The Bible: its true character and spiritual meaning

Preface

The object of these Lectures is to present the teaching of Swedenborg concerning the Sacred Scriptures, in a form likely to reach those who mi^ht otherwise remain in ignorance of it; and for this purpose I have used whatever in the collateral writings of the New Church I have found available for argument or illustration. Whatever has thus been assimilated into the scheme and purpose of this presentation,! of course make myself responsible for; but if credit is to be given, I wish to say it very likely belongs to others. It is only fair to add, that the Lectures, delivered from time to time, wdiich have appeared in the Chicago Times, called forth expressions of interest from various sources, which suggested the probable usefulness of printing them in this

present form.

L. P. M.

Chicago, Advent, 1879.

Contents

PAGE

I. THE BIBLE A BOOK OF DIVINE PARABLES . 5

Man Needs a Revelation .... 9

I. A Book Of Divine Pabables

Without a parable spate he not unto them.— Matt, xiii: 34.

A parable involves two distinct series of ideas ; one pertaining to principles, the other to persons and things. The power of the parable lies in this, that its distinct series of ideas are related as man's faculties of abstract and sensuous thought are related. It is a series of spiritual ideas clothed in a series of natural incidents, which by their dramatic force fix the interest and enlist the sympathies, and yield their inner meaning in the ratio of man's ascending thought. As the mind is indrawn from sensuous to spiritual thought, the narrative loses its incidental character, and becomes simply the mirror in which is presented the image of spiritual principles and their relations. The distinctness of this image will be

6 DIVINE PAYABLES.

in the ratio of man's growing wisdom ; and meanwhile the picture itself is vivified by the principle personified or the truth embodied. Thus it is that the parable speaks at once to the child and the philosopher ; and as the individual ascends the steps of maturer wisdom its meaning opens to his expanding consciousness. The divine parable of the Prodigal is to the child, who hears it first at his mother's knee, a simple story, presenting a vivid picture of personal history ; the youth learns to regard it as history teaching by example ; the man perceives that the historical form is only an investiture assumed for the purpose of illustration ; and yet, throughout this process, the spiritual interest of the story is developing in clearness, till finally the image of the fatherhood, forgiveness and providence of Divine love, which was not wholly absent from the child's first impressions, becomes supreme to the man's thought.

Now, let us reflect whether it would make any difference in the value or intention of that parable if we were to find it recorded among the chronicles of the Jewish kings, or the histories of the Israelitish people. Transfer it to the book of Samuel, give names to the father and sons, think of it as a historical occurrence and what is changed by the transference? The object and purpose of its insertion in the historic Word, were it found there, would still be the same as of its insertion in the Lord's discourse. Its exquisite portraiture of the tenderness of Divine love toward human waywardness would be the same, and the same, too, the progressive development of its lessons to man's expanding consciousness.

Has it never occurred to you that since the parables, with their spiritual contents, are so often historic in form, that therefore those narrations of the Holy Scriptures which are historic in form may be parables in reality, with an equally important spiritual significance ? The proud King Saul, head and shoulders above all the men of Israel, standing in fear with his armies before the giant of Gath, and finally delivered by the youthful David, the ruddy shepherd-boy from the fields of Bethlehem — is it any less a parable than the story of the lost sheep> or the marriage of the king's son, in the Gospels ? The touching story of Absalom, caught by his hair in the branches of the oak, may be the veriest history, but it is no less a parable than the story of the Prodigal. They contain the same elements, and serve the same ends ; they appeal to the humanity of the simple and the spiritual intuitions of the wise, and present their varied lessons to the varied sorts and conditions of men.

