The Gist of Swedenborg | Page 2

condition of the Christian Church, revealed in otherworld judgment
to be one of spiritual devastation and impotency. To serve in the
revelation of "doctrine for a New Church" became his Divinely
appointed work. He forwent his reputation as a man of science, gave up
his assessorship, cleared his desk of everything but the Scriptures. He
beheld in the Word of God a spiritual meaning, as he did a spiritual
world in the world of phenomena. In revealing both of these the Lord,
he said, made His Second Coming. For the rest of his long life
Swedenborg gave himself with unremitting labor but with a saving
calm to this commanding cause, publishing his great Latin volumes of
Scripture interpretation and of theological teaching at Amsterdam or
London, at first anonymously, and distributing them to clergy and
universities. The titles of his principal theological works appear in the
following compilation from them. Upon his death-bed this herald of a
new day for Christianity solemnly affirmed the reality of his experience
and the reception by him of his teaching from the Lord.
Swedenborg died in London, March 29, 1772. In 1908 his remains
were removed from the Swedish Church in that city to the cathedral at

Upsala, where they lie in a monument erected to his memory by the
Swedish Parliament.
WILLIAM F. WUNSCH.
Documents Concerning the Life and Character of Swedenborg (3 vols.)
1875-1877, R.L. Tafel, is the main collection of biographical material;
_The Life and Mission of Emanuel Swedenborg_, 1883, Benjamin
Worcester, and _Emanuel Swedenborg, His Life, Teachings and
Influence_, 1907, George Trobridge, are two of the better known
biographies.

THE GIST OF SWEDENBORG
"At this day nothing but the self-evidenced reason of love will
re-establish the Church."--_Canons_, Prologue.

GOD THE LORD
"Believe in God: believe also in Me."
_John_, XIV, 1
"My Lord, and my God!"
_John_, XX, 28
ONE AND INFINITE
God is One, and Infinite. The true quality of the Infinite does not
appear; for the human mind, however highly analytical and exalted, is
itself finite, and the finiteness in it cannot be laid aside. It is not fitted,
therefore, to see the Infinity of God, and thus God, as He is in Himself,
but can see God from behind in shadow; as it is said of Moses, when he
asked to see God, that he was placed in a cleft of the rock, and saw His
hinder side. It is enough to acknowledge God from things finite, that is,
created, in which He is infinitely.
--_True Christian Religion, n._ 28
"INTO HIS MARVELLOUS LIGHT"
We read in the Word that Jehovah God dwells in light inaccessible.
Who, then, could approach Him, unless He had come to dwell in
accessible light, that is, unless He had descended and assumed a
Humanity and in it had become the Light of the world? Who cannot see
that to approach Jehovah the Father in His light is as impossible as to

take the wings of the morning and to fly with them to the sun?
--_True Christian Religion, n._ 176
THE CHRIST-GOD
We ought to have faith in God the Saviour, Jesus Christ, because that is
faith in the visible God in Whom is the Invisible; and faith in the
visible God, Who is at once Man and God, enters into man. For while
faith is spiritual in essence it is natural in form, for everything spiritual,
in order to be anything with a man, is received by him in what is
natural.
--_True Christian Religion, n._ 339
Man's conjunction with the Lord is not with His supreme Divine Being
itself, but with His Divine Humanity, and by this with the supreme
Divine Being; for man can have no idea whatever of the supreme
Divine Being of the Lord, utterly transcending his thought as it does;
but of His Divine Human Being he can have an idea. Hence the Gospel
according to John says that no one has at any time seen God except the
only-begotten Son, and that there is no approach to the Father save by
Him. For the same reason He is called a Mediator.
--_Arcana Coelestia, n._ 4211
GOD-MAN
In the Lord, God and Man are not two but one Person, yea, altogether
one, as soul and body are. This is plain in many of the Lord's own
utterances; as that the Father and He are one; that all things of the
Father are His, and all His the Father's; that He is in the Father, and the
Father in Him; that all things are given into His hand; that He has all
power; that whosoever believes in Him has eternal life; that He is God
of heaven and earth.
--_Doctrine Concerning the Lord, n._ 60
There is one God, and the Lord is He, His Divinity