emplary virtue is not to be expected from the performers, as a body. Altogether, it is but too true, that our theatres are scenes of contagion andļas their attractions are also fascinating, it is no wonder if, by many of the pious, they are utterly proscribed. But suppose all this to be reversed: suppose the pieces performed to have no tendency but, by the most engaging means, to encourage and animate virtue and piety; suppose all the performers to be persons actuated by the sincerest desire to promote the same sacred object; and suppose all the spectators to be the best of characters likewise, attending the exhibition with a greater desire to be improved than amused, and to make the amusement completely subservient to the improvement: and what would there then be in the whole unworthy of heaven itself? The beautiful remarks of Addison in the Spectator* on the moral uses to which the stage is capable of being applied, are well known and even Watts, whom no one will accuse of laxity of moral or spiritual principle, allows, that it is only the abuse that makes the theatre an evil. "A dramatic representation," he observes, "of the affairs of human life, is by no means sinful itself: I am inclined to think, that valuable compositions might be made of this kind, such as might entertain a virtuous audience with delight, and even with some real profit. Such have been written in French." Indeed, the drama was originally connected with religion among the ancients, dramatic performances formed part of the solemnities of their religious festivals; and on their revival in more modern times, the subjects of them were taken from the Scriptures, the theatre for performing them was the church, and the performers were they clergy. Suppose them then to be not only restored to their original design, but exalted to all the excellence of which they are capable; and will they, we repeat, be unworthy of a place among the instructive recreations of heaven?-at least, of some of the societies of the lowest heaven? for it is only thus connected that Swedenborg mentions their existence. And, as mentioned by him, what is there justly to offend the most fastidious? His words are," There are moreover dramatic entertainments exhibited upon theatres out of the city; the actors representing the gra ces and virtues of moral life: amongst whom are inferior characters for the sake of relatives [or relation]. No virtue with its graces and decencies can be represented to the life, but by means of relatives, in which all its graces and decencies, from the greatest to the least, are comprised and represented; and the inferior characters represent the least, even till they become none but it is provided that nothing of the 1 On Education, Works, vol. vii. p. 566. * Nos. 39 and 93. opposite, or of what is unbecoming and dishonourable, should be exhibited, except figuratively and remotely. It is so provided, because nothing that is becoming and good in any virtue, can by successive progressions pass over to what is unbecoming and evil; it only proceeds to its least, where it perishes; and then, and not till then, its opposite commences: so that heaven, where all things are becoming and good, has nothing in common with hell, where all things are unbecoming and evil."* What is there, in this account of the matter, that is in the slightest degree unbecoming, or unworthy of heaven? Who that can in the least distinguish between names and things, can look at the thing here described, and think that it is at all unlikely to be among the means of instruction for " junior spirits," in the angelic world? Were not, in fact, the surprising scenes exhibited to John in the Revelation, completely of the nature of dramatic representations? And if such a mode of instruction can be resorted to in the case of the prophets, by the Divine Being himself, is it unreasonable to suppose that an inferior species of the same kind of instruction may be beneficial to noviciate angels? I have now gone through the chief of the particulars mentioned in the writings of Swedenborg, and derided by our adversaries, which can with any plausibility be constructed into matters of offence; and I trust that, when considered with reference to their proper causes, and to the nature of man after death, of the circumstances in which he is placed, and of the appearances around him, all the facts must be allowed to be in perfect harmony with the statements of Scripture and with the dictates of reason;-that the true ground of offence must be admitted to exist solely in the unfounded prejudices of our opponents, in the vague, shadowy conceptions, which in the acknowledged absence of all specific knowledge, they had formed for, and from, themselves. But to make this examination in all respects complete; and being desirous that everything which our enemies censure as objectionable should be viewed in the fullest light; an Appendix shall be added, in which each of the remaining Sundered Scraps that the writer I chiefly follow has adduced to substantiate his calumnious imputations, shall be separately considered. At present I will conclude with observing, that if even they who have dreamed of angels, good and evil, as beings of totally different origin and nature from men, have yet been obliged, as we have seen, in effect to make men of them before they could form respec ting them any determinate ideas; if having made them men, they have been compelled to represent the world they inhabit as very similar, in appearance, to the world inhabited by men ; * Tr. Chr. Rel. n. 745. thus if the great poet felt it necessary to suggest, as quoted above, "What if earth Be but the shadow of heaven, and things therein if the most elevated geniuses, though they assign to angels a nature different from the human, are constrained to represent them as speaking, acting, and existing in circumstances, only suitable to the nature of human beings, after all:-how far from ridiculous is it in Swedenborg, having rationally and scripturally evinced that all angels and spirits really are men, to place them in circumstances, and ascribe to them actions, suitable to the nature of men,-either of men little changed from what they are here, as is the case with all, on first entering the world of spirits,-or of men exalted to high degrees of angelic wisdom and goodness, as is the state of those in heaven,―or of men degraded to awful depths of infernal wickedness and insanity, as is the state of those in hell? SECTION VI. HEAVEN AND HELL; AND THE Appearances in them, anD