1042, 
 

 ;r'/^?^.% 
 
 
 \' * 
 
 #/: ■%^^"' 
 
I 
 
A 
 
ON 
 
 THE DANGERS 
 
 or 
 
 MODERN SPIRITUALISM. 
 
 WILLIAM B. HAYDE:^', 
 
 MINISTER or THE NEW JERUSALEM AT PORTLAND, MAINB. 
 
 -".J 
 
 FOURTH EDITION, REVISED. 
 
 ^/ 
 
 
 
 NEW YOKK: 
 
 
 PUBLISHED BY THE 
 
 NEW 
 
 CHURCH TRACT SOCIETY, 
 
 
 20 COOPEE UNION. 
 
 
 1870. 
 

 Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1870, by the 
 
 NEW CHURCH TRACT SOCIETY, 
 
 In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, in "Washington. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 LECTURE I. 
 
 The structure of the natural body viewed in its analogies to the spirit — 
 the spirit in the human form — the spiritual body dwells within the 
 natural body, and at death is evolved from it — the resurrection — 
 Paul's doctrine — the spiritual senses of men — their occasional 
 opening — the seers and prophets of the Old Testament — and 
 those of the New Testament — a peculiarity of the new dispensa- 
 tion ; . Page 5 to 30. 
 
 LECTURE II. 
 
 The first, second, and third state of spirits after death — the capacity 
 which spirits possess of communicating with men — these commu- 
 nications proceed neither from heaven nor from hell, but from the 
 .world of spirits, intermediate between heaven and hell — spirits 
 of some kind constantly associated with men — various modes in 
 which spirits operate upon men — proofs of the existence of familiar 
 intercourse with spirits in ancient times — among the heathen — 
 among the Jews — case of Saul and the witch of Endor — proofs 
 of an intermediate state which is neither heaven nor hell — such 
 intercourse forbidden to the Jews. . • . Page 31 to 54. 
 
 LECTURE III. 
 
 Importance of the doctrine of a future life — revelation progressive — 
 the Old Testament — the New Testament — reasons for expecting 
 further divine revelations — difference betAveen the disclosures of 
 spiritualism and those of the New Church — some prominent char • 
 acteristics of the alleged spiritual manifestations — the New 
 Jerusalem a system of divinely accorded spiritual truth for the 
 
 times Page 55 to 79. 
 
 . (3) 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 LECTURE IV. 
 
 The superiority of Swedenborg's claim prima facie evidence in favor of 
 the superiority of his mission — Swedenborg a true seer — his man- 
 ifold advantages in this respect — his disclosures form a system, 
 compact and homogeneous — those of spiritualism do not — the 
 unparalleled extent of his revelations — he forestalls and forestates 
 the phenomena of spiritualism — extracts from his writings — these 
 disclosures one hundred years in advance of the modern phenomena 
 — the two spiritual ways — the law of spiritual progression — op- 
 erates in two contrary directions. , . • Page 80 to 112. 
 
 LECTURE V. 
 
 Kecapitulation — the contents of the New Jerusalem revelation based 
 on the sacred Scripture — something concerning the Scriptures, the 
 style in which they are written, their inspiration, the manner in 
 which they are to be understood — revelation of its internal sense 
 — meaning of the white horse — the literal sense not impaired by 
 the spiritual — some misconceptions mentioned — the literal sense 
 needs to be explained — methods in which previous divine revela- 
 tions have been made explained in the New Church writings — lastly, 
 the moral quality of this revelation—- conclusion. Page 113 to 137. 
 
LECTURE I. 
 
 THE DOCTKINE OF KESUKKECTION, THE SPIRITUAL WORLD, 
 AIsD THE OPENING OF MAN's INTERIOR SENSES. 
 
 " And I John saw these things, and heard them. And when I had 
 heard and seen, I fell down to worship before the feet of the angel which 
 showed me these things. Then saith he unto me. See thou do it not : 
 for I am thy fellow-servant, and of thy brethren the prophets, and of 
 them which keep the sayings of this book : worship God." — Rev. 
 xxii. 8, 9. 
 
 *' For I am fearfully and wonderfully made." — Psalm cxxxix. 14. 
 
 If the osseous or bony structure of the human 
 frame be separated from the other parts of the body 
 and held out before the view by itself alone, it will 
 present to the eye the rude image of a man. It is in 
 the human form, not indeed complete and full, but 
 correct as far as it goes. It forms a skeleton which is 
 distinctly human ; no single bone of it is exactly such 
 as would enter into the structure of any other created 
 being. The first and obvious idea which the sight of 
 it suggests to the mind is that of a man. 
 
 If, now> we take the system of tissues which is 
 next above that, namely, the muscular system, which 
 immediately clothes that of the bony frame, and sepa- 
 rate thxt in like manner from the rest of the body, 
 1 * (5) 
 
6 MODERN SPIRITUALISM. 
 
 holding it up to \iew, we shall then have presented 
 to us a form yet more fully human than the other, and 
 one which more nearly resembles the perfect body of 
 a man. Still it will be exceedingly defective, and 
 wholly wanting in that rounded fulness of contour 
 which characterizes the living human shape. 
 
 If, again, we take either one of the two parts of 
 the great vascular system of the body, that is, the 
 arterial or the venous system, and treat it in a similar 
 manner, a similar result will follow, and a human 
 form will be exhibited which, though still defective, 
 will approach nearer to completeness. 
 
 But if instead of any of the others we select the 
 cerebro-spinal axis, as it is called, — that is, the 
 brain and nervous system, — as the subject of our ex- 
 periment, a somewhat different effect will be pi?duced. 
 The form thus presented will be found to be far more 
 perfect than either of the others. And if every rami- 
 fication, and reticulation, and fibre of the nerves be 
 fuithfully preserved the image will be complete ; the 
 eye on beholding it would be deceived ; and so per- 
 fect would be the representation of all the parts that, 
 until further examination were made, we should sup- 
 pose that an entire man stood before us. 
 
 Thus we find that our bodily system consists of a 
 series of human forms, woven together and interlaced 
 through each other — one form clothing another, and 
 one form supporting another. If we stop to contem- 
 plate the combination of these different forms in 
 another aspect, we shall discover that there is a cer- 
 tain successive order in the mode of their arrange- 
 ment, and in the degree in which they are capable 
 of manifesting the human form. The most gross, 
 Bolidj or earthy parts are capable of manifesting it 
 
HUMAN FORMS IN THE BODY. 7 
 
 least ; while as we ascend into the more refined, the 
 softer and fleshy parts, we perceive that they gradu- 
 ally approach it more nearly ; and when we come to 
 the most complex, the most highly organized, and the 
 most thoroughly vitalized of all the parts, we find 
 that they are the most completely of all in the human 
 form. 
 
 The mind acts the most directly or immediately 
 upon the brain and its appendages — that is, upon 
 the nervous system. Through this it acts upon the 
 vascular and muscular systems, and through these, 
 again, upon the osseous system or bony skeleton. 
 
 Thus the order of influx by which the soul operates 
 upon and moves the body is from above downwards 
 — from things more pure to things less pure ; from 
 tissues which are more highly organized to those 
 which are less highly organized; from parts which 
 are less gross to those which are more gross ; from 
 structures that are less solid to those which are more 
 solid ; and from systems which are more perfectly in 
 the human form continuously downward into systems 
 that are less perfectly so. 
 
 In examining the body, therefore, the farther we 
 recede from the soul, the farther do we recede from 
 the human form ; while the higher we ascend towards 
 the soul, the more nearly do we approach to a perfect 
 human form. 
 
 The cause or reason of this must, we conceive, to 
 the reflecting mind, appear sufficiently obvious. It is 
 because the soul itself, or inmost principle of man, is 
 in the human form. 
 
 Nor does the ascending analogy stop with the 
 merely outward constitution. The body of the spirit, 
 which is that next above the brain and nervous system. 
 
8 MODERN SPIRITUALISM. 
 
 is still more perfectly human in all its forms and func* 
 tions than the whole material body, with all its com- 
 binations and parts. As the nervous system itself;, 
 with all the grosser parts of the body taken out from 
 it, still presents the human form entire, so the spirit, 
 with all the gross things of the material body taken 
 out from it, still presents the same form entire. 
 
 It is this indwelling spiritual body that imparts the 
 form and gives consistency to the external one ; and 
 as each successive system of parts in the- natural body 
 requires one next below it, most like itself in organi- 
 zation and form, into which to flow and to operate, so 
 the more exquisite and invisible spiritual body requires 
 something next below it, most nearly resembling itself 
 in fineness of texture and fulness of form into which 
 it can flow, so as to operate upon what is ber<^ath it. 
 And it is because this indwelling body is so perfectly 
 in the human form that it requires so perfectly organ- 
 ized a nervous system as its first receptacle in the 
 physical body, for it to insert itself into, to act upon, 
 and to operate through. 
 
 During our life in this world the soul weaves for 
 itself a spiritual body, which pervades and fills with 
 life every portion of the material body; and when 
 the material body is laid aside, this spiritual body 
 serves as the perpetual investment of the spirit in the 
 other life. 
 
 Thus the soul is not a simple substance, — a mere 
 abstract thinking principle, — as is so * frequently 
 yrgued, but a complicated organization. Like the 
 body, it has its multitude of parts, its variety of 
 organs, its change and flux of constituent elements. 
 Every mental affection we experience is the indica- 
 tion of a change taking place in the substances which 
 
ST. Paul's doctrine. 9 
 
 compose the spirit. Every thought we think, e very- 
 emotion we feel, every act of the will, and each 
 secret intent of the heart, is instantly and indelibly 
 daguerreotyped upon the receptive components of the 
 spirit, and is f^iithfully recorded upon its immortal 
 tissues, remaining ever after an integrant part of its 
 own being, to go whithersoever it goes and to live 
 where it lives. 
 
 The apostle Paul says, in the fifteenth chapter of 
 the First of Corinthians, " There is a natural body, 
 and there is a spiritual body." He does not say there 
 is now a natural body, and there will be a spiritual 
 body at the resurrection. He speaks of them both 
 in the present tense ; of both as then existing to- 
 gether ; of the latter as being as much a present real- 
 ity at that time as the former. 
 
 Again he says, " There are bodies celestial, and 
 bodies terrestrial; but the glory of the terrestrial is 
 one, and the glory of the celestial is another." Now, 
 this is contrary to the common idea, which supposes 
 that. the departed spirits of men have no bodies, and 
 that they will get no celestial or spiritual bodies until 
 a future resurrection at the end of the world. But 
 the apostle speaks of celestial bodies as present reali- 
 ties, coexisting with terrestrial ones, while differing 
 from them in composition and quality. 
 
 So, too, the similitude which in this same chapter 
 the apostle uses to set forth and illustrate the resur- 
 rection, or the process by which the spirit is raised up 
 into another life, cannot be made to harmonize with 
 the common popular doctrine of the resurrection in 
 any one of its particulars. He likens it to the btalk 
 of grain growing up from the seed when dropped 
 into the ground. Now, the living geim which con- 
 
10 MODERN SPIRITUALISM. 
 
 stitntes the life of that seed does not, when the seed 
 is put into the ground, withdraw itself from the seed, 
 leaving it to die and rot, and then go off, without any 
 hody or form, into an intermediate state, remain there> 
 sejDarated from it, for an indefinite period of centuries, 
 or years, or even weeks, and then coming back, not 
 to the old seed, but to a new stalk or blade, ready 
 made for it and put into the ground, enter into that, 
 and fill it with life ; neither does it reenter the old 
 seed. vSuch is not the process ; and there is not the 
 least analogy between the doctrine of the resurrec- 
 tion of the body, as it is commonly taught, and the 
 process in nature to which the apostle refers as repre- 
 senting and illustrating that which takes place with 
 the spirit of man ; while, on the other hand, that 
 process does offer a most exact representation of the 
 resurrection of the soul, as described in the writings 
 of the New Church, and hardly any comparison can 
 be found that would explain it to the apprehension 
 more clearly. 
 
 The resurrection of every person takes place imme- 
 diately after death ; that is, as soon as the natural 
 body is no longer capable of performing the functions 
 for which and by means of which it is connected with 
 the spirit, the body then drops off from the soul, and 
 the spirit rises up into its own proper life. V/hen 
 the action of the lungs fully ceases, and the motion 
 of tiie material heart comes entirely to an end, the 
 spiritual body is drawn forth from the natural body, 
 and the man rises, in complete human form, at once 
 into the life and among the inhabitants of the spirit- 
 ual world. 
 
 Now, observe the exact correspondence or analogy 
 there is between ill 's process of resurrection and that 
 
EVOLUTION OF THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 11 
 
 of the growth of grain. The seed is dropped in^o 
 the ground, and the hard shell or covering, of the 
 seed, that is, the body of it, perishes, and is dropped 
 off; while the internal of the seed, that is, its very- 
 life and soul, expands itself, bursts its solid shell or 
 covering, breaks forth into a new existence, and in a 
 body proper to and peculiar to itself, evolved from the 
 old one, rises above the clods into new light and life. 
 The seed itself contained all this new body and new 
 life within it, as a germ or form. 
 
 Even so it is with the future life of man. His 
 natural body is the very seed, shell, or outward cover- 
 ing, in which his spiritual body is contained, and out 
 of which it rises into the light and life of the spirit- 
 ual world whenever his natural body is laid in the 
 ground ; and as the grain never again resumes its old, 
 cast-off body, so neither does the departed or risen 
 spirit of man ever return to his. 
 
 Thus it is that through a natural process which in- 
 volves the apparent death of the seed, we arrive at 
 the full and genuine development of the life of the 
 grain. And in like manner, also, a man, by laying 
 aside the natural body, by that very means assumes at 
 once and forever the spiritual body ; on leaving the 
 natural v/orld, enters at once into the world of de- 
 parted spirits ; and by a process which we call death, 
 leaves what is mortal forever behind him and is raised 
 up into eternal life. The man then finds that he has 
 a body, head, limbs, hands, feet, a mouth, and eyes, 
 and ears, as before. He has organs of respiration, 
 and all the internal viscera of the body are the same ; 
 only now they are composed of spiritual substances 
 alone, and have not that crass, material covering, or 
 investment, which were adjoined to them in thin world. 
 
12 MODERN SPIEITUALIS;^^. 
 
 In short, the man discovers that he has lost nothing 
 of himself whatsoever — that he has left nothing be- 
 hind him, save only those few particles of the four 
 chemical elements in which his organs had been hith- 
 erto incased. His entire organization remains still the 
 same, and he is a man in complete form as before. 
 His external aspect is unchanged, so that those who 
 had known him in the life of the natural body would, 
 if their eyes could perceive him, be still able to recog- 
 nize him as readily as of old. 
 
 It may be difficult for some, accustomed to the cur- 
 rent modes of metaphysical thinking, to conceive of a 
 spirit as having a form, or to conceive of any form 
 independent of crude, palpable matter ; when the 
 truth is, that matter, of itself, has no definite or deter- 
 minate form, and is incapable of assuming any, except 
 as it is acted upon and moved by some force superior 
 to and beyond itself. The outward body is held in 
 the particular form which it takes and exhibits by the 
 vital forces of the spirit. And it is because the forms 
 of the organs all exist in the spiritual body within, 
 that the various particles which are derived into the 
 material body from our food, arrange themselves into 
 these several shapes. It is plain that the body is in 
 the form of the vital forces which animate it, and 
 these vital forces are spiritual, constituting the body 
 of the spirit ; and these vital forces remain the same, 
 and continue their action, whether particles of matter 
 are given them to act upon or not. 
 
 For instance : a whirlwind is a particular form of 
 motion in the air ; but a pwre whirlwind is totally in- 
 visible to us ; that is, when there is nothing but air in 
 motion we do not see it ; but when it has picked up 
 from the earth a parcel of leaves, dust, or papers, and 
 
ANALOGIES OF TFIE SriEITUAL BODY. 13 
 
 arranged them into Its own shape, bearing them along 
 in its progress, — thus taking on as it were a material 
 body, — it becomes visible to our eyes and we call it 
 a whirlwind. When the same form of aerial motion 
 descends upon the ocean, and hurriedly and majesti- 
 cally wraps itself in a body composed of water drops 
 from the sea, we call it a waterspout. But it soon 
 drops this water body, and hies away, perchance, to 
 the desert, where it as hastily takes up the particles 
 of sand, swiftly arranges them into the gigantic pro- 
 portions of its own form, and stalks off majestically 
 over the burning plains enrobed in a complete mate- 
 rial body. But as soon as it drops out from its folds 
 the particles of water or the particles of sand, it 
 straightway becomes invisible again, and we cannot 
 tell whence it cometh or whither it goeth. 
 
 So it is with every one who has dropped out the 
 material particles of his physical body from the folds 
 of his spirit — the man is still there, but he is invisi- 
 ble to us. 
 
 As the spiritual body possesses all the organs and 
 parts which the natural body possesses, so it performs 
 functions corresponding to those which the natural 
 body performs. Our outward bodies are fitted to act 
 in, and to be acted upon by, the substances of the 
 natural world, while our interior bodies are corre- 
 spondingly fitted to act in, and to be acted upon by, 
 the substances of the spiritual world. 
 
 It is the spiritual body here which really performs 
 every function. For behind the material apparatus of 
 the eye there is a spiritual eye, that does all the see- 
 ing — looking out through its nice arrangement of 
 humors and lenses as a man looks out through a window 
 or a telescope. And behind the material apparatua 
 2 ' 
 
14 MODERN spiritualism:. 
 
 'which constitutes the outward ear there is a spiritual 
 ear, which does all the hearing. The same is true 
 of the other human senses and functions. As long as 
 they are covered with the material organs they are 
 capable of perceiving material things, of acting upon 
 them, and of being acted upon by them. When the 
 material organs are removed, these interior senses 
 then become capable of perceiving and acting upon 
 things which are uncovered like themselves — that is, 
 spiritual things, the objective existences of the spirit- 
 ual world. 
 
 It will probably strike the minds of many who 
 have not given the subject much consideration very 
 singularly, that it should be asserted that there are 
 in the invisible world a great variety of outward ob- 
 jects for the eye to rest upon, as there are in this 
 world. The idea that there are in heaven, and in 
 other parts of the spiritual world, trees, gardens, 
 fields, vineyards, houses, palaces, cities, uses, employ- 
 ments, books, utensils, and implements and instru- 
 ments of all kinds, and that the outward aspect of 
 men and things which meets the eye there is highly 
 similar, in many important respects, to that which 
 meets the eye here, will no doubt appear exceedingly 
 fanciful — a poetical conceit of the imagination, not 
 to be indulged in or believed by sober-minded or sen- 
 sible men. But a little patient thinking in regard to 
 the matter will, we feel assured, serve to do away 
 with this first hasty conclusion. 
 
 In the first place, let each one fairly settle in his 
 own mind whether he does really believe, firmly and 
 surely, that the spirit exists at all after it leaves the 
 body. We afiirm that it does, and on that assumj • 
 tion base our subsequent conclusions. In the nei . 
 
SENSE TERCEPTIONS IN THE FUTURE LIFE. 15 
 
 place, let each one decide for himself whether the 
 immortal spirit comes into the future state of its exist- 
 ence deaf, dumb, blind, and insensible to touch — 
 without sensational feeling ; and if that is the kind 
 of immortality to which we are all hastening — an 
 eternity of imprisonment within the single bounds of 
 our own consciousness, forever dark and lone, shut up 
 from all outward objects, and from all intercourse with 
 our fellows. Would any care to seek or live for such 
 an immortality as that ? If such a view be not the 
 true one, — and we affirm that it is not, and the com- 
 mon sentiment of Christendom responds to the same, 
 — then the spirit in that state must be endowed with 
 the various faculties pertaining to men ; he must be 
 able to see, hear, speak ; to feel, touch, and handle. 
 And if a spirit can see, he must have an organ of 
 vision — something to see with — which is an eye ; 
 if he can hear, he must have something to hear with, 
 which is an ear ; if he is not dumb, but can speak, he 
 must have an organ for the utterance of speech ; we 
 all know what that is ; if he can touch, feel, and 
 handle, he must have cuticular sensation, and hands 
 to touch and handle with ; if the departed saint can 
 go at once to walk the streets of the heavenly city, 
 he must be provided with feet, or he will be unable 
 to walk in that other life. 
 
 Now, let each one reflect within himself upon that 
 world in which the spirit goes to live when he is 
 w^ithdrawn from the body, having, as Ave have seen, 
 eyes and the faculty of seeing, ears and the faculty 
 of hearing, a mouth and the power of speech, hands 
 and the sense of touch. 
 
 Is that world totally without contents ? Is there 
 no object there for the eye to see, no sound for the 
 
16 MODERN SPIRITUALISM. 
 
 ear to hear, no language for the mouth to utter, no 
 articles or instruments for the hands to handle? Is 
 that world all one vast, hleak, blank emptiness ? Has 
 God created a heaven of angels, or a spiritual world, 
 with nothing in it ? Such a world certainly would fall 
 very far short of being an object of desire, and the 
 people of God could look forward to it with none of 
 the earnest enthusiasm of fervent hope. But such a 
 spiritual world is not only altogether inadequate to 
 satisfy the religious consciousness of mankind, it is 
 also wholly unscrlpturah Every reference made to 
 heaven and the spiritual world in the sacred writings 
 speaks of them and shows them as being a state of 
 existence which is filled with external objects to be 
 seen and heard. Some of the relations in regard to 
 that other life which occur in the Bible describe 
 scenes the most magnificent and grand. The multi- 
 tude of the things spoken of, and the minuteness with 
 which they are described in the writings of the New 
 Jerusalem, find an abundant warrant and confirmation 
 in the books of the ancient prophets. St. John, in 
 the Apocalypse, says, " After this I looked, and, be- 
 hold, a door was opened in heaven ; " and he immedi- 
 ately proceeds to give an account of things which 
 he saw there. Among them are mentioned a throne, 
 a rainbow, seven lamps burning, four and twenty seats 
 around the throne, and elders sitting, clothed in rai- 
 ment, a sea of glass, a book sealed with seven seals, 
 golden vials full of odors, and an innumerable multi- 
 tude of other things, which every reader of the Scrip- 
 tures will spontaneously call to mind. The whole 
 apocalyptic vision is a record of things actually heard 
 and seen by the apostle in heaven, or in the world of 
 spirits. Similar are all the accounts given of the 
 
OBJECTIVE EXISTENCES IN THE OTHER WORLD. 17 
 
 Other state of existence by the prophets of the Old 
 Testament. They, whenever their eyes were opened, 
 all saw and heard a multitude of things which had an 
 objective and real existence in the worlds of departed 
 spirits. Many of the objects and scenes that are de- 
 scribed by them are such as might be seen or might 
 occur in this world; while many others are such as 
 could never occur here, but are peculiarities of the 
 other life. The books of the prophets Ezeidel and 
 Daniel may be mentioned as containing the most 
 striking or remarkable relations of this kind. 
 
 It must be clear to every one who will give him- 
 self the trouble to reflect upon it, that if there is any 
 thing — if only a single object — in the spiritual 
 world, then there can be no possible reason why there 
 are not innumerable things there. If there is a sub- 
 stance in that other world of which a single object 
 may be composed, or out of which a single thing may 
 be constructed — no matter whether that object be 
 the united parts of a human form, a covering of rai- 
 ment, a throne, a golden candlestick, an altar of in- 
 cense, a temple for worship, or the harp of a seraph 
 — if any of these can come into being there, and be 
 exhibited to view, and handled, and made use of, then 
 the same substance which serves to compose them can 
 serve also to compose any other article, instrument, 
 utensil, or thing, which spirits may choose and have 
 the ability to construct. 
 
 And spirits are men ; and there is no reason to 
 expect or believe that the inventive genius or the 
 constructive faculties of the human mind will be 
 diminished in consequence of its translation to a 
 higher state of existence. There is no logical stop- 
 ping-place between. We must either allow the spirit- 
 2* 
 
18 MODERN SPIKITTJAIJSM. 
 
 ual world to be filled with the forms of a great variety 
 of objects — places of abode, articles of clothing, 
 every implement of use which the inventive genius 
 of man can contrive, and all the subiimer beauties 
 which the creations of nature can exhibit — and give 
 them a real, definite, and substantial existence, as is 
 done in the writings of the New Church, or else we 
 must take the other extreme, deprive man of those 
 faculties by which he communicates with what is 
 around him when he enters the other life, and sub- 
 tract, one after another, all the forms and scenery 
 which fill that world, until finally there is left — noth- 
 ing in it ; and a world without any contents or con- 
 stituent substances is a no-world, and becomes at once 
 non-extant. 
 
 The faculty, therefore, of perceiving and being 
 acted upon by the existences of the world of spirits is 
 innate or natural with every man ; and although the 
 interior senses, that is, the faculties of spiritual see- 
 ing, and spiritual hearing, and spiritual touching, are 
 not usually developed or brought into exercise so long 
 as the material body is retained, (or while we live in 
 this world,) yet they are sometimes brought into exer- 
 cise before departure ; and men, while they still live 
 here in the natural world, are occasionally brought 
 into a condition in which they can see, and hear, and 
 touch the men and the things which exist in the other 
 life ; for that other world is not far off from us, as 
 many suppose — a great way removed, located some- 
 where in outward space, among the stars or on the 
 planets — but is here, every where near us and around 
 us ; and it is only because we are not in sensible com- 
 munication with its inhabitants, because it is far dis- 
 tant from our affections^ and really far removed from 
 
OPEN VISION IN ALL AGES. 
 
 19 
 
 our belief, that it seems to be so far distant from us 
 in space. While from inadequate conceptions of the 
 real substantiality of pure spirit, joined to material 
 ideas of man's spiritual body, some modern philos- 
 ophers are driven to the peopling of the far off astro- 
 nomical worlds with the spirits of the departed. If 
 a sensible communication with the beings of the other 
 life were opened to us, this false appearance of re- 
 moteness would be dispelled, and we should come to 
 perceive and realize that the beings of that world 
 were, in truth, very near to us, and that they were 
 living and moving every where among us. 
 
 Such sensible perception, as we have said, has been 
 enjoyed or been at times exercised by multitudes of 
 persons, in various countries and in different ages of 
 the world. It is through the medium of such a pre- 
 mature exercise of the spiritual senses of some man 
 or men, that divine revelations have been communi- 
 cated to mankind. For the purpose of effecting these 
 revelations, the senses of those men were providen- 
 tially and preternaturally (or unusually) opened at the 
 time, and when the communication intended to be 
 made was finished, they returned into their ordinary 
 state, and that closed up the vision or brought it to 
 an end. 
 
