen and called, not because of their right- 
 eousness and spiritual character, but because 
 of the particular bent of their selfishness and 
 superstition. It is again and again said of 
 them that they were not chosen for their right- 
 eousness, nor for their own benefit, as particu- 
 lar favorites of God above all people ; but for 
 their peculiar fitness to prepare for and to 
 represent and typify the ends of God in the 
 coming Christianity. There are reasons here 
 which cannot be entered at this time, but it is 
 manifest upon the face of its history that their 
 dispensation was in all respects a representa- 
 tive one. And for such a purpose their very 
 absence of spirituality and their peculiar ex- 
 ternal character especially fitted them. Their 
 
PRINCIPLE OF ADAPTATION. 147 
 
 vanity was flattered with being selected by 
 the God of 'their fathers, whom they had for- 
 gotten in their idolatry. Their peculiar 
 superstitions rendered them susceptible to 
 wonders and signs; and their selfish greed 
 and fear gave to these signs a controlling 
 power over their conduct. Their peculiar ex- 
 ternal character rendered them capable, beyond 
 those more receptive of the interiors of religion, 
 bf attending to the minutiae of ceremonial wor- 
 ship, and of preserving it from a sense of the 
 sanctity of its forms. Their "stiff-neckedness," 
 their "lack of faith," and their idolatrous love 
 of ceremonials, were the very qualities which 
 rendered them capable of being led, and driven, 
 through a history in which should be set and 
 dramatized spiritual things of which they were 
 hopelessly ignorant. With them, as with no 
 other people, therefore, the idea of God and 
 the hope of Messiah could be preserved unto 
 the time of its fulfillment. With them, as 
 with no other people, could be enacted those 
 revolutions in the nations sunk in the most 
 hopeless idolatry — revolutions which were the 
 necessary preparation for Christianity. By 
 them, as by no other people, the materials 
 could be furnished, and the Holy Word be 
 written, and preserved in the form in which 
 
148 PBIJSrCIPLE OF ADAPTATION'. 
 
 we now have it, as the form best adapted to 
 render permanent the blessings of Divine reve- 
 lation, to make them the most extensive, and 
 to secure them from perversion. 
 
 Their history is to be read, therefore, and 
 their wars of extermination considered in the 
 light of this representative character of their 
 dispensation. As wars they were no more and 
 no less lovely than certain modern ones to 
 which we ascribe justice, and out of which 
 have certainly grown beneficient results. War 
 is never heavenly ; but if vice ever reached 
 its limit and needed to be overthrown by the 
 tearing down of its strongholds, then most 
 justly was punishment inflicted on the Can- 
 aanites. If a race ever destroys its capacity 
 to benefit mankind, or to save its posterity 
 from the darkness of its own evils, surely the 
 nations of Canaan had reached that limit 
 when their extirpation became a mercy. The 
 extirpation of the wicked when their wicked- 
 ness has reached its summit, is a measure of 
 merciful necessity. In the providence of 
 God the land of Canaan, the traditional seat 
 of the ancient churches, was to become the 
 theatre of representative rites and of a Divine 
 Incarnation, from which should spring a new 
 religious life on earth. The nations that over- 
 
PRINCIPLE OF ADAPTATION, 149 
 
 ran the land had acted their part, and run 
 the length of license, and come to the limit 
 of permission. They were to be, and they 
 were, displaced by a people who, though rebel- 
 lious, could yet be led into and kept in holy 
 externals. They were fit instruments, as a 
 holy and righteous people could not have been, 
 even if the Lord had found any such, for the 
 accomplishment of that which needed to be 
 done in the economy of His providence, which 
 looked to all that has grown out of it, and the 
 still greater blessings that are yet to grow out 
 of it in the brightening eras of a spiritual 
 Christianity. As matter of human history, 
 therefore, the displacement of the Canaani- 
 tish nations by the Children of Israel, is to be 
 regarded as the displacement of one evil by a 
 less, with a view to a providential purpose of 
 good to humanity. It was equally a mercy 
 to the Canaanites and to the world, if it is 
 ever a mercy to cut off a hopelessly tainted 
 generation. 
 
 (b.) Let us now consider the record of 
 these wars as a part of the written Word of 
 God. In common with all the Israelitish his- 
 tory, it is representative and typical of spirit- 
 ual things, the affairs of that people having 
 been constantly overruled for this purpose. It 
 
150 PRINCIPLE OF ADAPTATION. 
 
 is, as I have said, a grand drama. The first 
 scene commences with the calling of Abra- 
 ham, and the last concludes with the destruc- 
 tion of Jerusalem by the E-omans. All their 
 patriarchs and kings, priests and prophets, 
 and indeed the whole people, were the actors 
 in this wonderful drama. The characters 
 represented were the Lord Jesus Christ, as to 
 all that He performed and suffered in His con- 
 flicts with our spiritual enemies for the re- 
 demption of mankind ; His Church in the 
 steps of her progress from carnal to celestial ; 
 and the individual member of the Church in 
 all the stages of his corresponding advance- 
 ment. Everything which creates opposition 
 is also shown — the obstacles to be overcome 
 and the lapses to be dreaded, as well as the 
 blessings to be obtained. 
 
 Some of you may not know that this is 
 true, because it has not been shown you. But 
 consider if it were desirable whether the Chil- 
 dren of Israel were not just such a people as 
 would be capable of enacting such a represen- 
 tative history. Consider, if it were enacted 
 and desirable to be preserved, whether the 
 record of their history as found in the sacred 
 scriptures is not such as would be most scrup- 
 ulously guarded and handed down by them. 
 
PRINCIPLE OF ADAPTATION, 151 
 
 Consider whether its accommodations to their 
 idea of God as being One and Almighty, but 
 yet such a One as themselves ; its interpola- 
 ted myths appealing to their wonder ; its his- 
 torical exaggerations appealing to their vani- 
 ty, were not all necessary to their reception of 
 it, and likely to insure its preservation. And 
 when I tell you that these peculiarities of the 
 letter of the sacred record, which are so often 
 urged as an objection to its inspiration, were 
 not only necessary to its reception and preser- 
 vation, but were needed also to perfect the 
 series of truths which constitute its internal 
 spiritual sense, I only say what is verified and 
 is provable. For these sacred histories are 
 representative not only in a general way, but 
 specifically as to the actors, in their successes 
 and reverses, as to all the scenes, and every 
 particular. 
 
 This is strange only because it has not been 
 known. Devout discipleship has always seen 
 something of the general representation. It 
 has been known that Canaan represents the 
 Church and Heaven ; that Israel represents 
 the spiritual Israelite, who is without guile 
 before God ; and that their enemies typify 
 the besetting evils of the heart and obstruc- 
 tions to the Christian life. But it is now to 
 
152 PRINCIPLE OF ADAPTATION, 
 
 be known that this is not. only true in a figur- 
 ative sense and general way, but exactly as to 
 every particular recorded, even those whieh 
 are historically trivial and unaccountable. 
 This needs to be known, and is therefore re- 
 vealed in our day, for two reasons : First, to 
 restore confidence in the Inspiration of Scrip- 
 ture, and to lead on to an affirmative and ex- 
 pectant study of it. The searching analysis 
 of modern criticism has brought to light so 
 much in the mere letter to be complained of 
 and caviled at, that it has determined the 
 thought of the Church away from the " spir- 
 it " which " giveth life, " and left us the dead 
 letter of a peculiar history, which .is regarded 
 as holy only from its antiquity. Nothing but 
 an equally critical exposition of the spiritual 
 meanings involved in each and every particu- 
 lar case can again restore it to reverence, and 
 open its divine uses. Then, second, this needs 
 to be known, because it is not a mere techni- 
 cal issue of the Inspiration of Scripture, but 
 a matter of practical import in the illustra- 
 tion of Christian life. The Hebrew Scrip- 
 tures have not fulfilled their use, and ceased 
 to be the Word of God. The day is coming 
 when the spiritual sense of all this history 
 and symbol will be unfolded to your wonder, 
 
PRINCIPLE OF ADAPTATION. 153 
 
 and you shall see in them the gospel, such as 
 it has not entered into your heart to conceive 
 of it. And those who have looked upon the 
 dawn of the coming day, testify truly that 
 these Scriptures are no more to them a record 
 of bloody wars, and unchaste lives, and cruel 
 persecutions, man with man, but a prophecy 
 of self-conquest, a particular portrayal of the 
 evils to be encountered, and the means by 
 which they are to be subdued and the king- 
 dom of God established. 
 