IN the Intermediate Region, or World of Spirits. PART VI. Swedenborg's General Views respecting Heaven and Hell obviously agreeable to Reason and Scripture. If we have succeeded, as I trust will be the opinion of the Candid and Reflecting, in vindicating the most peculiar and uncom mon of the ideas presented in the writings of Swedenborg, respecting the other life and its inhabitants, from the ridicule and contempt which it has been attempted to throw upon them, and in shewing that even these, how different soever from what is usually conceived, are in no respect adverse either to Reason or to Scripture; it cannot be difficult to evince, that the General Views presented in those writings respecting Heaven and Hell are obviously agreeable to all that Reason and Scripture depose upon the subject; and that, in fact, nothing is here presented that can be deemed inconsistent with the usual conceptions of the Christian world. On these General Views, then, it cannot be needful to dwell at much length, though it would be an unpardonable omission not to notice them at all. Besides, even in this respect, the views of the New Church, obviously rational and Scriptural as they are, have not been allowed to pass unassailed. As much then of their nature must unavoidably be stated, as is necessary to rebut the chief of the calumnies which have been published against them. But in confining myself to this;-in forbearing to enlarge upon this subject, I am well aware that I am foregoing a great advantage; for the views we entertain respecting heaven and hell in general only require, I am sure, to be fully and fairly exhibited, to win the admiration, and charms the affections, of all the candid and reflecting aspirants for the heavenly kingdom. To generate odium, the opponent whom I have chiefly taken as a guide, imputes to us, by a most unaccountable misrepresentation, as noticed above*, the denial of" a future reckoning day and an hereafter of rewards and punishments;" so now, for the same purpose, he represents us as abolishing the diffe rence between heaven and hell. "The Baron," he affirms, "by his descriptions or the invisible world, has gone a great way towards making those who will believe him, neither very anxious for heaven, nor much afraid of hell, which, wherever such a feeling obtains, is a dreadful mental disease. For the sanctions of rewards and punishments do mightily restrain from vice, and promote virtue and piety. We are all naturally too remiss in religious duties: there is therefore little need to bereave us of those two great stimulants, hope and fear."+ So then, Swedenborg deprives virtue and vice of their sanctions-a serious charge indeed! To be" afraid of hell," however, in its most proper sense, is to be afraid of evil; for though hell is a place and state of misery, the essence of it is evil. The fear of hell which is not accompanied with the fear of evil, is but a spurious, selfish, and Pharisaic kind of feeling, productive of little benefit either to the individual or to society. A man may be afraid of hell in the manner recommended by this opponent, even of " the Mahometan's hell," the description of whose terrors he quotes (for he here again refers, for the third or fourth time, to his favourite standard of orthodoxy, "the Mahometan's Creed !")-without being much afraid of evil and surely it is no light evil continually to sin, as is done by our adversaries, against the commandment, "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour." That any man who has ever looked into Swedenborg's treatise on Heaven and Hell, and by making references to it, wishes it to be believed that he has read it, should be capable of advancing such a calumny as to say, that the Baron's descrip* Pp. 120, 121. + Anti-Swedenborg, p. 67. tions of the invisible world tend to make men neither very anxious for heaven nor much afraid of hell; to take away from virtue and vice the prospect of reward and punishment; and to deprive men of those stimulants to good conduct, hope and fear; is truly a deplorable example of the power of theological prejudice; for, most assuredly, never before was heaven represented under so truly attractive, exalted, and glorious an aspect; never was hell depicted so morally appalling, so repulsive for its credible horrors. Is there nothing calculated to render us anxious for heaven, -to make us regard it as a reward of virtue desirable in the highest degree,-in the assurance offered by Swedenborg, that he who enters heaven comes into a scene, where every object that can impart delight salutes his new-quickened sensations; while yet it is not in any thing imparted by outward objects that his happiness essentially consists, though they contribute to its fulness, but in that ineffable sense of blessedness which fills his whole mind, and which is inherent in that life of love, wisdom, and use, by which he is inwardly animated, and into the full activity, and completely developed enjoyments of which, he now finally enters? He is immediately, according to our Author, surrounded by kindred angels, all ready and eager to shew him the most winning offices of attention, and in whose society he feels at once entirely at home, as if he were among friends and relatives known to him from infancy; whence his spirits expand, and his life is exalted, being united with the life of all around him; which being all in harmony with his own, and not the slightest disagreement creating an opposing or uncongenial sphere to be felt, occasions such a sense of fulness of delight, as can never here be experienced, nor even conceived. Nor can any description ever exalt the imagination even to the threshold of the state requisite for ap prehending it; for it can only be apprehended, as it is, by those in the spiritual state belonging to angels, and which cannot be perceptibly communicated to man in the natural world. Of man in his natural state it will ever be true, as Divine Truth hath spoken, that " Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive, the things God hath prepared for them that love him." Nor does the experience of our author form any exception to this statement; for it was not to the faculties of his natural part, by which he lived as a man in the world, that the experience was communicated, but to those of his spiritual part, which properly belongs to the spiritual world; and he constantly declares that he can give no description of what it was thus granted him to perceive, that can convey any adequate idea of it to man in the world: all |