 In the case of St. John, in the Isle of Patmos, this 
 opening of his internal sight is expressed by saying, 
 '* After this, I looked, and behold a door was opened 
 in heaven." It is differently expressed in relation to 
 the cases of the different prophets and revelators of 
 the Old Testament, but is called, in the more ancient 
 records, open vision, or open sight ; by which it was 
 intended to convey the idea that the men who enjoyed 
 the gift of this sight, could look into the world of 
 
20 MODERN SPIEITUALISM. 
 
 departed spirits, and behold persons and things which 
 were invisible to other people. Hence, in the very- 
 early times, when, both from tradition and the fre- 
 quency of its occurrence, the matter was better un- 
 derstood than in later days, such men were palled 
 seers, or men who had their eyes open. Thus we 
 read in the ninth chapter, ninth verse, of the first book 
 of Samuel, where the servant of Saul advises him to 
 consult the man of God which is in the city. *^ Be- 
 foretime in Israel, when a man ivent to inquire of 
 God, thus he spake : Come, and let us go to the 
 SEER ; for he that is now called a prophet was 5e- 
 foretime called a seer." And as they went on to 
 the city where the man of God was, it is related 
 that they met young maidens coming out to draw 
 water, and they asked them, saying, " Is the seer 
 here ? " , 
 
 And so again, in the twenty -fourth chapter of the 
 book of Numbers, occur the following words : " And 
 the spirit of God came upon Balaam, and he took up 
 his parable and said, Balaam the son of Beor hath 
 said : he hath said which heard the words of God, 
 which saw the vision of the Almighty, falling into a 
 trance, but having his eyes open." After which fol- 
 lows the prophecy that he uttered. 
 
 And again, in another part of the same chapter, we 
 read, further : " And he took up his parable and said, 
 Balaam the son of Beor hath said, and the man whose 
 eyes were open hath said ; he hath said which heard 
 the words of God, and knew the knowledge of the 
 Most High; which saw the vision of the Almighty, 
 falling into a trance, but having his eyes open." 
 Then follow again the words of another prophecy. 
 
 From this we learn that Balaam^ although not an 
 
OPEN SIGHT OF THE PROPHETS. 21 
 
 Israelite, and though a priest of what, to the Israelites, 
 was a false religion, was, nevertheless, a true seer, and 
 one whom the Lord on that occasion made use of for 
 the utterance of a divine prophecy. 
 
 And we learn further, from this and other similar 
 statements in different parts of the Scriptures, that 
 the way in which the seers, the prophets, and re vela- 
 tors were enabled to look into the other world, and 
 behold thus the scenes there, to hear the sounds 
 uttered there, and to report over to the inhabitants 
 of this world the things which they heard and saw, 
 was by the opening of their interior or spiritual 
 senses. 
 
 Thus, when Abraham, Lot, Jacob, Elisha, Ezekiel, 
 the women at the sepulchre of our Lord, the disciples 
 on the mount of transfiguration, and at the time of 
 the Lord's ascension, saw, heard, and conversed with 
 angels and the spirits of departed men, they did so 
 by virtue of the opening within themselves of the 
 spiritual senses of seeing and hearing. The change 
 wrought was in themselves, and not in the beings who 
 appeared to them. The spirits or angels did not come 
 to them from a great distance, and suddenly assume a 
 body for the purpose of rtendering themselves visible, 
 and then put off the form again when they vanished. 
 
 The vanishing was caused by the closing up of the 
 spiritual senses, and the return of the person to his 
 ordinary state. So, when the angels appeared to the 
 shepherds in the plain, announcing to them the birth 
 of the infant Savior, they appeared by virtue of the 
 opening of the spiritual senses in the shepherds ; and 
 when they went away again into heaven, the going 
 was an apparent one, caused by the gradual closing uj) 
 of the spiritual senses of the shepherds. 
 
23 MODERN SPIEITUALISM, 
 
 The common doctrine on this subject seems to us 
 as crude and as unscriptural as that in relation to the 
 resurrection of the material body. The theory which 
 is generally entertained as Christian doctrine is, that 
 the angels and the souls or spirits of men have no 
 distinctive forms whatever ,• that they live some- 
 where in the material universe, at an inconceivable 
 distance from the earth, and that when they have 
 been seen by men, they have flown hither from that 
 distance and momentarily assumed natural bodies, 
 thus rendering themselves visible to the natural eyes 
 of those to whom they appeared ; that when they 
 disappeared fi'om the eyes of the men, they dropped 
 those natural human forms, and returned into their 
 former unformed or no-formed condition. We do 
 not give this as the universal, but only as a very 
 general belief. 
 
 If the angels and spirits who have appeared to men 
 did so by the assumption, for the occasion, of natural 
 forms not usually belonging to them, and disappeared 
 again by virtue of laying aside or putting off those 
 natural human forms, then we ask. Ought not, and 
 would not, those rejected or cast-off forms be found 
 in the spot wliere the angei or spirit vanished ? If 
 they were forms visible to the natural eye, then the 
 natural eye would continue to discern them after the 
 spirit had left them. If the angel who wrestled with 
 Jacob had vanished from him by virtue of putting off 
 a natural form, would Jacob not have seen the castroff 
 form as a dead body on the ground before him ? If 
 the angel who appeared to Zachariah in the temple, 
 foretelling the birth of John the Baptist, had disap- 
 peared by such a process, would not tiie rejected body 
 have been subsequently discovered in the temple? 
 
ANGELS NEVEE TAKE MATEKIAL BODIES. 23 
 
 And if the angel who appeared to Manoah and his 
 wife, announcing prophetically the birth of Samson, 
 and disappeared from them by going up in the flame 
 of the fire, had done so by dropping off a form vis- 
 ible to the natural eye, would not that rejected form 
 have been seen by them as a dead body falling back 
 into the fire ? 
 
 No such forms have ever been discovered or seen, 
 and may we not conclude, therefore, that the supposi- 
 tion that such was the mode of their appearance and 
 disappearance is wholly gratuitous and erroneous ? 
 
 But our chief allegation against the theory in 
 question is, that it is altogether contrary to the uni- 
 form teaching of the Scriptures to assume that angels 
 and departed spirits are without form ; that they are 
 by their own nature and essence in any other than the 
 human form, or that they in any way change their 
 forms when they appear to men. Not a single hint 
 of any thing of the kind which this theory supposes 
 occurs any where in Scripture ; on the other hand, the 
 very opposite view is every where maintained. The 
 appearing spirits and angels are on every occasion 
 represented as being most perfectly in the human 
 form. That is referred to as beinsc their normal 
 form, the one constantly belonging to them. They 
 are almost always at first mistaken by the beholders 
 for men, and in the written accounts are called men 
 as often as any thing else. Thus it is said of the case 
 of Jacob, that a man wrestled with him until the 
 morning. Manoah called the angel which appeared 
 to him a man ; and the angel which showed all the 
 wonders of the Revelation to John is called a man ; 
 and at the close, the angel told him that he was 
 one of John's own brethren the prophets ; hence. 
 
24 MODERN spiritualism:. 
 
 that he had once been a man, and lived on this 
 earth. 
 
 Thus the effect of the descriptions given in the 
 Bible is to convey the idea that both angels and 
 spirits are men, who, having passed out of their ma- 
 terial bodies, have risen up in their spiritual bodies, 
 and are now living in the spiritual world ; and that 
 they may at any time become visible to us by the 
 opening of our interior sight. 
 
 The very expression used in regard to the men 
 who saw those things, that they had their eyes open, 
 shows that their power of seeing was in a different 
 condition from that of other men, and from that of 
 their own at other times. Their natural eyes could 
 not have been referred to, for all the other persons 
 concerned had those open, and it is clear that no such 
 mode of speaking would occur in the Scriptures in 
 regard to our ordinary state of natural vision. The 
 form of words, too, so frequently occurring, that such 
 and such things were seen or heard in msio7i, c\q^y\j 
 enough implies that they were not heard and seen in 
 the person's ordinary state. 
 
 Besides this, the circumstances related to have taken 
 place on various occasions where open vision occurred 
 unmistakably show that the change by which the spir- 
 itual beings became visible was one that took place in 
 the perceptions of the men themselves. In order to 
 make this point unquestionably clear, as being the 
 uniform teaching throughout all parts of the sacred 
 writings, we will select only a single instance in illus- 
 tration, from each of the three great divisions of the 
 Bible — one from the historical part of the Old Tes- 
 tament, one from the prophetical part, and one from 
 the apostolical writings of the New. 
 
CASES OP ELISHA, DANIEL, AND PAUL. ^ 25 
 
 The first instance we shall refer to is that of the 
 young man with the prophet Ellsha, recorded in the 
 sixth chapter of the second book of Kings. The 
 prophet, who was a seer, and had, consequently, his 
 spiritual eyes open, saw, in the world of spirits, the 
 mountain over against them full of horsemen and 
 chariots. But the boy, in his natural state of vision 
 did not see them. But Elisha prayed, and said. Lord 
 open thou the eyes of the young man. And the Lord 
 opened the eyes of the young man, and then he also 
 saw the mountain covered in like manner. Here it is 
 distinctly stated that the way in which these spiritual 
 beings became visible to the young man was by an 
 opening of eyes in him which were not open in his 
 ordinary state of natural seeing. 
 
 The second instance we shall cite is from the book 
 of the prophet Daniel. It is sufficient that we quote 
 the words as recorded in the tenth chapter and seventh 
 verse. After describing the man or angel who ap- 
 peared to him, he says, "And I Daniel alone saw the 
 vision : for the men that were with me saw not the 
 vision; but a great quaking fell upon them, so that 
 they ran to hide themselves.^'' 
 
 Now, if the angel here had assumed a form visible 
 to the natural eye, he would have been just as visible 
 to the men who were with Daniel as he was to Daniel 
 himself. But it is because angels are not visible to 
 the natural eye that the men saw him not ; and it is 
 because they are visible to the interior eye, and be- 
 cause Daniel had these eyes open in him, and the 
 men had not, that he alone saw the vision. 
 
 The third and last instance to which we shall refer 
 is that of St. Paul and the men who were with him, 
 recorded in the book of Acts. 
 
20 MODERN SPIRITUALISM. 
 
 The apostle relates that the Lord Jesus Chnst ap- 
 peared to him, and gave him a call and a commission 
 to preach the gospel. He saw, also, a great light 
 from heaven shining round about him. But we read 
 that the men who were with Paul saw no light, nor 
 any man. This shows conclusively that their power 
 of seeing was not in the same condition that his was, 
 and that what he saw he saAV by virtue of having at 
 the moment developed in him a power of seeing dif- 
 ferent from theirs, and different from his own in his 
 ordinary state ', otherwise the men with him would 
 have seen whatsoever he saw. 
 
 We presume we have adduced evidence enough 
 from the Scriptures to show clearly and conclusively 
 that spirit seeing is a power or faculty developed or 
 brought into exercise within man himself. This also 
 accords with all our other experience ; for the world 
 has not been in any age without its witnesses to ap- 
 pearances of this kind. Innumerable well-authenti- 
 cated cases are on record in which the spirits of the 
 departed have been seen by those still in the mortal 
 body. 
 
 How many instances occur of persons who, on the 
 near approach of death, are favored with a view of 
 that world into which they are about to enter — see- 
 ing the persons, and sometimes hearing the music, 
 which pertain to the spheres of the other life ! Such 
 was the case with the martyr Stephen, w^hen stoned to 
 death, as it is told in the book of Acts ; and there is 
 scarcely any one in the community who has not> had 
 instances of the kind come within the circle of his 
 acquaintance, or even within that of his own observa- 
 tion and knowledge. The vision in these cases most 
 usually is of some near and dear friend or friends 
 
CASE OP SAMFEL, WITH ELI. 27 
 
 of the person, who have departed from this world 
 before him. 
 
 These instances also go to show that it is not with 
 the natural eye that such things are seen ; for the 
 friends gathoied about the bedside of the departing 
 one see not the faces, nor do they hear the voices, of 
 those spiritual beings whose presence then fills the 
 room. 
 
 Persons may sometimes have one of their spiritual 
 senses opened, while the others remain closed. Thus 
 one may come into a state in which he will be able to 
 hear spirits, without being able to see them ; or he 
 may both see and hear, without being able to feel 
 their touch ; and some may feel their touch, without 
 either hearing or seeing them. 
 
 Thus the prophet Samuel, while he was yet a boy 
 in the temple, wdth Eli the priest, heard a voice speak- 
 ing to him, and calling out, Samuel ! Samuel ! but saw 
 no one, and ran to Eli, supposing that he had called 
 him. In that case his spiritual hettring only was 
 opened. It was the same with the men already re- 
 ferred to, who were in company with St. Paul. Their 
 spiritual hearing only was opened ; for they, too, 
 heard a voice, but saw nothing. 
 
 In the case of Jacob wrestling with the angel there 
 must have been an opening of all three of the princi- 
 pal spiritual senses ; for he not only saw and heard, 
 but also manifestly touched him. There are also a 
 number .of other cases recorded in the Scriptures, 
 where the sense of spiritual touch was opened ; but 
 further illustrations of this point need not now be 
 cited. 
 
 It seems to have been a general rule in the divine 
 providential economy by which the developments of 
 
28 MOl^ERX SnmTlTALISM. 
 
 the Jewish and early Christian churches were carried 
 on, that there should be, nearly all the time, some one 
 who enjoyed the gift of spiritual seership, and that 
 the communication between the spiritual and natural 
 worlds should be thus kept open. There is sometimes 
 an appearance as though it was deemed highly impor- 
 tant to tho moral well being of the people that, by the 
 presence of some such continuous chain of facts as 
 those visions would afford, they should be constantly 
 reminded that there is a spiritual world, and a spirit- 
 ual existence and power which are above nature. 
 We read in one place, in the book of Proverbs, that 
 *' where no vision is, the people perish ; " therefore wo 
 find that from the call of Abraham down through 
 Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph — after that, through Moses, 
 Aaron, and Joshua — and, lastly, through Samuel, 
 Elijah, Elisha, and all the subsequent prophets — 
 there was kept up a succession of seers, or revelators, 
 who possessed the gift of open vision into the world 
 of spirits, and who, therefore, could receive communi- 
 cations from the inhabitants of that world, and make 
 them known to those of this world. This line of 
 succession was indeed frequently interrupted, and 
 sometimes the break extended over a considerable 
 period. But the interruption was regarded as a proper 
 source of regret, and as a circumstance in some sense 
 worthy to be deplored. In the days of the judges 
 there seems to have been a time when its suspension 
 was longer than usual ; for in a certain place in the 
 first book of Samuel* we read that ihe word of the 
 Lord was precious in those days, (for) there ivas no 
 
 OPEN VISION. 
 
 • 1 Sam. iii. 1. 
 
THESE VIEWS BASED ON THE BIBLE, 29 
 
 Thus far we have endeavored to show the method 
 in which divine revelations have been communicated 
 to men; and therefore have confined our attention 
 chiefly to the scriptural accounts. From this we do 
 not intend to have it inferred that therefore all com- 
 munications made from the spiritual world are divine 
 in their character, or that they all come from angels 
 or good spirits. On another occasion it will be our 
 design to take up another branch of the subject, and 
 show the various sources from which revelations from 
 the other world may come ; and with a single other 
 remark we shall now close this portion of our subject. 
 
 It will have been seen that our arguments for, and 
 confirmations of, the views here presented have been 
 drawn mainly from the sacred Scriptures, and that 
 they have been thus derived by virtue of putting a 
 new interpretation upon the descriptions brought into 
 view. We have read the passages in a different light 
 from that in which they are usually read, and have 
 endeavored to show them really to mean something 
 different from that which they have in this respect 
 been commonly understood to mean. 
 
 Now, this is th^ general character of the New 
 Church revelation. It is a further explanation of the 
 revelations which have come before. It is based 
 entirely upon the sacred Scripture, or word of the 
 Lord, and consists of a fuller and clearer exposition 
 of the truths which are already contained in that. 
 This sacred book, written, in the first place, for rude, 
 barbarous, and ignorant ages, being adapted to their 
 modes of expression and their style of thought, con- 
 tains many things on its external surface, or in the 
 mere letter, which the human mind now, after ninety 
 successive ages of training, of discovery, and develop- 
 3* 
 
30 MODERN SPIRITUALISM. 
 
 ment, plalnl}' sees to be, in a number of cases, unsci- 
 entific, in others irrational, and in some immoral. . 
 
 But that rude letter is only the outer garment in 
 which it was necessary for the divine truth to clothe 
 itself, as a protection for its inner life against the long 
 spiritual coldness of those darksome ages. The 
 rational difficulties which seem to stand in the way 
 of receiving the truth of this divine volume are re- 
 moved as soon as its narrations come to be understood 
 in their genuine sense. Its real meaning is every 
 where a spiritual one ; and those outward, natural 
 things of the letter all have actual spiritual realities to 
 which they correspond, and which they are here used 
 to denote. With a knowledge, therefore, of the spirit- 
 ual things to which these accounts relate, we have a 
 key by which to understand and interpret them cor- 
 rectly. 
 
 As foreseen by St. John in vision, this '* booJc,^* 
 which, it must be remembered, is said to have been 
 written within, as well as on the outside, is now 
 " opened,^' in order to meet the spiritual wants of these 
 new times; its ''seven seals ^^ have been taken off, and, 
 through the revelations made for *the New Jerusalem, 
 men, if they desire it, are enabled to see all the state- 
 ments and teachings of this book explained in clear, 
 rational light, and to know and understand the genu- 
 ine meaning of all its doctrines as they are known, 
 and understood, and taught among the angels. 
 
LECTURE II 
 
 ON TDE ASSOCIATION AND COMMUNICATION OF DEPARTED 
 SPIRITS WITH MEN. 
 
 " And when they shall say unto you, Seek unto them that have famil- 
 iar spirits, and unto wizards that peep and that mutter ; should not a 
 people seek unto their God ? for the living to the dead ? To the law 
 and to the testimony : if they speak not according to this word, it is 
 because there is no light in them." — Isaiah viii. 19. 
 
 On a previous evening we endeavored to direct 
 attention to some features of the spiritual constitution 
 of man, and to the rnethod in which the divine rev- 
 elations recorded in the Scriptures were communicated 
 to the persons who received them. On the present 
 occasion it is our design to offer a few remarks on a 
 parallel line of communications from the other world, 
 which are also mentioned in the Scriptures, of a 
 somewhat different kind, quality, and origin. 
 
 When a man first puts off the material body, and 
 from it rises forth into the light and life of the spirit- 
 ual world, he is in the full possession of every sense 
 and faculty which he possessed here. He has, more- 
 over, finer perceptions of all kinds. His organs are 
 less gross or corporeal than they were here ; being 
 
 (31) 
 
S2 MODERN SPIRITUALISM. 
 
 more vitally and purely organized, they are, there- 
 fore, ia% more sensitive than they were here, and are 
 more easily and deeply affected by the objects of that 
 world than they formerly were by the objects of this. 
 He is then enabled to see much more perfectly than 
 he could while in this world, to hear in much greater 
 perfection, and enjoys also a far more exquisite sense 
 of touch. A similar remark may be made in regard 
 to his intellect'- il faculties. The clouds and obscuri- 
 ties which matter interposed being removed, they 
 become clearer and brighter, while all his powers, 
 both of body and mind, find greater freedom of oper- 
 ation, and are brought into a fuller and more active 
 exercise. 
 
 In short, he is in all things more fully and com- 
 pletely a man than he ever was before. At tiiat 
 stage of his progress, the man-spirit is neither in 
 heaven nor in hell, but in the world of spirits, which 
 is an intermediate place, state, or world, midway 
 between the heavens and the hells, communicating 
 on the one hand with the former, and on the other 
 hand with the latter. 
 
 In that intermediate world the man passes succes- 
 sively through three distinct states, or spheres, or 
 circles of spiritual existence. 
 
 The first state is called that of the exteriors, and 
 is a sphere in which the departed spirit is in a condi- 
 tion of life very similar to that in which he was before 
 he left this world. That Hfe is only a farther contin- 
 uation of this hfe, and death is simply the passage. 
 Hence the change at first effected in a man is very 
 slight. His habits, manners, outward aspect, and ex- 
 ternal moral character are the same ; he maintains a 
 general deportment, and exhibits general qualities, like 
 
SECOND STATE OF MEN AFTER DEATH. 83 
 
 tliose whicli he used to maintain and exhibit before 
 men here. 
 
 ^ut after a certain period, which is longer or 
 shorter according to the circumstances in each par- 
 ticular case, he passes out of this state, and* comes into 
 the second. This is called, to distinguish it, the state 
 of the z'wteriors. In this state the spirit is let into 
 that state of thinking and feeling in which he was 
 internally in the world, when he was alone by him- 
 self, and when his desires, and intentions, and thoughts 
 took their own flow in perfect freedom. Outward 
 restraints being withdrawn, and the exteriors of his 
 life being quiesced or laid asleep,- the fountains of his 
 interior life are broken up, and his interior thoughts 
 and affections brought into open activity and play. 
 He then no longer appears in the character which he 
 simulated or habitually put on before men, but mani- 
 festly assumes that which was proper to his inmost 
 thoughts and feelings while in the world. The 
 change which this transfer from the first to the second 
 state after death effects upon spirits may be compared 
 to the change wrought in this world upon many per- 
 sons by an emigration from an old state of society, in 
 which they have been educated, and where they are 
 surrounded by many social, civil, and moral restraints, 
 to a new and unformed state of society, like that of 
 California or Australia, where those restraints are re- 
 moved, or exist only to a limited extent. The inte- 
 rior states of men, before hidden or buried, are then 
 brought to the surface, and the transformations of 
 outward character thus wrought even in tliis world 
 are often wonderful to the beholders. In the other 
 life, among spirits, the changes thus often effected are 
 far more wonderful, for the process there is more 
 thorough and deep. 
 
34 MODERN SPIRITXTALISM. 
 
 The third state into whicli spirits pass is one of 
 separation or judgment — a state or sphere in which 
 those who in passing through the previous state have 
 shown themselves to be internally good, are instructed 
 and prepared for heaven ; and those who have there 
 shown themselves to be internally evil, turn them- 
 selves in an opposite direction, and make ready to 
 unite themselves completely to spirits of their own 
 like. With the wicked, the third state follows on so 
 closely upon the second^ and is so intimately connecL- 
 ed with it, that the two may be more truly said to 
 constitute but a sino-le continuous state.* 
 
 From this third 'state, therefore, the next stage of 
 progress is either, on the one hand, upward into some 
 society of the heavenly world, or, on the other hand, 
 downward into some society of an opposite kind. 
 
 There are, also, three heavens above, and three 
 hells beneath ; but of these it is not our present pur- 
 pose further to speak. 
 
 These three states, through which we have described 
 the departed spirit as passing, may be compared to 
 the bud, the blossom, and the fruit, of a tree. The 
 man-spirit passes through them by virtue of the in- 
 herent laws of his own constitution. They are the 
 successive unrolling or development of different de- 
 grees of his own life germ. In the first state the 
 life of his spirit may be said to be in the bud ; it is 
 swelling and active, but still closed up, as it were, by 
 the life of his exteriors which he brought with him 
 from the world. In the second state it flowers out, 
 60 to speak, opens, and expands itself, bursts its 
 
 * For a feller description of ';he three states, see Swedenborg's Trea- 
 tise ou HciAcn, the World of bpiiits, aud Hell, from No. 491 to No. 520. 
 
COMMUNICATIONS FROM THE WORLD OF SPIRITS. 3o 
 
 enclosure, displaying its quality and disclosing its innate 
 tendencies. It thus and there gives full promise of 
 what it will be. In the third state it bears its fruit, 
 and whether that be evil or good, declares and fixes 
 its quality, at the same time determining its per- 
 manent condition or state. Then comes the harvest, 
 and it is now ready to be gathered into one or the 
 other of those two worlds into which all spiritual 
 beings finally go. 
 
 li is from the intermediate world of spirits that 
 the manifestations to and communications with men, 
 which are really made by spirits, proceed. When 
 angels are commissioned by the Lord to communicate 
 with men, and to open heaven to them, by opening 
 their internal senses, they come down into the world 
 of spirits to do it. The communication between the 
 earth and heaven is through the world of spirits. So 
 too, when evil spirits from the hells, that is, devils or 
 satans, come to speak with, to infest, enter into or 
 possess men, it is accomplished by their coming up 
 out of their customary abodes, into the world of 
 spirits. 
 
 As the spirits of the departed are every where 
 around us, living and moving in close proximity to 
 the inhabitants of this world, therefore our minds are 
 in close contact with their minds, and are operated 
 upon by the influences flowing from them. Their in- 
 fluences powerfully aftect us for good or for evil; their 
 modes of feeling and wishing, and their forms of per- 
 suasion or thought, constantly tend to propagate them- 
 selves over into our minds, and to become states o^ 
 thought and feeling in us. All through our lives in 
 the natural world, spirits are thus intimately associat- 
 ed with us, the good as well as the evil. This double 
 
36 MODERN SPIRITUALISM. 
 
 association with both good and evil spirits leaves us in 
 a state of spiritual equilibrium, or freedom of choice ; 
 the influence of the good Gounteracting as much as 
 possible the baleful influence flowing from the evil. 
 When we indulge in evil states of mind, we thereby 
 attract the evil spirits more nearly to us, and into a 
 more intimate conjunction with us, and when we put 
 awiiy evil states of feeHng, willing, and thinking from 
 us, and strive after good, we then draw the good 
 spirits and angels into closer connection with us, and 
 they are able to affect our minds more powerfully with 
 their kind of influences. 
 
 The quality of the influences we draw upon our 
 minds from the world of spirits, depends upon our 
 own choosing. The great and all-prevalent law of 
 spiritual affinity regulates both the kind and the 
 changes of our spiritual associations. We attract to 
 us those spirits who are most like ourselves, and for 
 whose tastes, desires, and habits of thought we have 
 the strongest or deepest sympathy. 
 
 Under ordinary circumstances, this association of 
 departed spirits with men is carried on unconsciously 
 to both. Men are not aware of the presence of 
 spirits, nor are spirits sensibly aware of the presence 
 of men. They know indeed the general fact that 
 they are in such a communication or association with 
 men, but usually are not momentarily sensible of the 
 contact. The two minds dwell together and operate 
 upon each other by means of their loves or affections ; 
 that is, the habitual desires which animate them; but 
 they are separated as to their conscious thoughts. 
 This vvall of separation, however, between the con- 
 scious tliought of the two minds may sometimes be 
 broken down, and the spirit and the man be brought 
 
DISORDERLY CONNECTIONS WITH SPIRITS. 37 
 
 tlius into a sensible, but yet Dnly internal or mental 
 communication. This constitutes a disorderly associa- 
 tion with spirits, and is one which is exceedingly dan- 
 gerous to the person in whom it occurs. For when a 
 spirit comes to a man in this state, he instantly puts 
 on every thing in the man's mind, the same as though 
 it was in his own mind. He at once reads the whole 
 of the man's memory better than he himself can, and 
 enters together with him into all his states of thought 
 and feeling. While the spirit remains in this kind of 
 connection with the man the two minds are in much 
 the same relative condition that two reservoirs of 
 water are when connected with each other by a con- 
 duit or pipe. The contents of each flow and reflow 
 reciprocally into the other ; whcitever affects one im- 
 mediately affects the other also. Whatsoever the 
 man thinks the spirit thinks, and whatsoever he 
 knows the spirit knows. And on the other hand, 
 v/hatever the spirit brings forth in his own mind 
 comes immediately into the man's mind, however evil 
 or dire it may be ; and the man knows no otherwise 
 than that all those things are his own ; no otherwise 
 than that they are produced in his own mind. It is 
 in this way that possessions occur, and that various 
 insanities are often produced ; the multitude of 
 things thus flowing into the man's mind, over which 
 he has no control, giving rise to the phenomena that 
 are sometimes exhibited in certain cases of mental 
 aberration ; and is the reason why persons in that 
 state utter so many things that are far removed from 
 and at variance with their ordinary healthy states of 
 mind. 
 
