The professor's letters

Preface

A few words only are needed to introduce this little book. If it has any quality of helpfulness, it will speak for itself better than any preface could do, and if it is found to be without that essential quality, it would be vain to bolster it with words. The book is rightly entitled "The Professor's Letters," but as there is a little work in them by another hand, it is right that it should be acknowledged. The letters were written many years ago to a young girl, solely for her benefit and instruction, and without any thought of publication. But after a time, the recipient of the letters thought they contained so many wise and useful thoughts that it seemed selfish not to share them with others, and she asked Professor Parsons if extracts from them could not be published. To this he gave his consent with a condition which at first seemed to spoil the plan. He said that his young friend must prepare them for publication herself, re-writing and adding whatever thoughts were suggested during this work.

IV PREFACE

All who knew Professor Parsons well, are aware of his constant kindness and zeal in carrying on this sort of education ; that is, drawing out all that was possible from the young people about him, by leading them to give expression to their faintly struggling thoughts. People were not inclined to disobey him ; they would generally try to do what was suggested, and so it was in this case. The letters, therefore, are still in substance the Professor's letters, wearing only a slightly different garment from the original ones, and with the addition of a few pages which though not written by the Professor, were certainly inspired by him.

The Professor's Letters

I

IT seemed to me when I last saw you, my dear friend, that I could read in your eyes even before you told me with your lips, that you were at last ready to welcome gladly the truths which I so gladly share' with you. Yes, now I can believe that our Father has made you ready. Your heart was like a rich meadow at which I often gaze from my window. Thick emerald grass and wild daisies grew there already ; but the owner meant to make it into a garden ; and last spring it was all ploughed up, and in that way prepared for the reception of the young trees and plants from which another year we may have sweet blossoms. I felt a momentary pang when the ploughshare began cutting long ridges in the soft green carpet which I loved, and which had often served to soothe my wearied eyes. At first it seemed almost cruel to turn the fresh grass under-

2 RELIEF FROM PRESENT TROUBLE

neath to die, till I remembered that its very death would help the new plant to a richer life. The simile which I have used is a trite one, but none the less apt, and you, who have now felt the effect of this preparation in your own heart, you at least will not find fault with it.

When I was with you a week ago we had no opportunity for much talk together, but you told me how strong was your desire to learn more of the doctrines of our Church, and I will endeavor to tell you what I can by letters, since I may not come

again to for a long time, and I could hardly

expect you to come where I am.

I speak of doctrines ; yet it is not my purpose to unfold them to you in any regular system ; but rather to suggest for your own earnest thinking whatever you may seem to need at any particular time. And this need I shall endeavor to find out from your letters.

Permit me to recur for a moment to the time, now long ago, when we first began to speak of these things. Like many another you hungered and thirsted for happiness ; for relief in some shape from the troubles which assailed you from your uncongenial surroundings ; for a removal of the pressure which weighed upon you, you knew not why. I remember you could not enjoy the delicious outpouring of song that interrupted our talk one day in

WHAT TRUE HAPPINESS IS the woods, because the first thought that came was, " Why cannot I be as happy as that bird ? Every note which he utters seems pure joy, and I, a human being with an organization so much higher, with a capacity of joy so much larger than this thrush, am yet so unsatisfied/' But at this time you had not suffered enough to find out the secret of true happiness, paradoxical as this may sound. I am convinced that many natures learn it only in this way.

I will pass over the events of a few years — the hard lessons, by which I am sure you have already profited much. I cannot but think that you are now able to perceive that the greatest human happiness must be an active and loving cooperation with our Father. Because His love is infinite, He gives blessings to all — to the infant, and to the most immature or feeble. But He must desire to give the highest happiness He can, and that He may do this, He gives to men the power of active and voluntary working with Him, that they may share, in their finite way, the infinite happiness He finds in His infinite work. And now I will ask you to consider whether it must not be true that they who can receive this best of Divine gifts, because they can meet His efforts with their own, must be unable to receive it unless they join their efforts with His ?