 And how much we need this instruction ! 
 It would save us many a sad disappointment, 
 and fortify us for strength where we often dis- 
 play vacillation and weakness. Multitudes 
 are received into the Church every year, un- 
 der the delusion that the indeterminate thing 
 called "conversion" is all and enough. Af- 
 ter a hearty and painful effort to rouse them- 
 selves from worldliness and indifference, 
 they are allowed to fancy all the promises of 
 "a new heart," and a pure one, fulfilled; and 
 that in entering into the communion of the 
 Church they are entering into a land " flow- 
 ing with milk and honey," wherein is rest, 
 peace and happiness. But they soon learn 
 better; and the disenchantment is often at- 
 tended with remorse and despair. How many 
 
154 PRINCIPLE OF ADAPTATION. 
 
 sad mistakes might have been saved you if 
 your new love and purpose and hope had 
 been warned of the "seven nations mightier 
 and stronger " than themselves, already in- 
 trenched in the fastness of the heart, ready to 
 contest every advance in the establishment of 
 heavenly principles. When the Israelites 
 arrived at the promised land, they found that 
 their real warfare had just begun. And for 
 what weary years, and with what ever-shift- 
 in vicissitudes it was carried on ! Sometimes 
 they were victorious; sometimes defeated — 
 once having even the sacred ark itself cap- 
 tured from them by their pagan enemies. In 
 all this is only an image of man's conflict 
 with "the foes of his own household," the 
 wicked native occupants of his heart, his he- 
 reditary and acquired evils which he cannot 
 run away from, but must combat and over- 
 come. It would do us infinite good in our 
 struggles to know that the Lord goes before us 
 to cast out these native evil and false princi- 
 ples, not all at once, lest the land become des- 
 olate, but little by little, as spiritual principles 
 increase and multiply and become fixed. 
 
 If this principle were clearly understood, it 
 would save much of what is known as " back- 
 sliding," — the indifference that follows disap- 
 
PlilNCIPLE OF ADAPTATION, 155 
 
 poiutmeat. Regeneration is not accomplished 
 by a sudden and irresistible stroke of God's 
 power, but by little and little, as evils are sub- 
 dued and good principles established in obe- 
 dience to the Lord, who is " the Captain of our 
 Salvation." AVhen we have put down pride, 
 jealousy is at hand ; and when we have over- 
 come selfishness in one form, it comes in 
 another form in the suggestion of spiritual 
 pride that we are getting to be somebody. No 
 sooner was a battle won than the Israelites 
 forgot God and fell a prey to another foe; illus- 
 trating the subtle encroachments of our selfish 
 pride, which plunges us into conceit at every 
 successful resistance of evil, and thus leaves us 
 unprotected from a still more persistent enemy 
 Our Christianity has been such an external 
 and formal thing for the most part, that very 
 few seem to realize that it involves interior 
 purification. If men have been faithful to the 
 laws of the institutional church, observing its 
 formalities with decorum, and stoutly calling 
 on the name of Christ, that is thought to be a 
 real life and preparation for heaven. It is 
 not so, however. Good it may be, but not 
 enough. Outward piety without internal re- 
 pentance is at least only a truce with our 
 spiritual foes. 
 
156 PRINCIPLE OF ADAPTATION. 
 
 Our regeneration is efiected by the implan- 
 tation of spiritual good and truth, and then 
 by the removal of what is evil and false. But 
 we have the faintest possible conception of the 
 process; of the complications of evil and its 
 entrenchment behind the fallacies and sophis- 
 tries of our artificial lives. " By little and 
 little " are they expelled, only as the fruitful- 
 ness of a true culture shall abound in the 
 spirit. The heart knoweth not its own secret; 
 the understanding doth not consider. It may 
 well be that our defeats are of Providence as 
 much as our victories are ; not only following 
 necessarily when we turn away to other gods, 
 but revealing thereby new foes to be encount- 
 ered and new truths to be heeded. We can- 
 not wish ourselves into the kingdom of heaven ; 
 we cannot pray ourselves there. We must 
 remember the Lord our God and keep his 
 commandments, and loyally fight on against 
 whatsoever opposes them. With " the sword 
 of the spirit" and ''the shield of faith, " we 
 must make the best fight we can, rallying from 
 every defeat, and glorifying God in every suc- 
 cess, "faithful unto death." 
 
 God hath given us this record of war, with 
 its successes and reverses, that we may read 
 in it our own evils and the means of subdu- 
 
FRINCIPLE OF ADAPTATION, 157 
 
 ing theiUjthe causes and the issues of conflict, 
 and through all our dependence upon Him 
 and the ark of His covenant. Shall we re- 
 nounce it all because the blind learning of 
 our day, seeking no Divine message in it, has 
 been able to read no Divine wisdom out of it? 
 Nay ; rather let us approach it as the good 
 gift of God, ready to learn and do what things 
 He has therein to teach us profitable for sal- 
 vation. It is not history or science that we 
 need a Bible to teach us, but the mysteries of 
 spiritual life, the sins that so easily beset us, 
 and the weapons of defense and final exter- 
 mination. And this we shall find whenso- 
 ever we seek it in the Holy Word if we are 
 teachable and humble, looking up to the spir- 
 it and not down to the letter. And in the 
 days that are opening upon the Church, bless- 
 ed shall they be who are found waiting, and 
 watching for the coming of the light of life ; 
 for they shall behold it breaking forth in . its 
 revealing splendors out of the darkest clouds 
 of the letter, giving a new meaning to human 
 life, a new breadth to the Divine command- 
 ments, and a new blessedness to the promise, 
 " To him that overcometh will I give to sit 
 with Me in My throne, even as I also over- 
 came and am set down with My Father in 
 His throne." 
 
VI. 
 
 THE DOOTEINE OF THE SPIEIT- 
 
 TJAL SENSE THE OK"LT AIS- 
 
 SWEE TO SKEPTIOAIi 
 
 OBJECTIOlvrS. 
 
 Heaven and earth shall pass away ; but my words shall not pass away. 
 —Luke xxi : 33. 
 
 Men's thonghts change, God's endure. Hu- 
 man imaginations serve their use and pass 
 away; but the eternal realities of Divine 
 Truth retrain. We begin with fallacies al- 
 ways. We see at the first only the appear- 
 ance. Though a truth be hidden in the falla- 
 cy, though a reality be presented in the ap- 
 pearance, we see it only as we are able; and 
 all our growth in wisdom and life consists in 
 penetrating appearances and rising out 
 of fallacies into more rational conceptions 
 of the indwelling Spirit of truth. Truth may 
 be divested of its garments, and ma}'- be seen 
 more and more clearly as to its real quality, 
 (158) 
 
SPIBITUAL SEJSrSE. 159 
 
 but it never is outgrown, never ceases to pre- 
 sent new fields of inquiry, and new answers to 
 newly awakened questions. Our opinions and 
 beliefs, founded on our imperfect and fallacious 
 interpetations of the Lord's words, change as 
 our states change, and pass away, but the truth 
 does not pass away, and this familiar fact is a 
 comfortable rock upon which to rest our faith 
 in the sufiiciency of the Bible to meet the need 
 and guide the thought of this skeptical and 
 speculative time. 
 
