XII.-CHARACTER, NOT BLOOD-RELATIONSHIP, LIVES AND CONSOCIATES AFTER DEATH.

:

A sundering of all merely natural blood-relationships at the death of the body, is here pointed out in the internal Word. Nothing founded upon birth alone, survives. The families of the spiritual world, to which we are all hastening, are families indeed; goodness and truth in their consanguinities are the great family of Maximus Homo above evil and falsity, in exact lineages of monstrosity and perversion, are the opposite broods below. Each man and woman becomes a substantial organization of affections for Right or Wrong in their indefinitely multiplied forms. And now something of the vanishing of mortal and terrestrial relationships is taught to us in this supreme instance of Mary, who even in this world is warned to part from her still apparent Son. "Simeon said unto Mary his mother : Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising of many in Israel; and for a sign which shall be spoken against. Yea, a sword shall pierce through thine own soul also, that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed" (Luke ii. 34, 35). This distinction between the spiritual and natural worlds is a sign which is spoken against, unwelcome news to the natural side. Its sharp iron, a sword, pierced through Mary's soul; for iron signifies natural truth, here instructed towards spiritual; the sword of the Spirit. It tries human love at first in revealing its origin in bloods and relationships. So it lays bare the thoughts of many hearts; and explains the dissolution of family ties on earth; a lesson and anticipation of disjunctions and new conjunctions and unions after death.

Jesus Christ extirpated or lived down the maternal proprium or individual selfhood which He inherited, and the God in Him which did this, in every ultimate act came

to the front, and stood there as a Divine Proprium. So He made His Human divine. In us there is a corresponding process when regeneration is going on. When bad ways are resisted and evils shunned as sins against the Lord, the heart is softened to His influx, the evil with its delights is rejected to the circumferences, and higher degrees in the mind through which the opposite good comes down, and where it can abide, are opened. Tiers of being are added to the man which practically do not exist before; for they are not his till then; but are in waiting at the door, opportune for him to open it. He is rejecting his hereditary character and his own previous life, and putting on a new nature. But yet he never can reject his proprium or evil selfhood as the Lord did, but only banish it from the centre to the circumference of his nature; from his delight to his aversion; from the warmth of his tropics to cold and congelation. It is kept in frost by God, but is indestructible, and sometimes a little of it is allowed to melt by the man's lapsing and compliance, to show him what he is, and to lead him back to greater humility and more complete acknowledgment of his unworthiness. But his evil proprium, though dormant at length and buried below his consciousness, and in heaven far below his conscience, is indestructible; and being fixed by birth in the natural world, is the basis of his immortality; of his everlasting Ego. Some permanent memory of his natural man, upon which the spiritual man is founded, extends upward through his spiritual faculties, and so the foothold of natural law is still under him as a plane giving the last substance and appearance to his life.

We make the Incarnation prefatory before coming more closely to the Jewish Church, because this order leads directly to the consideration of the former Churches, and the human faculties made use of in them; without which the Mosaic Dispensation cannot be understood. For it was not a religion, but an interregnum, a Theocracy between the Ancient and the Christian Churches. A moving Peniten

tiary of an imprisoned, not a privileged race. The coming of Christ when Judaism failed, sets the series and scale of Divine interpositions in a broad daylight, and makes the past and the future into an evident chain. The Incarnation itself, however, requires to be understood through the doctrines of the New Jerusalem, according to which we attempt to bring it before the reader.

XIII.—THE REPRESENTATION OF A CHURCH BY THE JEWS.

The Church with the Jews was the third inauguration of a Church with a Revelation to guide it, of which Jehovah God was the author. The first Church, called in Genesis, Adam, was from the creation,-the Adamic Church,which passed through many variations signalized by names of persons, and became extinct in the race before the Flood. The second was the Church called the Noahtic, which, with many changes, held the human race from Noah to Abraham. This second Church became extinct in Asia, and in Africa when the hosts of Pharaoh were drowned in the Red Sea. The third Church was with the Jews and Israelites until the dispersion of the Jews, and the destruction of the temple at Jerusalem.

Each of these religious epochs or ages, had a distinct character, by reason of the spiritual elements extant in the Eon to which it belonged. Love was the soul of the Adamic Church, and perception from love was its mind. This was the most ancient or celestial Church. After its consummation, the Lord raised up a new church, and Faith with conscience in which a new will was formed, became the life of the Noahtic, ancient or spiritual Church. On the extinction of this Church, no further dispensation could be founded; for the resources in human nature were at an end. Yet a church with God present, and revealing Himself, is

indispensable for the preservation of man. Accordingly, a Church was instituted with the Jews, but not in them, and God Himself became the upholder of the Jewish dispensation. It was not a Church, but it was the representation of a Church. Its virtue lay in implicit unhesitating obedience to external divine commands, attested by perpetual miracle, and reinforced by mortal fears and sublunary hopes.

Here was a third pause in History. Consider it carefully, because upon a comprehension of the three crises above mentioned, the understanding of everything in the Church with the Jews depends. The Love Ages, the primeval will, had passed away in the impure senility of the Adamic Church; and with the lusts which alone survived, the central intellect in the heart was turned into "direful persuasions."* So the likeness of God in man had perished: the inward Sun of goodwill had set. The age of instruction laying hold of the remains of the primeval integrity, and built into a second will as a new human faculty, a conscience,—had in like manner run its course; and the Noahtic Church was consummated in Egypt, Babylon and Assyria. So the image of God in man was darkened; and the Æon of Divine Truth communicated by God from without had come to an end. Bear in mind that these two great faculties or Churches were not of the nature of man, but were superadded gifts and endowments conferred upon him, and when he refused to continue to receive them, they were no more, and like Astrea they had left the earth. A world of idolatry and superstition was left, and no revival was possible; for the depravity of mankind was complete. The magnetism of love had grown poisonous, and the voice of warning truth was drowned in a triple dominion of evil and falsity, embodied in Egypt, Assyria and Babylon.

* See my work, Oannes according to Berosus, where the last state of this Church is described from its autopsy by Swedenborg, as well as from Chaldean tradition.

Such a dreg and residue of humanity could only be compelled, not attracted or instructed, into the service of heaven. Nothing internal was left. Self-love was left, and its lust and pride of place. It was eminent in the Jews more than in other races. They alternately accepted and rejected Jehovah, and still would be His chosen people. They brought a measured and frail obedience to the compact. Compliance, not from Conscience, not from Love, was in their bond. They could not become a Representative Church, but the Representation of a Church. Thus the depravity and selfishness of the world was the instrument at God's disposal wherewith to found an ultimatum on which heaven could rest, and be connected with mankind. Without such connection in a church or the mechanism of a church, the natural man who is the seminary of heaven, and the natural universe which exists as his foothold, would perish it would perish not by fire, or day of judgment, but by uselessness which is uncreation. Jehovah did not make the world evil, but found it so: and made it representative of good by events, by combats, and by religious rites and ceremonies; and first of all by the Ten Commandments directly forbidding evils; and then by Laws of order containing correspondences of the order of heaven. A Jewish Word was written by chosen men: by Lawgivers and Prophets, and by King David. In this Word direct verbal inspiration superseded the Jewish writer, and made him into the scribe and pen of Jehovah. This Word in its spiritual morality went utterly away from Judaism, and had the Gospel shining through it; and also was so accommodated to the Jewish character, that it accepted its peculiar self-love, and spoke according to it, allowing to it its naturalism, and not unveiling what was hidden and internal. In an evil world "it would not be difficult to enlist any nation in the service of representing religion provided it had holy externals of worship, and worshipped almost idolatrously; and it was the genius of the Jews more than any other nation completely