 A wickedly disposed spirit coming to a man with 
 whom he can effect this kind of connection can 
 
38 MODERN SPIRITUALISM. 
 
 sometimes flow in suddenly upon his mind, md insert 
 his own memory in the place of the man's memory, 
 thus cutting off, as it were, the thread of the man's 
 memory, and inducing a state of forgetfulness. While 
 this state lasts the man is carried away, as it were, by 
 a kind of mental whirlwind, which shows itself fre- 
 quently in outward acts of violence or disorder. 
 The spirit then stirs him up to do whatsoever he 
 wills to have him do ; he makes use, in fact, of his 
 organism, for the time being, for the purpose of eifect- 
 ing his own ends, and causes the man to commit sui- 
 cide, inflict injury upon others, or perform- any other 
 direful act he may wish to impel him to. 
 
 Veiy many things might here be said, showing the 
 imminent dangers arising to men from having their 
 minds consciously or too intimately associated with the 
 minds of spirits ; but the space we here have to spare 
 will not allow it. 
 
 There are a great many different ways in which the 
 door that separates the two worlds may be opened, 
 and through it sensible impressions be communicated 
 from one to the other. But, as a general remark, we 
 may say that for the most part they are liable to very 
 great abuse, and are exceedingly dangerous. This 
 door should never be forced open or broken into 
 from the outside. We should always wait to have it 
 opened to us from within, in an orderly manner. It 
 is sometimes so opened by divine permission, by 
 angels or good spirits, but never except for some high 
 purpose, or with some beneficent end. 
 
 There are also multitudes of spirits on the other 
 side of the veil, who, for a vast variety of vain pur- 
 poses of their own, would be glad to open and keep 
 up au outward seubible commuuication with men iu 
 
NECESSITY FOR A MEDIUM. 39 
 
 tlie body. These are, for the most part, a low order 
 of spirits ; for, as a general thing, the more gross, 
 worldly, and sensual a man's life has been while he 
 has been in the body, the longer will he remain in 
 close proximity to the sphere of this world after he 
 enters the other life, and the stronger will generally 
 be his desire of communicating. We are told in the 
 New Church writings concerning those who have so 
 strong a desire to return into the world, and live here 
 again, that they even make efforts to enter into other 
 men's bodies, and to use them for that purpose — en- 
 deavoring to speak and to operate through them. 
 
 In addition to the internal or mental communica- 
 tions that may occasionally be opened between spirits 
 and men, in which men may hear spirits speaking, and 
 sometimes manifestly feel their operations, spirits may 
 also operate at times upon material objects, so as to 
 produce visible or audible effects, by which they may 
 attract the attention of men, and thus commence a 
 kind of external intercourse or communication with 
 them, without the opening of any of their internal 
 sen:es, and without any change of state on the part 
 of tie man. 
 
 This kind of communication cannot usually be 
 effected without the intervention of some human me- 
 dium ; for, as we all know by experience, spirit can- 
 not act directly upon matter without the intermedia- 
 tion of graduated and adapted substances, capable of 
 receiving the influences received from the one, and 
 conveying them over to the other. The chasm which 
 ordinarily exists between mind and matter must in 
 some way be bridged over, in order that impulses of 
 the one may be propagated over and become • motions 
 of the other. Thus the will of a man can no more 
 
40 MODEKN SPIMTUALISM. 
 
 operate directly upon his own bones than it could 
 upon so many stones in the street. In order to effect 
 a communication, a series of nicely-prepared, organ- 
 ized substances are required. The bones must be 
 operated upon and moved through the medium of the 
 muscular fibres. But the mind can no more act 
 directly upon the muscles than it could upon the 
 bones ; the system of nerves must be interposed. And 
 even the fibres of these are altogether too gross to 
 receive the first motions of mind ; but all their tubes 
 have to be filled with a subtile and rarefied fluid ; and 
 so on, up to a set of substances which the natural eye 
 is Incapable of viewing, and the natural finger inca- 
 pable of touching, we might trace the chain of inter- 
 mediation between the spirit and the grosser forms of 
 matter. 
 
 As it is with the mind of a man in the body, so it 
 is with a spirit who has passed out of the body. He 
 cannot operate upon gross material things except 
 through the intervention of a series of prepared and 
 adapted , substances fitted to act as connecting links 
 from one degree to the other. Now, the human sys- 
 tem, as we have described it, offers to spirits such a 
 medium ready made. By his constitution, man is at 
 once a resident, to some extent, in both worlds. He 
 is a spirit clothed with a material body; therefore, 
 while by means of his natural body he lives in com- 
 munication with the natural world, by virtue of his 
 spiritual body he at the same time lives in continual 
 association with the spiritual world, though for the 
 most part he is unconscious of the fact. The two 
 worlds, therefore, otherwise separated from each other, 
 in him meet and communicate, the one with the other. 
 He is the hyphen which stands between the two worlds. 
 
ANCIENT BELIEF IN DEMONS. 41 
 
 and, while it marks their separation, serves at the 
 same time to connect them together. 
 
 A spirit living in the other world may enter into 
 connection with a spirit still in the body, and, through 
 the substances of his body, open a serial connection 
 with the surrounding substances of the material world, 
 along which chain may be propagated impulses of a 
 living force or energy, like the circuit of a voltaic 
 pile, a galvanic battery, or the familiar experiments in 
 magnetism and electricity. 
 
 Through the three general kinds of means, namely, 
 by the injecting or infusion of ideas manifestly into 
 the thought, or by manifest impressions made upon 
 the spiritual senses of men, or by communicating an 
 impulse to material objects, and thus addressing the 
 external senses, communications from the spiritual to 
 the natural world have been kept up in nearly all 
 ages of past history. They have been hardly ever 
 entirely suspended, though sometimes for long periods 
 they may have been comparatively infrequent, or even 
 exceedingly rare. 
 
 The entire ancient world, Jewish and pagan, be- 
 lieved in a world of demons, or disembodied, invisi- 
 ble spirits, every where circumfused, and in immedi- 
 ate contact with this, with the inhabitants of which it 
 was possible and common to consult. By demons 
 v.ere not understood devils, necessarily, but merely 
 disembodied spirits, either good or evil ; and they 
 were consulted or inquired of in those days in regard 
 to future events — usually in order to ascertain the 
 probable result or success of som.e enterprise or jour- 
 ney which the inquiring party was proposing to under- 
 take. They were resorted to, also, in times of great 
 4* 
 
i% MODERN SPIRITUALISM. 
 
 distress, perplexity, and trouble, or times of public 
 calamity, as war, pestilence, and famine. 
 
 This general belief took very different forms among 
 different nations. By some the spirits were divided 
 into distinct orders, or classes, and distinct functions 
 or offices imputed to them. A gi-eat variety of opin- 
 ion prevailed in respect to their nature, origin, and 
 characteristics. Some of the old religions assigned 
 different regions of the earth as the places of their 
 abode. All the literature, however, of that old world 
 is full of the doctrine and belief. The teachings of 
 the Zendavesta, the Vedas, and the laws of Menu, all 
 aisume the truth of the general view, and themselves 
 contain many definite theories connected with the 
 various parts of the subject. Go where we will in 
 the traditions of Persia, India, Medea, Assyria, Chal- 
 dea, Ethiopia, and Egypt, the same doctrine of a 
 world of spirits turns up, forming one of the greatest, 
 if not the very greatest, fact of all their religions. 
 
 So far as our researches into the history of antiquity 
 extend, all the early oriental nations were much in the 
 practice of placing themselves under some form of 
 supernatural influences, of communicating with and 
 receiving replies and favors from their gods, — thus 
 holding an intercourse with the inhabitants of the 
 world of spirits. These doctrines, traditions, and 
 practices, with the mysterious rites which accompa- 
 nied them, were transmitted from Asia Minor and 
 from Egypt to Greece. In all those countries there 
 existed legally recognized public institutions, where 
 such inquiries could be made, and this kind of inter- 
 course could be regularly carried on. These were 
 priestly establishments, devoted to the study of the 
 
ORACLES OF CLASSICAL ANTIQtJITY. 43 
 
 mysteries, and to the care and cure of the sick ; for 
 in those days the healing of diseases was intimately 
 connected with the teaching of religion ; and the 
 prospective cure of a troublesome disease was one 
 of the strongest and most common inducements for 
 seeking unto the oracles and making inquiry of the 
 gods. 
 
 Such institutions were the temple of Belus, at 
 Babylon, the great temples along the banks of the 
 'Nile in Egypt, the oracle of Jupiter Trophonios in 
 Bccotia, the Marsoor oracle at Tiora Mattiene, the 
 temple of Esculapius at Pergamus in Asia Minor, 
 and the oracles of Apollo at Colophon, and of Jupi- 
 ter at Dodona and Delphos. 
 
 In looking over the past history of the world, with 
 reference to this kind of phenomena, we shall find 
 that they have been exceedingly active in periods pre- 
 ceding great changes in the religious state of the 
 world, and have been the forerunners of events that 
 have powerfully affected the minds of men on a vari- 
 ety of subjects, especially in regard to their religious 
 sentiments. Thus, at and just before the time when 
 our Lord came into the world to institute a new reli- 
 gion, the communications of spirits with men had be- 
 come extremely common, and their influences upon 
 them most distinct and manifest. These influences, 
 especially so far as recorded in the New Testament, 
 proceeded from evil sources, and were evidently highly 
 injurious. The effect of our Lord's mission to the 
 earth was to work a very marked change of circum- 
 stances in this respect. Those peculiar obsessions 
 and possessions by demons, until then so common 
 among the Jews and in the surrounding countries, 
 thenoaforth disappeared ; and there is every reason to 
 
44 MODERN SPIRITUALISM. 
 
 believe that the entire system of spiritual communica- 
 tions, as they had till then existed, were broken up by 
 His advent, and an entire change wrought both in the 
 population which had before filled the world of spirits, 
 and also in regard to their action upon men. From 
 that time forth, also, the oracles throughout the Greek 
 and Eoman world ceased from giving their responses, 
 and were soon after abandoned by their former vo- 
 taries. [See Appendix.] 
 
 That the Israelites and Jews were exceedingly prone 
 to seek these communications with the spirits of the 
 departed, is very evident from the frequent prohibi- 
 tions of the practice that are met with in the Hebrew 
 Scriptures, and from the fact repeatedly mentioned in 
 their history, that notwithstanding the severity of the 
 penalties prescribed against them, persons having fa- 
 miliar spirits, or questioners of the dead, — that is, 
 persons who kept up a ^ sensible communication with 
 spirits, — continued to remain in the land, and the peo- 
 ple continued to consult them, though generally in a 
 secret or covert manner. As the Jewish church 
 gradually drew towards its end, and all the Mosaic 
 regulations as well as the statutes of Jehovah were 
 less regarded, and therefore more frequently dis- 
 obeyed, this open familiarity with departed spirits 
 very greatly increased. And it may here be men- 
 tioned as an important and interesting confirmation of 
 this view, that the relics or traces of the Babylonish 
 captivity of the Jews, which have been discovered by 
 Mr. Layard in his recent visit to and examination of 
 the ruins of Babylon, consist almost entirely of He- 
 brew inscriptions relating to this kind of intercourse. 
 Among them are the names of many of the spirits, 
 Uijimctions to them to depart, various written charms. 
 
JEWISH rt:lic3 at Babylon. 45 
 
 amulets, or protections against their bad influences, 
 directions how many of the evils flowing from the as- 
 sociation of spirits with men might be averted, and 
 many other things of a like sort. Bat the most re- 
 markable feature of the case is, that this one idea of 
 the intercourse of disembodied spirits with men 
 should have so conspicuously possessed the minds of 
 the Jewish people at that day as to be almost the 
 only thing which recorded itself on their written 
 monuments left in Babylon, with suflicient durability 
 to transmit itself to the present time. 
 
 As before observed, when an old dispensation of 
 religion is about passing away, and a new one is being 
 introduced, these manifestations are more rife, and 
 public attention is called more particularly to take 
 notice of them ; so it may be inferred, that as in the 
 New Church writings a new dispensation is described 
 as being introduced, and an old one about to pass 
 away, the receivers of those doctrines will naturally 
 be looking for or expecting some manifestations of 
 this kind to begin to take place. Especially when we 
 call to mind the immense amount of information there 
 is communicated in these writings concerning the life 
 after death, and the fact that very great changes have 
 within the last few years occurred in the world of 
 spirits. 
 
 Such consequently has been the case. Many re- 
 ceivers of the doctrines were looking for the advent 
 of some demonstrations of the kind, long before they 
 actually made their appearance ; and we presume that 
 very few, if any of them, were much taken by sur- 
 prise when it began to be alleged that communications 
 from spirits were really being received. It is of 
 course entirely beyond our province to declare what 
 
46 MODERJk SPIHITUALISM. 
 
 proportion oi the prevalent pretensions to that kind 
 of intercoui'se are spurious and delusive, and what 
 portion are really what they claim to be. Nor is 
 there any call for such a decision from us. That the 
 thing itself is intrinsically possible in the nature of 
 things we are quite certain ; that in the present spir- 
 itual circumstances of the world they would exten- 
 sively reappear we think highly probable; and that 
 they have thus reappeared and are existing around 
 us we have a very large amount of human testimony 
 of a similar kind to that upon which we receive re- 
 markable facts in every other department of knowl- 
 edge, whether of history or science. 
 
 Supposing them to be real, the next question which, 
 arises is in regard to their quality. Are they reli- 
 able ? Are they divine revelations ? Do they proceed 
 from good spirits or evil spirits ? from heaven or from 
 hell ? from devils or angels ? From the little that is 
 known concerning the other world, beyond the pre- 
 cincts of the New Church, and the extreme crudeness 
 of idea every where prevalent of the things of another 
 life, it was to be naturally expected that a great vari- 
 ety of answers would be given to these questions, and 
 a great many different theories be devised to account 
 for the phenomena. Such in practice has been found 
 to be the case. And while some find in them senti- 
 ments that appear to them all wisdom, and beauty, and 
 loveliness, and attribute to them an origin no less than 
 heavenly, another class of inquirers discover ,in them 
 the most pernicious and soul-destroying errors, the 
 doctrines of devils, and ascribe to them an origin as 
 low as hell itself. 
 
 Our common Protestant Christianity has placed 
 itself in a position highly unfavorable to forming a 
 
DIFFICULTY OF PROTESTANTS. 47 
 
 just judgment in this matter, by its unnecessary and 
 iinscriptural denial of any third AYorld in the other 
 life — of any intermediate state of departed spirits 
 between heaven and hell.* And this common teach- 
 ing of the Protestant churches that there are but the 
 two conditions of spiritual existence in the other life 
 has had the gradual effect of forming the popular 
 mind to the same idea. Hence, when any manifesta- 
 tions from the spiritual world occur, they have no 
 stand-point between those two extremes, and , of 
 course arc obliged to assign them all over to one or 
 the other. Therefore it is that in our view no one 
 of the writers who have attempted to treat these 
 modern manifestations from the stand of the current 
 theology has been able to appreciate the nature of the 
 phenomena here presented, or to do impartial justice 
 to their character. As already observed, these com- 
 munications are neither airs from heaven nor blasts 
 from hell ; are neither divinely authorized revelations 
 froi^ angels, nor only infernal breathings from devils. 
 The belief which attributes them to a class of demons 
 who have never inhabited human bodies is equally 
 erroneous according to our views, there being none 
 such in existence. 
 
 They are merely outbirths from the mixed and 
 varied population of the world of spirits ; for the 
 most part neither very good nor very evil, though 
 always of disorderly character and grade, and some- 
 times sinking to a lower one than common; con- 
 versations proceeding from persons like ourselves, 
 who have within the last few years, or few months, or 
 
 * This remark does not, of course, apply to the doctrine of the An- 
 glican Church, and of the Episcopal, in this country, for that definitely 
 a£^ms the e^ustence of such a state. 
 
48 MODERN SPlillTITALlSM. 
 
 days, goii^ into the other world from our Own midst, 
 though disorderly in their desire to communicate. 
 Our neighbors of ten years ago are now many of them 
 there. Within the last twenty or thirty years a num- 
 ber nearly equal to our present population has passed 
 into that life from Portland, from Boston, from New 
 York, from New England, and so too, of course, from 
 the whole United States, as well as every bther part 
 of the world. And the great majority of this vast 
 concourse are still living in the world of spirits, un- 
 transferred as yet either to a higher or to a lower 
 state of existence. There they are, with all their 
 varied habits of thought, and many of their confirmed 
 opinions, and with all the different degrees of moral 
 development and character which they possessed here. 
 A moment's reflection upon the facts of the case as 
 they actually exist, will serve to show us that conver- 
 sations held with this population, or communications 
 received from them, must in like manner be exceed- 
 ingly variable and diverse in their kind and quality. 
 They will of course possess no authority or reliabiUty 
 whatever as revelations of religious or divine truth. 
 And while many of them may appear harmless in 
 character, or even give utterance to high and noble 
 sentiments and sound moral maxims, yet on the whole 
 their tendency will be found to be demoralizing, as 
 the intercourse itself is disorderly, and only those 
 spirits who love what is foi-bidden will be willing to 
 enter into and keep up this famiUarity with men in 
 the world. They are revelations influenced from the 
 wrong side of the spiritual world, and in the long run 
 can tend only more and more to evil and error. This 
 view, which from our study of the New Church phi- 
 losophy and doctrines we are led to take, is fully veri- 
 
 A 
 
HADES AND SHEOL NOT GEHENXA. 49 
 
 fied, we believe, by a fair construction of all the phe- 
 nomena -which have thus far been reported to have 
 occurred. 
 
 We have said that the denial by Protestants of 
 the third spiritual world, or intermediate state of 
 the departed, between heaven and hell, is imscri])- 
 tural. This is a point which in these few papfes we 
 have no*t the space sufficiently to show ; but there are 
 two or three considerations to which we will refer, 
 that may serve to call attention to the subject, and 
 excite further inquiry. 1. Besides the terms used 
 in the Scriptures to designate heaven, there are also 
 in the Greek two other words to denote the places of 
 departed spirits.* One of these, Gehenna, unquts- 
 tionably means heJl, and is always translated so ; but 
 the other term. Hades, properly means the world of 
 departed spirits ; and is used to designate the world 
 of spirits, or intermediate state, in the New Testa- 
 ment. The word in Hebrew answerins^ to the Greek 
 Hades is Sheol, and the distinction which is made in 
 the writings of the New Church — between the world 
 of spirits and the hells appears every where in the 
 original languages of the Bible ; and the discrimina- 
 tion is strictly kept up throughout the Old and New 
 Testaments. 
 
 Martin Luther, in order to get rid of the Romish 
 doctrine of purgatory, and remove as far as possible 
 all Scripture warrant for the same, when he came to 
 translate the Bible into German, rendered both words, 
 Hades and Gehenna, as meaning the same place — that 
 is, the place of eternal punishment. All the Protes- 
 
 * The word Tartartis is once used, in the Epistle of Peter, to desig- 
 nate hell. 
 
50 MODERN SPIRITUALISM. 
 
 tant editions since have followed his example, and 
 hence in our common English Bible we have only 
 the single word hell, as a translation of both the other 
 words indiscriminately, wherever they occur. Every 
 reader of the classical Greek is well aware that Hades, 
 in their mythology, did nol; mean the infernal regions, 
 but simply the place of shades, the under-world, or 
 the abode to which the dead first went after they left 
 the body, and where the good and the evil were min- 
 gled together ; in other words, the world of spirits. 
 
 In this connection let us attend to a single circum- 
 stance brought to view in the visit of Saul to the 
 witch of Endor, and the interview which she obtained 
 for him with the prophet Samuel ; the account of 
 which is recorded in the twenty-eighth chapter of the 
 first book of Samuel. When he made his appearance, 
 Samuel said unto Saul, " Why hast thou disquieted 
 me to bring me up ? wherefore dost thou ask of me, 
 seeing that the Lord hath departed from thee ? The 
 Lord will deliver Israel with thee into the hand of 
 the Philistines ; and to-morrow shalt thou and thy 
 sons be with me." 
 
 The prophet had then recently died ; he was a good 
 man — had been most unexceptionable in his character 
 from his youth up, and became a prophet of the Lord. 
 On the common orthodox theory he must of course 
 have gone immediately to heaven. But here we have 
 Samuel' telling Saul that the very next day he and 
 his sons should be with him. Saul — a wicked man, 
 who disobeyed the voice of the Lord, who continually 
 forsook his statutes, and from whom the Lord was 
 about to rend the kingdom and give it to another ; 
 how could it be that he should "o so suddenly and at 
 once to heayen ? Manifestly that supposition cannot 
 
 I 
 
SPIRITUAL INTERCOURSE IX THE BIBLE. 51 
 
 be entertained. According to the common theory, he 
 ought to have made quite as sudden descent into hell. 
 How then, we ask, can the truth of Samuel's asser- 
 tion, that the next day Saul and his sons should be in 
 the same place with Samuel, be reconciled with the 
 current theories in regard to the subject ? Evidently 
 it cannot be so reconciled. The only sufficient expla- 
 nation of the matter is, to say, with the Ncav Church, 
 that Samuel was then in the world of spirits, whither 
 all first go after death, and where the good and the 
 evil are for a time still mingled together — the place 
 called Sheol in the Hebrew of the Old Testament, and 
 Hades in the Greek of the New. 
 
 In bringing our remarks on the present occasion to 
 a close, there are two broad facts that lie very ob- 
 viously exposed on the surface of the Scriptures to 
 which we wish briefly to advert. 1. The first of these 
 is, that the Bible every where recognizes the truth of 
 the prevalence of spiritual intercourse. All its lan- 
 guage on the subject presupposes and takes for 
 granted that those whom it speaks of as having fa- 
 miliar spirits, do in reality consult with departed 
 spirits, and obtain communications from them. It 
 every where treats the belief of the Jews, and the 
 belief of the pagan world that such was the fact, as a 
 true belief; and never, in one instance, hints that the 
 persons are deceived in this respect, or that the belief 
 in question was a delusion. Saul evidently thought 
 it no delusion when he went to the woman of Endor. 
 The men who told him of her, and he himself, had 
 not the least doubt but that she was a real medium, 
 and could obtain a communication for him from a real 
 spirit. He wished her to call up Samuel for him; 
 she called him^ and Samuel came, and his communi- 
 
52 M0DERJ5 SPIRITUALISM. 
 
 cation is recorded in the Scripture. The whole trans- 
 action is recorded as a fact, and not as a strange fact, 
 or one unlikely to occur, but as one which all the 
 parties concerned expected to see. 
 
 No such words are used in the Scripture concern- 
 ing such alleged communications as we now hear so 
 frequently in the current literature. It never says, 
 *'pseudo spiritualism,^' or ^' so called diviners,^' or 
 *' pretended consulters of the dead ; " but takes the 
 whole thing for granted, and applies to them a num- 
 ber of tei ns, all implying the truth and reality of the 
 alleged phenomena. As for instance : Diviners of 
 divination, cultivators of occult art, consulters of a 
 departed spirit, the knowing or wise wizards, seekers 
 unto the dead, and several others. This lact we com- 
 mend to the careful attention of those who in this 
 day wrap themselves up in a mantle of unbelief on 
 this subject, and deny the possibility or the reality of 
 this kind of intercourse. 
 
 The other circumstance to which we allude is the 
 fact that the Bible, while it thus universally recog- 
 nizes the reality of the thing, at the same time very 
 strictly enjoined the Israelites to refrain from seeking 
 that kind of intercourse. The prohibitions are fre- 
 quent, and the penalties prescribed for transgression 
 severe. Saul, though king, was compelled to go by 
 night, as he was fearful to be seen going by day. 
 
 In the eighteenth chapter of Deuteronomy., Moses, 
 at the command of the Lord, says, ** When thou art 
 come into the land which the Lord thy God giveth 
 thee, thou shalt not learn to do after the abominations 
 of those nations ; there shall not be found among you 
 any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass 
 through the fire, or tha useth divination, or an obser- 
 
THE BIBLE FORBIDS IT. 63 
 
 vev of times, dt an enchanter, or a witcli, or a con- 
 suiter with fiimiliar spirits, or a wizard, or a necro- 
 mancer; for all that do these things are an abomina- 
 tion nnto the Lord." 
 
 Another translation of this passage, giving the 
 sense perhaps more literally into English, is as fol- 
 lows : '' When thou comest to tlie land which Jehovah 
 God is about to give thee, there shall not be found in 
 thee that maketh his son or his daughter to pass 
 through the fire, that useth divinations, and that ask- 
 eth questions of the hells, and is given to augury, 
 and is a witch and enchanter, and that asketh ques- 
 tions of a familiar spirit, and is a soothsayer, and that 
 maketh inquiiy of the dead ; for every one that doeth 
 these things is an abomination to Jehovah." 
 
 Again, we read, Thoa shalt not suffer a iditch to 
 live ; " A man also, or a woman, that hath a familiar 
 spirit, or that is a wizard, shall surely be put to death ; 
 they shall stone them with stones." And in another 
 place we are told that " the soul that turneth after such 
 as have fiirailiar spirits, and after wizards, to go after 
 them, I will even set my face against that soul, and 
 Vv'ill cut him off from among his people." 
 
 In strict accordance with the spirit of these are the 
 words of the text : " When they say unto you. Seek 
 unto them that have llimiliar spirits, and to wizards 
 that peep and that mutter ; should not a people seek 
 unto their God ? For the living to the dead 1 To the 
 law and to the testimony. If they speak not according 
 to this JVordy it is because there is no truth in them." 
 And wlien we pass to the New Testament, we find, 
 in addition to the demons wliich our Lord and the dis- 
 ciples in Tlis day mot and cast out, that the apostles 
 Bometimes encountered similar manifestations. In the 
 A* 
 
54 MODEKN SPIEITTJALISil. 
 
 Book of Acts we read of a certain Simon, who be- 
 witched the people of Samaria with sorceries ; and 
 again of Bar-jesus, or Elymas, a sorcerer or fjxlse 
 prophet, who songht to turn away the deputy of the 
 province from the faith, and wlio, through Paul, y>^as 
 struck with blindness. Both these are instances of 
 seeking unhallowed influences from the other world. 
 While in the sixteenth chapter of the same book we 
 are told of another medium : " And it came to pass, as 
 we went to prayer, a certain damsel possessed with a 
 spirit of divination met us, Avhich brought her masters 
 much gain by soothsaying," — from whom Paul cast 
 out XkiQ, ijython or familiar spirit. 
 
