Thus have we given a summary view of the New doctrine concerning the lot of those in the other world, who depart this life in infancy and childhood. And is it not alike consistent, rational, interesting and beautiful, and at the same time in agreement with our highest ideas of the character and attributes of our Father in the heavens? Contrast it with the Old doctrine as exhibited in a previous chapter, and say which of the two is most worthy a God of infinite wisdom and love, and which most agreeable to the dictates of enlightened reason. Which looks most like a merely human invention, or like the ravings of insanity, the New doctrine as revealed through Swedenborg, or the Old doctrine as expounded by Augustin, Calvin, the Synod of Dort, and the Westminster Assembly? Is not the contrast between the two as striking as that between day and night, light and darkness, harmony and discord, the fragrance of a flower garden and the fœtor of a lazar-house ? While we recognize in the one the brightness and beauty of heaven, the other bears upon its face the blackness and deformity of hell. Had Emanuel Swedenborg, in all the ten thousand pages that he wrote, anywhere taught a doctrine so unreasonable and monstrous as the Old, and once popular, doctrine of infant damnation, we never would have taken our pen nor spent our breath in vindication of him or his teachings against the charge of madness.
All are constrained to acknowledge that the New doctrine upon the subject we have been considering,
