Israelitish and Jewish nation could not long represent the Church, for they were idolaters at heart, so they receded in time from representative worship; perverting all things of the Church, nor resting until they had devastated it. This was represented [dramatized] by profanations of the Temple by their kings, and by their idolatries: the final devastation of the Church by the destruction of the Temple, by the carrying away of the Israelitish people, and the captivity of the Jewish people in Babylon. This was the cause; and whatever is done from any cause, is done of Divine Providence according to some law of its own."—Ibid. n. 245, 246. Granting that there must be a church on earth for man to continue to subsist here and hereafter, and that a representation or drama of a Church was the only Atlas left on earth to support the heaven, and that the Lord in His Divine Providence must make use of this support,-granting this, Swedenborg's Rational Revelation is as incontestable as the surest truths of mechanical or mathematical science. Yet beyond human finding unless God show it, which He has done.

XXVI.-THE MEDIUMSHIP OF DAVID AND

THE PROPHETS.

When Christ was risen, and joined the two apostles who were going to the village of Emmaus, they had not truly believed what He announced before His Crucifixion. And now He said unto them, "O foolish men, and slow of heart to believe all that the Prophets have spoken. Ought not the Christ to suffer these things, and to enter into His Glory? And beginning from Moses and from all the Prophets, He interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself." And when He stood in the midst of the eleven at Jerusalem, and showed them His hands and His feet, and said, "Handle Me and see that it is I Myself, for a spirit hath not flesh and bones as ye see

Me have," He then also said to them "that all things must needs be fulfilled which are written in the law of Moses and the Prophets, and the Psalms concerning me. Then opened He their mind that they might understand the Scriptures. And He said unto them, Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer, and rise again from the dead the third day, and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name unto all the nations beginning from Jerusalem" (Luke xxv. 28, 39, 40, 44-48).

Here the Lord claims the Scriptures as Himself the Word of God. To those to whom the Psalms are a daily Gospel, it is impossible to conceive that they refer to David and the Jews excepting in a temporal sense. They express the attributes and struggles of a Divine Man, a God, with His feet in the world, and struggling against the fetters of its flesh, to bring his Godhead into its Power, Kingdom and Glory. To David, on the contrary, his Psalms signify indeed his relation to Jehovah, his states and struggles of mind, but all temporal and personal, though taking in his posterity; his consciousness of the disobedience of his nation, and fear for the consequences of it to himself, his reliance on the promises to his Royal Line which he regards as binding on the Almighty: his adjuration of Jehovah to take his side against his enemies, to carry out his curses, and extend his cruelties. Within these lines David was a devout man, and sufficiently faithful to his dispensation to keep his throne in it, and die a king, and bequeath a kingdom.

Swedenborg throughout his works has to reveal about David, both as a person, and as a merely representative character. As a person he partook of the Jewish nature, especially in his capacity for an external worship of Jehovah, while such worship had no internal response in his nature and character. On this account, as a dramatis persona, he could receive from an angel of Jehovah, that is, from Jehovah Himself, a verbal dictation of the Psalms, having always

some obvious reference to the man David, but also containing and hardly veiling a glory of Divine Truth and a fire. of Divine Love which were irrelevant to David. He never proclaimed his own divinity; but it was impossible that he should not attribute to himself many of the expressions which are obviously divine attributes. This kept him to

the representative worship of Jehovah; and was therefore an essential element in the Jewish Religiosity. Had he seen the coming Messiah in the Word verbally communicated, but inspired by Jehovah, he would not have been the Jew David. His love of himself and his descendants was in union here with the necessities of God's permission and providence, and he adored an external institution which suited his nature, and a word of the Lord which identified his name with a Royal Office, and did not make impossible demands upon him of self-sacrifice.

Few of my readers will object to be relieved from the "higher criticism" which tells us that David wrote but few of the Psalms, that his "last words" are partly his, and partly by some one else, etc., etc. To the main purpose here it is sufficient that these are divine Jewish writings with an inspired letter, and an internal sense.

