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142 SWEDENBORG’S TRAVELS AND DIARIES. [Doc. 208.
which cannot but be unintelligible ; the reason, however, is
that the character of the men living at the present time has
altogether changed from that of the men who lived in the
Ancient Church, and afterwards in the Primitive Christian
Church. If the men of modern times had lived in those times,
they might have known these things well from experience and
from inward revelation ; yet these things may be known still
better from the state of the spirits and human souls that now
fill the lowest sphere of heaven. This also is the reason I
am permitted to adduce from them the experience of things
altogether obliterated in these days, and thus to remove this
state of ignorance. "
Again he says, "In order that the True Christian Religion
might be manifested, it was absolutely necessary that some
one should be introduced into the spiritual world, and receive
from the Lord’s mouth genuine truths from the Word. For
to do this from the false churches which exist at the present
day, where it is impossible to see a single genuine truth from
the Word, except such as is encompassed with and steeped
in falsities and coheres with falsities, would be like attempting
to sail to the Pleiades, or like undertaking to dig out the
gold which is in the centre of the earth" (Invitatio ad Novam
Ecclesiam, no. 38).
Let us now see what is meant, in the case of Swedenborg,
by the opening of the spiritual sight. In a tract on which he
was engaged a short time before his death, and which was
printed by Dr. Immanuel Tafel in the "Spiritual Diary,"
Part VII, Appendix I, pages 168 and 169, we read as
follows: " In place of the miracles that were done in the
Church before the Lord’s Coming, at the present time [i. e.
in the case of Swedenborg himself] there has been a mani
festation of the Lord Himself, an introduction into the spiritual
world, and thereby immediate light from the Lord, illustration
in such things as constitute the interiors of the church, but
principally an opening of the spiritual sense of the Word, in
which the Lord is in His Divine light. These revelations are
not miracles; for every man is as to his spirit in the spiritual
world, yet without being separated from his body in the natural
world. In my case, however, there is a certain separation, but
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