I desire to commend to you this doctrine : That the Bible is a book of Divine Parables; its early portions are allegory ; its historical records a vast drama enacted by living men as types of spiritual things, with the redemption and regeneration of man for its subject. The advent of the Lord, His sufferings, His death, His gospel, can thus be seen to be in harmony with this drama, which embraces the Deity, and represents the states of every living soul. The Word, teaching us thus, becomes at once spiritual in its subject, in its importance, and in its style ; and is taken out of the arena of controversial criticism, and let out to the higher faculties of man for investigation and devout contemplation. Simple as this doctrine is, catholic as it is to the wisest thought of the church in primitive and modern times, I am unwilling to trust it to the fate of a plausible conjecture, and, therefore, ask your attention to some of the evidences of its truthfulness.

It must not be forgotten that the number of persons who feel themselves obliged to doubt whether the Bible is a revelation from God, daily increases. There may be more than one such among you ; and while there are considerations which might be helpful to such minds, which I am obliged, by the limits of this discourse, to omit, I wish it distinctly understood that I regard such doubts neither with disrespect nor sentiments of hopeless pity. They seem to me, in a certain sense, natural to the time, and a necessary consequence of the declining spirituality of the doctrine and interpretation of the Church. The doctrine concerning the Inspiration of the Scriptures which is currently promulgated in this day is untrue; and interpretations are taught which it were better to disbelieve. But because the Ptolemaic astronomy is exploded, is there no longer a solar system and a starry heaven? Surely, the rejection of a false theory of revelation need not necessarily lead to denial of the existence of revelation. It should rather turn the mind to investigation, and dispose it affirmatively toward the doctrine which announces more rational claims.

1. I begin then with recalling a truth which seems to be well based in human experience ; Marts religious instincts lead him to hole for and seek a revelation from God. The consciousness of a mind and life which is an enigma to himself; the universal intuition of God, which no man loses till it is blanketed by his own fallacious reasonings ; these two felt facts call for revelation from God to man concerning himself, and God's will with respect to him. There are powers and faculties of the human mind w 7 hich are not brought into exercise by an exclusive determination of thought to this world of the senses, which will exercise themselves with the problems of existence, and duty, and destiny. These faculties may be more or less developed, but at every stage of their activity they demand a knowledge different from that which the senses can give. They feel their fitness for a world of thought which the senses do not dirctly open, and they crave its revelation. The skeptic as to the inspiration of the Scriptures, if he have still preserved the intuition of God and the hope of immortality, will tell you how much he desires a revelation in which heart and mind may repose, with confidence and certainty. Many a mind chased by the phantoms of doubt; many a heart tired of following after the fantasies of sense, is crying to-day in your very midst: " As the hart panteth after the water-brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God." Even atheism acknowledges the want in ceaseless attempts and incessant activity to disprove it. Men do not raise armies and keep incessant watch and ward against nothing ; and the very struggle which unbelief keeps up from age to age, is virtually an acknowledgment that the human heart needs, yearns for, and is capable of believing in, a Divine Revelation.

2. Now reflect that the Sacred Scriptures claim to be such a revelation, and from age to age have made good their claim to countless multitudes. It is sometimes denied, I know; but so is the rotundity of the earth, and so is the beauty of art denied by those who have no eye, and the grandeur of music by those who have no ear, and the blessedness of brotherhood by those who have no love. The facts remain; over all the Scriptures is written the name of them, like the name on the vesture of Him whom John saw in vision, "The Word of God." It is the distinct and specific claim of Moses, and the prophets, and the Evangelists, that God spake unto them, and that what they have written is His Word. The claim is plainly there; it is either true or it is not. I confess a great deal of respect for the old argument that the effect of these Scriptures upon the mind and life of the disciple is strong presumption in favor of their claim. Those who are really affected by the Scriptures perceive in them a power far transcending that which is felt in any other writing, and such facts of experience are not to be ignored. The simple literal meaning of a verse by no means accounts for the impression it may produce. There are religious faculties in us all, that respond with fear or hope to the statutes and commands, the warnings and promises of Holy Scripture, even though intellectually we profess to believe them the product of men in past time ; there is a Divine power in them which has asserted itself to every generation for ages.