 Never were so great changes at work in the 
 " heaven and earth " of human minds ; never 
 were opinions so generally unsettled ; never 
 were dogmas so little respected and so easily 
 relinquished; never was investigation so free 
 and independent, ignoring past conclusions 
 based on discarded appearances, and reaching 
 out after facts. There is an old argument for 
 the Bible based upon its age and its influence, 
 namely : — These Holy Scriptures have stood* 
 the test of time. They have been the foun- 
 tain of life, light, inspiration and hope, to 
 thousands on earth, whom we trust and be- 
 lieve are now enjoying, the felicities of life 
 eternal. They have revealed the Master, and 
 imparted noble motives to the master-minds 
 of the civilized world. All this is good and 
 
160 SPIRITUAL SENSE, 
 
 strong presumptive evidence of their Divine, 
 origin. But there has come a state of mind 
 in society, to which this argument is inade- 
 quate. No merely external evidence of the 
 Divine character of the Scriptures is sufficient 
 to commend them to the love and faith of that 
 large class of thoroughly honest men and 
 women to whom modern criticism has ap- 
 pealed. The Bible is losing its hold upon so 
 many sincere minds, because it has been per- 
 verted by a vast amount of absurd interpreta- 
 tion, which men have not learned to separate 
 from the Revelation itself. Historical criti- 
 cism, useful as it may be in discovering what is 
 false in human interpretation, fails, for want 
 of a true doctrine of Divine Inspiration, to dis- 
 cern the universal and eternal Word of the 
 Lord in Sacred Scripture. Its present ten- 
 dency is to sweep away all Divine authority, 
 together with the traditions of men. **Lest, 
 therefore, mankind should be in doubt con- 
 cerning the Divinity and . sanctity of the 
 Word, its internal sense has been revealed, 
 which in its essence is spiritual, and is in the 
 external sense as the soul is in the body. That 
 sense is the soul which vivifies the letter ; 
 wherefore that sense can testify concerning 
 the Divine sanctity of the Word, and convince 
 
SPIRITUAL SEJSrSE. 161 
 
 even the natural man if he is willing to be 
 convinced." 
 
 I wish to give you some final reasons for 
 this faith, and shall endeavour to show {a) 
 the great present need in the Churches of the 
 doctrine of the internal sense ; and {b) that it is 
 the only answer to ske|)tical objections. 
 
 1. The new doctrine of the Internal Sense 
 of Holy Scripture is needed in the Churches, 
 because apart from it there is no practical 
 faith in the Bible as the Word of God. A 
 practical faith is a working faith. It must be, 
 as far as it goes, rational, assured, settled, con- 
 fident. It must be seen to inhere in the nature 
 of things; must be so justified and confirmed 
 as to become a principle of belief and conduct. 
 There is no such faith in the plenary Inspira- 
 tion of the Scriptures apart from the doctrine 
 of their internal sense. It is impossible that a 
 belief in their plenary Inspiration can co-exist 
 with a belief that they contain but one sense, 
 and that the literal sense. It might have 
 been possible once, when men believed what 
 they were taught without questioning the mat- 
 ter of belief or the authority of the teacher ; 
 but it is not possible in this day of intellectual 
 activity, when teachers debate and men weigh 
 
 evidence. This is shown not alone in the pres- 
 11 
 
162 SPIRITUAL SENSE. 
 
 ent confusion of opinion and timid, apologetic 
 defense of Revelation ; but also in the history 
 of the decline of the doctrine of Inspiration. 
 
 It is true that all Christian Churches agree 
 in confessing the Bible as the Word of God, 
 but upon no subject is there greater diversity 
 of opinion than upon the character and extent 
 of its Inspiration. " The consequence of the 
 study and application of the Bible, from the 
 period of the Beformation (says an orthodox 
 authority) ,r has been gradually and progres- 
 sively to limit the extent of Inspiration ; and 
 by so doing to vindicate (as was supposed) the 
 Holy Character of what is unquestionably of 
 Divine origin, and to make the application of 
 the rule of faith more sure." The belief in the 
 Spiritual sense of Scripture, which was cur- 
 rent in the primitive Church and prevailed 
 more or less extensively for fourteen centuries, 
 had suffered much discredit on account of fanci- 
 ful and absurd interpretations. Without any 
 rational doctrine of the inhabitation of the 
 Spiritual ser^se in the literal, and with no rule 
 of interpertation, the temptation to read human 
 fancies into the text led to appalling corruptions 
 of doctrine. The reaction, of course, was to 
 insist upon the authority of the literal sense- 
 of Scripture as its final sense ; but the doctrine 
 
SPIRITUAL SENSE, 163 
 
 of plenary Inspiration was still retained, in 
 name at least. There had been a belief in "an 
 entire inspiration of matter, words and com- 
 position generally;" but "at the period of the 
 Reformation, Luther placed the first limit on 
 this view, and contended that the matter only 
 was of Divine origin, the composition human." 
 With the gradual progress of inquiry and the 
 more diligent use of the Scriptures a further 
 limitation was put upon their inspiration, and 
 so much of the matter of the Bible as conflicted 
 with the developing facts of natural science, 
 was excluded. Then, with one portion of the 
 matter of the Bible excluded from the sphere 
 of Revelation, it was contended that state- 
 ments of fact which belonged not to Sacred but 
 to profane history, should be excluded on sim- 
 ilar grounds. Next was raised the question 
 whether even its Sacred history is inspired ; 
 and that question was answered in the nega- 
 tive with regard to all except such portions of 
 the historical record as involve a matter of 
 faith or practice. And proceeding on this 
 principle, as orthodox criticism has done, 
 namely, that the Bible is to be maintained as 
 " the rule of faith," and dogmatic truth the 
 only matter needing the control of Inspiration, 
 the reasoning of the inspired writers was next 
 
164 SPIBITVAL SENSE. 
 
 held to belong to themselves and not to the 
 Spirit. Hence, " the assertions, and not the 
 proofs, are the proper objects of unqualified 
 assent." 
 
 This gradual limitation of the extent of In- 
 spiration has proceeded upon the theory, it 
 must be remembered, that the Bible contains 
 but one sense, and that the sense of the letter ; 
 the "meaning which it had to the prophet or 
 evangelist who first uttered or wrote, to the 
 hearers or readers who first received it." Be- 
 hold, then, what a remarkable basis of faith 
 in Inspiration is left for the devout acceptance 
 of men ! After you have excluded all possi- 
 ble mystical meaning in any part of Scripture, 
 and confined its Inspiration to the plain gram- 
 matical sense of the letter ; after you have, ex- 
 cluded all that is peculiar in its composition; all 
 allusions to natural facts ; all matter of profane 
 history ; all religious history that is not abso- 
 lutely necessary to establish some dogma of 
 faith; all parables, illustrations and reason- 
 ings; everything but the exact, direct and 
 unequivocal assertion of matter of belief; — 
 that which is left over is not much. 
 
