JUN -3 1920 EDITOR'S PREFACE. SINCE the removal from this world of my dear father, it has been a labor of love for me to finish the work on which he was engaged for many years, but which the state of his health prevented him from carrying to completion. The intricate nature of the corrections he introduced, often with years of intervals, and the voluminous notes he collected from his extensive reading, has kept the work longer in my hands than I desired or expected. I have at last found time to complete it, and, through the kindness and liberality of an American friend, to whom my best thanks are due, I am now enabled to offer a worthy and affectionate memorial to my father's memory, and also to present to the Church a new edition of a work which stands alone in her literature, and which I trust and believe will be useful in extending a knowledge and love of God's most Holy Word. BOXLEY, MAIDSTONE, ENGLAND. E. M. iii AUTHOR'S PREFACE. HE following work [Part I.] originated in a lecture delivered THE at the opening of Albion Chapel, Albion Street, Leeds, in 1847. I reluctantly consented to the earnest request of many who heard it for its publication, as an epitome of the great subject on which it professed to treat. On reflection, I thought it would be but a brief and imperfect sketch-little more than a tract, of which several admirable ones on the same topic are widely circulated by the Manchester Tract Society, and the London Missionary and Tract Society of the New Church-and I determined to give it a more permanent value; and in this edition have altered its arrangement, and, indeed, rewritten no inconsiderable portion of the work. I have added a series of notes, not only such as are explanatory, illustrative or confirmatory of the subjects and reasonings of the text, but many drawn from various sources designed to show the remarkable coincidences of thought which have obtained among pious and learned men, of all periods and classes; and which indicate most distinctly that an idea, in some shape or other, has been and still is prevalent, that an inward spiritual sense or meaning exists within the letter of the Word of God. Much which has been written on this subject, especially by the early Christian Fathers, affords only fanciful and arbitrary explanations of the Holy Word; yet they seem eagerly to have sought a more certain rule of exposition, which, in the wisdom of Providence, was reserved for a distant and more prepared age. Even the Apostles only "knew in part, and prophesied (or taught) in part" (1 Cor. xiii. 9). The declaration of our Lord to his disciples, "For many prophets and righteous men have desired to see those things which ye see, and have not seen them; and to hear those things which ye hear, and have not heard them" (Matt. xiii. 17), is equally applicable to the New Dispensation under which we are now living. The illustrious Swedenborg has been the appointed instrument, in the order of Divine Providence, for restoring the long-lost Science of Correspondences to the world,-that "chain of golden links by which heaven and earth are bound in harmonious unison;" and this work is designed to answer, without any pretension to critical exactness, and in as plain and familiar a manner as possible, the inquiries which are continually and naturally urged, as to what is meant by this science,—how a knowledge of it may be acquired,— how its truth may be demonstrated, and in what way it is to be applied in expounding the Holy Word: and also to remove some of the difficulties which, from want of a knowledge of this science, every one will encounter in first taking up a volume of Swedenborg's expositions, and which have induced some earnest minds to relinquish the study of his writings, and regard his interpretations as clever, but chimerical and capricious. I can exhibit only the rudiments of this momentous subject, and for its complete development must refer the reader to the works of Swedenborg himself. No satisfactory reasoning can be substituted for the confirmations which so vividly and so constantly present themselves in his pages, especially such as are founded upon his extensive and profound metaphysical and physiological investigations, and his luminous expositions of mental phenomena, or deduced from his own marvelous psychological experience. I have endeavored, therefore, by the numerous quotations made from this enlightened author, to keep the necessity of attentively reading and studying his works constantly before the reader's mind, in the hope of awakening an interest in them as treating of the things which preeminently belong to our spiritual and eternal well-being. For the notes to which no writer's name is annexed, the author is responsible, with the exception, however, of a few to be found in Lexicons. Several of the papers in the Appendix are inserted by special desire, with a view to obviate difficulties which might otherwise perplex the reader. The former edition having been exhausted in a few months from the time of its publication, this enlarged, and the author hopes greatly improved, edition is, at the earnest solicitation of numerous and valued friends, submitted to the public, with devout prayer to the Lord Jesus Christ (without whose blessing our best efforts are vain), that it may prove conducive to the advancenent of true religion, and be instrumental in removing from many minds those objections which hinder their belief in the truth of Revelation, because based on what appears to derogate from the purity, sanctity, authority and divinity of the ORACLES OF TRUTH. E. M., SR. BIRMINGHAM. |