 These things we regard as involving a clear and im- 
 portant law, a perpetual and constant law of the mind 
 and of its connection with the eternal world. Such 
 sensible or familiar intercourse with the spirits is never 
 to be sought for, but rather to be avoided and shunned 
 as an evil or a sin. " For rebellion is as the sin of 
 Avitchcraft." Men are not reformed or rendered better 
 by this kind of intercourse. It was not until the 
 Lord had left Saul that he sought out the woman of 
 Endor. And so, a seeking unto the mediums mny 
 always be taken as a virtual turning away from the 
 Lord. The Bible is His revelation, and it is there that 
 we are to seek Him. 
 
LECTURE III.- 
 
 THE NE\> JER.3ALEM A REVEALED SYSTEM OF DOCTRINAIi 
 TRUTH FOR THE NEW AGE. 
 
 " After his I looked, and, behold, a door was opened in heaven." — 
 Rev. iv. 1. 
 
 The immortality or future everlasting existence of 
 the human soul is a theme which has employed the 
 best thought of the best minds in all ages. There is 
 a perpetual influx from the world of departed spirits 
 into the minds of men, producing a general impres- 
 sion that they are to live hereafter. The inflowing 
 of this general thought is unconsciously received by 
 men ; but yet, under the operation of its influence, 
 rationally-minded persons can see a confirmation of 
 the truth imaged forth by many things in nature, and 
 a further one drawn from the constitution and phe- 
 nomena of their own minds. 
 
 But notwithstanding this common idea and general 
 belief existing in all times and among all people, 
 nothing at all satisfactory or definite can be known 
 concerning that future state except through express 
 or direct revelation. We require some communica- 
 
 (55) 
 

 56 MODERN SPIRITUALISM. 
 
 tion witli and from that world, in order to assure us 
 fully of the reality of its existence, the nature of its 
 inhabitants, and the quality of the life which is lived 
 there; and ample provision has been made by the 
 Lord, at different ages of the world, for the supply of 
 this want and the communication of this knowledge, 
 so far as they could be rendered serviceable to the 
 human race. A divinely-authorized revelation of 
 spiritual truth has been kept in the world from the 
 first appearance of man upon the earth down to the 
 present hour. After the loss or disappearance of the 
 Ancient Word, (a Bible or sacred Scripture that ex- 
 isted among the nations of Western Asia before the 
 Old Testament, or Jewish Scriptures,) Abraham was 
 called, Moses raised up, and a new revelation began 
 to be communicated. As all who are familiar with 
 its history are well aware, this was a slowly pi\^2'res- 
 sive revelation. Not only hundreds, but some thou- 
 sands of years elapsed between its commencement 
 with Abraham and its termination with Malachi. Very 
 few indeed are the thini^s which were at lirst made 
 known to the three patriarchs, or to the children of 
 Jacob. But the comiimnication proceeded. Moses and 
 Joshua received more. " Open vision " was repeated 
 througljout the days of the Judges. And tliougli it 
 ceased then for a period of about three hundred yeai-s, 
 it returned when " the Word of the Lord came again 
 to Samuel in Sliiloh." Thence it continued in Israel, 
 until the last words of the last prophet of the s;icj-ed 
 canon. Thus the volume of spiritual truth thrown in 
 upon the thought of mankind was constantly increasing. 
 It lias been maintained by some tliat tlie Jews knew 
 nothing of the immortality of the soul, or of the life 
 after death. The particulars, indeed, are wanting 
 
DIVINE EEYELATIOX PROGRESSIVE. 57 
 
 which enable us to trace minutely the history of these 
 ideas in the national mind ; while it is undoubtedly 
 tiue that Sadducees existed, as well as others deny- 
 ing a future state. But a reference to tlie Tar- 
 gunis shows conclusively that a future state, with its 
 diiferent places of abode and its appropriate distribu- 
 tions of what were called rewards and punishments, 
 was entirely flimiliar not only to the learned among 
 them but also to the well instructed among the people 
 before the daAvn of Christianity. The change, however, 
 would still fnlly justify Paul's remarks to Timothy, 
 that Jesus Christ had brought life and immortality to 
 Jlnht in tlie Gospel, so great is the additional clearness. 
 
 The New Testament revelation, also, was a pro- 
 gressive one, extending from the promise of the birth 
 ot" John the Baptist to the vision of St. John the Di- 
 vine — over a period of, say, nearly one hundred years. 
 It is not merely successive in point of time, but is 
 also progressive with respect to the amount of knowl- 
 edge Vv'hich it communicates relating to the future life ; 
 for much more is made known concerning the world 
 of angels and spirits in the book of Revelation than 
 there is in the Gospel of Matthew. In fact, the book 
 of Revelation is almost wholly taken up with an ac- 
 count of things heard and seen by John in the world 
 where spirits and angels dwell. 
 
 From the hasty glance we have thus been enabled 
 to take, on the present and on a previous occasion, of 
 the past history of revelations and communications 
 from the world of departed spirits, two leading facts 
 are brought prominently into view. The first is, that 
 the divine revelation to men has been progressively 
 delivered. It was not all given at once ; neither to 
 one set of prophets, nor in a single age, nor to one 
 
58 MODERN SPIRITUALISM. 
 
 nation, nor in one language. It lias been a continu- 
 ous chain of many successive links ; not a great many- 
 centuries having been allowed to elapse without some 
 further vision of heavenly things having been accord- 
 ed to a duly-authorized seer. 
 
 The second fact is, that communications from the 
 other world have, in all ages, consisted of two gen- 
 eral classes or kinds ; one which was divinely author- 
 ized, and therefore orderly and reliable, and another 
 not divinely autliorized, and therefore irregular, un- 
 reliable, disorderly, and therefore forbidden. All 
 those instances in the sacred Scriptures which we have 
 referred to to show the existence of open intercourse, 
 through the medium of prophets or seers, were of an 
 orderly kind, and occurred by the will of the Divine 
 Providence in an orderly, though unusual, operation 
 of the physiological and psychological laws of man's 
 being. They were provided and caused to occur by 
 the Lord for important purposes connected with his 
 church and kingdom amongst men. They were in no 
 case mentioned sought by the person in any way what- 
 ever, that we have any account of, but occurred by 
 the special pleasure and provision of the Lord, for 
 some good and important purpose relating to his 
 church and the spiritual and eternal welfare of men. 
 
 While this was the case with all the prophets and 
 seers of the Old Testament, and with the apostles and 
 a few others of the New, there was another class of 
 persons, exceedingly numerous in comparison, who 
 had, in one way or another, more or less sensible or 
 open communication with spirits. This numerous 
 class, however, desired and sought for such open com- 
 munications, and often, by an abuse or perverted use 
 of the laws connecting our spirits with those in the 
 
\ 
 
 MISCELLANEOUS COMMUNICATIONS. 59 
 
 spiritual world, forced open, to a greater or less ex- 
 tent, some in one way and some in another, the door 
 that ordinarily shuts that world and its inhabitants 
 from our view and knowledge, and thus obtained a 
 species of unlawful or disorderly entrance, and, as a 
 matter of course, according to the laws of spiritual 
 association, came, by such communication, into com- 
 pany with, and more or less under the influence of, 
 mixed and disorderly spirits, and frequently of evil 
 and infernal ones. Persons seeking and holding this 
 kind of intercourse with the other world are called 
 " charmers,''^ " necromancers," " those that have famil- 
 iar spirits," " wizards," " conjurers," '* witches," 
 *-'■ soothsayers," "diviners," "magicians," "sorcerers," 
 "seekers unto the dead," " consulters of 'departed 
 spirits," &c.; and these different names are given to 
 them as indicating the many various ways in which 
 they operated, the various kinds of manifestation they 
 were severally in the habit of obtaining, and the vari- 
 ous kinds of spiritual influences which they experi- 
 enced in their own persons, or caused upon others ; 
 for it must be remembered that these difl'erent terms 
 in our own language all come from one general source, 
 and have as the original of their meaning, " persons 
 who liold intercourse with departed (or disimbodied) 
 spirits." 
 
 From these two facts thus brought into view, — 
 "first, of a progressive divine revelation, and second, 
 of a parallel line of unreliable spiritual communica- 
 tions, — we draw the two following inferences : name- 
 ly, first, that after an interruption of many centuries 
 we may reasonably expect a further continuance of 
 the chain of divine revelations ; and secondly, that 
 whenever, in the history of the world, a period should 
 
60 MODERN SPIRITUALISM. 
 
 occur in whicli the miscellaneous communications from 
 the world of spirits should become again remarkably 
 prevalent, should exhibit new and extraordinary fea- 
 tures, and develop new and important characteristics, 
 then there is an antecedent probability, or a priori 
 presumption, that there would in the same age be sent 
 into the world, through the Divine Providence, another 
 revelation, of an authentic and reliable kind, to meet 
 the rational and spiritual wants of the times, and to 
 impart to the church and the world a light sufficiently 
 full and clear to guide them safely through every exi- 
 gency, and to point them unerringly to the genuine 
 truth. Such, consequently, is the announcement 
 which we now have to make. 
 
 With respect to the first part, therefore, we shall 
 assume that well-authenticated facts, occurring all 
 around us, and extending over most civilized coun- 
 tries, clearly enough for our present purpose demon- 
 strate the proposition that miscellaneous communica- 
 tions from the other world, varying in character, 
 quality, and degree, are now taking place in unusual 
 and extraordinary numbers. Many of the communi- 
 cations claiming to be thus received contain a style of 
 thought and are conveyed in language such as the 
 world has never witnessed from a similar source be- 
 fore. And that these manifestations are exercising an 
 influence upon the popular mind of the day such as 
 was never before exercised by communications of a 
 similar kind will be, we presume, also readily ad- 
 mitted. 
 
 It is also our high privilege to be able to affirm the 
 presence in the world of a corresponding . divinely- 
 accorded revelation — a revelation as far exceeding 
 those which have gone before it in the fulness of its 
 
DIVINE REVELATIONS NOT ENDED. 61 
 
 disclosures concerning the future life as the spiritual 
 manifestations of the day exceed in this respect those 
 of the previous ages. ^ 
 
 We are aware that an objection may at this point 
 suggest itself to many minds, not from the side of 
 spiritualism, but from that of the current old church 
 theology ; and it may be worth while to give that ob- 
 jection a passing notice. 
 
 It is a frequent and oft-repeated assertion, continu- 
 ally meeting our eyes and ears in religious books and 
 religious discourses, that the series of divine commu- 
 nications to men has long since closed ; that we are to 
 have no more revelations ; that the age for such dis- 
 closures has ceased, or gone by never more to return. 
 And this proposition, by dint of continuous repetition, 
 has come at length to be believed, as though it had 
 some solid or sufficient ground upon which to rest. But 
 this supposition will^ on examination, be found to be 
 very far from true. There is certainly nothing in the 
 nature of the case to lead to the belief that such rev- 
 elations would cease to occur. There is no rational, 
 a priori basis for such a doctrine, and no scriptural 
 warrant for it. We have sought in vain for a single 
 expression in all the Scripture, from beginning to end, 
 that contained a hint of any thing of the kind. We 
 have never seen or heard any such testimony adduced ; 
 on the contrary, the Scriptures all along keep point- 
 ing forward in various ways to developments of fact 
 and disclosures of truth which are yet to come. Dan- 
 iel was told that the meaning of his vision could not 
 then be made known to him, but that it should be 
 opened or disclosed at the end of many ages. The 
 Lord, in speaking to his disciples, referred to a time 
 coming when he should no longer, as he did then, veil 
 6 
 
62 MODERN SPIRITUALIS.M. 
 
 what be liad to say in parable, or similitude, or figure, 
 but in which the truth would be more plainly or defi- 
 nitely unfolded. The whole book of Kevelation is a 
 pointing forward to a period of more ample disclosure 
 in regard to spiritual and divine things. The heavens 
 are seen opening ; the hitherto comparatively sealed 
 book of God's word is seen by the apostle to be one 
 of the things which were to be opened in that future 
 into which he was then symbolically looking ; the New 
 Jerusalem was seen to descend — a descent by which 
 it is declared that God should reveal himself more 
 completely to men than ever before. 
 
 But without wearying your patience by a further 
 enumeration of particulars, we may affirm that so far 
 from tlie scriptural presumption being that such reve- 
 lations are closed, there are frequent and positive pre- 
 dictions to the contrary — predictions which fully 
 assure not only that there will be further disclosures 
 of such truth, but that such truths will be known in 
 much greater abundance than in all the times which 
 are past. 
 
 Every presumption, therefore, both of reason and 
 prophecy, is in favor of the supposition that some new 
 divine revelation would be accorded to men about the 
 present age of the world ; and this general presump- 
 tion will, we think, be very strongly confirmed in the 
 mind of any person who will rationally examine the 
 subject, and then look out around him upon the many 
 and various signs of the times. 
 
 If, then, such a revelation is to be expected, it is 
 also rationally to be presumed that that revelation, 
 when it does come, will, among other things, make 
 known to us the mysteries of another life. Inasmuch 
 as the old revelation went on, from stage to stage, 
 
THE FUTURE LIFE TO BE KNOWN. -63 
 
 disclosing more and more definitely tlie truths concern- 
 ing man's future existence, as the world was able to 
 bear or receive them, closing in a vision which with- 
 drew the veil from between the two worlds in a man- 
 ner in which it had never been withdrawn before, may 
 we not fairly expect, when the grand drama of heav- 
 enly seership again reopens, and a new scene is pre- 
 sented, that the other world and the other life will be 
 still more fully laid open to view than ever before ? 
 We have every reason to suppose that the general 
 order of progressive development will be maintained, 
 and that the single door there opened into those 
 heavenly spheres will be thrown still more widely 
 apart, and men made more fully acquainted with the 
 states and conditions of their inhabitants. 
 
 Such, consequently, is actually the case. The New 
 Jerusalem revelation contains an opening of the con- 
 ditions in which men live after they have passed out 
 of the mortal body. It makes known the quality and 
 the phenomena of the future state, and describes the 
 vast but diverse populations that inhabit the world of 
 spirits, the spheres of the evil, and the heavenly 
 worlds of good spirits and angels. 
 
 And the writings containing these accounts are not 
 made up of romantic sketches, are not vague, dreamy, 
 highly imaginative, or poetic pictures, to suit the ap- 
 petite of a wandering fancy, as many are induced to 
 believe, but consist of simple, clear, concise, prosaic 
 descriptions of facts conveyed with the minute accu- 
 racy of phrase suited to scientific statements, of com ■ 
 pact logical trains of thought, of lucid expositions of 
 philosophical principles, and of rational unfoldings of 
 organic laws. 
 
 Another idea which is very frequently expressed in 
 
€4; MOD^IRN SPIHITUALISM. 
 
 the religious literature of the day, and which may 
 therefore lie in the minds of some as an objection to 
 the truth of this kind of revelation, is, that because 
 nothins: definite concerninsr the m.ode of the future 
 state of existence has been made known in the literal 
 sense of the Old and New Testaments, therefore sucl? 
 knowledge never will be made known, is* not in itself 
 to be desired, and if known would only minister to an 
 idle curiosity, and never be of use to mankind. And 
 by maintaining and repeating a doctrine like this it is 
 now sought to forestall and repress all rational inquiry 
 into the subject. 
 
 Nothing can be more fallacious than an allegation 
 and an inference of this kind. If it be the mark of a 
 noble and manly mind to feel and manifest an interest 
 in the great question of its own immortality, it must 
 surely be a matter of equal dignity and importance to 
 inquire rationally as to the mode and conditions of 
 that existence. If a desire for a little knowledge on 
 the subject be a commendable quality, then certainly 
 a desire for rational, clear, definite, and full knowl- 
 edge in regard to it must be more commendable still ; 
 and it will be found, as a general rule, that the more 
 real interest a person feels in his own future existence, 
 the stronger will be his desire to acquire ■ and form 
 some definite and rational conceptions concerning the 
 manner, state, and conditions of that existence. A 
 knowledge concerning the other world is a highly de- 
 sirable and proper kind of knowledge. When exhib- 
 ited in connection with the principles of genuine reli- 
 gion, and used as it may and is intended to be, to 
 show man his true destiny, and how he may avoid 
 misery and how best attain to eternal happiness in that 
 world, it becomes the most valuable kind of knqwl- 
 
THE LORD WILLING TO KEVEAL. 65 
 
 edge of which it is possible for the mind of man to 
 conceive — a knowledge which the Lord in times past 
 has not been striving to conceal from his creatures, 
 but which, on the other hand, he has been constantly 
 endeavoring to prepare them for, that he might com- 
 municate it. Through a long series of dispensations 
 he has been gradually leading them on to desire and 
 ask for more of it, mysteriously lifting the veil now 
 and then, giving here and there a glimpse of the won- 
 ders which are behind it, so as to attract attention to 
 the subject, to arouse curiosity,' invite investigation, 
 and stimulate rational inquiry. " Prove me now here' 
 wilkf if I will not open you the windows of heaven, 
 and your you out a blessing that there be not room 
 enough to receive it,'' has always been the language 
 of the Lord of Hosts, both in his word and in his 
 providence. But men have been so fully absorbed in 
 their own worldly interests and affairs that they could 
 not have their minds so lifted above them as to ren- 
 der such knowledge of any spiritual benefit to them. 
 They have been too dim of sight and too dull of 
 hearinor heretofore for the further revelation of these 
 matters. If they sought* intercourse with the beings 
 of the other world in ages past, it was not to gather 
 spiritual instruction, or to learn how they might live 
 better moral lives, but only to know the result of a 
 coming battle or journey, how to succeed in some petty 
 quarrel, or to make some other inquiry in regard to 
 their merely selfish and worldly affairs. But now, after 
 three or four thousand years of training and develop- 
 ment, a different state has been prepared with some, 
 and the rational mind of many of the race is just be- 
 ginning to ask those momentous questions in regard to 
 tiie realities of the future life which it ought to have 
 6 
 
66 MODERN SPIRITUALISM. 
 
 asked, and wliich it has been solicited to ask in a proper 
 manner ages and ages ago. And here is the divine 
 revelation, already in the world, accorded beforehand, 
 to answer the question, to meet the coming want, to 
 shed the needed light, to supply the incipient demand. 
 
 We hold, therefore, that the prevalent desire which 
 is now being manifested by multitudes of people to 
 make inquiry concerning the spiritual world, to learn 
 the state of the departed, to know in what manner 
 their friends who have gone from earth continue to 
 live in that other life, to what extent they are still 
 aware of the things which are transpiring here, and 
 how for they can or are willing to communicate their 
 present knowledge to the inhabitants of earth, is a 
 rational and proper desire — a desire calculated in the 
 long run gradually to elevate the human mind, and 
 turn its attention more decidedly to the themes con- 
 nected witli our immortality. Jiut the desire needs 
 direction and instruction. Like other natural impulses, 
 it must be purified and elevated, or it will run to low 
 and grovelling gratifications. The Lord has provided 
 for it food and stimulus, and these are contained in 
 the Sacred Scripture. More i^ involved in the Scrip- 
 tural disclosures, and more can be learned from them 
 on these topics by careful study than many suppose. 
 The heavens desire to communicate this knowledge to 
 us, but only through the divinely appointed channels, 
 the pages of the Inspired Word ; and to affect us, but 
 only by the silent and imperceptible ministry of 
 angels. 
 
 Since the execution of the last general judgment in 
 the world of spirits, in the year 1757, and the conse- 
 quent commencement of a new dispensation, a new 
 order of thiuixs has been o-raduallv introduced into all 
 
PREPARATII NS FOR A NEW AGE. G7 
 
 the arrangements of the spiritual world. The socie- 
 ties of diabolical spirits were then removed from the 
 world of spirits, and a new order of heavenly societies 
 were formed from among the good. The world of 
 spirits lias since been filling up with a new popula- 
 tion. The intensely profime and evil are not now 
 allowed to remain so long, and to accumulate there in 
 permanent societies as they formerly did, and the gen- 
 eral state of its inhabitants is now one of perpetual 
 flux and change. The new heavens or the new 
 heavenly societies which wei'e formed at the time of 
 the last judgment are brought down nearer to men than 
 the former heavens were ; and there is a general and 
 strong desire on the part of the good inhabitants of 
 the spiritual worlds to communicate the good things 
 and true things of their state to men, in their way. 
 
 The truth is that the Lord is at this day rapidly 
 preparing affairs, both in the other world and in this, 
 for the successive accomplishment of the great and 
 glorious things of prophecy ; for hastening on the 
 time when the waste places of the earth shall become 
 joyous and glad, when the desert shall blossom as the 
 rose, and when the lion and the lamb shall lie down 
 together. The world is about entering upon the 
 earlier stages of a new great epoch in universal his- 
 tory, in which humanity is going to achieve that 
 grander destiny and development which has for so 
 many ages been alike the dream of the poet, the vision 
 of the inspired seer, and the rational hope of the 
 philosopher and the sage. And that destiny is not to 
 be simply a secular or merehj worldly oiie. The main- 
 springs of its movement are to be moral forces. It 
 will be deeply and intimately connected with the 
 church of the race, with the spiritual interests of the 
 
68 MODERN SPIRITUALISM. 
 
 human soul, and will grow out of a new opening and 
 expansion of man's religious life. 
 
 Now with this great thought — the grand idea of 
 this new and more gloiious dispensation — the crown 
 and diadem of all tiie dispensations that have gone 
 before it — the whole spiritual world is swelHng and 
 pregnant. There is an intense desire felt on their part 
 to communicate the thought, and to help forward the 
 movement. The spiritual world is as it were every- 
 where pressing down upon this world in order to be 
 received and acknowledged. It seeks to inspire the 
 minds of men here with a belief in the realities, the 
 substantialities, and the nearness of that world and of 
 that life. 
 
 But men for the most part are so slow to believe 
 these things, are so prone and content to plod on in 
 the care and thought of their worldly occupations and 
 interests, that they are not ready to seek a knowledge 
 of these things of their own accord, or without the 
 stimulus of some present and powerful motive. The 
 reception of the full, clear, and rational revelation of 
 these things made in the divine providence of the 
 Lord, one hundred years ago, has been comparatively 
 slow and gradual. The age requires some striking 
 and extraordinary display to arrest its attention, to 
 excite its curiosity, and to lead it to an attentive and 
 careftd investigation of the whole subject. 
 
 Demonstrations of this kind exist extensively in the 
 new and unparalleled changes and movements of the 
 day, so unlike anything witnessed m former ages. All 
 things betoken a new i;rent phase in nnivei-sal history. 
 What function ])recisely tliese sj)iritualistic manifesta- 
 tions are intended to perform in this general movement, 
 it is impossible for us to say ; but they are certainly under 
 
A 15'EW DISPENSATIOX PRESSING IN. 69 
 
 the direction of tlie divine providence, and subject to 
 His control, and hence we must infer tliat tliey liave been 
 permitted for some wise and sufficient end. Tliey may 
 be meant to have an indirect and reflex influence oper- 
 ,itin^ upon the community whicli does not seek tlie in- 
 tercourse, familiarizing the popular mind with the idea 
 of a living, real spiritual world, exciting attention, and 
 nltimately determining inquiry into right and liealtliy 
 channels. Perhaps we may be allowed to say that a 
 state of things has arrived at tlie present day in regard 
 to these truths, somewhat similar to that which vras ex- 
 pressed by our Lord when he was riding into Jerusalem 
 on the ass's colt. Speaking of the men, women, and 
 children v»'ho were running beside him and singing 
 Hosanna to the Son of David, he said, Jf these 
 should hold their peace, the very stones would cry out. 
 The idea is, that the truth pressed in with such power 
 to be made knoAvn, that it must obtain an utterance 
 somewhere ; that it was impossible but that it should 
 attract to itself mediums through whom it could get 
 articulation and voice. And so it is again at this day. 
 These great pregnant truths, of such vast impor- 
 tance to the human race, and having so direct a bear- 
 ing upon man's eternal interests, are pressing in with 
 imparalleled power from the other world, and are 
 striving to make themselves known. They flow in in 
 some form or other, into the better affections of men, 
 disposing them to think and inquire, and producing a 
 certain illustration of mind when the inquiry is pui'sued 
 with right motives and in the right quarters ; while 
 Providence seems willing, too, to permit influences of 
 an opposite kind to take effect, to flow down into ul- 
 timate manifestation, giving visible signs and tokens 
 among men, which a certain class of minds can believe, 
 
70 MODERN SPIRITUALISM. 
 
 and which may be overruled for their ultimate good. 
 If the scribes and Pharisees of the prevailing chnrch 
 refuse to receive and declare the true doctrine of the 
 resurrection and the future life, it may be necessary, in 
 the permissions of the divine economy, that the very 
 crowds in the streets should lift up their voices. It 
 may be claimed by the advocates of these phenomena, 
 "that multitudes of well-disposed and enlightened spirits 
 have tlms communicaterl, and that they have dis- 
 closed to their own friends and to the public mind of 
 the world impoitant facts of which it was not before 
 aware. They have brought home to the convictions 
 and the hearts of many people the spiritual world and 
 its inhabitants, and the future life of man, in a sen- 
 sible and realizable manner, as the whole church of 
 the past has never been able to do. And they have 
 given forth many instructions correct in science, 
 elevated in moral sentiment, calculated to improve 
 the characters of men, and to render them more 
 thoughtful, and wiser, and better." . 
 
 But with all this standing out prominently from the 
 canvas as one side of the picture, it must not be 
 omitted or forgotten that the subject presents also 
 another and a very different side. We are content 
 to put the inquiry to those most familiar with the 
 matter, and therefore the best qualified to judge, 
 whether there is not constantly being received from 
 the same general source much that is evil and many 
 things that are false ; whether, after all, beyond a 
 few general facts in regard to the resurrection of the 
 spirit, and its immediate entrance into eternal life, 
 with the mode in which men first live there, the com- 
 munications are not, in a very great majority of cases, 
 merely petty and frivolous conversations, absurd or 
 
CHARACTERISTICS OF THESE COMMUNICATIONS 71 
 
 ridiculous instructions, deceitful and fraudulent alle- 
 gations, vapid and incoherent fancies, or high-flown, 
 swelling, and bombastic deliverances, of vast preten- 
 sion, but of weak substance or fulfilment ; keeping, 
 like Macbeth's witches, the word of promise to the 
 ear, but breaking it to the hope ; in many cases exer- 
 cising a very pernicious and injurious influence upon 
 men — taking away their proper and useful interest 
 in the common affairs of life, turning them aside from 
 their daily avocations and duties, intoxicating their 
 minds with a species of unwholesome enthusiasm or 
 fervor, lifting them oflf their intellectual feet, and 
 carrying them about on the mock wings of a fallacious 
 and spurious inspiration ; substituting often, in place 
 of their own rationality^ the lead and direction of 
 spirits not half so wise, perhaps, or well developed as 
 themselves ; and whose company, could, they but be 
 brought visibly face to face with them, they would no 
 longer be in a desire to keep ; and filling the insane 
 asylums all through the land with the victims of a 
 new kind of mania.* 
 
 Now this latter class of facts connected with these 
 phenomena must not be hastily passed over or pushed 
 out of view. They form an integrant and inevitable 
 element in this kind of manifestation ; and something 
 which must always go along with it, helping to 
 modify its character, and tending to impart to it a 
 general and permanent quality. 
 