3. Consider, then, in view of what the Scriptures claim to be, the Word of God, whether they can possibly be such without containing the mind of God in spiritual truths utterly distinct from that which appears in the grammatical construction of the letter. It must be admitted that a large part of the Bible claiming to be the Word of God, is not the Word of God to us unless indeed it be uttered in parable and contain secrets within its bosom ready to be unfolded to the teachable mind. But could any of it be the Word of God without a spiritual sense within the letter? Kationally it is impossible to conceive of a Divine truth descending into the language of men, and taking to itself an expression in such language without the mediation not of one only but of many distinct series of ideas. If the Scriptures really treated in their letter in all its parts of love and faith, of the Divine Character and human duty, of that which bears directly upon man's spiritual life, and those subjects concerning which alone he needs a revelation, it is inconceivable that such teaching could be given by God to man without containing spiritual arcana, distinct from the series of natural ideas composing the letter. Every writing has the author in it ; all that there is in his mind concerning the subject is involved, and possible therefore to be evolved. Thought clothes itself in speech ; and abstract intellectual truth clothes itself with the images of sensuous thought before it can put on a garment of language.

All our ideas are derived in the first instance from impressions of phenomena ; and the images of these become not only the basis of subsequent thoughts, but their appropriate sign and expression. Our intellectual conceptions, which are born on the one side of sensuous impressions, must on the other hand think themselves out, or clothe themselves with sensuous images, before they can find expression. How then shall truth divine, transcending the faculties of sense, communicate itself in the language of men without first investing itself with angelic ideas, and then with corresponding natural images ? The object of such a communication beins: to make known things which "eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man to conceive/' the human mind w r ould be incapable of apprehending them, except through the medium of sensuous representatives and corresponding signs. The language of a Divine Revelation must, therefore, from the nature of its message, be parabolic. Even its natural images of moral righteousness can be only images of spiritual graces and Divine perfections. But much of the letter of Scripture treats of specific events, and is limited in its application to the occasion past. It does not treat of such subjects as man needs to have revealed. How then can it be the Word of God, as it claims, unless it is also, as it claims, "settled forever in the heavens?" — unless it contains an internal meaning which is apprehensible to angelic intelligence, or spiritual thought? Possessing at least two distinct series of ideas, as it must thus do to be the Word of God, it is parabolic in reality, and spiritual in its object, and eternal in its inter-

DIVIDE PARABLES. 15

est. Whether couched in the form allegory, history, precept, or prophecy, the Word must have the regeneration of man for its one great object. The variety of its immediate subjects must have been selected as adapted to its single object, the spiritual instruction of mankind ; and, therefore, whether its form be allegory or history, must be determined by the adaptability of one or the other to secure the attention and fix the interest of men in time, but whether one or the other, it must contain the secrets of spiritual wisdom in truths which could not be spoken without a parable.

This we believe, that the Word of the Lord is so written, and that the Bible is thus a book of Divine Parables, plenarily inspired by virtue of the informing wisdom through which as a medium, the very spirit of God vivifies even the letter of its myths, its histories, its statutes and its promises. Its inspiration and divineness are not acquired by the miraculous mode of its composition, and have nothing to do with the infallibility of its science, or its history, or the personal purity of its characters; but by the indwelling spirit of God, and Divine spiritual truth from Him. The inspiration of the writers of the Scriptures was temporary, and for a specific purpose; the inspiration of that which was written is eternal. It is the indwelling mind of God and Divine truth from Him in all its gradations. It is this eternal and perpetual inspiration of truth in the Scriptures themselves which constitutes them the Word of God; which makes them reach bevond the necessities of the occasion on which they were given ; and by virtue of which they furnish food for the angels in heaven as well as men on earth. The Word in its " beginnings " or first principles, is " with God " and " is God ; " but to make itself apprehensible to finite minds, it must clothe itself with garments woven from the fibers of angelic and human thought, constituting a spiritual and a natural sense, to suit the states respectively of angels and of men.

