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church and religion.
271
The Swedish Mission Union has also numerous adherents among the Swedes in
America; many again have joined the Reformed Sects, more especially the Baptists
and Methodists.
A religious movement, which, although it has not very many
followers, yet has a special interest for us Swedes in its having emanated
from our country, is the New Church, founded by the famous Emanuel
Svedenborg (born at Stockholm in 1688, died in 1772).
The basis of his
views on religion is that
there exists a far greater
correspondence between
the lower and higher
spheres of Nature than
is usually supposed to be
the case and likewise
between Nature and the
spirit-world (the
Doctrine of
Correspondences). Every advance
is brought about only
through interior
development, and good and
truth are in themselves
fundamentally
inseparable from each other, so
that no one can
appropriate any truth as his
own who does not at
the same time acquire
the corresponding form
of good. Svedenborg
conceives the future life as
wholly analogous with
this present one. He
rejects the doctrine of the
judgment day and
combats the orthodox
doctrines of the Trinity and
of the Justification.
Svedenborg, a
scientific man too of the
highest calibre,
pronounced on many topics truths which.have not been valued at their true worth
until our day — and then under other men’s fathership. The general public
really only knows his name from his famous »visionary faculty»; but many of
the greatest spirits of the latter centuries have come under the influence of
Sve-denborg’s teaching and have acknowledged the debt they owe to him.
The adherents of the New Church are, as a rule, broad-minded people, and
expect nothing but gain for their religious views from the progress of scientific
research. Thus, both the Religious Congress at Chicago in 1893 and the Religious
Science Congress in Stockholm in 1897 were arranged on the initiative of members
of the New Church.
Emanuel Svedenborg.
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