perversions of the Divine life, therefore they are nothing. What is meant by the phrase "no real independent existence," does not appear; independent of what? He has not yet shown how anything exists independent of the only life, not even man with an individuality and consciousness of his own. If there is one only "life, love, goodness, wisdom, power," how does it operate, how manifest itself, and to whom? What receives it, and whence and how does that recipient exist? Just here is the key to the psychology of the New Church, and to the confusion of Doctor Holcombe's "Thoughts." Swedenborg answers these questions in the Doctrine of the Divine Proceeding, and of created forms; the Doctor does not answer them, nor does he keep Swedenborg's answer clearly in mind, but more often the "idealism on which Christian Science is based."
Every man is a thought of God—a form of the Divine Truth, born of the Father or the Divine Love, and destined by appointed ways to work out and ultimate the divine purposes. This is the true doctrine of predestination and of immortality, Truth is God thinking in us. Goodness is God feeling in us. All our movements from goodness and truth are God working through us. And yet we are not God—nor is this pantheism. It is the Christian's union with God. "That they all may be one: as thou, Father art in me and I in thee; that they may also be one in us—I in them and thou in me"—Page 12.