 It would be wrong to present this as a 
 statement of the accepted doctrine of Inspira- 
 tion. It is doubtful if the Latitudinarian 
 
SPIRITUAL SENSE, 165 
 
 School, which as we read the signs, is begin- 
 ning to prevail even in Orthodox Churches, 
 would accept the consequences of such a state- 
 ment. But it is seriously presented, notwith- 
 standing, as the logical conclusion required 
 by their frequent assertions and concessions, 
 however much their reverent feelings may 
 revolt against such an intellectual conclusion. 
 It is probable that most religious teachers 
 hope to maintain a truce between faith and 
 reason, and retain a real belief in the Divine 
 Origin and Inspiration of the Scriptures, while 
 allowing the admissions which the results of 
 criticism seem to require ; but it is a self-decep- 
 tion that cannot last. "So long as it was be- 
 lie ved,'' says a much respected authority, " that 
 each word and phrase to be found in the Bi- 
 ble — nay, even the order and grammatical 
 connection of such w^ords and phrases — had 
 been infused by the Holy Ghost into the 
 minds of the Sacred writers, or dictated to 
 them by His immediate suggestion, so long 
 must the opinion held respecting Inspiration 
 have been clear, intelligible, and accurately 
 defined. But such a theory could not stand 
 the test of close examination. The strongest 
 evidence against it has been supplied by 
 the Bible itself; and each additional discovery 
 
166 SPIRITUAL SENSE. 
 
 in the criticism of the Greek and Hebrew text 
 confirms anew the conclusion that the great 
 doctrine of the infallibility of Holy Scripture 
 can no longer rely upon such a principle for 
 its defense. The * mechanicah' theory (he con- 
 tinues) having been tacitly abandoned — at 
 least by all who are capable of appreciating 
 the results of criticism — and no systen alto- 
 gether satisfactory having been proposed in its 
 stead, there has gradually sprung up a want 
 of definiteness and an absence of consistency 
 in the language used when speaking of In- 
 spiration, owing to which those who are most 
 sincere in maintaining the Divine Character of 
 the Bible, have not infrequently been betrayed 
 into concessions fatal to its supreme authority." 
 {Lee on Inspiration, Preface,) This writer in 
 presenting the characteristic of "the great 
 majority of modern theories of Inspiration," 
 "that of ascribing undue prominence to the 
 human element of the Bible," reduces the vari- 
 eties of opinion which may be traced to this 
 source to the following : 
 
 " I. To the first head may be referred those 
 writers who have changed the formula *.The 
 Bible is the Word of God,' into ' The Bible 
 contains the Word of God.' Writers of this 
 class, while they generally shrink from abso- 
 
SPIRITUAL SEJSrSE. 16? 
 
 lutely drawing the line between what is and 
 what is not inspired, yet broadly assert as well 
 the possibility as the existence of imperfections 
 in Scripture, whether resulting from limited 
 knowledge, or inadvertance, or defective 
 memory on the part of its authors." 
 
 " II. Under the second head, may be placed 
 the different hypotheses which assume various 
 degrees of Inspiration. The tendency of all 
 such hypotheses," "is to fine down to the min- 
 utest point, if not altogether to deny, the agen- 
 cy of the * Holy Spirit in certain portions of 
 
 the Bible Where nature ended, and 
 
 Inspiration began, it is not for man to say.'" 
 
 "HI. The third head comprises Schleier- 
 macher and his followers ; the shibboleth of 
 whose school, in brief, is this : * The letter kill- 
 eth, the spirit giveth life.' The idea of Rev- 
 elation, according to Schleiermacher, is con- 
 fined to the 'person of Christ : the notion of In- 
 spiration he considers to be one of completely 
 subordinate importance in Christianity ; the 
 sole power which the Bible possesses of convey- 
 ing a Eevelation to us consisting in its aiding in 
 the awakening and elevation of our religious 
 conciousness ; in its presenting to us a mirror 
 of the history of Christ ; in its respecting the 
 intense religious life of His followers ; and in 
 
168 SPIRITUAL SENSE, 
 
 giving us the letter through which the Spirit 
 of Truth may be brought home in vital expe- 
 rience to the human heart.'" (Id. p. 34.) 
 
 Kejecting the doctrine of "mechanical" 
 Inspiration, and these theories which arise 
 from giving undue prominence to the " human 
 element " of the Bible, this author proposes a 
 theory of Inspiration by which he wishes to 
 retain the truth in each of the several systems 
 without their weaknesses and errors. He 
 makes a distinction between Kevelation and 
 Inspiration. By Bevelation he understands 
 " a direct communication to man, either of 
 such knowledge as man could not of himself 
 attain to, because its subject-matter transcends 
 human sagacity," " or which was not in point 
 of fact, from whatever cause, known to the 
 person who received the Revelation." By In- 
 spiration he understands " that actuating en- 
 ergy of the Holy Spirit, in whatever degree or 
 manner it may have been exercised, guided by 
 which the human agents chosen by God have 
 officially proclaimed His will." Upon this 
 theory some portions of the Scriptures cannot 
 be said to contain a Divine Bevelation ; but 
 they are all the result of Divine Inspiration. 
 This Inspiration " employs man's faculties in 
 accordance with their natural laws; at the 
 
SPIRITUAL SENSE, 169 
 
 same time animating, guiding, moulding them 
 so as to accomplish the Divine, purpose." 
 " We must not regard the Sacred penmen, on 
 the one hand, as passive machines, yielding to 
 an external mechanical force;" *^on the other 
 hand, if we dwell solely upon the subjective 
 phase of this influence, we lose sight of the 
 living connection of the writers with God." 
 In a word, the writers were themselves in the 
 fall possession of their faculties, and their own 
 knowledge of history and precept ; but they 
 were so guided and controlled by Inspiration, 
 and their knowledge so far supplemented by 
 supernatural Kevelation, that the result, 
 while partaking of the peculiarity of genius, 
 thought and feeling of the writer, is never- 
 theless Divine and authoritative (pp. 140,42). 
 This theory of Inspiration may be accepted, 
 we suppose, as substantially representing the 
 position of the most thoughtful among Ortho- 
 dox teachers in the Churches. It contains 
 many elements of truth, and so far as it goes, 
 it is capable of being harmonized with the 
 doctrine of an indwelling spiritual sense in all 
 Scripture. But standing alone, and predicated 
 of the mere literal sense of Scripture, it is ut- 
 terly indefensible. It fails to account for dis- 
 crepancies in facts and statements, for the want 
 
170 SPIRITUAL SENSE, 
 
 of chronological accuracy, for tlie unnatural 
 arrangement and confusion in the order of the 
 narrative, which are acknowledged on all 
 hands to exist in the Old Testament history. 
 It does not account for the different versions 
 of the same facts, nor for the seeming contra- 
 diction, both in the relation of the same facts, 
 and in the relation of other facts which ap- 
 pear to exclude each other, in the Gospels. 
 If the letter of the Bible is exclusively the 
 Word of God, containing no distinct spiritual 
 sense to account for these apparent difficulties, 
 they cannot be reconciled with any theory of 
 Inspiration which claims the Bible as a Di- 
 vine and authoritative record. " To suppose 
 a supernatural influence to cause the record of 
 that which can only issue in a puzzle, is to 
 lower infinitely our conceptions of the Divine 
 dealings in respect to a special revelation." 
 
 In estimating the need of a new doctrine of 
 the Sacred Scriptures in the Churches, there- 
 fore, we must consider, not alone what is put 
 forth as the theory of Inspiration, but also the 
 admissions and difficulties which, on the other 
 hand, render the doctrine as held indefensible. 
 It will be found {a) that among a majority of 
 the teachers in the Churches, the impression 
 prevails, not that the Bible is the Word of 
 
SPIBITUAL SEN'S!:, 171 
 
 God, but that it contains the Word of God ; 
 and that means, not that it contains an inter- 
 nal sense bj virtue of which it is Holy and 
 Divine, but that some things in it are true, and 
 some are not. Where the line is to be drawn, 
 what is to be accepted and what rejected, it is 
 not easy to determine, in the absence of any 
 better guide than the individual judgment. It 
 is manifest that such an uncertain faith in Di- 
 vine Revelation cannot hold its own poor 
 footing against the advance of a destructive 
 criticism. 
 
 It will be found {b) that there are teachers 
 in the Churches who contend that the Sacred 
 writers were so guided and controlled by In- 
 spiration as to have produced a record which, 
 with all its human elements, is still the Divine 
 and authoritative Word of God. But inas- 
 much as these hold the literal sense to be the 
 final sense of Scripture, they are left with no 
 defense against the destructive exhibit of his- 
 torical criticism, save their own naked asser- 
 tion. It will be found {c) that these diffi- 
 culties are becoming more clearly appreciated, 
 both by the Orthodox and liberal teachers in 
 the Churches. The Rev. Moses Smith voices 
 the feeling of a large number of sincere and 
 able ministers when he writes, ** Wanted : 
 
172 SPIBITUAL SJEN'SJE. 
 
 A new statement of the doctrine of the Inspi- 
 ration of the Bible." " Modern scholarship," 
 he says, " has made large advances in restor- 
 ing the original Scripture text ; scientific 
 discoveries have notably improved Biblical 
 interpretation. Some modification of state- 
 ment in regard to Inspiration would naturally 
 be expected. Such modification has become 
 imnerative. The old forms of statement, in 
 the face of modern criticism, are like stone 
 forts and wooden frigates in the face of mod- 
 ern ordinance and iron-clads." 
 