I know that I lay a burden upon you in asking you to think all this out. Not at once, nor yet at

RELIEF THROUGH GRIEF many times. But I beg you to try, and persist in trying ; for great will be your reward. It will come, not at once, possibly not soon, but it will come in the knowledge and invigoration of your own power, in the conscious elevation of thought and of your whole being. More than this, in the clearer perception of your Father, and in ever growing trust and gratitude, and ever clearer recognition of His presence in His word and in His works, in all the circumstances of being, in all the events of your own life.

I would not deceive you. All this cannot come unless you pay the price ; and this may be painful effort, suffering, and grief. But may you live to know how —

" From grief comes glory As the rainbow from the cloud."

HEAVEN AND HELL

II

I HAS TEN to answer your last letter which interested me much, for I find that you have been not only reading the book which I suggested on Heaven and Hell, but have been thinking as well as reading. Swedenborg says things about Heaven which you find it difficult to accept. But what are they ? This is just what I want you to tell me, just what I want you to tell distinctly to yourself. One trouble I think I know — you cannot believe the fact that Heaven does not contain all who die. You wish all to be in Heaven. " God must wish it more than I do ; but He is omnipotent. If then, He wishes this more than I can, why does He not exert His omnipotence to effect it?" I will not now argue this with you, but leave it for you to consider. Does not your trouble about this matter recall most vividly my own when first called upon to forsake the vague but pleasing faith in which I had always indulged — that somehow all would become good and happy in exchanging this world for a higher one, although it might be after a longer or shorter period of trial and purification ?

6 REJECTED TRUTH CLOSES A DOOR

An explanation of this difficulty would involve an inquiry into the origin and nature of evil. Let me postpone anything like a discussion of this question to a future time. One reason for this delay is, that however willing you might be to believe certain truths, your intellect would necessarily reject them if offered prematurely. And rejected truth closes a door — closes not fastens, but closes at least for a time. But in the mean time think about it.

On reading over what I have written I become aware what a burden I have laid on your unpractised strength. It must seem to you nothing less than the solution of the whole problem of being — the reconciliation of any and all human suffering with perfect and omnipotent love. For a little thought will convince you that the difficulty is much the same as to this world and to the other. The only difference is that here you know there is misery and the problem is to account for it. There, you do not know that it exists and you deny it because you cannot account for it.

If you had died at birth and grown up in heaven, and the comers from this earth had told you of the sin and suffering and degradation which prevail here, it would have been still more difficult for you to believe that such things can be in the universe of God, than it is now for you to believe their existence in the spiritual world.

THROUGH XIGHT IX TO LIGHT J

This problem has vexed the most thoughtful minds and saddened the tenderest hearts in all ages. Heretofore all that could be done was to compel the acquiescence of the intellect and silence its denials, by proving from the analogy of all known existence, that a mingled thread of good and evil, of order and disorder, of joy and sorrow runs through all being. This was hard enough, but, thanks be to our Father, the truth has come which is the key to all these problems.

This key, in a feeble and untrained hand as mine is, and yours still more, will not so unlock them as to leave no mystery behind. This I do not pretend to do, and may almost say I do not desire. I have no wish to lose the pleasure of progress in thought, while I can see surely and certainly that I am treading a pathway towards the Truth. " Evening and morning " belong always to every day of creation ; evening first, for it is the doubt, the uncertainty, the question, the sense of darkness and want which must come first ; and the light follows for then it is sought. If there were no night there could be no morning.

This key is in that great truth, unknown on earth until Swedenborg told it. The truth, that human life is God's own life, given to man to be his own, incessantly given to be absolutely his own, his selfhood, himself. God gives this life to man because there

8 THE KEY TO THE PROBLEM

can be no other life ; because if cut off from constant and continued effluence from God it would be what light is when we cut it off from its source and shut it up — and that is, nothing. And if it is given us to be our own and make each man himself, then man is not an imperfect fragment of God, but has his own personal individuality, and can forever cowork with God in building up his own happiness, and work so of himself, of himself but from God, in freedom and in power and consciousness of self-existing power — not self-derived power, but self-existing by God's gift. And this must be the greatest blessing Infinite Love can give to a creature, and therefore that which that Love must desire to give. Then I see clearly that all this necessarily involves power, duty, and responsibility; and then I have the key to all the vexed problems of the existence of evil. For if evil could not be, then the highest good could not be ; because all the highest good springs from or rather is the choice — the actual choice in actual and not illusory freedom — of good rather than evil.