 * "We allow this latter allusion to stand as it is, because it is fully sus- 
 tained by the facts of the case. Nevertheless, it ought in justice to be 
 remarked in this connection, that the production of insanity is not a 
 very distinguishing mark of the spiritual manifestations. Men are 
 likewise continually being rendered insane by various religious excite- 
 ments, as well as by close application to study, and unremitted attention 
 to mercantile business in our large cities. 
 
73 MODERN SPmrrUALISM. 
 
 And how, we ask, is it possible that it shouhl bo 
 otherwise, when we consider the mixed and variable 
 character of the population of the world of spirits, 
 where all go when they first depart from natural 
 body, and the place from which these communica- 
 tions come ? Multitudes of abandoned and evil 
 men are there, wandering about through that world, 
 wishing and determined to counteract any beneficial 
 infiuences which good spirits may strive to exert upon 
 the minds of men, and to overthrow any good results 
 which are likely to be built up here in consequence. 
 And we must keep it constantly in mind that in very 
 many cases, men who were evil in disposition here 
 become far more evil* in action there ; for in that 
 work], after a while, all outward restraints upon the 
 conduct of men are withdrawn, and the spirit then 
 behaves just as wickedly as his secret inclinations 
 prompt him to. 
 
 "We are not conscious of the least disposition to 
 underrate or undervalue the character and results of 
 modern spiritualism, as our remarks may already to 
 some extent have served to show. It is our continual 
 desire to arrive at a full and just estimate both of the 
 present merits and prospective influence of a demon- 
 stration evidently growing out of the causes of the 
 new dispensation, and intimately connected with it. 
 We would also accord sincerity and purity of motive 
 to those earnest and honest minds who are endeavor- 
 ing to seek the truth through that channel. But 
 when examined in all its facts and features, and 
 viewed from the stand-point of the New Church, it 
 can by no means be regarded, as the final movement 
 of this new age. It makes known no new thing to 
 
A NEW CHURCH NEEDED. <d 
 
 the student of New Cliurcli theology, except as con- 
 firming general principles therein disclosed. It may 
 possibly turn out to be in the world of theology and 
 religion what the French revolution was in the world 
 of political institutions, — a breaker up and tearer 
 down of mouldering forms and decaying systems of 
 the past ; thus perhaps performing a highly important 
 and even necessary preliminary work, — but is of 
 itself far too chaotic, fragmentary, variable, and con- 
 tradictory in its elements to constitute or to contribute 
 the positive, organizing, and reconstructive principle 
 of the future. 
 
 That principle is to be found in a church sijited to 
 the epoch ; a church in a great measure new and dis- 
 tinct from preceding ones ; possessing and based upon 
 a centralized, complete, self-consistent, and logically 
 harmonious system of revealed doctrines ; disclosing 
 all the required truths in regard to the other world, 
 the modes of life there, and man's eternal destiny ; 
 and coming down from a point far above man, and far 
 above the world of spirits. 
 
 The necessity for some such revealed standard, act- 
 ing as a test to which to bring all the variant and con- 
 flicting teachings now flowing in from the other world 
 and springing up in this, must we think become appar- 
 ent, as the subject is contemplated in the full light 
 of history and of fact. 
 
 With these preliminary observations therefore, go- 
 ing, as we conceive, to evince an antecedent probability 
 that there would at this day be accorded a new divine 
 revelation, we are prepared to advance to the more 
 specific question, — fVhy are the revelations made 
 through Swedenborg entitled to more implicit belief, 
 or worthy of greater credit y than are the communica- 
 7 
 
74 MODERN SPIRITUALISM. 
 
 tions received through the spiritual mediums of the 
 day 1 
 
 As tliis is the great question between the New 
 Church and modern spirituaKsm, we are not unwilling 
 to devote some attention to it. We shall have space 
 on the present occasion only to open the subject, and 
 lay out the general ground ; it is therefore our design 
 to follow it up at a future time with a fuller adduc- 
 tion of reasons and considerations. 
 
 1. The first point to which we shall invite attention 
 is the difference of claim set up by the two systems. 
 This difference is apparent upon the very face of the 
 two. The system of Swedenborg sets out with the 
 averment that it is a divine revelation, and this assev- 
 eration it constantly carries Avith it throughout its 
 entire length and breadth. Spiritualism, on the other 
 hand, makes no such claim. It professes to be, and 
 from the very nature of the case must of necessity be, 
 a set of variable miscellaneous communications received 
 from departed spirits, human and fallible like our- 
 selves, and capable of giving forth only their own 
 views and opinions. They tell you from the first that 
 they are some departed brother, father, or other rela- 
 tive, or some neighbor, friend, or acquaintance ; or, 
 where this is not the case, some other person of whom 
 you have heard, or who, at any rate, not many years 
 ago livqd here in the world — men, women, and chil- 
 dren like ourselves. All they can testify to are the 
 facts which have come under their own personal obser- 
 vation since they have been in the world of spirits"; 
 and can tell nothing concerning the higher or lower 
 spheres of spiritual existence, except from hearsay or 
 conjecture ; and in ninety -nine cases out of a hundred 
 
SPIRITUALISM TRIED BY ITS OWN CLAIM. 75 
 
 they tell you so. The very best and most intelligent 
 communications that are received — those professing 
 to come from Bacon" and Franklin, or other eminent 
 statesmen and philosophers — distinctly disclaim for 
 themselves any superior illumination^ plainly assert 
 that knowledge is gained in that world, as it is in this, 
 by patient study and investigation. The best informed 
 and most reliable spirits say in their communications 
 that all the higher orders and degrees of truth are 
 matters of speculation and opinion among them as 
 among us, and distinctly state that what they give 
 they give as opinions, and call upon men to exercise 
 their own rationality in deciding upon them. Thus 
 w^e see that so far as concerns the question of being a 
 divinely authorized or infallibly reliable revelation of 
 high theological truth, spiritualism is nonsuited before 
 it even comes into court, and cannot be brought to 
 trial before the same bench that is to pass judgment 
 on the system of the New Church. By its own uni- 
 versal confession it eschews all divine claims, and vol- 
 untarily places itself in the ranks of miscellaneous 
 communications from the spiritual world. 
 
 Now, contrast this with the claims of Swedenborg. 
 It is a current and prevailing misconception in regard 
 to Swedenborg 's case that he received his communica- 
 tions from spirits and angels. Because his spiritual 
 senses were open and he held continual intercourse 
 with the inhabitants of the other world, it is therefore 
 supposed and presumed by most persons but little 
 acquainted with the subject that what he .gave forth 
 was received from spirits and angels, and that his pub- 
 lished writings contain the doctrines and sentiments 
 which were thus taught him by them. But this is 
 altogether an erroneous impression, and one therefore 
 
76 MODERN SPIRITUALISM. 
 
 which requires most emphatic correction in this place. 
 His distinct affirmation is, in regard to the system of 
 doctrines which he has given to the world, that he did 
 not receive them even from any angel, much less from 
 any spirit, but only from the Lord alone. Angels 
 were often used (as well they might be) as mediums 
 to impart to him useful instructions, to unfold and 
 illustrate for him some doctrine of divine truth, and 
 communicate to him their ideas of it ; but the author- 
 ity for the truths themselves is derived from the Lord 
 through the Word. 
 
 This is a proposition so important to be understood 
 and borne in mind that we will give at least one state- 
 ment of it in his own words. In the last work he 
 wrote and published, and in which is contained the 
 Universal Theology* of the New Church, he says : — 
 " That the Lord has manifested himself before me, his 
 servant, and sent me on this office, and that, after 
 this, he opened the sight of my spirit, and thus let 
 me into the spiritual world, and gave to see the 
 heavens and the hells, and also to speak with angels 
 and spirits, and this now for many years, I testify in 
 truth ; and also that, from the first day of my call to 
 this office, I have never received any thing appertain- 
 ing to the doctrines of that church from any angel, 
 but from the Lord alone, while I read the Word. To 
 the end that the Lord might be constantly present, 
 he revealed to me the spiritual sense of his Word, in 
 which sense divine truth is in its light ; and in this 
 light he is continually present." — True Christian 
 Religion, 779, 780. 
 
 Assertions to this effect he repeatedly makes in 
 
 * Called also the Trv£ Christian Religion, 
 
THE NEW JERUSALEM A DIVINE REVELATION. 77 
 
 letters to his friends, and in various parts of his 
 writings ; it is his constant claim for thirty years, from 
 the commencement to the close of his mission. In 
 his letter to the Landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt, who 
 had inquired of him in relation to the subject, he 
 says that the Lord, unconsciously to Mm, had pre- 
 pared him for the office from his infancy upward ; and 
 that this favor was not shown to him on account of 
 any merits of his own, but for the sake of the New 
 Church, and the great concern of all Christians' sal- 
 vation and happiness. 
 
 For twenty-seven years he enjoyed uninterrupted 
 open intercourse with the other world ; during which 
 time, as he himself states, he met and conversed with 
 angels from all three of the heavens, with evil spirits 
 from all three of the hells, with spirits from every 
 part of the world of spirits ; with many who had 
 lived on different planets in our solar system, and on 
 other worlds beyond our solar system — in all to the 
 number of many thousands. And in a great many 
 cases he reports the conversations which he had with 
 them ; he tells what he saw in their places of abode ; 
 he relates what he learned from them in regard to 
 their own character, history, and present opinions ; he 
 makes a record of their view^s and beliefs on a great 
 variety of subjects — philosophical, religious, and 
 moral. But what he gets from a spirit lie reports as 
 coming from a spirit, and what he hears among the 
 angels he relates as coming from the angels. He sim- 
 ply reports them over, as matters of fact, for what 
 they are worth, never intimating that such views are 
 to be received as divine or infallibly reliable truths ; 
 and communications so received form no part of the 
 
78 MODEUN SPIRITUALISM. 
 
 New Churcli system of doctrines.* That system was 
 taught him solely by the Lord, from the Word ; and 
 he repeatedly affirms that it was not permitted him to 
 incorporate into it any thing coming from any other 
 source, averring that so many and so strongly con- 
 firmed persuasions of what is false exist in the spirit- 
 ual world, unless he had been continually guarded by 
 the Lord against being influenced by spirits, and 
 against adopting any thing from them as doctrine, it 
 could not have been otherwise than that his revelation 
 would have been full of errors. What might have 
 come from spirits would have been filled and mingled 
 with falsities, and what might have come even from 
 angels would have contained various fallacies and mis- 
 conceptions or partial and erroneous impressions of 
 truth, wanting in adaptation to the universal spiritual 
 needs of mankind. 
 
 From the tenor of these statements it will be per- 
 ceived that a very grave distinction is to be observed 
 between the revelations of the New Jerusalem and 
 ordinary communications from the other world. Swe- 
 denborg was not in any sense merely a clairvoyant or 
 spiritualistic medium. He received his doctrinal 
 teachings from none of the '^ seven spheres " or " cir- 
 cles " in the other life. Tried, therefore, by their 
 own claims merely, and with equal liberality granting 
 to each system the character which it demands for 
 itself, a wide chasm is found to exist between them. 
 It will be seen that while on the one hand spiritual- 
 ism, as a matter of course, falls of its own accord into 
 
 * Though they are regarded by New Churchmen as reliable disclosures 
 of fact, and of facts calculated to throw important lights over the laws 
 and principles of divine truth. 
 
DIYEESITT OF THE TWO CLAIMS. 79 
 
 that scries of disclosures from the other world which 
 we have all along denominated 'miscellaneous comimi- 
 nications^ the New Church system, on the other hand, 
 is based on truths and facts and principles drawn from 
 the Word of God, delivered through a line of divinely 
 commissioned prophets, apostles, and seers. 
 
 With this marking off of separate position we shall 
 be prepared to go forward in a subsequent lecture and 
 adduce some of the reasons which serve to substantiate 
 this diversity of claim. 
 
LECTUEE IV. 
 
 WHY ARE THE DISCLOSURES OF SWEDENBORG OF MORE 
 AUTHORITY THAN THOSE OF SPIRITUALISM? 
 
 " And he said unto him, Behold now, there is in this city a man of 
 God, and he is an honorable man ; all that he saith cometh surely to 
 pu,ss : now let us go thither ; peradvcnture he can show us our way that 
 we should go." — 1 Sam. ix. 6. 
 
 At the conclusion of our last lecture we promised 
 to bring forward some of the reasons which induce us 
 to prefer the revelations made through Swedenborg to 
 those coming through spiritualism. It is our design, 
 therefore, to proceed now and present a few considera- 
 tions which seem to us to render his statements more 
 reliable t'lian those of spiritual mediums, and to in- 
 spire a superior degree of confidence in the genuine 
 truthfulness of his revelations. 
 
 These proofs will be altogether internal, based upon 
 the intrinsic characteristics of the revelations them- 
 selves, and the relations they bear to other systems of 
 known or acknowledared truth. Thev will be ad- 
 dressed to the reason, or more properly, perhaps, to 
 that purer rationality of the mind which is a percep- 
 tive faculty, by wl ose use we see, as it were, the iu- 
 
 m 
 
PECULIARITY OF SWEDENBORG's CLAIM. 81 
 
 trinsic truth or falsity of a proposition, whose exercise 
 involves a moral quality, and which is in itself the 
 highest power of the understanding.' 
 
 1. The first consideration to which we shall refer is 
 that of the claim itself. This was in part alluded to 
 in our last discourse ; but we desire to recall attention 
 to it for a few moments, with a view of revolving it 
 in a new light. The revelator himself declares that 
 he received the doctrines from the Lord alone ; and 
 appends the extraordinary statement that he was -not 
 permitted to send forth any thing as doctrine that 
 might be taught him by spirits, not even by heavenly 
 spirits, nor yet by the angels themselves ; giving as a 
 reason for this that revelations coming even from good 
 spirits are not reliable, and those from angels do not 
 possess the authority of divine truth. 
 
 When we consider the ideas most commonly preva- 
 lent concerning the invisible world, with what awe 
 any communications from it are usually received, with 
 how much confidence any statements coming from a 
 supernatural source are apt to be regarded as of divine 
 authority, — when we reflect that to most minds the 
 bare assurance that a doctrine was delivered by a 
 being from the other world would be a sufhqjent guar- 
 anty for believing it, and when we observe how much 
 reliance is now placed on the statements of disembod- 
 ied spirits, and how readily many of their commands 
 are obeyed, merely because they come from spirits, — 
 the above assertions made by Swedenborg are truly 
 remarkable. Had he been an impostor it never would 
 have occurred to him to set up the peculiar claim he 
 has, and to couple it with such reasons. To whom 
 was it before known among men that a revelation from 
 angels vras not sufficiently reliable to be received as 
 
S2 MODERN SPIRITUALISM. 
 
 infallible doctrine? "What impostor would not have 
 supposed that if his revelation came from the super- 
 natural world at all, it would be of sufficient authority ? 
 
 We regard this statement of Swedenborg, then, 
 connected with the accounts which he gives concern- 
 ing the life of spirits, their capacity of communicating 
 with men, their want of reliability when they do com- 
 municate, and viewed in the light and confirmation of 
 modern facts and experiences, as something worthy of 
 arresting our attention. And when we go further, 
 and look around upon what is taking place about us 
 — observing the broad fact that spiritualism does 
 every where base itself upon miscellaneous communi- 
 cations received not even from angels, but from spirits 
 of lower grade, and of every imaginable character or 
 quality — the circumstance, we say, that a revelator 
 so long ago should have had sufficient insight imparted 
 to him to make so vital a distinction, is prima facie 
 evidence in favor of his truthfulness. The superiority 
 of his claim creates an antecedent probability of the 
 superiority of his mission, and affords at least a very 
 strong presumption in favor of his revelation. 
 
 2. The second consideration which we shall adduce 
 is the fact that Swedenborg was a seer. This is a 
 proposition generally acknowledged by spiritualism, 
 and does not, therefore, require to be proven. Nearly 
 all the receivers of the spiritualistic doctrines, if not 
 all, freely admit that he had that kind of intercourse 
 with spirits which he describes, and that his commu- 
 nications with them extended beyond those of almost 
 any other person of whom we have a record ; and 
 many of the spirits who it is said communicate through 
 the modern mediums constantly aver that he had the 
 open intercourse with those of the other life that he 
 
SWEDENBORG A TRUE SEER. 83 
 
 claims for himself, and that he had a far greater 
 knowledge concerning their world and its inhabitants 
 than any man who ever lived. The idea that he was 
 gifted with extraordinary spiritual powers of some 
 kind is also beginning to gain currency in circles be- 
 yond the precincts of spiritualism and the New 
 Church. 
 
 Let us look at the consequences which this fact of 
 seership carries with it. 
 
 His eyes were open. All his spiritual senses were 
 open, and in full activity and exercise. He could 
 look out directly upon the scenes of the world of 
 spirits as we ca» look forth upon the scenes of this 
 world. He could see wdiatever was taking place there. 
 He needed not that any spirit should come and tell 
 him that spirits are in the human form, — to tell him. 
 that men rise immediately after death — how they 
 look and in what condition they find themselves after 
 the natural body has been thrown aside — how that 
 world appears — how spirits live, and what they are 
 in the habit of doing, — for all these things he could 
 see and observe for himself. He enjoyed every means 
 of obtaining information concerning that world and 
 that life that they themselves enjoyed. He was as 
 familiar with the laws and phenomena of that w^orld, 
 and with the. state of things there, as we are with the 
 laws and phenomena of this world, and of the state 
 of things here. 
 
 Contrast this condition of his with that of the spir- 
 itual mediums. They are perfectly in the dark as 
 regards every thing pertaining to the other world. 
 Not a single circumstance do they know by their own 
 observation. They are entirely dependent upon others 
 for what they receive, and have no means at hand by 
 
84 MODERN SPIRITUALISM. 
 
 which to correct the reports.* Most of them have 
 not sufficient knowledge concerning the other life to 
 understand correctly the impressions made upon them, 
 or to translate correctly the meaning of the messages 
 communicated through them, or to understand intelli- 
 gently the phenomena connected with it. 
 
 When a spirit approached Swedenborg, he saw him, 
 could observe his appearance, his manners, could per- 
 ceive something of his quality, and form an idea of 
 his character, as men here can by observation know 
 who it is with whom they are holding intercourse, or 
 form some estimate of character from manners and 
 appearance, if they do not know them. 
 
 Not so with the mediums. They have no sensible 
 perception of the person wdth whom they are commu- 
 nicating. The spirit can assume to be any body he 
 chooses ; can sustain, for the time, any character he 
 likes, and can tell any kind of story he pleases, still 
 remaining beyond their power of detection. 
 
 Swedenborg enjoyed open intercourse with the 
 spiritual world nearly thirty years ; he was, besides, a 
 man of extraordinary intellectual endowments. He 
 possessed great philosophical acumen, with almost un- 
 paralleled scientific attainments. Reflect a moment 
 upon the advantages which such a man would possess 
 for acquiring information and forming correct ideas. 
 We all know how it is in this world. A man of little 
 reading, and possessing a low order of talent, may go 
 to Europe and return scarcely a whit wiser than he 
 v> ent ; while another, of large capacity and extensive 
 erudition, will astonish us with the extent and accu- 
 
 * The few instances in which some spiritur.lists aver that they have 
 seen spirits, or a naked hand, do not seem to us sufficiently important 
 to modify the language of our general statement. 
 
swedenborg's endowments for his office. 85 
 
 racy of his observations, and with the amount of reli- 
 able knowledge and new information he brings home. 
 So would it be with a man like Swedenborg in the 
 spiritual world. He enjoyed all the privileges in this 
 respect of a permanent resident there ; and with the 
 laws of mind before us we can see how intrinsically 
 superior his acquisition of accurate knowledge would 
 be, not only to all merely spiritualistic mediums, but 
 even to that of most spirits themselves. There cer- 
 tainly cannot be more than one person in a hundred 
 millions so endowed and capacitated to acquire knowl- 
 edge by familiar intercourse with the spiritual world 
 as he was. And it is not too much to say, then, that 
 intelligent spirits who have passed out of the body 
 from among us, and have been in that world five, ten, 
 fifteen, twenty, or even twenty-five years, would not 
 possess the qualifications for communicating to us 
 abundant and correct information concerning that 
 world and that life that Swedenborg possesses ; w^hile 
 the great mass of spirits — those of common mind and 
 common attainments, with little curiosity or inquiry 
 — might remain in that world age after age and cen- 
 tury after century without ever acquiring a tithe of 
 his knowledge of the subject. For twenty-seven 
 years he made the facts or phenomena, the laws and 
 principles, of the other state of existence matter of* 
 laborious study, of scientific observation, and of philo- 
 sophical deduction. 
 
 Supposing, therefore, that Swedenborg had no spe- 
 cial commission of a divine kind, and placing the plea 
 for his reliability merely upon his qualities as a man 
 and his opportunities as a seer, we must at once pro- 
 nounce his disclosures to have a claim upon our tonfi- 
 8 
 
86 MODERN SPIRITUALISM. 
 
 dence superior to those of any spiritualist medium, 
 ancient or modern, of which we have any account. 
 
 S. The third consideration, to which we now ad- 
 vance, is that the revelations of Swedenborg constitute 
 a system. 
 
 It is hardly necessary that we allude to the fact 
 that spiritualism is fragmentary and variable in the 
 matter of its disclosures. While it is not denied that 
 some important and evident truths have been and are 
 being so communicated, it is just as clear that many 
 pernicious errors have gained admittance through the 
 same door ; that the contents of the revelations are 
 discordant and heterogeneous. The different parts 
 are not in agreement with each other. Besides the 
 extreme frivolousness of most of the communications, 
 there are grave discrepancies in regard to higher 
 themes of disclosure. One class of mediums will 
 contradict another class on important points of spirit- 
 ual belief; and doctrines are taught through them 
 coming from every point of the theological compass. 
 How can communications coming in this manner and 
 possessing these characteristics be reliable witnesses in 
 relation to the higher subjects of human thought ? 
 
 With the writings of Swedenborg the case is differ- 
 ent. His revelations form one compact and" homoge- 
 ^leous system. All the different parts are nicely ad- 
 justed to each other, and all fall harmoniously into 
 their several places. There is not only a simple logi- 
 cal consistency between them, but a kind of living 
 coherency running through them all, binding them 
 into a single organic whole. No fact or doctrine is 
 here found but is needed to fill an important place in 
 this complete body ; and no place in the circle of 
 
EXTENT OF SWEDENBORG's DISCLOSURES. 8T 
 
 tliouglit is left without its appropriate teaching of 
 principles and facts. Every part is integral to every 
 other part ; and the whole solves all»the questions of 
 philosophy, and solves them in harmony with each 
 other. It addresses itself to the reason, and the rea- 
 son can decide, by examining its contents, as to the 
 rationality and truth of the system. 
 
 4. The fourth consideration to which we advert is 
 the relative extent of his disclosures. 
 
 Spiritualism really tells us very little about the 
 other world and its inhabitants, about the modes of 
 life there and the laws of that state of being, when 
 compared to the amount of information given on the 
 subject in the writings of Swedenborg. The disclo- 
 sures coming through the mediums contain things so 
 new to most people, and giving, as they do, some light 
 on subjects upon w^hich such entire ignorance gener- 
 ally prevails, it is not at all remarkable that they 
 should strike the minds of multitudes with consider- 
 able amazement. The contrast between what was be- 
 fore popularly known concerning the other life and 
 that which is now made known through spiritualism 
 is very great indeed. We have no wish to under esti- 
 mate the addition of knowledge that has been made 
 in this respect. Still, we feel bound to state it as a 
 fact, which may be verified by examination, that the 
 contrast between the knowledge that may be gained 
 on these subjects from spiritualism (supposing all its 
 disclosures to be true) and that which may be found 
 in the New Church writings is very much greater 
 tiian that between spiritualism and the rest of the 
 world. The two will hardly bear comparison together, 
 so great a preponderance is there of light and knowl- 
 edge in favor of the New Church system. 
 
88 MODERN SPIRITUALISM, 
 
 Only look a moment at the facts of the case. About 
 one half the theological writings which Swedenborg 
 has left are devoted to themes connected with the 
 spiritual world. His disclosures on these subjects 
 alone, therefore, comprise nearly fifteen closely -printed 
 octavo volumes. Add to this that throughout these 
 there is very little indeed, if any, repetition. No 
 time is lost and no space thrown away in eloquent 
 rhetoric or abstract speculations. The style is every 
 where simple, clear, direct, concise. Every para- 
 graph is made to communicate a fact or evolve a prin- 
 ciple. All his memorable relations, and every con- 
 versation with a spirit which he records, is introduced 
 only to illustrate some law or bring to light some 
 fresh phenomenon of that state of existence. He had 
 too much to do in one short lifetime, too much knowl- 
 edge to communicate, and too many important truths 
 to write out for the future use of men, either to trifle 
 with his readers, to loiter at his task, or to perform 
 any portion of it twice over. Hence the slowness 
 with which his system is received. It is on account 
 of its vastness. Not that he discloses so little, but 
 because he communicates so much ; because he takes 
 the human mind so far away from the common routine 
 of thought, and lifts it so high into the upper regions 
 of rational and spiritual trutii. It is not a collection - 
 of pleasing fancies which may be intellectually played 
 with, but a system of solid truths that must be under- 
 standingly acquired. In the mastery of it you mount 
 from fact to fact and from principle to principle, as in 
 the study of a fully developed and well ordered sci- 
 ence. It is like the science of astronomy, in which 
 every new fact gained fills with further particulars a 
 previous idea, or extends the horizon )f the mind in 
 
HIS DESCRIPTIONS OF THE OTHER LIFE. 89 
 
 a wider circle. Every step taken in it is a real ad- 
 vance; every page read and retained is a definite 
 addition to the stores of our positive knowledge. It 
 contains not only a complete geography, so to speak, 
 of the invisible world, but also a general account of 
 the different classes of its inhabitants, with a compre- 
 hensive statement of its constitution and laws. 
 
 It takes man from the moment he enters the other 
 life, and traces him through all the changes, phases, 
 and developments in the line of his destiny, until he 
 arrives at his final and permanent abode. When the 
 body descends into the grave, Swedenborg passes be- 
 yond that gate, and follows the departing spirit. He 
 tells us of the form, appearance, and functions of the 
 spirit's body. He describes, minutely enough for our 
 information, the world into which the spirit comes ; 
 the state of life in which he then is ; and how he is 
 associated with the people whom he finds there. He 
 gives an account of the great populations that reside 
 in that part of the world of spirits into which all 
 spirits first go, and which constitutes the first state 
 after death ; shows us how the different nations and 
 peoples of the Christian world are situated there with 
 respect to each other ; how the Mohammedans are 
 situated, and how the pagan or Gentile communities 
 there appear. Not only are all the different popula- 
 tions which go thither from this earth described, but 
 we learn also of the men who come into that world 
 from the other planets. Nor are we confined to the 
 limits of our own solar system in this respect, but our 
 minds are carried beyond our own system into the 
 sidereal worlds, and enough made known to show us 
 that the planets of other constellations are inhabited. 
 
90 MODERN SPIRITTTA.LTSM. 
 
 and that they too are daily sending forward their myri- 
 ads of spirits into the other life. 
 
