than he otherwise could. Why, then, should not we be able to give a wiser direction to our own education in this the childhood of our being, by a knowledge of the world into which we are sure of being ushered in our more mature manhood?—a knowledge of the laws, duties, occupations and enjoyments of the spiritual realm?
No need of a revelation concerning the other world! Look at the state of the Christian church at the time Swedenborg lived and wrote. Infidelity had well-nigh palsied every limb, and a cheerless, heartless, withering materialism was pressing like an incubus upon her vitals. Questions had been asked about the future life, which the wisest of the clergy were unable to answer. Many had come to deny, and many more to doubt, even the soul's immortality. To arrest this tide of skepticism, there was needed just such a disclosure of the future life and of the grand realities of the spiritual world, as that made through Swedenborg; and one accompanied with precisely that internal and rational kind of evidence, too, which alone could satisfy the demands of a reasoning and reflecting age.
A revelation concerning the spiritual world not needed! Useless, say you, even if true! Go ask that mother as she bends over the body of her departed child, and presses upon its marble brow the last fond tribute of a mother's love:—Ask her if she could find no solace in the assured conviction that her little one is now in the tender embrace of loving angels—yes, and brighter, healthier, happier, too, and fuller of exuberant life and bounding joy than ever before. Or ask that