 The defect thus confessed is not alone in the 
 inadequate statement, however, but in the fal- 
 lacious conception of the Divine character of 
 the Scriptures. What is needed is a doctrine 
 able to maintain itself, and capable, therefore, 
 of supporting a rational, assured, settled, con- 
 fident faith. This characteristic the new doc- 
 trine of the Internal Sense presents. It is not 
 disturbed by any conflict between the cos- 
 mogany of the Pentateuch and science, nor by 
 historical inaccuracies, nor by literal contra- 
 dictions even, since it declares the purpose of 
 Scripture is to teach neither science, nor histor 
 ry, nor formulated dogma, but spiritual prin- 
 ciples. It is not affected by the obscurities of 
 the letter, for it possesses a rule of interpreta- 
 
SPIBITUAL SEJSrSE. 173 
 
 tion by which to resolve the apparent confu- 
 sion of the literal symbols and representatives 
 into the light and harmony of spiritual truth. 
 It makes little difference to a faith resting 
 upon this doctrine, whether the Pentateuch 
 were written by Moses or copied from older 
 documents; little diTorence whether it be 
 myth or fact that is recorded. For it accepts 
 as the primary aim of the Word the revela- 
 tion of spiritual truth ; and for this purpose a 
 myth may in some instances be more service- 
 able than a fact ; a fragmentary history more 
 useful than exact Chronicle. What this doc- 
 trine requires is, that in every instance, wheth- 
 er myth or fact, the record shall contain a 
 distinct spiritual meaning corresponding with 
 the sense of the letter ; and the presence of 
 such a meaning alone constitutes its full or 
 " plenary " Inspiration. The peculiarities in 
 the record which are brought to light in the 
 progress of science or criticism, will be wel- 
 comed in the light of this doctrine as so many 
 instances of the supremacy of the Spiritual 
 Sense ; and if the doctrine be true it will be 
 able to show that these peculiarities of the 
 letter only minister to the sequence and per- 
 fection of the spiritual meaning. Such a 
 doctrine the Churches need; and nothing but 
 
174: SPIRITUAL SENSE. 
 
 its acceptance can save them from practical re- 
 jection of the Word of God. 
 
 I do not forget that the Bible is able to 
 commend itself to simple faith ; that it has 
 met, and does now meet, the spiritual wants 
 of many sincere Christian people who have 
 never been disturbed by the clamors of criti- 
 cism, and who have never attempted to define 
 the doctrine of Inspiration. They know that 
 they have always been accustomed to regard 
 the Bible as God's Word, and beyond this 
 they only know that they find in it when they 
 seek the Bread of Life. But these simple- 
 minded Christians do really and most practi- 
 cally believe in the Spiritual sense of the Bible ; 
 and it is this which makes itself felt through 
 their unshaken faith, and gives them wisdom 
 above their teachers. Once destroy that faith, 
 by persistent and confusing objections, and 
 thenceforth " one suggestion of doubt will have 
 more weight than a thousand confirmations." 
 It is precisely this which is being done. Peo- 
 ple are taught to think of the letter alone, and 
 they hear this attacked on every side by the 
 most specious objections. They observe that 
 most of what is written by their orthodox and 
 trusted teachers is directed to the defense of the 
 authenticity of the Sacred books, or to the 
 
SPIRITUAL SENSE, 175 
 
 reconciliation of Genesis and Geology, or the 
 harmonizing of historical discrepancies; they 
 observe the accumulating strength of skeptical 
 objections, and the demoralization of their own 
 forces, and losing thus the reverence of tradi- 
 tion, and finding no rational basis of faith, they 
 are without the S[)iritual qualifications for per- 
 ceiving the Divine Spirit and life that flow in 
 through the Word. The man who has grown 
 up with a sincere and humble reverence for 
 God's message to him in His Holy Book, and 
 has actually tested its commands in his life's 
 experience, knows that it is Divine by the sur- 
 est of all testimony : " Wherea3 I was blind, 
 now I see." But such is not the condition of 
 the rising generation, nor of any great number 
 of professing Christians; they have passed from 
 the state of traditional faith into a skepticism, 
 out of which there is no way but through 
 rational evidence and intellectual conviction. 
 They must be taught rationally to see that 
 there is an internal Spiritual sense everywhere 
 present in Holy Scripture, by virtue of which 
 it is Divine, and then they may if they will, 
 reverence it as God's Word, and compelling 
 themselves to obey it as such, confirm their 
 rational faith in Spiritual experience. 
 
 11. We have now to consider the doctrine 
 
176 SPIRITUAL SEJSrSE. 
 
 of the Internal Sense in its relation to skepti- 
 cal objections. The first general answer which 
 this doctrine presents to all skeptical objections 
 founded upon the appearances of the letter of 
 Holy Scripture is this : " Admitting all the 
 difficulties which you have brought forward, 
 the fair inference from such appearances is, 
 not that the Scriptures are uninspired, but that 
 if they are, they must contain that superior wis- 
 dom which is the criterion of Inspiration, in an 
 interior sense distinct from the literal expression- 
 We find in the Scriptures numerous intimations 
 leading us to look for something beyond the 
 letter; the difficulties you have raised are cal- 
 culated to turn our attention in the same direc- 
 tion ; you have produced nothing that can con- 
 vince a reflecting mind that the Scriptures are 
 not the Word of God; you only compel us to 
 correct our conceptions, and take higher views 
 as to what the Word of God must really be; 
 your objections hold mainly against your 
 first assumed canon of interpretation, namely : 
 that the Scriptures contain but one sense and 
 that the literal sense ; they judge your own 
 position, and sustain the first conclusion of 
 reason that a Eevelation which is really from 
 God, must contain the mind of God — not upon 
 its face but within its bosom." 
 
ms^ 
 
 SPIRITUAL SEK^. 
 
 This answer does not indeed prove that the 
 Scriptures are the Word of God, but it indi- 
 cates the proper attitude of the inquirer, and 
 establishes a ruling principle of criticism, 
 which the objections drawn from the letter of 
 Scripture in no way invalidate, but rather 
 strengthen. This principle is, that the evi- 
 dences of Divine Inspiration, and the final and 
 harmonizing sense of Scripture, is to be sought 
 for within, and not without. If the matter to 
 be revealed is the Divine and Infinite wisdom, 
 and God has nothing else to reveal; if those to 
 whom it is to be adapted and revealed are im- 
 mersed in evils and fallacies ; it follows as a 
 necessary conclusion that the real matter of 
 Revelation must be involved in earthly sym- 
 bols and representatives, and that it is to be 
 sought within the symbols and representatives 
 and not confounded with them. Strong pre- 
 sumptive evidence in favor of this position is 
 furnished in the facts, (a), that the Scriptures 
 repeatedly make this claim for themselves ; (5) 
 that it was accepted and made the basis of 
 interpretation in the Primitive Church; (c) 
 that it has been tacitly accepted and practically 
 followed by all earnest Christians who have 
 realized the highest experiences of Spiritual 
 life, and {d)^ that the symbols and representa- 
 
 12 
 
178 SPIBITVAL SENSE. 
 
 tives of the letter, as examined and compared 
 in the light of modern criticism, cannot be 
 understood as presenting the genuine Divine 
 truth upon their face, and must be regarded as 
 its clothing and representative mirror, or as 
 unworthy of reverence. 
 