When men on earth rejected Him who was the Word made flesh, they divided His coat, and found a vesture woven from the top throughout without a seam. This essential Word appearing as the Son of Man, clothed with an inner garment, and over this an outer robe, pieced and seamed, represents the Word which is the Divine truth itself, clothed in the vesture of angelic wisdom, which constitutes the spiritual sense of our written Bible, and over this the outer garment of its letter, pieced from the contributions of human myth and history, that could serve the "Word of life for clothing. And like the Lord's vesture, which it really is, the inner spiritual sense of the Word is woven throughout without a seam ; while men dispute and divide the letter, the vesture of angelic w T isdom constitutes one harmonious serial and continuous garment of light. Amid all the difficulties which beset literal criticism and the doubts which overhang natural thought, this glorious fabric of spiritual truth awaits man's faculty of perception. It may appear with greater or less clearness as men are more or less instructed concerning it. The more spiritually-minded the reader the deeper and fuller will be his perception of such spiritual signification. The deeps in his own soul will answ r er back to the deeps in God's word. Space and time and person will recede in the contemplation of Holy Scripture, and spiritual principles, and states, and progression of state will become the subjects of thought. He who thus looks in God's Word for that which is the subject of faith, can realize its histories in his own mental progressions. He may learn the stages of his regeneration in the story of creation ; the Divine evolution of spiritual faculties, affections and thoughts, from the chaos of the natural mind. He can read 2

18 DIVINE PAHABLES.

the processes of his Spiritual growth in the journey of Israel ; be instructed by the Law in his pilgrimage, and enter the heavenly Canaan under the leadership of a higher Joshua. A greater than David can give him the possession of Mount Zion ; and a more glorious King than Solomon build within him a more glorious temple.

4. I ask now your attention to the testimony of Scripture , mid the tradition of the Church, to the truth of this doctrine. The present troubles of dogmatic orthodoxy have arisen from ignoring the primitive doctrine of the Word, and insisting upon its literal sufficiency and infallibility, unmindful of the numerous instances in the Bible in which that Word is asserted to be figurative, typical, a collection of parables. 1. We continually find the Scriptures themselves in their very letter, directing the reader to elevate his mind above the merely literal expression — above the natural ideas and images which compose its outward language, and to explore the truly Divine wisdom that is contained within. "Open Thou mine eyes, that I may behold the wondrous things out of thy law." "The law of the Lord is perfect; converting the soul." Perfect in the infinitude of its significance; and the universality of its adaptability to man's need! Worthy of God and suited to man! "Give ear, My people, to My law; incline your ear to the words of My mouth. I will open My mouth in a parable ; I will utter dark sayings of old." Then follows the summary of the history of Israel; and what must we infer if not that the whole history is one vast parable; that it was overruled by Divine Providence so that it might be a parable; that because it was such a parable it was therefore written; that because parabolic of spiritual things it has been preserved ; that because those spiritual things have permanence and relation to ourselves they may therefore be opened to us?

" History is philosophy teaching by example/' says Napoleon ; but this is more. It is spiritual philosophy teaching by symbols — a Divine drama; God the arranger of the types, His object the spiritual instruction of His children, the tribes of Israel and their enemies only the dramatis personce on the natural stage of exterior life, playing symbolic parts, and leaving their memories and their deeds pregnant types for universal man. A literal people, representing the spiritual people of God ; their history, the progressions, trials and conflicts, the triumphs and failures of the soul. " It is the spirit that quickeneth (saith the Lord); the flesh profiteth nothing; the words I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life." " O fools and slow of heart to believe (he said,) ought not Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into His glory? And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself." 2. The Apostles recognized this character of Holy Scripture. They declare that the deluge, the ark, and Noah and his sons, are "figures," types ; the " Jews after the flesh " were but types of the " Jews after the Spirit;" the tabernacle and its ceremonies were but "symbols of the true;" Jerusalem below the type " of Jerusalem that is above, the mother of us all ;" the earthly Zion the figure of the " Mount Zion, that city of the living God, the Heavenly Jerusalem ;" Abraham and his two sons were " an allegory ;" Melchisedec the type of Christ, and so were the high priests. 3. The Fathers in the primitive church developed the idea to great lengths. Mosheim, himself an opponent of allegorical interpretation, is compelled to confess that it was predominant in the early centuries of the church.

