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344 VIL TIME OF FREEDOM AND NEOLOGY.
wanting in the spiritual sense. Indeed, he puts both
David and St. Paul among the lost. Holy Scripture,
according to his teaching, is divine, and, in fact, an Incar
nation of the Son of God. But, starting with this principle,
he rejects from it all that does not seem to him divine that
is, all that does not fit in with his theory of the other world.
The human instruments who convey it are not necessarily
important people. This theory is made further possible by
the doctrine of the spiritual sense of Scripture, and by that
of correspondences which teaches that everything on earth
has its counterpart in the other worlds. This, of course,
has its partial justification in our Lord s parables and in
the teaching of the Fathers as to the mystical sense of
Scripture (Cp. True Christian Religion, 199-207). The
Memorable Relations with which Swedenborg illustrates
the larger sections of his book indeed often remind us of
the Similitudes of Hermas.
As might be expected from the manner in which he
approaches his subject, that is from the pursuit of unity in
nature, his doctrine is essentially monistic or pantheistic
and also rationalistic. He is by his own showing a hater
of philosophy, and declared that the more a man had of it
the blinder he grew. He trusts then not really to Scrip
ture or to any definite system of scriptural interpretation,
or to any system of philosophy, but to his own visions,
which, according to the long habit and bent of his mind,
give him the image of an invisible kingdom or kingdoms
of the same sort as the kingdom of nature. It is con
ceived, like the vision of Dante, in a thoroughly concrete
form and under geometrical figures.
"
He represents the universe of being
"
(says Dorner :
I.e., p. 243) "under the figure of three concentric circles,
the Prophets" (4 and 12), "and Lamentations" . . . "and
in the New Testament, the four Evangelists . . . and, lastly,
the Apocalypse (Wilkinson, 145)."
But Job and the Acts are
not infrequently quoted, and some of the other books of the
New Testament. Cp. Kohler, P.R.E.* 19, Siuedenborg, p. 189
for the canon.
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