THE OLD AND THE NEW

III

HOW well I understand, my dear young friend, what you say of your feelings about the Bible. You do not know that you have only your share of what is becoming the universal feeling of Christendom. Everywhere, among all who have any sentiment of religion, with any freedom of thought, or any capacity of thinking about their thoughts, there is a prevalent sense of unrest and discomfort about the Bible. No two feel it just alike, for its aspects are innumerable. What does it all mean ? what is its cause ? what is to be its effect ?

A hundred years ago, Swedenborg saw in the spiritual world a magnificent Temple, wherein lay the Word, opened, and girded with light, and over the gate of the Temple, was an inscription which grew into form as he looked, and he read " nunc licet,' 7 " Now it is permitted." He inquired what this meant. He was told that an age was drawing near when it would be permitted to inquire with perfect freedom into the Word ; into its origin, its character, its authority, its meaning ; and to investiio A NEW LANGUAGE

gate with the same freedom all questions of religious doctrines.

In the long ages which have passed this was not permitted. Men were protected from it, because the results must have been disastrous. Therefore the Word was enveloped in its awful sanctity as in impenetrable armor. Its mysterious holiness silenced all inquiry but that of the scorner. All that state or condition of thought has passed or is passing away. The age has come which Swedenborg saw in vision. The word " Free-thinker " was once, and not long since, synonymous with " Infidel ; " and now the most religious minds are asking the questions and urging the difficulties which formerly only to name was an act of irreligion.

Why is all this now permitted ? Because now an answer can be given to all these questions ; a solution for all these difficulties.

But this work must be gradual and slow. Why ■ — you may ask — why has He not written His truth legibly on the sky, and painted it with sunlight on the clouds, and made every flower and every leaf His page, and let the winds whisper His lessons ? Dear friend all this is so. The sky and cloud, the flower and leaf are His written page, and the winds utter His voice. But we have not learned the language in which they speak to us. You describe a beautiful cloud which seemed to you like a "very

A NEW SCIENCE glimpse into heaven." You did not know that in fact and in truth it was just that. You did not know, that simple, exact, and rigorous truth, scientific truth, if it were but the truth now attainable in the science of religion, would have made that cloud as significant as it was beautiful ; would have taught you to look through all its splendor and glory to the glory beyond — to the sun within that material sun which painted the dark cloud with the flame you saw. So may that inner Sun, so will that inner Sun one day, make the clouds of your mind resplendent with light. Many may be the days and nights of your pilgrimage ; but let us pray that every night may be bounded by the beauty of evening and the promise of dawn.

To return to your Bible difficulty. You say that you are quite ready to believe in a spiritual meaning, and indeed see no other road out of the infinite perplexities and apparent incongruities which beset you on every hand. But if the science of correspondences is to be the key which will open the door into this blessed region of light, how are you to apply it ? Does it seem a hard answer to say that patient and prayerful study and a simple belief that the Bible is God's own Word, will help you in this ? I verily believe that nothing more than these are wanted to help us at least to all that we need from the Divine Word. The simple, loving heart, will find truth soonest.

12 A BESETTING TROUBLE

You ask if the passages in the Word which now contain in the literal sense beautiful and heart reaching truths, still contain other, higher, more beautiful, and more searching truth. I can easily make the general answer, They do. But I would say more. The literal sense hides the spiritual meaning far more completely in some parts than in others. In many texts there is a spiritual meaning distinctly expressed in the letter. It comes to the surface and is one with the letter. Swedenborg compares these passages to the human face, which is not clothed, but reveals and expresses the inmost thoughts and feelings of the man.

You have been troubled with a difficulty which besets and of necessity must beset all who begin this work of searching for the inner truth of the Word. You hear an explanation of some passage which is utterly meaningless in the literal sense, so far as relates to any religious truth. And in the light of this explanation it is full of the most beautiful, most useful instruction. The first impression is one of delight that a truth is presented to you so full of charm and power. But then comes the thought, How can I know that this is the spiritual sense ? What can assure me that another mind of equal ingenuity may not extract from this passage another meaning wholly different but of equal power and beauty ?

