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Doc. 208. HIS SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE IN 1743. 137
Swedenborg’s own words. For in order to do justice to an
author, and to understand him truly, he must be studied
objectively, i. e. he must be allowed to explain himself; and
the reader and the commentator must endeavour to emancipate
themselves from their own subjective states, i. e. from pre
judice and all pre-conceived ideas.
The aim of Swedenborg’s life, and thus the purpose ofthe
experiences recorded in the following pages, are stated by him
in his work entitled the "True Christian Religion" in these
words:
"The Lord’s Second Advent is made by a man before whom
He has manifested Himself in person, and whom He has filled
with His Spirit to teach the doctrines of the New Church by
the Word from Himself. This is meant in the Apocalypse by
the New Heaven and the New Earth, and the New Jerusalem
descending thence" (see headings to nos. 779 and 781).
That he himself is the man by whose instrumentality the
Lord would effect His Second Coming, is declared by Sweden
borg in the following passage: " As the Lord cannot [now]
manifest Himself in person, and yet foretold that He would
come again, and establish a New Church, which is the
New Jerusalem, it follows that He would do this by a man,
who could not only receive the doctrines of that church in
his understanding, but also publish them by the press. I
testify in truth that the Lord manifested Himself before me,
His servant; that He commissioned me to do this work, and
afterwards opened the sight of my spirit, and so let me into
the spiritual world, permitting me to see the heavens and the
hells, and also to converse with angels and spirits, and this
now continually for many years ; and, likewise, that from the
first day of my call to this office, I have never received any
thing relating to the doctrines of that church from any angel,
but from the Lord alone while I was reading the Word"
(no. 779).
The necessity of a long preparation for this work he states
in no. 850, in these words: " [On the question] , Why did the
Lord reveal the long list of arcana, which thou hast just
enumerated, to thee who art a layman, and not to one of the
clergy ? I replied, that this was in the good pleasure of the
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