 In the face of all this it ought not to seem 
 impossible nor improbable that there is a Di- 
 vine Law governing the inhabitation of Spirit- 
 ual wisdom in the letter of Scripture, and that 
 that law should be revealed in the Church and 
 become a universal rule of interpretation. 
 These considerations should, at least, create in 
 the earnest truth-seeker, an affirmative attitude 
 of mind, toward the doctrine of an internal 
 sense, and that established, the rest is a matter 
 of fact. It is incumbent upon the doctrine of 
 the internal sense to demonstrate its fitness, and 
 upon its doctrine of Correspondence to show 
 its reality by its ability to unlock the symbols 
 of the letter, and explain the peculiarities of 
 the literal record. This we claim it will do 
 for the inquirer who approaches in an affirma- 
 tive state of mind. But he must guard against 
 prejudice as an end of inquiry. He must ad- 
 mit the possibility provisionally or he cannot 
 proceed. I have done what I could in former 
 lectures to throw light upon the general sub- 
 
SPIRITUAL SERSE. 179 
 
 ject in such a way as to create this aflSrmative 
 attitude of inquiry. Whoever is ready for 
 proofs, and willing to see them if they are 
 valid, may find them in Swedenborg's Arcana 
 Coelestia, or in the expository works of the 
 New Church, where the actual working power 
 of the doctrine of Correspondence, as a rule of 
 interpretation, is presented. For my present 
 purpose I must again assume these evidences 
 perfect, that I may proceed to state in brief 
 the answers of this doctrine to some of the 
 particular objections of skepticism. 
 
 (1) As to the Authenticity of the Canon. 
 We are told that "the ablest critics agree only 
 in the opinion that no safe opinion can be pro- 
 nounced," "as to when, or by whom, or on 
 what principle" the Jewish Canon was estab- 
 lished, and that it is equally impossible to tell 
 when or by whom the four Gospels were writ- 
 ten. This difficulty is urged against the In- 
 spiration and Divine authority of the Scriptures 
 on the assumption that such authority is inad- 
 missible unless you can authenticate an inspir- 
 ed writer and "a perfect two-thousand-year- 
 long chain of preservation and transmission" 
 of the original writing. It is to be regretted 
 that the defenders of the Bible should seem to 
 admit this assumption in accepting the issue. 
 
180 SPIRITUAL SENSE. 
 
 It is well enough for historical critics to bring 
 to light what facts they are able in regard to 
 the authenticity of the Sacred books, but it is a 
 mistake to rest the question of Inspiration upon 
 external evidences of authenticity ; (a) , Because 
 external evidence in such matters is exceed- 
 ingly uncertain, and may be easily used to 
 confirm any hypothesis with which the inves- 
 tigation is begun. The results of criticism 
 show that this is the case, and that opposite 
 schools can with great show of success press the 
 uncertain data to the support of opposite conclu- 
 sions, {h), Because it is not a primary question. 
 Its settlement determines nothing with re- 
 spect to the Divine character and Spiritual value 
 of the document. If the authorship and pre- 
 cise transmission could be perfectly authenti- 
 cated by external evidence, the question of In- 
 spiration would be just as far from being set- 
 tled, and the characteristics of the writings 
 just as difficult of explanation. Error uttered 
 by an inspired writer is no more truth than 
 the error of an uninspired one, and the primary 
 question is not as to the human authorship, but 
 as to the Divine content of the Scriptures. 
 Our answer to all objections based upon the 
 difficulty of authenticating by external evi- 
 dence the authorship and purity of the Sacred 
 
SPIRITUAL SENSE. 181 
 
 text is this : The Scriptures are Divine by 
 virtue of a distinct Spiritual sense exactly with- 
 in the letter ; the Science of Correspondence 
 discloses such a sense, it is, therefore, the true 
 test of Divine authenticity. I must remind 
 you again, that this Science of Correspondence 
 is a definite and teachable system ; that it 
 can be studied and applied, and the re- 
 sults examined in the light of reason ; that it 
 has been so studied and applied, and the result 
 is an intelligible, serial and consistent Spiritual 
 sense in verse after verse, and book after book, 
 and that to those, who, from examination, are 
 alone competent to judge, the rule of interpreta- 
 tion and the Spiritual sense elicited verify each 
 other. If, now, it should be demonstrable thiat 
 Genesis yields upon the application of this 
 science a serial and harmonious Spiritual sense 
 in all respects worthy of a Divine Revelation, 
 and the book of Proverbs does not ; then any 
 reasonable man must conclude that the Divine 
 content of Genesis is its authentication, even 
 though there should be no evidence of any kind 
 that it was written by Moses, or any one man 
 at any one time, and though there should be 
 the most unmistakable evidence, on the other 
 hand, that the Proverbs were written by their 
 reputed author. If the rule of interpretation 
 
182 SPIRITUAL SEJSFSE. 
 
 were a loose and imperfect key, unlocking 
 some passages or even some chapters, and fail- 
 ing in others, it could scarcely be accepted as 
 the test of the Divine Canon. But such is not 
 its character. It unlocks the intelligible secret 
 of those books which bear upon their face the 
 claim to be the Word of God. It applies with 
 equally happy results to the Pentateuch and to 
 the Four Gospels, to the Pslams and to the 
 Prophets, showing in each and all a connected 
 and harmonious internal sense. In the face of 
 such internal evidence, the conjectures and 
 debates of the critics from their uncertain his- 
 torical data, is mere ingenious trifling, and 
 the most sober and assured results of literary 
 criticism possess only a secondary value. 
 
 (2) As to the Mythical element in Sacred 
 Scripture, We are told that much of the 
 Scriptures which is historical in form is mythi- 
 cal in fact, that the writings of the Hebrews, 
 like the earliest writings of all nations, are 
 mythical, and that, therefore, they are of hu- 
 man origin and possess no more Divine au- 
 thority than other writings. It is asked, "can 
 a book like Genesis or Exodus, made up largely 
 of legends, be of equal value as history with a 
 later book which really is history." A very 
 pertinent question, if you wish to obscure the 
 
SPIRITUAL SEJSrSE, 183 
 
 whole subject by assuming that the main pur- 
 pose of the Scriptures is to teach history, and 
 their value to be tested by historical accuracy. 
 This assumption, however, we deny. No critic, 
 orthodox or heterodox, has ever presented any 
 good reason for it. It certainly was not a doc- 
 trine of Primitive Christianity; it certainly is 
 not promotive of Spiritual thought or religious 
 faith. There is much more wisdom and Spirit- 
 uality in the position taken by a clergyman of 
 the English Church recently, who, declaring 
 his belief in the Inspiration of the Bible, says; 
 "I believe the Spirit of God, not only moved 
 by secret impulses the minds of the Sacred 
 writers, but also overruled to a great extent the 
 ipsissima verba of Holy writ. And nowhere 
 do I feel (rightly or wrongly) the Divine In- 
 spiration more strongly and pervadingly, than 
 in the early record of Genesis; every sentence, 
 as Augustine says, contains a mystery. And 
 yet I do regard these records as myths, and I 
 think that all the efforts made to reconcile their 
 statements with historv and with science are 
 only so much industry thrown away." This 
 is the true position, and a perfectly natural 
 and consistent one if we start with the assump- 
 tion of the real claim of the Scriptures that they 
 are God-inspired and profitable for instruction 
 
184: SPIRITUAL SENSE. 
 