WHAT THIS EARTH IS 13

The first answer is one of which you can learn the full force only slowly and gradually. It is that our interpretation of the Scripture is founded upon exact and definite principles, which can be accurately learned ; or rather upon laws of interpretation which justify the use of the phrase, " Science of Correspondence."

Another answer, however, is one which I am anxious to bring before you intelligibly. Let me then say that the phrase, the spiritual meaning of any passage of Scripture, is not so good as a spiritual meaning. Try to remember that this little earth on which we live is the foundation on which all the heavens, consisting of all good men who ever lived here, rest. It is the last and lowest ultimate towards which converge and in which end all the creative and causative influences from all those heavens. Hence, innumerable and inconceivable influences of life come down into and centre in any one thing that is here, and that thing is a fitting basis to receive them all, and to be what it is because it receives them all.

It is just so with the literal sense of the Word. For there is no passage there which is not the clothing and expression of innumerable higher senses. It is the lowest step of the ladder which rests upon the ground, but which goes up higher than the heavens, and on which the angels of God are forever

14 NO TWO SEE EXACTLY ALIKE

descending and ascending — descending to find man in his lowest possible condition, and present their truth in a form adapted to him, and ascending to bear upwards all who are willing to go up with them.

The next thing I would have you observe is, that while there is but one literal sense, no two persons who discern a higher and interior sense would see it in precisely the same way ; for to every one it presents itself, in its aspect and in its application, as that which suits their character and wants. Nor would they use precisely the same words to express it. And these diversities might be so great that there might seem to be almost inconsistency between them. But there would be none in fact.

My purpose in saying all this is to give you freedom and hope. Begin where you will. This beginning, like that of all good progress, will have its difficulty, but will I think give you pleasure. And as you go on you will find the difficulty less, and the enjoyment more. Apply to any passages the simple laws of interpretation which you know now. You may not succeed in the first effort, or the second ; but of this be sure, that when you do succeed in finding an interpretation which, while it accords with the principles of correspondence, gives to any passage new meaning and new life, that is a spiritual meaning for you.

You speak of the twelfth chapter of Romans. It

WHAT TRUE INSPIRATION IS 15

is indeed a most instructive and a most spiritual chapter. But it will perhaps surprise you to hear that the Canon of the New Testament, the true Canon, consists only of the Gospels and the Revelation. The epistles were written by men of sense, men wise in spiritual or religious truth, and of profound piety. But they were not inspired. Their letters to the churches or in a few cases to individuals have been, by the permission of Divine Providence, received from early ages as authorized Sacred Writings, and bound up with the inspired books, because of their immense utility from the stores of religious wisdom they contain. And they have been all the more needed and all the more useful, because the ignorance that there was any spiritual sense in the Gospels made so much of them, and especially so much of their mere narrative, of comparatively little use for religious instruction. Eminently useful the epistles indeed are ; and Swedenborg often refers to them, for illustration of the spiritual sense of the Word, properly so called.

The great difference is here. The Gospels and the Revelation were written by inspiration, and contain in all their words infinite stores of wisdom which were unknown to those who were employed as the subjects of inspiration to write them. The epistles are wise and good only because the writers were so, and only as far as they were so.

1 6 ST. PAUL'S REASONING

Take for example the twentieth verse of the twelfth chapter of Romans : " Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him ; if he thirst, give him drink : for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head." The first clauses contain and express with great force truth which cannot be too deeply rooted in every heart. But the reason given for feeding a hungry enemy is St. Paul's own reason. There is very little of spiritual character about it, nor is there any spiritual meaning in it. It elevates the feeling of hostility, but does not extinguish it. It says, return good for evil, because you will inflict upon the enemy whom you relieve the pain and anguish of remorse. It is far better to return good for evil even for this reason, than to return evil for evil ; but then it is not a spiritual reason. For all that, let the epistles minister to you all the good they can. There is in them much religious truth of the greatest value ; much that may well open the mind to far higher truth than they can impart.

A SERMOJVETTE 17

IV

THIS morning a text of Scripture fell under my eye and fastened itself upon me, and I have been thinking of it, at times, through the day. Shall I tell you why ? I cannot without writing you a sermonette upon the text.

