303

HINTS

IN AID OF

THE PERCEPTION OF THE SPIRITUAL SENSE

OF THE WORD.

THERE are few things which appear more self-evidently true, than that a revelation from God must ever exist in the world; and, indeed, so intimately is the fact of the existence of God connected with the fact of a revelation from Him, that to suppose the one, implies the other; and to doubt the one, is to doubt the other. The existence of the fountain supposes the existence of the stream. To suppose the existence of a God and no revelation from Him, is to suppose the existence of a God unjust or unwise.

Assuming the existence of a Creator, we must assume that He is infinitely good and wise, as being the source of all finite goodness and wisdom; we must assume, consequently, that God designed his creature, man, to be happy, by becoming like Himself, good and wise, and therefore happy. And contemplating the fact that man, by creation, is a free-agent, inasmuch as his own consciousness assures him that his acting with or against God depends altogether on his own determination, there appears an absolute necessity that God should so reveal Himself as to engage man's co-operation, by declaring what he must think, and what he must do, in order to realize his Creator's beneficent design. How is it possible for this freeagent, man, to become what he must have been designed to become, except his Creator should tell him what he must choose, and what he must avoid, in order to the accomplishment of that design? No man can imagine himself as filling the character of a Creator without concluding, that the act of creating man as surely involves a subsequent revelation to him; as the act of hiring a servant presupposes a subsequent direction to him, how to serve. Hence the existence of a revelation becomes a self-evident fact, simply by the

individual man (with all reverence) supposing himself for a moment to stand in the place of the Creator.

Assuming, then, the existence of a revelation somewhere, as an undeniable fact, where can a revelation be found which presents goodness and wisdom so attractively as we find in the Bible? But, say the sceptics, we entertain such and such objections to the Bible being received as a revelation from God. All these objections, however, are entirely dissipated by the stupendous spiritual miracle wrought for the New Church, by the discovery of the divine science of correspondences, which gives to those who are teachable rationally and conclusively to perceive, that there exists an internal sense in the Sacred Word, full of the wisdom of love, and standing in relation to the literal sense, of the jewel to its casket.

We now proceed, in the first place, in furtherance of our attempt to offer a few hints in aid of the perception of this spiritual sense, to make a few general observations.

The Holy Word is not only designed to convey to us certain rules of conduct, illustrated by examples of the respective consequences of well or ill-doing; it is not only intended to reveal to us a heaven and a hell, and by the credible record of miracles, and the evidence arising from the fulfilment of prophecy, to manifest the true God to his creatures, and, at the same time, to prove that the Word "has God for its author;" but it is designed and constructed to convey to mankind even still greater and more exalted blessings than these. The Lord's Word is so framed as to be the medium of man's holding interior communication with the angels of heaven, and also with the Lord of heaven, while its sacred contents are read with devotion, with humility, and with a sincere desire to perform the whole will of God as therein revealed, and presented for the acceptance of his creatures. This communication with heaven and the Lord is effected by means of its spiritual or internal sense. It is effected, however, only obscurely and partially while the nature, and particularly while the existence of that sense is unknown; but with clearness and in fulness, in proportion as that sense is known, delighted in, perceived, and understood. While man is reading the literal sense devoutly, the attendant angels perceive the spiritual sense, and are affected by it; and their heavenly perceptions and affections are communicated to the reader in an inward consciousness of holy light and peace, calculated to strengthen, encourage, and urge him forward in that good path of righteousness which alone can lead

to life eternal. All devout readers of the Word, however ignorant of the existence of its internal sense, have borne testimony to the peculiar influence upon their minds while reading the inspired volume, —an influence not found to accompany the perusal of any other book whatever. But it is for the happy subjects of the New Jerusalem dispensation to know experimentally, and from that experience to testify, how much the power and sweetness of the angelic influence that accompanies the devout reading of the Word, is exalted and increased, in proportion to their knowledge and love of the spiritual sense; for in the same proportion they not only possess a general communion of feeling with the angels present with them, but also an affinity of thought and perception; and it is a known thing, that the delight of friendly communication in this world depends on congeniality of thought, and very much diminishes in intensity and fulness, where friendship is nothing more than a reciprocity of good wishes.

While man is not in the knowledge or acknowledgment of the internal sense, he is content, while reading the Word, with the perceptions that arise from the literal sense, or the instruction which he can thence derive; and he passes over, as too mysterious for him, and, therefore, as void of interest, such parts as he cannot understand or connect with his own immortal well-being. When, therefore, he finds any thing too hard for him, it gives him no concern; he possibly thinks, like Luther of old, that the Author of the Word, by means of its difficulties, is putting his faith to the proof; and this sentiment, united with the generally-received idea that the Christian system is itself an unfathomable mystery, and strengthened by the natural indifference of the unrenewed understanding to religious truth as a thing in itself supremely excellent and delightful, leads him to read a large portion of the Word almost without an effort towards the profitable understanding of it.

