—the light of life? It is manifest that a different light now shines upon men, from that by which they saw two centuries ago. Else, why does the doctrine we have here been considering, appear so different to people now, from what it did to Christians of former times? And what is this new light, so manifest to all eyes, but a new and spiritual advent of the Lord? What, but His promised glorious appearance amid the dark clouds of ignorance and error, which have so long spanned the moral firmament, but which are now beginning to dissolve and disappear? If it be upon such clouds, and not upon those which address the outward sense, that we are to look for the predicted second appearing of the Lord, then may we be sure that we are living in the time of the second advent. For every one sees that the clouds of superstition, ignorance and error, which once darkened men's moral horizon, are gradually breaking away, and new light from the Sun of heaven beginning to stream through: agreeably to the divine declaration, "Behold He cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see Him."
And how shall we account for the flood of light which has been pouring in upon the world during the last century, making more and more manifest the things of darkness? The all-sufficient answer to this question—and the only rational answer that we have ever heard—may be found in Swedenborg's announcement of the last general judgment in the World of Spirits in 1757, and the commencement, about that