These conditions must be kept up. As we have seen, nothing in David's mere selfhood prevented him from representing the Lord spiritually. This he did both in his lifetime, and by the Prophets after his death. "It is written of David that he shall be king over them; and they all shall have one Shepherd: they shall dwell in the land, they and their children, and their children's children, for ever." -Ezekiel xxxiv. 24, 25. And again, The children of Israel shall return, and seek Jehovah their God, and David their King."--Hosea iii. 5. These words were written by the prophets after the time of David; and yet it is plainly declared that he shall be their king and prince; whence it may be evident that David means the Lord."-Arcana Calestia, n. 1888. Moreover every name in the Word,

whether of kingdoms, countries, cities, or men, is a receptacle, and thus a repository, of the celestial and spiritual things of the Lord.—Ibid. The throne of David is not the kingdom David had, but the kingdom of Heaven; wherefore David does not signify David, but the Lord's divine Royalty; and throne signifies the Divine Truth which proceeds, and which constitutes the Lord's kingdom.-Ibid. 5313. I am the root and the offspring of David,-Apocalypse, xxii. 16,— signifies that He is that Lord who was born in the world, and therefore the Lord in His Divine Humanity. From this He is also called the Branch of David."-Apocalypse Revealed, n. 954. "He that hath the key of David, and openeth, and no one shutteth, and shutteth and no one openeth,-Apocalypse, iii. 7,-signifies, Who alone has omnipotence to save. David signifies the Lord as to Divine Truth. The key of David has a similar signification to the keys of Peter. Ibid. n. 174. Enough has here been given to show that David in the internal sense, which is communicated for the new religion, denotes the Lord. And that His own conversation to the two disciples going to Emmaus was a declaration and prophecy by the Word made flesh, and who dwelt among us, of a Revelation which brings His omnipresence in the Old Testament from His own Divine Rationality into our most human certainty. His medium fulfilling this prophecy is Emanuel Swedenborg.

XXVII. THE IMMANENCE OF JEHOVAH IN THE MOSAIC DISPENSATION.

Jehovah was near to the Jews in their Church Representation. It was a regimen of personal and national fear accompanied by signs and wonders; of threats and punishments; and of victories and worldly prosperity for legal and technical obedience. Jehovah spoke to Abraham and called him. He was an idolater at the time, and did not know

E

Jehovah, and therefore was more susceptible of the call to a new state than others in Syria among whom there lingered perverted knowledges of the destroyed Noahtic Church. He was indeed almost in the same religious state as the peoples around him; but, because he was emptied of the old religion, he could be spoken to by Jehovah for the new, and receive his Call. These characteristics were the beginning and seed of the Jewish Church. The Fathers of that Church were no better than the surrounding tribes, but they had a new word of Jehovah with them, which the others had not, and besides this, special fitnesses of dramatic emotional nature which have been dwelt upon frequently in these pages.

The Old Testament declares throughout, the visible and audible presence of Jehovah God. He said to Abram, Get thee out of thy country and from thy kindred, and from thy Father's House, into a land that I will show thee, and I will make of thee a great nation. He appeared to him at the place of Sichem, where Abram built an altar unto the Lord who appeared to him. The Word of the Lord came to him in a vision, and promised him a son and heir, and bringing him forth abroad, said, Look now towards heaven and tell the stars, if thou be able to number them; and He said unto him, So shall thy seed be. The Angel of the Lord also counselled Hagar, whom Sarai had given to Abram to be his wife, and prophesied to her of her seed, that it should not be numbered for multitude; and the Angel said, Thou shalt call his name Ishmael. When Abram was ninety years old and nine, the Lord appeared to him and said, I, the Almighty God! walk before me, and be thou perfect. . . . Thy name shall be called Abraham; for a father of many nations have I made thee. Of this we read in Swedenborg : "The letter H. was taken from the name Jehovah, being the only letter in that name which involves the divine, and signifies I AM and TO BE; and was inserted in the name Abram. In like manner with Sarai, who became Sarah."-Arcana Calestia, 2010. Jehovah