tional and scientific truth. Such a doctrine, as I have before endeavored to show, is that which teaches that death separates the spirit of man from all immediate connection with the natural world, and hence that the resurrection and final judgment must take place in the spiritual world; and that those important events will leave the laws and operations of the natural world undisturbed. If therefore Peter and the other apostles, understood the words of the prophets to mean that the earth and the works that are therein would be burnt up, in a literal sense, we can only say that we have now the most abundant reasons for believing that they did not understand the true spiritual meaning of those words.
But is it not a bold and daring presumption, to intimate that Emanuel Swedenborg has understood and explained the word of the Lord better than the apostles? I confess I am unable to see, why we are justly liable to such a charge provided we are convinced, on good and rational grounds, of the truth of what we assert. On the other hand, it seems to me that the presumption is on the part of those who deny the divine illumination of our author, "understanding neither what they say nor whereof they affirm." The second coming of the Son of Man is clearly foretold in the word. This all admit. But it is also distinctly shown in the word that the "Son of Man "is "the word" and "the truth." We read that the "Son of Man shall come in his glory;" that he shall judge the twelve tribes of Israel;" that we shall all "stand before the Son of Man," and that "in such an hour as ye think not the Son of Man cometh," that "the Father hath committed all judgment unto the Son because he is the Son of Man." Now who is this Son of Man, of whom we so often read that he will come again, and that he will judge the world? He is surely not a distinct person from Jehovah the Father, for this would involve us in the awful absurdity of acknowledging more divine persons than one, or, which is the same
