borg allows none. The revelations and doctrines are the Lord's, not his. Circumspect we may be, but no one can investigate the teachings to any purpose, without considering the mission of the teacher. Swedenborg's call, his intromission into the spiritual world, the opening of his understanding to the law of Correspondence which rules in that world and explains the origin and order of this world, the revelation of the spiritual sense of the Word, and the formulation of its divine doctrine,—all these things are so bound up and held together, that they must be examined and considered together. Why such a call and mission?
1. He tells us that the Church was dead in a spiritless formalism, and an equally lifeless speculative discussion of dogma, and that the Lord would revive it according to His promise, and restore to the world the spiritual doctrines of faith.
2. That no rational belief in a spiritual and eternal world remained, and that to restore it to men, there was needed the human experience of life in the spiritual world from which to deduce in rational light the true knowledge of that world.
3. That belief in the Word of God, being