 in righteousness. Then, manifestly, a myth 
 may be more serviceable as a vehicle of Di- 
 vine and Spiritual truth than the most dog- 
 matical form of doctrine, or the most exact 
 statement of historical fact. That we should 
 find both a Divine and a human element in 
 the Bible, and that the human element should 
 be variable, in adaptation to the changing cast 
 of thought of successive ages, is precisely 
 what we should expect in a written Revela- 
 tion. That the earliest written forms of 
 Divine Revelation should receive a mythical 
 expression, is in entire agreement with what 
 we know of the genius of the ancients. Why 
 then should we conclude that because a myth- 
 ical element is found in the Bible, the Divine 
 must be wanting? Such an assumption, is 
 wholly gratuitous and inconclusive, and is of 
 a piece with the insane notion of "develop- 
 ment," that would trace everything back to 
 nothing. If any one chooses to believe that 
 the ancient myths and legends had their ori- 
 gin in ignorance and superstition, he is indeed 
 entitled to his choice; but he should know 
 that the facts presented by comparative my- 
 thology require no such conclusion, and lend 
 to it no color of truth, unless you deny before 
 hand that there is a God, or, being one, that 
 
SPIRITUAL SENSE. 185 
 
 He is able to reveal Himself to man. What 
 modern learning has done is this: "It traces 
 the widely-scattered families of our race to- 
 day, through the mazes of diverse languages, 
 myths and religions, to our common old 
 Aryan homestead ;" and shows us, " looming 
 forth from the mists of past ages, the great 
 trunk of a primitive religion and an Ancient 
 Word, of which all the various religions and 
 sacred traditions of later times are but the nu- 
 merous and fruitful branches." The attempt 
 to construct this primitive religion out of 
 natural elements alone, and to refer it to the 
 so-called Solar and Lunar Deities, or the su- 
 perstitious reverence for natural phenomena, 
 explains nothing but the pre-conceptions of 
 those who invent it. 
 
 We believe that these myths, legends, tales 
 of the gods, pictures of the qualities and attri- 
 butes and operations of the one God in his 
 dealings with men, had their origin not in 
 darkness, but in light ; — in that spiritual wis- 
 dom and open revelation enjoyed by the Most 
 Ancient Church, when Nature was to them 
 full of the Divine Spirit and life, which then, 
 in orderly influx, was communicated from the 
 Deitv without the need of a written Word. 
 At first, creation was to them an open book of 
 
186 SPIRITUAL SENSE, 
 
 symbols, a mirror of Divine and Spiritual 
 things ; but when this faculty of intuitive per- 
 ception began to decline, in consequence of 
 their turning to sensuous things for their own 
 sake instead of regarding them as the means 
 of heavenly intelligence and use, whilst yet 
 among the wisest a desire for the knowledge 
 of heavenly things remained, then they per- 
 petuated by instruction those things which 
 had before been known by intuition. Thus 
 originated mythical stories and allegorical 
 histories, by which were expressed, by means 
 of analogies taken from nature and human 
 conduct, the spiritual truths which had at the 
 first been intuitively perceived in their natural 
 correspondences and representatives. They 
 described spiritual and interior subjects, in 
 language borrowed from the appearances of 
 nature, in allegory and myth, without danger 
 of such forms of expression being misunder- 
 stood as literal statement of ordinary fact. 
 The earliest form of Divine Revelation as- 
 sumed, therefore, a mythical expression, as a 
 necessary adaptation to the genius of the peo- 
 ple to whom it was given ; and the first eleven 
 chapters of Genesis, copied from the ancient 
 Word, are illustrations of the purely correspon- 
 dential style of the primitive Eevelation. 
 
SPIRITUAL SENSE. ISt 
 
 The various mythologies are but branches of 
 this ancient trunk of Revelation ; they point 
 with wonderful distinctness to their common 
 pre-historic origin ; they bear in their bosoms, 
 buried under many corruptions, the Divine 
 wisdom which is veiled in the natural symbol- 
 ism and allegory of our written Bible; and the 
 Science of Correspondence which opens to our 
 wondering vision a complete and serial spirit- 
 ual sense within the latter, furnishes also a 
 key to the lost meaning and uniform origin of 
 all sacred myths. When, therefore, it is ob- 
 jected, that much which purports to be a his- 
 tory of God's dealings with men, and of the 
 order and time of creation, possesses neither 
 historical nor scientific value — is in fact mere 
 fable and myth, without any Divine Author- 
 ity — we admit the fact, and deny the conclu- 
 sion. And while modern criticism can only 
 substantiate the fact, the doctrine of the Inter- 
 nal Sense gives a reason for the fact and veri- 
 fies its reason by the exhibit of an intelligible 
 Spiritual Sense in each and every fabulous 
 history and so-called mythical interpolation, 
 in its place. We may class also under this 
 head all of those objections which are founded 
 upon such peculiarities of the text as, (a) the 
 want of chronological accuracy, {b) historical 
 
188 SPIRITUAL SENSE. 
 
 discrepancies, (c) the recurrence of round 
 numbers, such as are popularly supposed to 
 possess a mystical meaning, {d) repetitions of 
 the same fact or narrative under different con- 
 ditions, or in relation to different persons, {e) 
 an unnatural arrangement and dislocation of 
 the narrative in many places, and (/) the 
 existence of poetical and mystical forms of 
 speech. These peculiarities, so troublesome to 
 the critic who bases his investigations upon 
 the assumption that the literal sense is the only 
 sense, are seen from the standpoint of the in- 
 ternal sense to furnish no ground of objection 
 to the Divine Inspiration of the Scriptures, 
 but on the contrary, are actually required to 
 contain and express that sense. 
 
 (3) As to the apparent sanction of im- 
 mortality. The answer to this whole class of 
 objections,was really furnished in the discourse 
 on the Principle of Adaptation ; that Divine 
 truth, in order to make itself apprehensible in 
 any form to such a people as the Jews, and com- 
 pel their obedience to any laws of Divine order, 
 must necessarily be expressed in accommoda- 
 tion to their carnal state and fallacious notions. 
 Every Revelation is and must be an accom- 
 modation of the matter so revealed to the states 
 and capacities of those to whom it has come. It 
 
SPIRITUAL SEJSrSE, 189 
 
 must therefore of necessity indicate two things : 
 the mode in which it is made will indicate the 
 states and character of those to whom it was 
 originally given ; the substance of the Reve- 
 lation will indicate the matter which was to be 
 made known. Every Divine Kevelation must 
 therefore contain both genuine and apparent 
 truths — truth as it is, and truth as it appears to 
 those to whom it is revealed. The appearance 
 does stand for a reality, just as do the falla- 
 cies of the senses in man's relation to the 
 world ; and those who regard them in simplic- 
 ity and regulate their conduct accordingly 
 are clearly gainers. The appearances of 
 truth in the letter of the Word simply indi- 
 cate the states and character of man, to whom 
 the genuine truth was thus accommodated; 
 they are therefore the fallacious aspects of 
 truths which only h^Q^mQ falsities when they 
 are confirmed as the real and only truth. 
 The presence of such appearances does not 
 argue the absence of a Divine reality, any 
 more than the apparent rising of the sun ar- 
 gues the absence of a law of planetary rota- 
 tion. The Spiritual sense opens to us this 
 Divine reality and genuine truth ; enables us 
 to see the cause of its fallacious presentation 
 in the letter; and removes all objection to its 
 
190 SPIRITUAL SENSE, 
 
 Divine character arising from such appear- 
 ances. We have applied this explanation in 
 a former discourse to the wars of the Jews, 
 and do not need to dwell upon it here. Once 
 admit that the Israelites were chosen merely to 
 represent the subjects belonging to the Church, 
 and consider all the leading characters in the 
 record as representatives and types, rather 
 than patterns, and all difficulties arising from 
 the questionable morality of some of them 
 disappears. We then see how the record may 
 be essentially the Word of God, notwith- 
 standing the craft imputed to the immediate 
 founders of the nation their adherence to 
 eastern manners in regard to the intercourse 
 of the sexes, and the acts of violence and 
 treachery committed. Granted these immor- 
 alities, and even the apparent imputation of 
 the Divine sanction; what then? It only 
 shows that the Jews were not the subjects of 
 a real church, possessing the inward principles 
 of spiritual life, but only of the type of a 
 church — of a dispensation representing by 
 external acts the operation of spiritual prin- 
 ciples, in which they had no actual participa- 
 tion. And when these spiritual principles 
 are unfolded by the science of Correspond- 
 ence, the record is seen not as offering a pattern 
 
SPIBITTTAZ SEIsrSE. 191 
 
 of conduct, but as a Divine mirror constructed 
 from earthly materials for the reflection of the 
 wisdom of heaven ; and the mirror passes from 
 the thought in the contemplation of the glori- 
 ous imasre which it reflects. 
 