Indeed, no truth of history is more certain than this : that for fourteen hundred years few who received the Scriptures at all ever thought of denying that they contain mysteries in their bosom, which do not appear upon their surface. In the first three centuries the men most renowned for piety and erudition "all attributed a double sense to the words of Scripture, the one obvious and literal, the other hidden and mysterious, which lay concealed as it were under the veil of the outward letter. The former they treated with the utmost neglect, and turned the whole force of their genius and application to unfold the latter." In the following ages of the church it is true that some were dissatisfied with the interpretations which had been given by others, but the existence of a spiritual sense was not denied, nor the principle of allegorical interpretation abandoned. It prevailed with such constancy and predominance, down even to the fifteenth century, as to justify Bishop Home in stating " that such spiritual method did universally prevail in the church from the beginning" The value of such figurative interpretations as were thus furnished to the church is not the matter on which I would insist, but the catholicity of the doctrine of " a double sense." In proportion as this doctrine is denied, faith in the inspiration of Scripture has declined. In the ratio of men's belief that the literal sense of Scripture is its only sense, have they denied that it is the Word of God. If it contains no Divine and spiritual sense distinctly within the letter, large portions of it cannot be Divine in any sense. Its mistakes in science and history destroy its claims to infallibility as science and history ; its contradictions are inconsistent with its divine origin, except there be an underlying harmony ; and much of it is so obscure in its figures as to elude all the laws of rhetorical interpretation. The fundamental principle of modern Biblical criticism is, that " Scripture, like other books, has one meaning — the meaning which it had to the mind of the Prophet or Evangelist," and "no second or hidden sense different from that which appears upon the surface." From which it follows : 1. That it has no Divine sense at all, unless that be the same as human sense. 2. That much of the only sense which is contained in Scripture is non-sense. This is very different from the faith of St. Paul, who says, " our sufficiency is of God, who also hath made us able ministers of the New Testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit; for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life." The Fathers followed a better principle when they said, " the law of God is spiritual, and they have not the true law who do not take it spiritually ; " and " that the true meaning of the sacred writers was to be sought in the sense which is within the letter."

In the development of this subject, I should be obliged next to present and consider the chief objection to the admission of a spiritual sense of the Scriptures, namely, the absence of uniformity among the interpreters ; the great danger of vagaries of our own being foisted upon or pretendedly drawn from them — the lack of any rule of consistent interpretation. It must be borne in mind, however, that this objection applied with equal force to the gospel parables themselves, which are commonly esteemed to be the most perfect form of Divine teaching. It no more applies to the difficulties and dangers of spiritually interpreting the narratives, which are historical in form and parabolic in reality, than it does to those confessed parables which are the matchless mirrors of spiritual wisdom. The difference is only one of degree, not of kind. The objection, however, is a valid one, and if the spiritual sense of Holy Scripture dwells in its histories as in its parables, there must be some law of its inhabitation, which being known, would serve as a rule of accurate interpretation.

We must leave the subject here at this time, with a promise. In my next lecture I shall endeavor to show that there is an exact law of Correspondence between spiritual principles and natural phenomena ; that in this law all language has its origin and all symbolism its explanation ; that the Scriptures are divinely given in accordance with it, and the knowledge of the law becomes a key to their heavenly secrets.