 And all this is in regard to the first state into which 
 men go after death — the very first entrance or vesti- 
 bule of the spiritual world. It is from this first state 
 in the world of spirits that all the disclosures of spir- 
 itualism undoubtedly come. The familiar spirits, or 
 those who communicate through mediums, are persons 
 who are still living in that mere vestibule of the other 
 world.* And the account which Swedenborg gives 
 of that state is in general agreement with what these 
 communicating spirits make known concerning the 
 world in which they are. From his descriptions of 
 it, and his statements in regard to the condition of 
 things which exists there, we should expect just such 
 developments and disclosures to take place should a 
 communication be opened between its inhabitaiits and 
 people in this world, as we now find revealed through 
 spiritualism. 
 
 It is a world in which there is much magnificence 
 and beauty ; a state of existence which is an advance 
 upon our present condition ; a world of greater free- 
 dom, and in which many new opportunities are open 
 to the expanding and developing mind. Persons on 
 entering that world are usually seized with a degree 
 of exhilaration and delight from the circumstance of 
 
 * The manifestations are all from that state, although they may at 
 times come from spirits who have passed beyond it ; for the spirits Avho 
 have passed beyond come back into it in order to communicate. Thus, 
 should there a manifestation be given from an evil spirit of one of the 
 hells, it would be because he had for the time being couie up out of his 
 own evil society into the world of spirits. We assume, however, in 
 these lectures, that a majority of these manifestations come from per- 
 sons recently dead, and who, consequently, have not yet passed into any 
 of the other states. 
 
FIRST STATE OF MEN AFTER DEATH. 91 
 
 finding themselves still so completely alive, and at the 
 prospect which is opened up before them of an end- 
 less existence without any more death. 
 
 Moreover, it is a state in which men are still in the 
 life of their exteriors, w^hen they appear much the 
 same that they did before they left us. Their interi- 
 ors are not yet necessarily revealed, and the wicked 
 may, if they choose, put on a seemly and generally 
 becoming external behavior. Hence the common im- 
 pression which at first flows in from that world that 
 there are no evil spirits ; that every thing is progress ; 
 and that that progress is all in the right direction. 
 This would naturally be the appearance things would 
 wear in that first state ; for men are continually pass- 
 ing out of that sphere or state into the next beyond, 
 just as they are continually passing out of our world 
 into the next. Their communities are in a perpetual 
 flow and transformation by the reception of new indi- 
 viduals from this world, and, after their residence 
 there for a number of years, their transfer to the next 
 state, just as our communities here are in a perpetual 
 flux and change from the continual births of new 
 individuals, and continual deaths. 
 
 And because men there are all free, and all develop 
 themselves in precisely the manner which they prefer, 
 it cannot but be, as a general thing, a happy state of 
 existence to those who are in it. And as all pass out 
 of it in the direction they choose, each one pursuing 
 that line of development most congenial to his tastes, 
 it is natural enough that there should seem to be one 
 great law of eternal progression holding sway over all 
 classes of mind alike. 
 
 But reflect a moment upon how limited a portion 
 of the spiritual world that is from which these com- 
 
92 MODERN SPIRITUALISM. 
 
 munications come. It is only the merest vestibule of 
 that immeasurable temple which lies beyond. Hence 
 it is that in these communications we hear so little 
 about any of the subsequent states into which spirits 
 pass ; that we get nothing but opinions or conjectures 
 concerning the spheres that lie beyond ; that we hear 
 so little concerning the second state, so much less 
 concerning the third state, and nothing at all, scarcely, 
 of those eternal abodes where, on the one hand, the 
 myriads of the blessed are arranged in three vast ex- 
 panses rising one above the other, and on the other 
 hand the universal congregations of an opposite kind 
 recede, one behind the other, downward into the 
 realms of everlasting darkness. 
 
 Hence, too, it is that we hear so little in these com- 
 munications concerning the higher truths of religion ; 
 so little definite doctrine concerning the Lor-l Jesus 
 Christ ; of the glorification of his humanity, of his 
 divine work of redemption, of the spiritual sense of 
 the sacred Scripture, of the science of correspond- 
 ences, of hereditary evil, and of the spiritual regen- 
 eration of man. 
 
 Now, in contrast with this, consider the revelations 
 of Swedenborg in respect to these things. He does 
 not stop with you at the portico of the temple, and 
 after describing to you the scenes there, straightway 
 leave you to your own conjectures. He conducts us 
 within the building ; he leads us slowly through its 
 long-drawn aisles, through its transepts, its chancels, 
 and its choirs ; he points us to the great crowd of 
 worshippers assembled about the altar, and shows us, 
 also, what is going on at the various shrines in the 
 nooks and corners ; he lifts now and then a marble 
 slab from the pavement, that we may perceive the 
 
COMPLETE MAP OF TIIE SPIRITUAL UNIVERSE. 93 
 
 smoke whicli rises up from beneath, and get an occa- 
 sional glance into the donjon keeps and charnel houses 
 below ; and then bids us lift our eyes to the serial 
 galleries where the white-robed bands are chanting the 
 high praises of God and of the Lamb, or points them 
 still upward to tjie immensity of the vaulted roof and 
 the measureless concave of that illimitable dome. 
 
 He describes to us the second and third states of 
 spirits as well as the first ; he tells us of the heavens 
 as well as concerning the world of spirits ; he de- 
 scribes the three distinct degrees or worlds into which 
 they are divided as he does the three degrees of devel- 
 opment which attend a progress through the world of 
 spirits. And he is as comprehensive and as satisfac- 
 tory in the information he conveys concerning the suc- 
 cessive communities of the evil as he is concerning 
 the ascending societies of the good. 
 
 In his disclosures the entire spiritual universe is 
 distinctly mapped out ; all its different parts are 
 brought fairly into view ; not one of them is left out, 
 or pushed aside, or neglected, or hurriedly and super- 
 ficially passed over. The distance to which all these 
 extend beyond the outermost confines of spiritualism 
 is, at a moderate estimation, as ten to one. A person 
 has only to take up a volume of Swedenborg's, as, for 
 instance, the work on Heaven and Hell, and read with 
 considerate attention the table of its contents, to per- 
 ceive the superior extent and comprehensiveness of 
 the knowledge he undertakes to communicate. Let 
 him carefully contemplate the amplitude of the ground 
 there laid out before him, the philosophical mode in 
 which the subjects are treated, the rich variety of 
 topics that are discussed, and the logical order in 
 which they are introduced ; let him observe the great 
 
-94 MODERN SPIRITUALISM. 
 
 number of important principles tliat are announced, 
 with the fulness of light and illustration that attend 
 their development ; and then let him pass in like man- 
 ner to his other works, and to the Memorable Rela- 
 tions, and he must, we think, rise from the perusal 
 impressed with a conviction that nothing else in human 
 literature can be compared to them ; and that in them 
 we are introduced to a wider, more thorough, more 
 definite and complete account of the invisible commu- 
 nities than in all the other books that have ever been 
 written put together, or than has elsewhere entered 
 into the heart of man to conceive could ever be given 
 in human language. We conclude, therefore, that 
 the fact that Swedenborg communicates to us so much 
 larger an amount of information concerning the other 
 life is another important reason why we should receive 
 his revelations in preference to those of spiritualism, 
 and a fact, too, which, as his works succeed in inviting 
 that fulness of study which they deserve, will insure 
 for him a general reception among rational and reli- 
 gious minds. 
 
 5. The fifth thought which we shall proceed to 
 suggest is, that the revelations of Swedenborg com- 
 pletely forestall, overlook, and account for the phe- 
 nomena of spiritualism. 
 
 This claim might be extended farther. With equal 
 propriety it might be announced that the facts and 
 principles brought to light in his writings clear up 
 and explain all the great questions of pneumatology. 
 They afford us a scientific clew to all similar phenom- 
 ena in past times, and unlock the principal mysteries 
 of the ancient magic — black and white — with all 
 the modes of an improper spiritual intercourse and 
 influence, as well as all those cases of spiritual vision 
 
DISCOURSE OF SIIRITS WITH MAN. 95 
 
 which were of an orderly kind. In short, his system 
 of disclosures gives us an insight into all the circum- 
 stances of a spiritual state of existence, of the rela- 
 tions of that state to our present one, of the con- 
 nections between that world and this world, of the 
 operations of persons in that world upon persons in 
 this world, and of the connection of the spirit with 
 the body. 
 
 But let us see in what manner the phenomena of 
 spiritualism are forestalled in his writings. This can 
 only be accomplished by giving a few extracts. 
 
 These selections must of course waive all reference 
 to that part of the subject in which are taught the 
 truths relative to man's being all the time in the midst 
 of spirits, and confine themselves to those phenomena 
 peculiar to the modern manifestations. 
 
 I. Concerning the Discourse of Spirits with Man. 
 
 "It is believed by many that man may be taught 
 of the Lord by spirits speaking with him ; but they 
 who believe this, and are willing to believe it, do not 
 know that it is connected with danger to their souls. 
 Man, so long as he lives in the world, is in the midst 
 of spirits as to his spirit ; and yet spirits do not know 
 that they are with man, nor doth man know that he 
 is with spirits ; the reason is, because they are con- 
 joined as to the affections of the will immediately, 
 and as to the thoughts of the understanding mediately ; 
 for man thinks naturally, but spirits spiritually; and 
 natural and spiritual thought do not otherwise make 
 one than by correspondences ; a union by correspond- 
 ences causes that one doth not know any thing con- 
 cerning the other. But as soon as spirits begin to 
 
9b MODERN SPIRirUALISM. 
 
 speak with man, they come out of their spiritual state 
 into the natural state of man, and in this case they 
 know that they are with man ; and conjoin themselves 
 with the thoughts of his affection, and from those 
 thoughts speak with him ; they cannot enter into 
 any thing else, for similar affection and consequent 
 thought conjoins all, and dissimilar separates. It is 
 owing to this circumstance that the speaking spirit is 
 in the same principles with the man to whom he 
 speaks, whether they be true or false, and likewise 
 that he excites them, and by his affection conjoined to 
 the man's affection, strongly confirms them. Hence 
 it is manifest that none other than similar spirits speak 
 with man or manifestly operate upon him, for manifest 
 operation coincides with speech. Hence it is that no 
 other than enthusiastic spirits speak with enthusiasts ; 
 also that no other than Quaker spirits operate upon 
 Quakers, and Moravian spirits upon Moravians ; the 
 case would be similar with Arians, with Socinians, 
 and other heretics. All spirits speaking with man 
 are no other than such as have bqen men in the world, 
 and were then of such a quality ; that this is the case 
 hath been given me to know by repeated experience. 
 And what is ridiculous, when man believes the Holy 
 Spirit speaks with him, or operates upon him, the 
 spirit also believes that he is the Holy Spirit. From 
 these considerations, it is evident to what danger man 
 is exposed who speaks with spirits, or who manifestly 
 feels their operation. Man is ignorant of the quality 
 of his own affection, whether it be good or evil, and 
 with what other beings it is conjoined ; and if he is 
 in the conceit of his own intelligence, his attendant 
 spirits favor every thought which is thence derived : 
 iii like manner, if any one is disposed to favor partic- 
 
SPIRITS COMTMTJNICATE WITH THETU LIKE. 97 
 
 •ular principles, enkindled by a certain fire, which, 
 hath place Vvdtli those who are not in truths from 
 genuine affection : when a spirit from similar affection 
 favors man's thoughts or prinqiples, then one leads 
 the other, as the blind the blind, until both fall into 
 the pit. The Pythonics formerly were of this descrip- 
 tion, and likewise the magicians in Egypt and in 
 Babel, who by reason of discourse with spirits, and 
 of the operation of spirits felt manifestly in them- 
 selves, were called wise : but by this the worship of 
 God was converted into the worship of demons, and 
 the church perished ; wherefore such communications 
 were forbidden the sons of Israel under penalty of 
 death." — ^^. Ex. 1182. 
 
 With reference to this passage a recent writer * on 
 the subject makes the following remarks : — 
 
 " The spiritual manifestations, so prevalent and in- 
 creasing for the last few years, are of four general 
 varieties, and may be known as mesmerism, with its 
 clairvoyance, and as exhibited by rapping, writing, 
 and speaking mediums. Besides these there are sev- 
 eral varieties of sorcery, prevailing not so much of 
 late as a few years ago, though occasionally seen yet 
 among some enthusiastic sects, where the power, not 
 of the Holy Spirit, but of enthusiastic and fanatical 
 spirits, is very manifest. In these latter I refer to 
 the jerks and dancings among the Quakers ; the bark- 
 ings, &c., of the so called great revival, in the begin- 
 ning of the present century, in Kentucky ; and the 
 fallings f and shoutings, and strange experiences, occa- 
 sional instances of which are still to be found, in out 
 of the way places, among certain sects ; very many 
 
 * Rev. J. R. Hibbard, of Chicago, in his recent work " Necromancy, 
 or Pseudo-Spiritualism." 
 
98 MODERN SPIRITUALISM. 
 
 of which I have witnessed, if not produced, at a time 
 when I was as ignorant of their origin and character 
 as those Avho now consider them the special operations 
 of the Holy Spirit. We shall pass over all these 
 latter named, under the general head of sorceries, 
 with the remark that they are from enthusiastic and 
 fanatical spirits, excited by, and in their turn exciting, 
 those who, to a certain extent innocently, because 
 ignorantly, believe them to be the Holy Spirit, and 
 who, just as ignorantly, engage in a machinery of 
 means unwittingly to practise sorcery upon a large 
 scale." 
 
 II. Power of Spirits to communicate through writing 
 and speaking Mediums. 
 
 As Swedenborisr was let into a £C''eat variety of 
 spiritual states that he might describe them, he says, 
 with respect to this kind of revelation from the other 
 world, — 
 
 " The writing is so guided that not the least word 
 can be written otherwise than it is. Sometimes, how- 
 ever, it is more insensible, sometimes so sensible that 
 the finger is conducted in the writing by a higher 
 power, so that if the attempt were made to Avrite 
 otherwise, it would be impossible ; and this not only 
 with an adjoined perception of the subject, but even, 
 what has again and again happened to me, without 
 this perception, so that I was ignorant of the series 
 of things until after they were written ; but this onli/ 
 in very rare instances, and only for the sake of inform- 
 ing us that revelations are made in this manner. 
 TiiOse papers [r.lius written] iverc therefore dcsrroyed, 
 because God Messiah was unwilling that it should 6e 
 
WRITING AND SPEAKING MEDIUMS. 99 
 
 SO done.^' (Adversaria, 7167; N C. Repos. vol. v. 
 p. 467.) In another place he says, " Spirits who 
 are the souls of those who are dead as to the body, if 
 they were permitted, could, through the man who 
 speaks with them, but not through others, be as 
 though they were entirely in the world, and indeed, 
 in a manner so manifest that they could communicate 
 their thoughts hy words through another man, and 
 even hy letters, for they have sometimes directed my 
 hand when writing, as though it were entirely their 
 own, so that they thought that it was they themselves 
 who were writing ; and if they were permitted they 
 could write in their own peculiar style, which I know 
 from some little expedience ; hut this is not permitted.'' 
 — ^S. D. 557. Says Mr. Hibbard— 
 
 " Here, almost a hundred years before these writing 
 and speaking mediums appear, the Lord has warned 
 the church and the world against them, by letting his 
 prepared servant be operated upon in the same way, 
 and then commanding him to destroy the papers thus 
 written, because it was not his will that such things 
 should be done." 
 
 III. Power and Hahit of Spirits to deceive. 
 
 " When spirits wished to instruct me concerning 
 various things, there was scarcely any thing but what 
 was false ; wherefore I was prohibited from believing 
 any thing that they spake, nor was I permitted to 
 infer any such thing as was proper to them." (^S'. D. 
 1647.) " When spirits begin to speak with man, he 
 must beware lest he believe them in any thing : things 
 are fabricated by them and they lie ; for if they were 
 permitted to tell what heaven is, and how things are 
 
100 MODERN SPIRITUALISM. 
 
 in tlie heavens, they would tell so many lies, and in- 
 deed with solemn affirmation, that man would be 
 astonished ; wherefore when spirits were speaking I 
 was not permitted to have faith in the things which 
 they related. For they are extremely fond of fabri- 
 cating ; and when any subject of discourse is proposed, 
 they think that they know it, and give their opinions 
 one after another, one in one way and another in 
 another, altogether as if they knew ; and if man then 
 listens and believes, they press on and deceive in 
 divers ways. For instance, if they were permitted to 
 tell about things to come, about things unknown in 
 the universal heaven, about all things whatsoever that 
 man desires, yet [they would tell] all the things 
 falsely, while from themselves : wherefore let man 
 beware lest he believe them. On this account the 
 state of speaking with spirits on this earth is most 
 perilous, unless man be in true faith. They induce 
 so strong a persuasion that it is the Lord Himself who 
 commands, that men cannot but believe and obey." 
 — S. D. 1622. Says Mr. Hibbard again— 
 
 ** In modern spiritual manifestations nothing is 
 more common than for the spirits who communicate 
 to say they are such or such a person, per.haps a de- 
 parted friend, or relative, perhaps some great man, 
 Washington, Franklin, or Swedenborg. We have 
 some light concerning this in the following." " That 
 spirits may be induced who represent another person : 
 and the spirit, as also he who was known to the 
 spirit, cannot know otherwise than that he ivas the 
 same. This has many times been shown to me, that 
 the spirits speaking with me did not know otherwise 
 than that they were the men who were the subject of 
 thought, neither did other spirits know otherwise ; as 
 
DECEPTIONS PRACTISED BY SPIRITS. 101 
 
 jresterday and to-day some one known to me in life 
 [was represented by one] who was so like him in all 
 things which belong to him, so far as they were 
 Icnown to me, that nothing was more like. Where- 
 fore let those who speak with spirits beware lest they 
 be deceived, when they say that they are those whom 
 they know, and that they are dead. For there are 
 genera and species of spirits of a like faculty ; and 
 when similar things are called up in the memory of 
 man, and are thus represented to them, they think 
 that they are the same person. Then all the things 
 are called forth from the memory that represented 
 those persons, both the words, the speech, the tones, 
 the gestures, and other things, besides that they are 
 induced to speak thus when other spirits inspire 
 them." {S, D. 2860, 2861.) Again: "There are 
 others who induce upon themselves so dexterously the 
 persons of others, that the deception can scarcely be 
 detected." (S. D. 42TT.) " It is one of the wonders 
 of another lite which scarce any one can believe, that, 
 as soon as any spirit comes to another, and especially 
 when he comes to man, he instantly knows his thoughts 
 and his affections, and what he had been doing to that 
 time, thus all his present state exactly as if he had 
 been with him ever so lonj?. Such is the nature of 
 communication." (^A. C. 5383.) " It was shown me 
 to the life, in what manner spirits flow in with man : 
 when they come to him they put on all things of his 
 memory, thus all things which the man has learned 
 and imbibed from infancy, and the spirits suppose 
 these things to be their own ; thus they act, as it were, 
 the part of man with man." — A. C. 6192. 
 
 " How often do we hear of such an one having had 
 a communication from his or her father or mother, or 
 9* 
 
10.^ MODERN SPIRITUALISM. 
 
 from their ] ttle child, or some friend or acquaintance 
 in the other world ! These extracts show how much 
 such persons are [liable to be] deceived. Some other 
 spirit, a lying spirit, flows into their memory, and 
 there puts on all they know or ever knew about their 
 father, mother, brother, sister, or little child, friend or 
 acquaintance, and raps, or writes, or speaks, just as 
 the persons asking the communication might expect 
 those they are thinking of to do, imitating the tones, 
 gestures, handwriting, &c., and telling all or any thing 
 those persons themselves could tell. So that it is no 
 sign that a spirit is the one he professes to be, because 
 he appears to be, or because he tells what no one knew 
 but the questioner."* 
 
 IV. Concerning some who desire to he familial 
 
 Spirits. 
 
 " An account of the hell of the men of the Ancient 
 Church. The hells of the men of the Noetic or An- 
 cient Church for the most part consist of magicians, 
 who have huts and places of entertainment scattered 
 up and down in the desert. They wander about there 
 with staves of various forms in their hands, some of 
 which are stained with necromantic juices : by these, 
 as in former times, they still exercise their arts, which 
 are affected by the abuse of correspondences, by fan- 
 tasies, by persuasive appearances, which formerly gave 
 birth to miraculous faith and miraculous works, and 
 also by exorcism, incantation, fascination, and sorcery, 
 and several other infernal contrivances, whereby they 
 present illusory appearances as if they were real. 
 TIjeir hearts' greatest delight is to utter prophecies and 
 
 * J. R. Hibbard. 
 
SPIRITS WHO WISH TO RETURN TO THIS WORLD. 103 
 
 prognostications, and to he familiar spirits. These 
 chiefly have given rise to the various enthusiasms of 
 the Christian world. — Cor. 45. 
 
 V. Concerning some who desire to return into the 
 World. 
 
 " There are very many spirits at this day who are 
 desirous to not only flow into man's thoughts and 
 aftections, but also into his speech and actions, thus 
 even into his corporeals ; to flow into man's bodily 
 things is to obsess him. The spirits who will and in- 
 tend this are those who, in the life of the body, had 
 been adulterers, that is, who had perceived delight in 
 adulteries and persuaded themselves that they were 
 lawful ; and also those who had been cruel ; the 
 reason is, because both the former and the latter are 
 corporeal and sensual above others, and have rejected 
 from themselves all things concerning heaven, by at- 
 tributing all things to nature, and nothing to the 
 Divine ; thus they have closed up interior things to 
 themselves, and have opened external things ; and 
 because in the world they Avere solely in the love of 
 these things, therefore in the other life they are in 
 the desire of returning into them through man by 
 obsessing him." — A. C. 5990. 
 
 VI. Great Danger attending the being led by Spirits. 
 
 ^'But to speak with spirits at this day is seldom 
 given, since it is dangerous ; for then the spirits know 
 that they are with man, which otherwise they do not 
 know ; and evil spirits are such that they hold man 
 in deadly hatred and desire nothing more than to 
 
104 . ' MODERN SPIRITUALISM. 
 
 destroy him both as to soul and body, which also is 
 done with those who have indulged much in fantasies, 
 £0 that they have removed from themselves the de- 
 lights suitable to the natural man. Some also, who 
 lead a solitary life, sometimes hear spirits speaking 
 with them, and without danger ; but the spirits with 
 them are at intervals removed by the Lord, lest they 
 should know that they are with man : for most spirits 
 do not know that there is any other world than that 
 in whi'ch they are ; thus also they do not know that 
 there are men elsewhere ; wherefore it is not lawful 
 for a man to speak in turn with them, for if he should 
 they would know it. Those who think much on reli- 
 gious subjects, and are so intent upon them as to see 
 them as it were inwardly in themselves, also begin to 
 hear spirits speaking with them : for the things of 
 religion, whatever they are, when man from himself 
 dwells upon them, and does not modify them by the 
 various things which are of use in the world, go inte- 
 riorly, and there subsist, and occupy the whole spirit 
 of the man, and enter the spiritual world, and move 
 the spirits who are there ; but such persons are vision- 
 aries and enthusiasts, and whatever spirit they hear 
 they believe to be the Holy Spirit, when yet they are 
 enthusiastic spirits. Those Avho are such see falses 
 as truths, and because they see them, they persuade 
 themselves, and likewise persuade those with whom 
 they flow in." — jff. H, 249. 
 
 Are not these warnings strikingly applicable to the 
 circumstances of the times ? Do we not now see a 
 wide spread manifestation of spiritual intercourse 
 which had no existence in Swendenborg's day ? And 
 do not men now get from spirits the kind of replies 
 
SWEDEXBORG FORESTALLS SPIRITUALISM. 105 
 
 and the kind of information wliich he foretold they 
 would get ? Spirits do not always give men just that 
 information which they had before expected to receive, 
 but they always give them something which is in ac- 
 cordance with their ruling inclinations and desires, 
 and something through which they may gain an influ- 
 ence over them, and so induce them finally to believe 
 whatsoever they communicate to them. Do we not 
 see in the results attending these modern manifesta- 
 tions almost innumerable instances in which the sj^irits 
 acquire a power of persuasion over the minds of their 
 subjects that is all but irresistible — Cases in which it 
 seems, in the language of one of the above extracts, 
 that the man " cannot but believe and obey " ? 
 
 It is impossible to do justice to this branch of our 
 subject, and bring fairly into view the entire scope of 
 Swedenborg's teachings in this respect, exhibiting in 
 full the complete manner in which he preoccupies and 
 explains the whole ground in question, without going 
 far beyond any reasonable limits in the copiousness of 
 our extracts. We should need at least a good sized 
 octavo volume to quote all that he has written bearing 
 on this subject ; and another one, or more, in which 
 to elucidate and confirm their application. All we can 
 hope to do in a few lectures is to give men a slight 
 foretaste of the quality of these revelations, and point 
 them to the writings in which they are contained. 
 
 He was himself let into the various spiritual states 
 in order that he might describe them from experience, 
 and so put them on record for the future instruction 
 and use of the church and of men. Hence we find 
 in his writings accounts of the various ways in which 
 spirits operate to produce their effects, the manner in 
 which they fiow ii with man and possess themselves 
 
106 MODERN SPIRITUALISM. 
 
 of his I Dwers, and the various abnormal states into 
 which man himself may be brought — such as the 
 different degrees of the mesmeric sleep, the state of 
 trance, and the sensations experienced on passing out 
 of the natural body. 
 
 He uncovers, too, all the machinations of evil 
 spirits in the other lite ; exposes the innumerable arts 
 which they practise for deceiving men ; how many 
 things they will feign, for the purpose of leading them 
 astray ; how much seeming goodness or apparent 
 piety they will sometimes assume, in order to gain an 
 influence over their minds ; and how many true dis- 
 closures they will make in regard to minor things, that 
 they may inspire a confidence that the falsities which 
 they utter about important things are true also. 
 
 One point to which we desire particularly to call 
 attention in all this is the fact that all these disclosures, 
 instructions, and warnings in regard to this matter 
 were providentially given he forehand. They were 
 put on record by a man claiming to be a divinely com- 
 missioned seer, a century before they were actually 
 required for practical use, in an age in which the 
 church, so far as could be discerned by men, had no 
 special need of them, and before the circumstances to 
 which they more particularly refer had begun to arise. 
 This, of itself, is, we think, a very powerful consid- 
 eration in favor of the divine origin of his mission, 
 and of the New .Church revelation. 
 
 With respect to the future history of these modern 
 manifestations, we may, perhaps, be allowed in this 
 connection to make a passing remark, which will be 
 of the nature of a conjecture. 
 