" The axe is laid unto the root of the tree." What is the axe ? It represents truth in its destruction of error, when it seems hard and sharp and pitiless, for so it must seem while it is doing this work. How easy it is to recognize the beauty of truth, to accept it even with the purpose of obeying it, to let it prune away many exuberances of thought and feeling, perhaps cut off some things which were as a very pleasant fruit to us ; and then to stop, then to think the work done which is only begun. For that work is not done till " the axe is laid unto the root of the tree."

You read your Bible, and read it reverently ; and yet has the lesson been often before your mind which it is always teaching — the absolute opposition between all that we are naturally, and that

1 8 LIFE IS CONTINUOUS CHANGE

which we should become ; the lesson taught in such words as those which commend us to hate our own life — to lose our life that we may save it !

Who is there nowadays that reads such things without the feeling that they are rhetorical and extravagant expressions, which no one can suppose intended to be taken as true in their full extent and breadth, and in their plain and direct meaning ? And yet this is just what is intended. These are God's words, said to you, yourself, just as much as if He whispered them in your ear, and you alone of all the earth heard them.

And then you will ask me, How can I obey this command ? How can I at once, by any effort of my will, change the whole nature of that will, and hate what I have always loved, and love with my whole heart and soul what I certainly have never loved in that way ?

Of course you cannot. There can be no greater impossibilities. What then is the true question ? It is, Is this end distinctly before you as one which your Father invites you to approach and will help you to approach ; one that you yourself must constantly and steadfastly strive to reach, as nearly as may be, and by all the means which every day and hour offer to you. Anything less than this would be, at the very least, weakness. You know that no night when you sleep finds you just where you were

IN HIS IMAGE 19 when you rose. That day offered you the means of advancement ; some means, either by learning new truth, obeying something you had learned, doing something, no matter what, to cast off the influence of w r orldliness and the habit of frivolity, to build yourself into the stature of an earnest and resolute woman, who, instead of floating on the current of circumstances, makes use of them for her eternal good.

Some one says, " Unless above himself he can erect himself, how poor a thing is man ! " A grand thought and well to be remembered, if we remember also that this self, above which we must rise, is that poor creature which man has made himself, in the abuse of our God-given freedom ; a far different creature from that regenerated self, the Divine image, which we were intended to be.

2 THE WORST ROBBERY

V

LET me try to give you some thoughts which I have been full of lately. They relate to a text of Scripture to which, I suppose, before the Science of Correspondence was revealed, it was impossible for any one to ascribe a spiritual meaning. You remember Pilate said to the Jews, " Whom will ye that I should release unto you, Barabbas or Jesus ? " But the chief priests and elders persuaded the multitude that they should ask for Barabbas, and destroy Jesus. " Now Barabbas was a robber." He had " made an insurrection," and " had committed murder in the insurrection."

The worst and last robbery is robbery from God, which steals away from Him the faith and the affections which should be His, and robs Him of our love, our obedience, and our trust. The same feeling and falsity which does this, " makes an insurrection " against Him, seeks to dethrone Him, deny His sovereignty, and His right to our constant worship, obedience, and love, and even His personal existence, if it cannot otherwise deny this sover-

WHICH SHALL DIE ? 21

eignty. In this insurrection it commits " a murder/' the murder of the very soul — of all that constitutes true life within us. And all this is Barabbas. And Barabbas and Jesus cannot both live within us. One must die. Yes, every emotion of selfishness or worldliness in every soul plays the part of Barabbas. Good influences may have prevailed for a time, and they, or perhaps motives of worldly regard, may have put Barabbas in prison, and under some restraint ; but the decisive, the fatal question remains, Shall he die ? Yes, he or Jesus. The powers of evil ruling in us, our priests and elders, come to his rescue, because they hate and fear the influence of Jesus. They persuade the multitude of thoughts and feelings which take the side of worldliness to liberate and save him. They do save him, and Jesus dies !

Nor is it only on great occasions and in fearful crises that this question comes to us. Every hour, every moment, when we resist what we must know to be the influence of our Lord, and, casting that aside, give the victory, under whatever pretence or name, to that which is indeed our own Barabbas, we then do all that we are able to do to crucify our Lord anew.