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232 DOCUMENTS CONCERNING SWEDENBOUG
the extraordinary privilege, and inestimable blessing vouchsafed him, in having
been admitted to the knowledge and acknowledgment of the truth and import-
ance of the doctrines unfolded by Swedenborg from the Word of God as the
genuine doctrines of Christianity. For what worldly glory, gain, or happiness,
can stand in competition with this—to know Jesus Christ to be the only true God^
and to be allowed to approach and worship Him in His Divine Humanity ; to be
delivered thus from all perplexity as to the proper object of worship ; to see, at
the same time, the divine volume of Revelation opened ; its interior treasures
displayed ; its evidence and authority thus confirmed by its divine contents ; its
apparent contradictions reconciled ; whilst all that is divine and holy, all that is
good and true, all that is calculated to excite the veneration of intelligent beings,
and the affection of penitent ones; all, in short, that has a tendency either to en-
lighten the human understanding, or to purify the human will ; either to edify,
by the bright and proud lessons of divine truth, or to soften and console by the
sweet and tender influences of the divine love, is perceived to proceed from this
Divine Fountain, as its only source ! Yet such is the transcendent glory, gain,
and happiness imparted to every penitent and devout receiver of the above
Heavenly Doctrine^. Add to this, the nearness and connexion between this
world and another, demonstrated by such a weight of irresistible evidence ; the
great evangelical doctrines of Faith, of Charity, of Repentance and Remission
of Sins, of Temptation, Reformation, Regeneration, and the Freedom of the Will,
opened, explained, and enforced, according to their edifying and important
meaning; the nature, also, and effect of the Last Judgment, the Lord’s Second
Advent, and the descent of the New Jerusalem, presented to view in all the
brightness and fullness of truth, and confirmed by the testimony of the sure
Word of prophecy ; and some faint idea may then be formed of the immense
debt of gratitude, owing at this day from all the families of the earth to their
Heavenly Father. For who, except that Father, whose tender mercies are over all
His works, could thus cause His light to shine in darkness for the deliverance of
His people from evil, from error, and from destruction, and, at the same time, for
the guidance of their feet into the ways of righteousness, truth, and salvation ?
To his praises, and most unfeigned thankfulness on this occasion, the author is
lastly urgent to add his ardent prayers, that the above glorious light may shine
in every corner of the habitable globe, until the whole earth becomes that bless-
ed tabernacle of God, which was announced to be withmen, in which ’ God will
dwell and be with them their Godj and wipe away all tears from] their eyes’* (Rev. xxi.
3, 4)."
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