Virtue never has such winning charms, as when seen by the side of vice. Truth never looks so lovely—never shines with such heavenly lustre, as when contrasted with the dark shades of ignorance or error. Every good artist understands this. Hence poets, painters, and sculptors, in seeking to present us with their highest conceptions of the beautiful, the good, and the true, almost always avail themselves of the power that exists in contrasts.
It is from a motive akin to that of the artist, that we here undertake to exhibit the Old doctrine concerning the state of infants after death, side by side with the New. The reader will thus be enabled to judge between them; while the truth and beauty of the one, cannot fail to be exalted by contrast with the blackness and deformity of the other.
We have a further object in exhibiting the Old doctrine upon this subject with some minuteness, and somewhat in detail. It is, that the reader may see what gross darkness enveloped the Christian church prior to that New Dispensation of Christianity which it is our high privilege to proclaim; and how urgent was the need, therefore, of a new revelation, upon the subject here treated of, at least. Before men can be expected to bestow much serious and candid attention upon the writings of Swedenborg, which contain this new revelation, they must be led to see and acknowledge that there existed a real need of some such new revelation, prior to the time of its announcement. And the best way to lead them to see and acknowledge