But so soon as an individual knows and acknowledges, by his reception of the heavenly doctrines of the New Jerusalem, that a spiritual sense exists in every part of the Word, rendering every verse the vehicle of light and life to the soul,-a pre-eminently blessed means of informing the understanding and purifying the heart,—he can no longer be satisfied with his former desultory mode of reading the inspired volume. And whenever his limited knowledge of the spiritual sense leaves him without a perception of the interior contents of any portion of sacred history, prophecy, or narrative, he feels

like a weary and thirsty traveller, who arrives at a much-desired well of water, but, alas! he finds a stone upon the mouth of it, and which he is unable, by his own unassisted efforts, to remove.

To assist the early receiver of the Lord at his Second Advent, in preparing himself for the divine presence in his soul by means of the "power and great glory" of the interiors of his Word, is the object of the following hints. Perhaps every new receiver of the doctrines expects, without much effort, to come into immediate possession of the delightful and inestimable capability of perceiving the spiritual sense while reading the Word. He imagines that the science of the correspondence between things natural and spiritual may be learned as we are accustomed to learn a new language, by the help of a dictionary, not being aware, that the true spiritual sense can no more be learned from a dictionary of correspondences, than the true interpretation of the literal sense of the Word can be determined from a common English dictionary. It is not always seen that the interpretation of both senses not only requires proper materials, but a matured and enlightened judgment to make use of them.*

In his expectation of an easy introduction to the knowledge of the spiritual sense of the Word, the novitiate, however, soon finds himself mistaken; and perceives that he must be content to bear disappointment, at least for a time. He is already acquainted with the meaning of the terms contained in the literal sense of the Word, and he desires to become equally so with the corresponding spiritual ideas; but then he has to learn, by a fuller acquaintance with the general doctrines of the Church, the exact meaning of the terms by which spiritual ideas are expressed; he has to learn doctrinally the things or principles constituent of the mind itself, in its respective states of natural disorder, and spiritual order; and, what is still more indispensable to a clear view of the subject, he has to become experimentally acquainted with these things, by being able to trace them in his own soul, and to see the very things in himself of which the internal sense treats, that is, the things pertaining to man's regeneration, and which are consciously developed during the successive states of that divine process. Without such a preparation as this, the terms used by E. S. in connection with man's mental and moral constitution, will be used by his disciples with either little or no

*Notwithstanding this remark, "Dictionaries of correspondences" may greatly aid the study of the spiritual sense, at the same time that they serve, in some degree, the purpose of an index to the writings of E. S.

meaning, or else a wrong one; and should such an unprepared per. son undertake to expound publicly the spiritual sense, he will fill the character of a prater, rather than a preacher, by talking of matters of which he has really no right understanding.

We repeat then, and with much earnestness, that no one can understand the spiritual sense until he has attained a correct general knowledge of the subject of regeneration, and of the particulars involved in a just doctrinal view of it; nor can he understand that subject in any degree of fulness or reality, until, and so far as, those particulars are actually revealed in his own inward personal experience. What adequate idea, for instance, can a merely natural man attach to the expresssion, "the love of God above all things?" He may use the words, indeed, and add some idea to them from such things as exist in his own mind; but what are those things? An apostle says they "are enmity against God!" and therefore they cannot lead him to form any proper idea of love, but only an idea of a selfish love; nor any idea of God, except as being such an one as himself, but more powerful. This extreme case may shew how gradually the member of a spiritual church must be introduced to the interior knowledges of divine truth. It is in vain to look into a dictionary to see what the olive, the vine, and the fig-tree, correspond to, and to learn that they correspond to celestial, spiritual, and natural good, unless it be known what is the nature and quality of those several degrees of good respectively. The regenerating member of the church will, however, almost insensibly be advancing in the knowledge of the spiritual sense by the reading of the writings, and the introspection and observation of his own mental states, so that, by degrees, it will become natural and habitual to him, during the reading of the Word, to perceive with more or less illustration, edification, and delight, the contents and series of the internal sense.

The Word of the Old Testament, according to the New Church canon, regarded as to its letter or literal sense, contains allegorical narrative up to the end of the 11th chapter of Genesis; afterwards the history of the Israelitish and Jewish nation from their progenitor Abraham, and of the church instituted amongst them; and then follow the books of prophecy connected with and relating to them; the whole interspersed with divine doctrinal and preceptive instruction. The book of Psalms is a peculiar and mixed kind of composition; combining at once history, prophecy, doctrine, precept, and devout exercises of prayer and praise. The New Testament, accord