 It will be remembered that we have already alluded 
 to the diverse (Qualities of these rommunications ; to 
 
SPIRITUALISM WILL BECOME DIVIDED. 107 
 
 the fact that while some of them were comparatively 
 good, and imbodied a considerable degree of trutn, 
 others were extremely evil, teaching a large amount 
 of folly and falsehood. It is our opinion that these 
 latter cbaractei'istics will continue to increase and be- 
 come more and more decidedly marked as spiritual- 
 ism advances. It will be discovered ere long by the 
 sincere and truth-loving consulters of the mediums 
 that there are evil spirits in the other world, as well as 
 good ones ; that that world abounds in deceivers and 
 liars ; that many subtleties are put forth by the spirits, 
 which, though at first having all the appearance and 
 plausibility of truth, are yet founded in fallacy, and 
 lead to persuasions that are perniciously false. In 
 this way we think there must ultimately be produced 
 a division among spiritualists. Those who retain a 
 respect for the sacred Scriptures, and an affection for 
 genuine religious, spiritual, and moral truth, will be 
 gradually led to separate themselves from those who 
 take a different course — from those who throw aside 
 the revelations of the Bible as of no account, who be- 
 lieve that there is no real evil in the universe, that all 
 is one great progression towards good, and place full 
 confidence in and reliance upon whatever the spirits 
 they are in communication with have a mind to tell 
 them. 
 
 It is also our belief that when such a separation 
 does take place between spiritualists, the communica- 
 tions which are received by those who are religiously 
 inclined will be no more sought, and that their vota- 
 ries will gradually be led nearer and nearer to the 
 truths of the New Jerusalem ; while, on the other 
 hand, those that are received by the opposite circles 
 will tend more and more downvrard, and finally end 
 
108 MODERN SPIRITUALISM. 
 
 in what was anciently meant by sorcery, magic, and 
 witchcraft, or necromancy. 
 
 In the seventh chapter of the Gospel of Matthew 
 we read concerning the two ways — a narrow way 
 which leadeth unto life, and a broad way that leadeth 
 to destruction. These ways are, of course, spiritual, 
 and all men are daily travelling in one or the other 
 of them. All are, by the continual habits of their 
 lives, betoming, on the one hand, less selfish, and there- 
 fore wiser and better, or, on the other hand, more 
 selfish, and therefore more evil and more in love with 
 the false. Hence the many who at this day suppose 
 and teach that there is but one spiritual way, that the 
 growth of mind is only upward, that every person, by 
 a route more or less direct or more or less circuitous, 
 is all the while becoming better and wiser, do not 
 allow themselves to be guided by the light of this 
 divine truth; and on a careful examination, their sup- 
 position will be discovered to be a most grievous fal- 
 lacy, infused by evil spirits for the very purpose of 
 lulling men into a fatal feeling of security in regard 
 to their spiritual condition. The belief is one which 
 strongly induces a state of spiritual sleep, giving an 
 impression that our progress is at all events being 
 worked out, however we may continue to live ; thus 
 withdrawing our minds from any active or vigorous 
 opposition to our own evil inclinations, and deceiving 
 us into a contentment with our present impure and 
 selfish states of affection, under a general impression 
 that all w411 come out right for us at last. 
 
 Viewed from a sound philosophy and in genuine 
 light, the progress of the human spirit will be seen 
 to be not always in one direction. The two opening 
 
THE TWO OPPOSITE WAYS. 109 
 
 lines of development diverge from each other from the 
 very start, and at length bend away into two exactly 
 opposite terminations. That there is a progress in 
 evil as well as in good, in folly as well as in wisdom, 
 a successive degradation as well as a successive eleva- 
 tion of soul, a progress downwards as well as a prog- 
 ress upwards, a growth of spiritual disease as well as 
 a growth of spiritual health, and that these two kinds 
 of development and progress result from the constitu- 
 tional laws of our being, is too obvious a fact, one too 
 fully imaged every where in nature, and one too 
 broadly written out on every page of the world's his- 
 tory, on every present state of human society, and on 
 every individual experience, to be long seriously called 
 in question by the truly rational and in-quiring mind. 
 
 Some acorns, owing to defects in their organization, 
 produce only gnarled and crabbed oaks, unfit for the 
 ordinary uses of timber ; some rosebuds have worms 
 in them ; and some men, when they pass out of this 
 world, carry with them a ruling love for what is evil 
 wrapped up in the imperishable folds of their spirit. 
 At the separation called death the spirit leaves the 
 body forever behind, never more to return to it, and 
 enters at once upon the career of its eternal existence. 
 There is no law in the universe that is retrogressive 
 in its action ; no process in nature ever moves back- 
 ward ; the fruit never returns to its flower, nor old 
 age to youth ; the plant never goes back and becomes 
 a seed, nor an oak an acorn, the beast an embryo, nor 
 ihe bird an egg. So, neither does the immortal spirit, 
 after having once in the order of nature shuffled off 
 its bodily coil, ever return hither to take it up. As 
 no departed spirit ever returns to a material body, or 
 ever possesses any body which it does not carry with 
 10 
 
110 MODERN SPIRITUALISM. 
 
 it when it goes away, so there are no spiii-ts in the 
 other life who have not once been in material bodies, 
 and lived a natural life in them, as we are now doing, 
 if not upon this earth then upon some other. Every 
 angel in heaven, every devil in hell, and every spirit 
 in the world of spirits, midway between heaven and 
 hell, has been a man, and lived a life in a natural 
 body upon some one of the innumerable earthly globes 
 there are in the universe. There are no races of 
 beings created originally in a disimbodied state ; no 
 original demons, no original angels ; no class of created 
 intelligences with native constitution and endowment 
 superior to man's. To reverse our illustration : as 
 there is no fruit that ever returns to a flower, and no 
 spirit that ever returns to a body, so there is no fruit 
 that has not emerged from some flower, no rose that 
 is not the expansion of a bud, no butterfly that has 
 not been evolved from some creeping worm, nor a 
 plant or an oak that did not come from a seed or an 
 acorn. Every grown man has been an infant, every 
 beast an embryo, every bird an e^^', and, as we before 
 said, every angel and every devil a man. 
 
 Here, then, we have opened out before us the two 
 grand vistas of spiritual development and. spiritual 
 destiny. Every place in the universe is open to man. 
 No one so mean that he may not covet the best gifts 
 and aspire to the highest ; and no one so high in tliis 
 w^orld, or so secure, that he may not slide away from 
 his level, and fall to the lowest. Along one way 
 angelic influences beckon him on to the most exalted 
 states of created existence - — the purest love, the 
 largest culture, the profoundest bliss. Along the 
 other, flushed malice inflicts its stab, secretive envy 
 weaves its tangled web, pale avarice curves its spiue 
 
ORGANIC VITALITY OF SPIRITUAL LAWS. Ill 
 
 and shuffles Its feet, and all tlie shapes of blight and 
 deformity peep and mutter. 
 
 In one direction the highest, holiest, most glorious 
 temples in the universe are waiting to swing back 
 upon their golden hinges their seven-leaved gates, and 
 welcome every man and every woman who can sum- 
 mon their inmates to the portals by the magnetic 
 touch of a sympathetic affection. In the other direc- 
 tion yawn the entrances to those dens — deeper and 
 darker than any habitations of earth — where the 
 malignant, the treacherous, and the vile open their 
 creaking doors to birds of a similar feather. 
 
 So far as we cherish within ourselves an actual love 
 for what is good, and delight in the things pertaining 
 to the Lord's kingdom, just so far we advance in the 
 one direction ; while so far as we allow to operate in 
 us a love for what is evil, false, and selfish, so far we 
 advance in the other. The law which determines our 
 destiny hereafter is not an arbitrary external regula- 
 tion, or merely verbal commandment, but a vital, 
 organific force constantly at work in the desires and 
 affections of the spirit ; and is as self-executive and as 
 precise in its adjustments, when it sinks the evil spirit 
 to his place and elevates the good to his, as that law 
 of gravitation by which the leaden plummet falls 
 through the body of water, and the balloon of hydro- 
 gen rises to the upper atmosphere. 
 
 While we remain in this world we are left by our 
 Creator in perfect moral freedom — in freedom to 
 choose and follow either one of these two ways ; and 
 when men are transferred to the other world their free- 
 dom is not taken away. They there continue in the 
 way upon which they have entered here. In this 
 world a man pursues the evil way because he loves it 
 
112 MODERN SPIPvITUALISM. 
 
 better than the opposite good ; and in that world, 
 with the same freedom of choice, he will pursue it 
 still for the same reason. His continual choice be- 
 comes a confirmed and permanent state of the will, a 
 fixed habit of m'nd ; and that which constitutes his 
 very life's love is never changed to eternity. 
 
LECTURE V. 
 
 REASONS FOR ACCEPTING THE REVELATIONS OF THE NEW 
 JERUSALEM AS TRUTH. 
 
 "Forever, O Jehovah, thy -word is established in heaven. Thy truth 
 is unto all generations." — Psalm cxix. 89. 
 
 In resuming the theme upon which we have been 
 addressing you for several evenings past, and in carry- 
 ing it forward to its completion on the present occa- 
 sion, it may be useful to pause here a moment and 
 briefly consider the ground which has been passed 
 over. 
 
 In the first place we endeavored to give some ac 
 count of man's spiritual nature with reference to his 
 future existence. We attempted to describe the mode 
 in which the resurrection takes place after the death 
 of the material body, the form and functions of the 
 spiritual body, and to say something concerning the 
 first state in which men find themselves after they pass 
 out of this world. 
 
 We then undertook to show something of the man- 
 ner in which departed spirits continue to be associated 
 with men here, and of the difierent methods in which 
 10 * (113) 
 
114 MODERN SPIRITUALISM. 
 
 men can become sensible of their presence, and receive 
 communications from them. The manner in which 
 the divine revelations that are recorded in the Scrip- 
 tures Avere mad*^ was to some extent explained, as well 
 as the method and character of that other kind of 
 spiritual intercourse which is there spoken of. "VVe 
 endeavored to show the difference between them, and 
 confirmed our views of them, to a considerable extent, 
 from the records of the Bible. We next proceeded 
 to point out the distinction which exists between the 
 church of the New Jerusalem and modern spiritual- 
 ism ; assigning to the former the character of a 
 divinely appointed revelation, and to the latter that 
 of a series of miscellanepus communications from indi- 
 vidual spirits. 
 
 In our last lecture we proceeded farther, and ad- 
 duced some of the reasons for admitting the truth of 
 the superior claim which the New Church sets up, 
 and for preferring the disclosures made through Swe- 
 denborg before those coming from the modern medi- 
 ums. The first consideration there brought forward 
 was that the superiority of the claim itself, under ail 
 the attendant circumstances in which it is made, is a 
 strong prima facie evidence in favor of the superior 
 character of Swedenborg's mission. The second argu- 
 ment we adduced was drawn from the fact that Swe- 
 denborg was a seer, and that having *•' his eyes open " 
 into the other world, he needed not that spirits should 
 testify to him concerning the state of things in their 
 world, for he was enabled to observe them for him- 
 self, and so could report them over to us in a more 
 reliable form than when coming through unknown, 
 miscellaneous, and contradictory spirits. 
 
 The third reason s^iven was that the revelations 
 
RECAPITULATION. 115 
 
 coming througli Swedenborg constitute a complete, 
 self-consistent, and harmonious system, all the parts 
 of which agree with all the other parts; while the 
 communications of spiritualism present only a vast 
 mass of heterogeneous, incongruous, and contradic- 
 tory matter. 
 
 The fourth consideration we ventured to advance 
 was the relative extent of his disclosures as compared 
 with those of spiritualism. And under this head we 
 endeavored to give some idea of the vastly greater 
 amount of real information concerning all the laws, 
 conditions, and phenomena of the other life conveyed 
 in the writings of Swedenborg than are contained in 
 all other books put together, or than can be obtained 
 from all other sources put together. 
 
 The fifth thought we presented was the circumstance 
 that the revelations of the New Church, coming a 
 hundred years before them, completely forestall, over- 
 look, and account for the phenomena and disclosures 
 of spiritualism. Under this head we endeavored to 
 show, to a limited extent, that these writings, while 
 describing beforehand the general facts which have 
 since occurred, contain, also, such admonitions and 
 warnings in regard to the dangers attending that kind 
 of intercourse as we should rationally expect to find 
 in a divinely-accorded revealment. 
 
 In the course we have thus pursued, it has been 
 one object with us to bring into vicAv the fact that the 
 New Jerusalem has somethinsf to ofier on these and 
 
 o 
 
 kindred subjects ; that it has been provided, from 
 some source, with definite and rational doctrine on all 
 points relating to man's future state and destiny ; that 
 it is endowed with a kind of teaching on important 
 subjects calculated to meet the wants of the times in 
 
116 MODERN spiritualism: 
 
 a manner in which other theological systems are not 
 prepared; and that the light it is enabled to cast 
 over these mysterious questions points to it as pos- 
 sessing qualities that fit it to become what it is di- 
 vinely intended to be — the Christian church of the 
 future. 
 
 6. "V^e proceed next to the consideration of our 
 sixth reason. The contents of the New Jerusalem 
 revelation are based on the sacred Scripture. 
 
 In this particular it is most diverse from spiritual- 
 ism. It does not present itself in an attitude of antag- 
 onism to the religious truth of the past. It does not 
 array itself, as the latter does, against the teachings 
 of holy writ, but conforms to them and confirms them. 
 It takes up the former revelations divinely made, and 
 carries them forward to completion. God has always 
 provided that there should be a testimony to his truth 
 in the world, shining with as clear and full a light as 
 the intellectual eyes of the epoch were capable of 
 bearing, and has continued to increase that light as 
 often as the world's intelligence has passed on to a 
 new plane. The system of the New Church, there- 
 fore, comes before the world with the history of fifty 
 centuries at its back. It comes as the latent born and 
 the inheritor of the spiritual wealth of all the churches. 
 It joins on organically upon that great tree of heavenly 
 disclosure which the Lord planted early in our earth, 
 and which, under his own guardian care and nurture, 
 has all along been extending its growth through the 
 ages. It clothes the sturdy branches of that tree, all 
 over, with a fresh and living foliage of particular and 
 definite truths, which derive all their vigor and beauty 
 from the original sap that has forever circulated in the 
 trunk. 
 
THE NEW JERUSALEM BASED ON SCRIPTURE. 117 
 
 The light of this revelation fulfils the prophecies 
 of those which have come before. It presents those 
 very disclosures which the Scriptures so frequently 
 teach us to look forward to and expect. Itself dis- 
 tinctly foretold by name as a city that should one day 
 descend out of heaven — a city that should be enlight- 
 ened by a supernatural light — it unveils the mysteries 
 that were hidden behind the symbolic curtain of the 
 Apocalypse, exposes to our view the scenes of the Last 
 Judgment — the Destruction of Babylon, the Casting 
 Down of the Dragon, the Second Coming of the Lord, 
 the Unsealing of the Book, the going forth of the 
 White Horse, the End of the former Dispensation, 
 and the commencement of the New Age. 
 
 It explains the meaning of what has been revealed 
 before ; removes from our minds the difficulties which 
 surround many things in the old Scriptures by show- 
 ing in what manner they are to be understood, and 
 raises our respect for them by making known the 
 nature and extent of their inspiration. Obscurities 
 are cleared up, seeming contradictions harmonized, 
 discrepancies accounted for, parables explained, pre- 
 ceptive truths interiorly unfolded, and a flood of gen- 
 uine rational light is thrown over all the cloudy ap- 
 pearances of- the letter. The sacred Scripture is so 
 clearly demonstrated to be really the word of God 
 that it can be seen in intellectual Light by those who 
 religiously study the writings. 
 
 In one place Swedenborg says that what is repre- 
 sented and signified in the internal sense by most of 
 those things that are named in the letter " has hereto- 
 fore been known to no one ; nor could it be known ; 
 because the world, even the learned part of it, has 
 •heretofore imagined that the historical portions of the 
 
118 MODERN SPIRITUALISM. 
 
 "Word are merely histories, and infold nothing deeper. 
 And although they have said that every iota is divine- 
 ly inspired, still by this they meant no more than that 
 such historical narratives were made known by reve- 
 lation, and that certain tenets may be deduced from 
 them appHcable to the doctrine of faith, and profita- 
 ble to those who teach and to those who are taught ; 
 as also that, in consequence of being divinely inspired, 
 the narratives have a divine force on men's minds, and 
 are operative of good above all other histories. Bat 
 historical relations, considered in themselves, effect 
 little towards man's amendment, nor any thing towards 
 eternal life ; for in the ether life they are sunk in 
 oblivion. Of what use, then, could it be to know 
 (for instance) concerning Hagar, a servant maid, that 
 she was given to Abram by Sarai ? or to know the 
 history of Ishmael, or even that of Abram ? Nothing 
 is necessary for souls, in order to their entering into 
 heaven and enjoying bhss, that is, eternal life, but 
 what has relation to the Lord, and is from the Lord. 
 These are the things to communicate which the Word 
 was given ; and these are the things which are con- 
 tained in its interiors." 
 
 " Inspiration," he says, '* implies that in all parts 
 of the Word, even the most minute, as w^ell historical 
 as others, are contained celestial things which are of 
 love, or good, and spiritual things which are of faith, 
 or truth, consequently, things divine. For what is 
 inspired by the Lord descends from him through the 
 angelic heaven, and thus through the world of spirits, 
 till it reaches man, before whom it presents itself such 
 as the Word is in the letter ; but it is altogether dif- 
 ferent in its first origin. In heaven there is not any 
 worldly history, but the whole [Word there] is repre- 
 
INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 119 
 
 sentatlve of things divine, nor is any thing else there 
 perceived, as may also be known from this, that the 
 things which are there are unspeakable [in the lan- 
 guage of men] ; wherefore, unless the historical por 
 tions [of the Scripture" be representative of things 
 divine, and be thus celestial, they cannot possibly be 
 divinely inspired. What is the nature of the Word 
 in the heavens can be known only from the internal 
 sense ; for the internal sense is the Word of the Lord 
 in the heavens." (That is, the internal sense is the 
 sacred Scripture as it exists, and is read, ^nd per- 
 ceived, and understood among the angels.) — A. C. 
 1886, 1887. 
 
 From the above remarks we gain some idea of the 
 meaning of the first portion of our text, which says, 
 " Forever, O Jehovah, thy Word is established in 
 heaven." And this is what is meant w^hen it is said 
 that the New Jerusalem descends out of heaven ; 
 namely, that the mode in which the doctrines of the 
 Word of God are understood in heaven is revealed to 
 men, so that a new earth may be gradually formed 
 here which shall correspond to the heavens, both in 
 understanding and life, and that men may be freely led 
 first to think, then to feel, and at length to act, like the 
 angels. 
 
 That the literal sense of the sacred Scripture is rep- 
 resentative of such divine arcana as stated in the para- 
 graph we have just cited, and that it is a receptacle, 
 and thus a repository, of the celestial and spiritual 
 things of the Lord, cannot be made clear to the appre- 
 hension unless it be illustrated by numerous examples 
 of interpretation — a process for which v/e have not 
 the space; but is a thing w^iich can be rationally seen 
 
120 MODERN SPIRITUALISM. 
 
 and confirmed tlie oftener the Word is read in the 
 light of such explanations. 
 
 To unfold and publish this interior sense of the 
 Word was the great object of Swedenborg's mission. 
 So important a dispensation is it in the divine economy 
 that this sense should be known to men, and that by 
 means of it the Word of God might be correctly un- 
 derstood and interpreted in these latter times, that it 
 is frequently made the subject of inspired prophecy. 
 In the fifth chapter of the book of Eevelation the 
 effect which the opening of this sense is destined to 
 have upon the lives of spirits and men is represented 
 by the opening of the book sealed with seven seals ; 
 and in the nineteenth chapter of the Apocalypse this 
 revealment is symbolized by the opening of heaven 
 and the vision of the white horse. So great is the 
 change which a knowledge and practice of the truth 
 contained in the spiritual sense of the Word is to pro- 
 duce in the religious history of the world, that its 
 promulgation on the earth is spoken of in the New 
 Testament Scriptures as being the second coming of 
 the Lord. It is the only way in which his second 
 coming will be perceived in the natural world, and 
 the only medium he will use to introduce and perfect 
 the latter day glory of his church. He comes now as 
 the Word revealed. He makes himself known not 
 only as the author and source of the Word, but as 
 being the very truth of the Word, its soul or essence, 
 its liglit and life. Hence we read in the prophecy 
 already referred to that he who sat upon the horse is 
 called Faithful and True, and in righteousness doth 
 he judge and make war; and his name is called The 
 Word of God. v 
 
EXPLANATIONS OF THE SCEIPTIRE NEEDED. 121 
 
 That some higher UDderstaiiding of the sacred 
 Scriptures, and some better interpretation of them 
 than ib novv' in current use, is needed in the modern 
 circumst:inces in which the church is placed seems to 
 us quite evident. The church at large requires some 
 further key to the meaniua^ of the divine oracles than 
 she now possesses, both for her ow^n satisfaction and 
 for her sojurity. She needs it in order that her own 
 children and separated branches may come to some 
 common agreement among themselves on fundamental 
 doctrines. She needs it both for light and for life ; 
 to correct the enthusiasms and delusions that arise in 
 her ov/n pale from a misunderstanding of the declara- 
 tions of prophecy ; to defend the Scriptures them- 
 selves from the attacks of scientific objectors ; and to 
 minister to the nev/ moral and philosophical require- 
 ments of the human mind. 
 
 Objections to the teachings and records of the 
 Scriptures more numerous than ever before, presented 
 from entirely new points of view, are gravely and 
 persistently urged by naturalists, by spiritualists, by 
 rationalists. And so far as the literal sense merely is 
 concerned, many of these are rightly m-ged. With- 
 out a different mode of interpreting than has hereto- 
 fore prevailed, the rational decision must be in many 
 instances against the old record and ir favor of the 
 new discoveries. 
 
 Now, in the New Church system all these diincul- 
 ties are rationally met and explained. We here have 
 all the freedom of thought, and more, v,^e have all the 
 spiritual science, and more, all the deep philosophy of 
 man and of nature, and more, all the vast fields of 
 newly opened inquiry, and more, that are presented to 
 the mind in spiritualism, in rationalism, or in any sys- 
 11 
 
122 MODERN SPIRITUALISM. 
 
 tern of philosophy. And in' addition to ail this we 
 have a biblical science which breaks open the shell of 
 divine truth, and lets forth its interior light, takes off 
 the rind of the fruit, distributing the wholesome meat 
 within for the nutriment of the nations. It preserves 
 intact both the soul and the body of the former reve- 
 lation, only clearing away and stripping off the heavy 
 clothing of dogmas and fallacies and vain conceits 
 with which the officious and speculating mind of the 
 centuries has encumbered it. 
 
 Now that a system fully providing for these wants of 
 the church should present itself to the world in such an 
 age as this, that it should have made its appearance at 
 least half a century before the main exigencies had 
 arisen, so that the books containing it might be generally 
 distributed through Christendom, ready to take the new 
 movement in its incipient stages, and rise into notice 
 with it, shows that there is something particularly 
 providential in it; and, connected with the claim it 
 makes, is to our mind a very strong evidence in favor 
 of its divine origin. 
 
 A very common misconception which persons form 
 on first approaching the system of the New Church, 
 and hearing the docrine of a spiritual sense taught, is, 
 that it is something that is to do away with the literal 
 sense ; that it is an interpretation which is to be sub- 
 stituted for the plain and direct meaning of the Scrip- 
 tures. And the impression thus made upon many 
 minds is, that this mode of understanding the Scrip- 
 tures is without fixedness ; something unstable ; some- 
 thing too figurative, and too far removed from common 
 apprehension to be rendered practically useful. The 
 feeling is, that by means of it the Scriptures are likely 
 to be interpreted according to the imagination, the 
 
LITERAL SEN3E NOT IMPAIRED BY SPIRITUAL. 123 
 
 meaning rendered indefinite, and the wliole mind be 
 thrown into the realm of uncertainty in regard to it. 
 
 As these various impressions are incorrect, it is 
 therefore important that something should be done to 
 remove them. 
 
 The spiritual sense does not come to take the place 
 of the literal sense ; it does not overthrow it ; does 
 not destroy its authority ; it leaves the literal sense 
 just as complete as it found it. The two senses are 
 entirely distinct from each other. The one refers to 
 visible things, to affairs and relations existing in this 
 world ; the other refers to invisible things, to affairs 
 and relations which exist in the spiritual world. The 
 literal sense is designed for the use of men on earth, 
 and the spiritual sense is for the angels in heaven. 
 Men could not write a book which would be so 
 adapted. All the powers of all the human intellects 
 that ever existed, combined together, could not pro- 
 duce a single page of such a work. Herein lies the 
 reality of its divine origin and inspiration. Accord- 
 ing to the divine law by which the universe is created 
 natural things are so made that they symbolize and 
 image forth spiritual things. Natural events so hap- 
 pen and flow on that they correspond to and represent 
 changes and varieties of spiritual state and experi- 
 ence ; while circumstances and conditions exist in 
 this world which correspond to states and circum- 
 stances in the other world, and which, therefore, may 
 be used to represent and describe them. This law of 
 correspondence between the spiritual world and the 
 natural is known in its origin and essence to the 
 Creator alone ; it is a law and operation of his own 
 mind and thought. He alone could first know the 
 principles and the applications of this law, and there- 
 
IS4 MODERN SPiaiTUAXISM. 
 
 fore he alone could utter a Word whicli, wliile it 
 should be forever estahlished in heaven, would also 
 serve for truth to all generations on earth. He alone 
 could cause to be written a book which, while it 
 should instruct, elevate, and guide men in the sacred 
 truths of religion, should at the same time serve as a 
 medium by which angels are instructed, enlightened, 
 and perfected, with respect to the same themes. 
 
 Now, in making known these things to the world, 
 the New Church revelation does not impair the literal 
 sense of the Word : men will still continue to under- 
 stand the Scriptures naturally as heretofore. But let 
 us glance a moment at some of the uses which are 
 performed by the revelation of the fact we have set 
 forth. In the first place, by it is shown the divinity 
 of the Word. If we cannot ourselves get a full perr 
 ception of the spiritual meaning, and -understand it as 
 the angels do, yet we can here and there get a few 
 glimpses of it, we can clearly see that the Scripture 
 has more in it than we formerly supposed it had, and 
 as it is far above our entire comprehension we can see 
 that there is a superhuman element in it, we can 
 clearly perceive that it is beyond the power of man to 
 write such a book, and hence its divine origin and in- 
 spiration will take a rational and firm hold on our 
 minds. 
 
 In the second place, the revelation of this great 
 fact has the efifect to turn our minds in the right direc- 
 tion. It points us the way in which all new and true 
 light is to come. It withdraws our minds from the 
 worldly modes of regarding and reading the Scrip- 
 ture and elevates them towards the light that comes 
 down from above. It enables men to begin and 
 think a little as the angels do, and enables the aijgels 
 
THE LITERAL SENSE NEEDS TO BE EXPLAINED. 125 
 
 to come nearer to men and assist them, as far as tliey 
 are able, to understand tlie AVord better. Thus it 
 makes it possible for men here, though at the very- 
 foot of the ladder, to commence their heavenly edu- 
 cation, and thereby go into the other world so much 
 the better prepared to make rapid advances there. 
 