 (4) As to infallihility. It is objected that 
 whatever view is taken of the Scriptures, and 
 in whatever way they may be held as being or 
 containing the Word of God, they are not in- 
 fallible. They do teach error, and they do 
 mislead. They teach one set of doctrines to 
 one class of men, and another to others. They 
 hold out to the simple expectations which are 
 continually disappointed, and must forever be 
 impossible of fulfillment. Now, all that de- 
 pends on what you mean by infallible. If you 
 mean that the Scriptures should contain no 
 errors of history, or of science, or of dogmatic 
 precept — that they should not only be free from 
 false and fallacious representations, but that 
 they should be able to prevent the possibility 
 of mistake or misapprehension on the part of 
 their readers, then we grant that the Scriptures 
 are not infallible in such a sense. It is not 
 possible, in the nature of the human mind, 
 that any, even a Divine Communication, how- 
 ever true in itself, can insure man against the 
 misapprehension of its message. Nor is it pos- 
 
192 SPIRITUAL SENSE, 
 
 sible that it could make itself in any way appre- 
 hensible and secure man's attention and obedi- 
 ence, without presenting many fallacious ap- 
 pearances of truth in accomodation to his perver- 
 ted understanding and perverse heart. Much 
 less is it necessary that a Divine communication 
 with a purely moral and spiritual purpose 
 should be free from historical and scientific in- 
 acuracy. But if by infallibility you mean what 
 is perfectly and unerringly adapted for the ac- 
 complishment ^iits own end, and that it will 
 not mislead those who put their trust in it as 
 a guide to that end ; then the Word is infallible 
 indeed, and its infallibility proven by cen- 
 turies of human experience, and multitudes of 
 witnesses. That you do not find it infallible 
 when judged by your scientific standards of 
 truth is not strange, since it is not offered as a 
 guide to such truth. That you should find it 
 contradictory and misleading when you ap- 
 proach it with minds pre-occupied with theories 
 foreign to its purpose, or a skepticism that 
 renders the reception of instruction impossible, 
 is the result, not of anything in its own char- 
 acter, but of your own mental state. But as 
 a guide to righteousness, to those who seek it 
 as a message from God, willing to learn and 
 do what it teaches it is infallible, in that it is 
 
SPIRITUAL SEN'SE. 193 
 
 infinitely competent to the accomplishment of 
 that end, and infinitely adapted to all human 
 states, of all sorts and conditions, good or bad, 
 wise or foolish. In this respect it is not only 
 free from error, but is altogether above and 
 beyond criticism.. We do not say that the 
 Scriptures carry upon their face the sciences 
 of theology and pneumatology, any more 
 than nature carries her sciences upon her sur- 
 face; nor that they are able to preserve men 
 from false conclusions from fallacious appear- 
 ances ; but that the appearances of truth which 
 the Scriptures present are precisely such as to 
 best guide the life of the man to whom they 
 appeal. Theological accuracy, even, is some- 
 thing which the Scriptures do not profess to^ 
 infallibly guarantee; and all objections to the 
 Bible on this score of its fallibility, are di- 
 rected against a dogmatic position of protest- 
 ant Churches, and not any claim or profession 
 which the Bible itself presents. This is true 
 in fact of all the objections which I have no- 
 ticed, as well as the many which I must 
 pass over ; — they avail nothing whatever 
 against the Word of God as it is in itself, hut 
 only against the literalistic interpretations 
 and narrow sectarian claims which commonly 
 prevail. 
 
 13 
 
194 SPIRITUAL SENSE, 
 
 Those who seek the bread of Life in the 
 Scriptures find that its doctrines are doctrines 
 of life. Their history and prophetic imagery 
 are but the clothing of thought, and when we 
 get at the thought we get knowledge and ex- 
 perience of spiritual things, not natural; princi- 
 ples of life and not merely definitions of belief. 
 But all who ever did come to a knowledge of 
 the inner things of Holy Scripture had to pass 
 through many states, and in passing through 
 them, to experience many changes. Things 
 which seemed as enduring as the heavens and 
 the earth, w^ere, in the experience of those 
 changes, found to be not enduring, but only 
 intended to serve in their temporary continu- 
 ance, things which are eternal. They have 
 rested on some conception as in the very heart 
 of truth, and then coming again into states of 
 inquiry, have learned that their conception is 
 only partial ; that there is greater breadth upon 
 the commandment and unexplored instruction 
 in the bosom of song or story. Mistakes have 
 to be corrected, false notions dispelled, and the 
 world of partial ideas in wliich they lived 
 must pass away, both its heaven and its earth ; 
 for our thoughts with respect to the Lord 
 change as well as our thoughts of human duty. 
 But in all these changes it is not the real truth 
 
SPIBITUAL SEXSE. 195 
 
 which passes away. All that is real remains, 
 and with this all that is new and true coal- 
 esces — the Word of the Lord shall not pass 
 away. 
 
 So now in the Church, .this which indi- 
 viduals have often experienced, is taking 
 place upon a larger scale. The heavens and 
 earth of human interpretation are passing 
 away, that it may be known that they are not 
 the Word of the Lord, that endureth forever. 
 The denial of the Spiritual sense of the Word, 
 which is latent in the literal interpretations 
 and naturalistic theories of Inspiration cur- 
 rent in the churches, is itself the triumph of 
 infidelity. It is thus that the letter kills. 
 And doubtless in the Divine Providence, the 
 skepticism which so often accompanies modern 
 critical studies is being turned to use in the 
 destruction and dissipation of those unworthy 
 views and false interpretations, that the 
 Church of the future mav know and teach that 
 "it is the Spirit that quickeneth." Because 
 we believe that the day is at hand when the 
 falsifications and perversions of the Word of 
 God, to which the ver}- Word itself is made 
 subservient in the strongholds of so-called or- 
 thodoxy, shall pass away ; when the dogmas, 
 which are held in supremacy to the Word 
 
196 SPIRITUAL SENSE. 
 
 from which they profess to be drawn, must be 
 given up, willingly or unwillingly ; we, there- 
 fore, offer you the intellectual help of the doc- 
 trine of the Internal Sense and of the science 
 of Correspondence, for the strengthening of 
 your faith in the internal glory and Divinity 
 of the Word. Be assured that if the Church 
 is to arise with power, if faith is to con- 
 tinue and exercise a power in the life of 
 man and of society, the Word of God must 
 be vindicated as the channel of truth eter- 
 nal. This is the purport we believe of that 
 prophetic vision of the river of life, proceeding 
 out of the throne of God. You shall see if you 
 improve your privileges, the self-attesting Di- 
 vine truth issuing from the very heart of God, 
 full of the power of His Life — a power which 
 is not in words, nor in dogma, but in the in- 
 breathed Spirit of Divine Life, transforming 
 mind and heart. You will look in vain in his- 
 tory and science, as such, for this power of life 
 unto salvation; it is not even identified with the 
 letter of law and precept, but is in them flowing 
 out of the Divine fullness. You will find this 
 spirit and life that quickeneth — not by looking 
 at, but by looking through, the letter of Holy 
 Scripture. And if you will use the means 
 which by the mercy of the Lord, are at this day 
 
SPIRITUAL SENSE, 197 
 
 furnished in the restored doctrine of Corres- 
 pondence, you may see and know intellectually 
 and rationally this spiritual character and 
 Divine sufl&ciency of the Word of God. " We 
 testify that we do know," for our eyes have seen 
 what we would that you should see also, " that 
 I may be comforted together with you, by the 
 mutual faith both of you and me." Amen. 
 
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