Meanwhile, I wish to leave with you, if I may, an impression of the importance just now of determining the world's thought, away from the sensual criticism that can never enlighten but only confuse and extinguish faith. It seems to me of the utmost importance that faith in the plenary divine inspiration of the Scriptures should be established in reason and based in intelligence ; and I admit indeed that this can never be realized till the old naturalistic doctrine of historical and literal infallibility is destroyed ; and I admit further, that historical criticism is rapidly and effectually accomplishing that result. But when you have razed your old crazy habitation you have not built your new home. There is positive as well as negative work to be done; construction must follow upon destruction. And it seems to me time that men were encouraged to build a positive faith in spiritual truth as revealed from the Lord. Such a structure of faith can only be permanent, indeed, as it is founded upon rational doctrine; but a first and presently important exercise is the determination of thought to divine ideals. Leaving those things which are behind, press forward to those things which are before ; reach out to those grand universal spiritual truths which shine with the clearness of the day-spring in numerous places through the veil of the written Word, and resting in these, search for their illustration in the disguises of Scripture history and prophecy and song. Jewish history and Mosaic cosmogony is unworthy of your immortal vocation, but search rather for the wisdom of the Son of Man and the illustrations of spiritual experience in the " parables " and " dark sayings of old." The trials of skepticism, the deeper skepticism which overwhelms the heart in the daily struggles of life when God seems a myth and Providence a cheat, the clouds of sense which close in upon us now and again like the shades of eternal night; these can only be dissipated by lifting our thought up into the clearer air of spiritual contemplation and looking for divine instruction on the other side, that is, the inside of the Divine Parables of Eden, and Canaan, and Egypt, the history of Israel, the life of the Son of Man, and the vision of the Seer of Patmos. Believe me, that as the Scriptures are thus analyzed the function of criticism, important as it has been, will pale; and the obscurities of doubt, dark as they may be, will lift ; and the inquiries of faith, sincere as they are, will yet transcend what it hath entered into the heart of man to conceive. God and heaven close into these sacred parables, and as thought is determined from What is incidental and dead in itself, the gates will open into the heavenly places which reflect the counsels of God. Amen!

II. The Dootrike Of Correspond- Ence : A Key To Divine Parables

Who is worthy to open the book and loose the seals thereof?

Theee are two questions which must inevitably come to the front in the theological discussions of the near future; one respecting the Person of God : the other the existence of a Word of God. In regard to the first, the old theistic argument may for a time be successfully opposed to speculative atheism, but it will never prove satisfactory to its advocates, because the God which it postulates is unknown. If there be a God, the first likely hypothesis is, that He shows Himself exactly to instruct mankind; and the aspiration of theism to a creed of God, must, in proportion as it is earnest, search for Him where perhaps He may be found, in those Scriptures

which claim to be a revelation from Him.

Thus discussion must, ultimately, pass over to the question as to the existence of a Word of God ; and the real question here, is not as to the truth of the science or history in the Bible, but as to the existence of a Spiritual Sense from which it is divinely inspired and holy in every part. The Bible considered in its letter, and from its letter alone, does not justify the expectations which men have a right to base upon its claim. This hjts been clearly and repeatedly admitted in the past, and is the present boast of literal criticism. " If we who profess Christianity," said Dr. Wordsworth, " do not recognize the life-giving virtue of the Spirit in the Old Testament, we cannot expect to retain the letter of the Old Testament; we shall soon lose our belief in its unity, integrity, veracity and inspiration." The prediction has been verified. There is no intelligible and definite belief in either Old or New Testament as in any real sense the Word of God; neither indeed, can there be, unless the Bible be a book of Divine Parables containing a distinct series of spiritual truths related to the ideas of the letter, as the soul of man to his earthly body. If this be denied in the Church, what it calls the Word of God must fall into the hands of the Critics, whose method is to wrap it in the grave-clothes of literalism, with the fragrant spices of a few fine compliments on its venerable character, "as the manner of the Jews is to bury." No expedients can prevail to ward off this issue. In the " battle between the Word of God and the Critics" the real question should be distinctly presented. Does the Bible contain an internal spiritual sense distinct from the letter? If not, it will be taken away from the Church altogether; nothing can save it. If it does, there must be some law of its inhabitation, which being known would serve as a rule of accurate interpretation.