 Thirdly, the spiritual sense throws a genuine light 
 over the literal sense and enables us to iinderstand 
 that better. This is the first great use which it per- 
 forms for the church. The great need of the world 
 at the present moment is to understand the meaning 
 of the literal sense. This is the very sense which 
 puzzles ail the commentators. It is the sense about 
 the meaning of which all the controversies and di- 
 visions in the Christian world occur. Instead of 
 being every where plain and obvious it is the very 
 thing which in innumerable instances is neither plain 
 nor obvious. How many passages there are occurring 
 in every part of the Scriptures upon which hardly 
 any two commentators agree ; how many that - are 
 made to mean one thing by Catholics and another 
 thing by Protestants ; one thing by High Churchmen, 
 another by Congregationalists ; one thing by Baptists, 
 another by Pedo-Baptists ! Do not Trinitarians and 
 Unitarians, Calvinists and Arminians, Supernatural- 
 ists and nationalists, continually read their different 
 and contradictory interpretations into the same texts ? 
 Who, now, in the Christian world can tell with any 
 certainty the meaning of one half of the literal sense 
 of the Bible ? Where can be found a fixed, reliable, 
 and satisfactory interpretation of the early chapters of 
 Genesis, of the prophetical books of the Old Teota- 
 ment, of the twenty-fourth chapter of Matthew, and 
 of the whole book of Revelation ? Who in the Chiis- 
 11* 
 
126 MODERN SPIRITUALISM. 
 
 tlan world can tell any thing (otherwise than by con 
 jecture) concerning the meaning of what is said in 
 the literal sense of the Scriptures about the last 
 things — about the resurrection, the end of the world, 
 the millennium, the second coming of the Lord, the 
 last judgment, the descent of the New Jerusalem ? 
 
 We see, then, that it is precisely the literal or nat- 
 ural sense of the Scriptures which at this day needs 
 to be made plain. And this is one office which the 
 New Jerusalem revelation performs. The light of 
 the spiritual sense serves to fix and determine the 
 meaning of doubtful or obscure passages of the natu- 
 ral sense. It is in reality the understanding of the 
 Word from the spiritual sense that is alone definite 
 and fixed, while it is the understanding of the merely 
 literal sense that is variable, floating, zndefinite and 
 Infixed. 
 
 As an illustration of this, take, for instance, the first 
 clause of our text, — " Forever, O Jehovah, thy 
 Word is established in heaven.''^ What meaning do 
 these words convey to the ordinary understandhigs 
 of men ? What definite fact do they describe to the 
 mind of one who reads them in the light of the com- 
 mon modes of interpretation? Take down the vol- 
 umes of tvfenty commentators and you shall find as 
 many different views or suggestions thrown out, and 
 not one of them the ris^ht one. As a 2:eneral thim? 
 the phrase will be considered as conveying a poetical 
 figure, or an oriental hyperbole ; and the flu'ther you 
 proceed in your investigations the more indefinite will 
 the meaning of the passage become. To the mind 
 of the New Churchman it describes a definite fact — 
 one already referred to, namely, that the divine A\^ord, 
 which men call the sacred Scripture, exists also in 
 
NEW CHURPH REVELATIONS. 127 
 
 tlie heavens, and is in continual use tliere among tlie 
 angels. This is the plain, natural sense of that pas- 
 sage. The words simply and dh-ectly assert a definite 
 fact, and by the light of the revelation of the spirit- 
 ual sense we are enabled to point out distinctly what 
 that fact is ; Avithout that light we could not so point 
 it out. We have not here attempted to 023en to you 
 the internal or angelic sense of this passage, but have 
 only explained it according to its genuine literal 
 sense. Take, as another illustration, the twenty-first 
 chapter of Kevelation, where the descent of the New 
 Jerusalem is described. We say that by the New 
 Jerusalem is meant a New Church ; that by its de- 
 scent out of heaven is meant that this church as to 
 its doctrines is revealed from heaven ; and .that when 
 it is said the tabernacle of God shall be with men, 
 it is meant that this New Church from the Lord 
 is to be established among men on the earth. 
 
 This we give as the plain natural sense of these 
 things. We do not here attempt to open the internal 
 or truly angelic sense of this vision — the sense in 
 which what is here written apphes to the regenera- 
 tion of man ; we only point out the real, external, 
 objective facts to which these passages refer in their 
 genuine earthly or human sense. We simply tell 
 you what the literal sense means; which we should 
 not be able to do if it were not for the light which 
 the spiritual sense of the Word affords. 
 
 The same is true of the second coming of the 
 Lord, the last judgment, and all the other events pre- 
 dicted in the Apocalypse. Tiie revelations of this 
 church give the angeli: sense of these various chap- 
 ters, but they give also what the churches at present 
 first need, the genuine meaning of the natural sense. 
 
128 MODEHN SPIRITUALISM. 
 
 We miglit go through the Scriptures in this way, 
 and from almost every chapter select something that 
 would illustrate these views, some passage whith 
 would show how the light of the spiritual sense every 
 where illuminates the letter, making it clear, and how 
 much this light is needed in order that the letter may 
 be correctly understood. 
 
 In order to be a New Churchman, therefore, in 
 reading the Scriptures, it is not necessary for a man 
 to attempt to climb up to something which he cannot 
 understand. It is not necessary that he should at 
 once enter into the spiritual sense as the angels do ; 
 but only that he should read them in the light of the 
 spiritual sense, and thus come to a correct understand- 
 ing of their genuine meaning in their external or lit- 
 eral sense. The real strength and power of the Word 
 is in its literal sense ; without it there could be no 
 spiritual sense ; it is the very foundation or base upon 
 which the other is built. Thus, in a manner which 
 we can but very faintly attempt to describe, does the 
 Kew Church revelation grow, by a most vital and 
 organic continuity, directly out of the divine revela- 
 tion which has come before. 
 
 And not only does it proceed forth from it in a nat- 
 ural and orderly continuity, but the fundamental prin- 
 ciples and doctrines upon which it is based are clearly 
 taught in, and can be plainly and abundantly con- 
 firmed from, the literal sense of the Scriptures. The 
 annoancement of this fact we consider of sufficient 
 importance at least to invite inquiry, and those who 
 candidly investigate the claim find that it is so. They 
 find that all the great leading doctrines of the New 
 Church can be proven from the sacred Scriptures ; 
 that they are indeed the real and only doctrines of the 
 
METHODS OF DIVINE REVELATIONS. 129 
 
 Scriptures; and that in their light they can more 
 phiinly and clearly perceive the actual meaning of 
 what they read in the Word of God than they ever 
 could before. 
 
 Hence, as the sacred Scriptures are already an 
 acknowledged authority to a large majority of minds 
 in all Christiaii countries, this circumstance of itself 
 affords another sufficient reason why we should repose 
 with confidence on the truth of these revelations. 
 
 7. We Avill now proceed to our seventh considera- 
 tion. And the thought we shall here present relates 
 to the fact that Swedenhorg malces known to us the 
 various methods in ivhich the previous divine revela- 
 tions have been cor/imunicated. 
 
 This part of our subject would very naturally, per- 
 haps, have fallen under the preceding consideration — 
 that the New Church system is based on the sacred 
 Scripture ; but as the specific points to which we refer 
 are perfectly distinct in themselves, we have concluded 
 to array them under a separate head. 
 
 In our last lecture we referred to the circumstance 
 that Swedenborg was let into the various abnormal spir- 
 itual states — mesmeric, clairvoyant, somnambulic, and 
 spiritualistic — that he might understand and describe 
 them, so, now, what we wish to state is, that he was in 
 like manner led into, and so enabled from experience 
 to describe, all the various mental conditions induced 
 upon men by the operation of the spirit of the Lord 
 upon them, and the different psychological states in 
 w^iiich the pi'ophets and other inspired men were when 
 they received their revelations. 
 
 He commences with an account of the primeval or 
 most ancient people, when open intercourse with the 
 s-piritual world was the common prerogative of all 
 
130 MODERN SPIRITUALISM. 
 
 men, the state in which those were who are called 
 Adam, when they heard the voice of the Lord God 
 walking in the garden, when men conversed with 
 angels and spirits as man with man. He explains 
 what is meant in the narrative where it is said that 
 Enoch walked with God, and was not, for that God 
 took him. He shows in what manner the Lord com- 
 municated with the Hebrew patriarchs, Abraham, 
 Isaac, and Jacob. He describes those mysterious the- 
 ophanies of the Old Testament, in which it is said 
 that the angel of Jehovah appeared unto different 
 persons, and that through that appearance Jehovah 
 himself spake to them ; as in the case of Moses at the 
 burning bush, of Joshua when he saw the armed war- 
 rior, the captain of the host of Jehovah, on his en- 
 trance into the land of Canaan ; and of the prophet 
 Ezekiel, when he saw the appearance of Jehovah, as 
 of a man, above upon the altar. He tells us how the 
 Lord communicated with Moses during the journey 
 through the wilderness, and how he appeared to him 
 when it is said that he talked with him face to face, as 
 a man talketh with a friend. He describes the man- 
 ner in which and the means by which the .divine re- 
 sponses were given by Urim and Thummim, when 
 through that institution the Israelites went on im- 
 portant occasions to make inquiries of Jehovah. He 
 makes known the state of open vision — the state in 
 which the prophets were when they received their 
 revelations ; he distinguishes between the different 
 kinds of visions, and explains the meaning of those 
 representative ones which were slipwn to the prophets. 
 He also mentions several Icjnds of vision differing 
 from those which have been ordinarily experienced, 
 and into which he was let only that he might know 
 
METHODS OF DIVINE RE\^LATiONS. 131 
 
 the nature of them, and be able to put them on vec 
 ord. So, alsOj he describes the state of divine trance. 
 He was, too, permitted to relate with considerable 
 minuteness what is meant by being in the spirit, as 
 where St. John says that he was in the spirit on tne 
 Lord's day ; what is meant by being taken out of the 
 body, or to be in a state in which one does not know 
 whether he be in the body or out of the body, as was 
 the case on one occasion with St. Paul ; as well as the 
 state in which Paul was when he was caught up to 
 the third heaven, and heard and saw ineffable things, 
 %yhich it was not lawful for the mouth of man to utter. 
 He says that it was given him to know by lively 
 experience the nature of what is meant where the 
 being carried by the spirit into another place is spoken 
 of, but this only twice or three times, to the intent 
 that he might describe it. This phenomenon is sev- 
 eral times referred to in the Bible, as in the eighteenth 
 chapter of the first book of Kings, Avhere Obadiah is 
 fearful lest the Spirit of the Lord should carry the 
 prophet EHjah into another place, and so he not be 
 found where he left him ; also in the second chapter 
 of the second book of Kings, where the sons of the 
 prophets proposed to Ehsha that fifty strong men 
 should be sent in search of Elijah, lest, as they said, 
 peradventure the Spirit of the Lord had taJcen him. up 
 and cast him upon some mountain or into some valley. 
 And again, in the third chapter of Ezekiel, where the 
 prophet relates that he was lifted up by the spirit and 
 carried away into Babylonia, and set dovvii tliere among 
 the children of the captivity, by the river Chebar, and 
 that he remained there seven days. As also in ihe 
 eighth chapter of Acts, where it is related of Philip 
 that after he had haptized the eunuch, as he carne ip 
 
132 MODERN SPIRITUALISM. 
 
 out of the water the Spirit of the Lord caught away 
 Philip, and the eunuch saw him no more ; but it is 
 afterwards said that Philip was found at Azotus. 
 
 The phenomena of dreams are also explained, both 
 the ordinary and the extraordinary, with the intent of 
 causing to be understood the nature of those which 
 are sometimes employed as the mediums of communi- 
 cating important warnings or divine instruction to 
 men ; as was the case with Joseph, both in Canaan 
 and in Egypt, with King Solomon and Daniel the 
 prophet, as well as with Joseph the husband of Mary, 
 and many others who are mentioned both in the Old 
 and New Testaments. It is told in Avhat manner 
 angels flow in and operate to cause such dreams. 
 
 We also learn from these writings the various cir- 
 cumstances connected with the temptations which our 
 Lord endured as to, his human nature while he was in 
 the world ; how he was connected and associated with 
 the beings of the other world ; how evil spirits came 
 to him and assaulted him ; how they endeavored to 
 aiiect, to operate upon, and to destroy him, and how 
 he continually affected, operated upon, and discom- 
 fited them ; how the departed spirits of good men 
 were at times in company with him, and how angels 
 came and ministered unto him. The different kinds 
 and degrees of divine inspiration are discriminated 
 and pointed out, as well as the various styles in which 
 the diiTerent parts of the Bible are written. Thus the 
 parts written by Moses differ in style from those com- 
 posed by David, and the psychological state of those 
 who had pro2)hetic visions v/as very diverse from that 
 of those persons who composed only inspired histo- 
 ries ; while the divine influence which rested upon the 
 minds of Paul and of the other authors of the apos- 
 
MORAL QUALITY OF THESE REVELATIONS. 183 
 
 tolical epistles was, again, unlike ^hat which was en- 
 joyed by the other classes to which we have referred. 
 
 In short, we may affirm, in conclusion, that all the 
 spu'itual phenomena connected with the revelation of 
 the sacred Scriptures are in this revelation clearly, 
 rationally, and satisfactorily explained. This is a 
 feature which neither spiritualism nor any other sys- 
 tem now before the world possesses to any distinguish- 
 ing degree. We cannot help regarding it as a some- 
 what important feature, one which affords a peculiar 
 and striking consideration in favor of the New Church 
 system. 
 
 8. In the eighth and last place we adduce the moral 
 quality of these revelations. 
 
 It is agreed on all hands by Christian writers that 
 the great and paramount p)roof of the divinity of the 
 Christian religion is its internal quality — the pure 
 and heavenly character of its moral teachings. This 
 is almost universally considered the very hinging 
 point in the evidences of Christianity ; and it is often 
 alleged that no dispensation of mere outward, physical 
 m-iracles, however stupendous, would be sufficient to 
 authenticate the truth of a system which taught what 
 is rationally seen to be wrong, or whose morality was 
 impure ; in other words which did not possess the 
 distinguishing characteristic we have already pointed 
 out. 
 
 This we consider solid ground. And it is accord- 
 ing to the criterion furnished by this rule that the 
 New Church system is to be explored and judged of 
 No one can enter upon the study of the 'Ne\Y Church 
 M'ritiugs without being forcibly struck with this \y\. 
 portant feature of their character. Another has well 
 said that " a deep and solemn earnestness pervades 
 12 
 
134 MODERN SPIRITUAL .M. 
 
 every portion " of our author's rrks. '^ One may 
 search through the twenty thousanu pages of his theo- 
 logical writings, and not find a single passage de- 
 signed to excite mirth or laughter," or calculated to 
 awaken any impure or unholy emotion. All is seri- 
 ous, solemn, earnest, truthful. The moral atmosphere 
 IS every where calm, pure, and serene. The mind is 
 continually led by a gentle and rational influence, 
 withdrawing it from evil and bending it to good, ele- 
 vating it from earth and pointing it towards heaven. 
 The single aim of the wdiole system is to make men 
 better ; to withhold them from depraved affections, 
 and bring them under the influence of heavenly affec- 
 tions ; to withdraw their thoughts from the shade of 
 false persuasions, and introduce them into the full 
 light of spiritual truth ; to bring them out from under 
 the dominion of worldly lusts, of natural passions 
 and loves, and of selfish desires and ends of life, and 
 place them more and more under the rule and order 
 of the Lord's kingdom, under obedience to his divine 
 influences, and under the sway and control of holy 
 love, of renewed emotions and unselfish desires. 
 
 The very fact that so great a prominence is given 
 in the system to the s]piriiual sense of the Word shows 
 that the chief aim is to awaken into life the religious 
 experience of men, to strengthen its hold upon the 
 character, to render it more interior, to c,irry it for- 
 ward to a higher degree of development, and make it 
 permanently abiding. 
 
 To effect this end the nature and essence of evil are 
 plainly pointed out. We are shown the origin from 
 which all evil comes, and wherein it consists. Its 
 malignity, its intensity, and its excessive direfulness 
 are held up in a stioug and clear rational Ifslit. Tiie 
 
NEW CHURCH AND SPIRITUALISM CONTRASTED. 135 
 
 many hidden and insidious ways in which it at first 
 besets, then invades, and finally enthrones itself in 
 the human heart are most surprisingly expounded ; 
 while the awful results to which it leads hereafter, the 
 thick mental darkness, the insane persuasions, and the 
 deep and lasting misery with which it covers men in 
 the other life, are laid open in a manner altogether 
 surpassing the information given on the same subjects 
 in the literal sense of the sacred Scriptures, and sur- 
 passing the powers of the human imagination before- 
 hand to conceive. 
 
 Contrast this characteristic of the New Church sys- 
 tem with what is found predominant in most of the 
 teachings which flow in through spiritualism, in which 
 the real direfulness of evil is almost always over- 
 looked, and for the most part expressly denied ; in 
 which Avicked depravities and wrong states of the 
 human will are characterized as harmless eccentrici- 
 ties, or held to be only lower forms of undeveloped 
 good. 
 
 In the teachings of the New Church the various 
 wa.ys in which evil may be avoided, in the acts, in 
 the thoughts, and in the heart, are openly manifested ; 
 how its influences may be withstood, its seeds uprooted 
 from the aflections, and itself cast out of the mind 
 and put away. How the opposite good states of mind 
 are to be acquired is also taught ; how aflections of 
 genuine spiritual love may be induced to flow in and 
 occupy the places formerly filled with evil. The 
 spiritual regeneration of man is every where the one 
 grand theme. The divine precepts of the Word of 
 God, opened according to their internal sense, are 
 made to apply to the cleansing and purifying of the 
 interior life in a manner in which they could not be 
 
ISO MODERN SPIRITUALISM. 
 
 made to do in tJieir merely literal sense. AVe are 
 continually pointed forward to higher and still higher 
 attainments in the regenerate life ; and the most ele- 
 vated rounds of the heavenly ladder are brought dis- 
 tinctly into Tiew. The literal language of the law is. 
 Thou shcilt love thy neighbor as thyself; but from 
 these revelations accompanying the spiritual sense of 
 the ^Vord we learn that the angels in their world 
 understand this to mean that they are to love their 
 neighbor better than themselves ; and we here read, 
 too, concerning those celestial beings dwelling nearest 
 the eternal throne, who have advanced so far in holy 
 life as heartily to obey this precept to that degree, 
 and who now continually live loving the neighbor 
 better than themselves. 
 
 With respect to the quality of its moral influences, 
 therefore, and the depth of the spiritual purity it 
 enjoins, the New Jerusalem most completely vindi- 
 cates to itself the very highest claim upon our faith 
 and reception. As, in regard to the general truths of 
 revelation, the new dispensation takes up the line 
 where the former dispensation dropped it, and carries 
 it forward into a further field of development, so, too, 
 in regard to the application of divine truth to the 
 sanctiiication of the inward life, does the spiritual 
 sense of the Word take up the line of Christian expe- 
 rience at the point where the literal sense leaves it, 
 and carry it forward into the fields of angelic and 
 heavenly attainment. 
 
 And is not this what Ave ought to expect? How 
 could it be otherwise with the heaven-descended city ? 
 For the divine motto written over her entrance is, 
 '^Blessed are they that do his commandments that they 
 may have right to the tree of lifej and may enter in 
 
CONCLUSION. 13T 
 
 through the gates into the city.^^ And, again, we read 
 the inspired declaration in regard to her : — "And 
 ihere shall in no wise enter into it any thing that de- 
 Jileth, neither whatsoever worlceth ahomination, or 
 maketh a lie ; hut they which are written in the Lamb's 
 hook of life." 
 
 We have now finished what we purposed to say in 
 regard to modern spiritualism, and have closed also 
 our enumeration of reasons in favor of the revelations 
 given through Emanuel Swedenborg. The distinc- 
 tion and some of the differences between the two 
 have, we trust, been made sufficiently apparent. We 
 are not without hope, too, that several difficulties have 
 been rationally cleared av/ay from before some inquir- 
 ing minds, and a lighted avenue opened before them 
 along which they can fearlessly and conscientiously 
 pass at least to a candid and thorough examination of 
 the doctrines, if not at once to a full and complete 
 reception. 
 
 They Avill be found to contain every thing that all 
 the divine revelations which have come before them 
 contain, together with much that never has been made 
 knov/n before. No loss, therefore, can be sustained 
 by their reception. Whatever of truth there may be 
 in the literal sense of the Scriptures the New Church 
 lias it. all, for she has all the Scriptures. She destroys 
 nothing, she rejects nothing. Whatever of good may 
 have been revealed before, or is now contained in the 
 old, she loses not, she accepts it all. She treasures 
 up every thing good and true which the entire past 
 has to Oiler, and only adds to -them those newer and 
 richer treasuj-es of light and knowledge which have 
 descended to lier, as her birthright, from above. 
 12* 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 [Note to tlie remarks at tlw hotto7n of page 43 and top of 44,] 
 
 "We regard tlie demoniacal possessions mentioned in the Gos- 
 pel as literally real ; and presume the fact of the great change 
 in respect to them wronght by our Lord's advent will not be 
 generally questioned. Their prevalence distinctly appears to 
 have been broken up, and their occurrence reduced to a fev/- 
 sporadic instances, which no doubt may be said to hav^e con- 
 tinued down to our own times. 
 
 With respect to the oracles, it is true that the authority of 
 some of them began to decline before the coming of tlie Lord. 
 But after His advent the change certainly was more marked 
 and rapid. Eusebius refers to tins circumstance, as well known 
 in his day, and attributes it to the advent of tlie Messiah, main- 
 taining that He had when on earth sent the responding demons 
 away. A similar view was maintained by other early Christian 
 writers, and for several centuries it is alleged to have been tlie 
 current Christian belief Ennemoser (Hist. Magic, Vol. I., pp. 
 433, 434) says, " This idea was strengthened by some occasional 
 answers of' tlie oracles themselves, and, among others, Por- 
 phyrins received this response : ' The voice comes no longer to 
 tlie priestess ; she is condemned to a long silence.'" To Au- 
 gustus, too, Vvho, according to Suidas and Nicephorus, sent to 
 the oracle to inquire what successor he should have, it was 
 answered : " The Hebrew child, whom all the gods obey, drives 
 me hence." 
 
 Ennemoser still believes, however, that the oracles did not 
 cease with Christ, as we find frequent mention made of them 
 afterward. This is undoubtedly true ; they continued for some 
 time to be consulted. But the great fact remains, as held by 
 the early Christians, and they were living in the times to be- 
 hold it, and could not have maintained it in the face of the Pa- 
 gan world if it had not been true — that they very rapidly sank 
 into disrepute, and in no great length of time, certainly by the 
 time of Constantine, had disappeared altogeiher, is clear, un- 
 less the scattered attempts to seek communications from the 
 other world, which we believe have existed in all ages, can be 
 called " oracles." 
 
 See also the articles on the subject in Chambers' and in the 
 New American Encjclopedias. 
 
AA.t.tA.tA^AA.l.tAAAAA.tAAAAAA.tAAAAAA^AA^AAAAAAAAA^AAA^AAAAAAAAAAAA, 
 
 ON 
 
 THE DANGERS 
 
 MODERN SPIRITUALISM. 
 
 WILLIAM bMiAYDEN, 
 
 VmBTBR 01" THB KBW JERUSALEM AT PORTLAND, MAIKB. 
 
 FOURTH EDITION, REVISED. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 
 PUBLISHED BY THE 
 
 NEW CHURCH TRACT SOCIETY, 
 
 20 COOPER UNION. 
 
 1870. 
 
 yfffTTt>>ff»ff H fftf y » *f??T f >ffy?T H >»fyfffff»fyff»ffyff>ff 
 
THEOLOGICAL WORKS 
 
 OF 
 
 EMANUEL SWEDENBORGr. 
 
 HEAVEN AND HELL 1 vol., 12mo. 
 
 This work unfolds the laws of the Spiritual World, describes the condi- 
 tion of both good and evil spirits, the cause and nature of their joys and 
 'ionows, their an'aiigement into i<ocietiee, tl\eir occupation, habitations, and 
 iiie scenery which surrounds them ; presenting altogether a rational and 
 complote system of Pneumatology in perfect harmony with the teachings 
 of tlie Holy Scriptures. 
 
 THE TRUE CHRISTL^N RELIGION 1 vol., 8vo. 
 
 This work contaius a full and comprehensive statement of the Theology 
 of the New Church in all its branches. It is a complete body of New Church 
 Divinity, and the best work for those to study who desire to master the log- 
 ical system of its doctrines from bcgiuninu- to end in the shortest space of 
 time. The author begins by demonstratin;^ tlie existence and unity of God, 
 and the nature of the Divine Trinity in tho one perton of the Lord Jeeus 
 Christ, and from this central point proceeds to treat of every subject of in- 
 terest to the religious man. 
 
 THE DIVINE PROVIDENCE 1 vol., 12mo. 
 
 This work treats of the nature and operations of the Divine Providence, 
 and unfolds the laws of order accordin^to which the Lord's moral govern- 
 ment is regulated. It shows that the Divine Providence has for an end a 
 lieaven of angels from the human race ; that it works, not at random, but ac- 
 cording to certain invariable Laws which are here disclosed ; that it is uni- 
 versal, extending to the least things as well as to the neatest ; that in all it 
 does, it has respect to what is eternal with man, aucl to things temporary 
 only for the sake of what is eternal; tliat the Lord can not act against the 
 Laws of his Providence, because to act against them would be to al^t ao;ainst 
 bis Divine Love and his Divine Wisdom, consequently against Himselt. 
 
 ARCANA CCELESTIA 12 vols., 8vo. 
 
 This work is a full exposition of the internal or spiritual sense, according 
 to tlie law of correspondences, of the books of Genesis and Exodus. It 
 gives a clear and rational explanation of the history of the creation and fall 
 of man— showing what is symbolized by the garden of Eden and the agency 
 of the serpent in seducing Adam and Eve. It also explains the nature of 
 the deluge; the true import of the lives of the Patriarchs and their chil- 
 dren ; the meaning of the rituals of the Jewish religion, its sacrifices and 
 observances, and, in general, traces tlie foreshadowing through both books 
 of the incarnation and the glorification of the Lord Jesus Christ. 
 
 THE APOCALYPSE REVEALED 3 vols., 8vo. 
 
 This work bears the same relation to the book of Revelation that the Ar- 
 cana Coelestia does to Genesis and Exodus. It gives a rational, consistent, 
 nm\ coherent meaning to this Book, rendering plain and luminous what be- 
 fore has been confessedly unintelligible and dark. 
 
 Besides these there are many short treatises, among the most important 
 of which are— 
 
 The Last Judgment ; The New Jerusalem and Its Heavenxy Doc- 
 trine ; The Fouk Leading Doctrines op the New Church — The Doc- 
 trine op the Lord, Sacred Scriptures, Faith, and the Doctrine op 
 Lipe. 
 
 The above books are sold at a reasonable price, and, with all the works 
 relating to the New Church, can be had at No. 20 Cooper Union, New 
 York, 
 
 hrrr 
 
1 
 
\ 
 
 i 
 
i 
 
 ) 
 
 ? 
 
I\ 
 
 \ 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS # 
 
 022 204 264 1