and majestic, and so admirably adapted to human wants in this age, that it could have none other than God himself for its author. He accepts Swedenborg's teachings, therefore, as a new Dispensation of spiritual truth, bearing the impress of God's own finger. So abundant and overmastering is the evidence, that he cannot do otherwise; he cannot reach any other conclusion.
But those cannot admit his claim, who have not studied his writings. How can they?—for they have not weighed the evidence; they have not seen it, indeed. And nowhere but in his writings themselves, can satisfactory evidence of his claim be found. They may, from having read a few pages or chapters of his works, admit that he saw and taught much truth; but we cannot expect them to go beyond this—nor ought they—until they have studied his writings sufficiently to enable them to discern, in some measure, their wondrous depth and comprehensiveness and philosophy and unity. Such persons, (and they are not a few) stand toward this New Christian Dispensation in the same attitude as those stand toward the first Christian dispensation, who admit that Jesus Christ was a wise and excellent man, and that much truth is to be found in the New Testament; but who do not admit the proper divinity of the one, nor the inspiration of the other; who regard the Saviour as a merely finite and human being, and the writings of the Evangelists as merely human compositions. And while some of these persons may have more of the spirit of Christ than many who
