Light on the last things

Front matter

LIBRARY QF CONGRESS;

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$ UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

Chapter I. Page

New truth for a new age ; the extraordinary mental activity and increased knowledge of our times a preparation for a new disclosure of holy truth from the Word of God, through a better understanding of its meaning 9

Chapter II

Reality and extent of the other world; all the previous generations of men on our earth, now living in societies there ; illustrations from the Bible 17

Chapter III

Seership, or the sight opened ; the seers of the Old Testament men who had the capacity of looking into the other world ; its nearness to this world ; the 4 ' Visions of Angels" effected by the opening of the ''sight" in men 25

Chapter IV

The spiritual body contained within the natural body, being withdrawn from it at the decease of the latter; and man rises, almost immediately at death, in a perfect human form, into the spiritual world. Illustrations from Scripture 31

Chapter V

Proofs from the Old Testament showing that " Sheol," being a place of the departed into which good and evil alike went, can mean neither heaven nor hell, but an intermediate world of spirits 43

VI CONTENTS.

CHAPTEE VI.

Page Proofs of the same with respect to c ' Hades " from the New

Testament. The parable of the wheat and tares :

representations of the Apocalypse 50

Chapter VII

That intermediate world needed, as a place where the u Judgment" occurs, and where the well-disposed are instructed and prepared for Heaven. The Truth judges, while men are left in moral freedom : but the separation between good and evil becomes at length complete and final. G-od punishes none ; but the evil cast themselves down 60

Chapter VIII

The history of that intermediate world, drawn from Scripture. Brief view of the Apocalypse : most of the scenes < described in that book occurred in Hades; instances cited in illustration 78

Chapter IX

History of u Sheol " under the old dispensations. Several " Judgments" have been effected in it ; one in the days of Noah, another in the days of Lot 89

Chapter X

An important part of our Lord's work lay in Hades ; consisting of a "Judgment," or separation of evil spirits from the good, the overthrow of the infernal powers, the elevation of the good, and the consequent deliverance of men from the bondage of hell. Fulness of the prophecies in this respect. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Malachi, etc 101

CHAPTER XL

The Lord's work on the unclean spirits, when He appeared. The gospel history. His intercourse with, and opera-

CONTENTS. Vll

Page tion in, the unseen world, constant and important ;

resulting in a u Judgment," the overthrow of the infernal crew, and the redemption or deliverance of mankind 112

Chapter XII

The end of the world not foretold in Scripture ; but only the " Consummation of the Age ;" i.e., the closing of the apostolic dispensation, and the beginning of another, viz. : the apocalyptic dispensation or age of the New Jerusalem 126

The perpetuity of the earth argued further, from its own

indestructibility, and the divine purposes in regard to it. 157

Chapter XVI

The visible heavens not to be destroyed. The stars too large to fall to the earth. Astronomy demonstrates the permanent stability of the planetary system. The earth to remain forever, as a field or plane for the fulfilment of all the glorious prophecies with respect to the Church 164

V1H CONTENTS.

Chapter XVII. Page

The " Clouds" in which the Lord is predicted to make His second appearing, are the symbols in the letter of His Word, which cloud or veil the truth of the prophecy, until it is fulfilled ; and when it is fulfilled and the meaning explained, He then comes, according to the intent of the prophecy 170

Chapter XVIII

The u Eye" meant is the eye of the mind, or the rational thought, to which He now comes, in a new age of light, in a new and wonderful disclosure of sacred and heavenly truth. Illustrations from the signs of the times 173

Chapter XIX

The mourning of the tribes of the earth is the opposition felt by the evil conservatism of the age, to the organic changes which the establishment of truth, justice, and true Christian love, requires 184

Chapter XX

The New Jerusalem a New Church on earth. The end of the apostolic dispensation came about the middle of the last century ; the Last Judgment occurred in the World of Spirits in 1757 ; the second coming of the Lord effected by the revelation of the new heavenly truth ; the New Jerusalem, the real Church of the Future, already begmning to be established. Its platform of catholic doctrine . . . , 187

Chapter 1. New Truth For A New Age

"And I saw heaven opened." — Rev. xtx. 11.

The mental activity of our age is without a parallel in history. The human mind is wider awake than ever before. Rational inquiry, upon all subjects, is pursued with greater animation and a quicker intelligence, than it used to be in the former ages. Since the middle of the last century a new era, — by common consent, — has dawned in human affairs ; and human society everywhere wears a new aspect.

As we look abroad and contemplate the scene, in its multiform details, we can see, all around us, the words of the prophecy, — " Behold, I make all things new," — in the process of rapid fulfilment.

Even before it began, the Seer of the New Jerusalem had declared that the movement would come, and had laid open in his writings the spiritual causes which were to produce it. He had announced that

1* the things foretold in the Book of Revelation are at this day fulfilled ; that the Last Judgment predicted in the Scriptures was executed in the World of Spirits, intermediate between heaven and hell, in the year 1757. This, consisting as it did of a separation — a simple separation — of the good from among the evil, and of the evil from the good, sending each to their permanent abodes — above and below, cleared that intermediate world of its old inhabitants, thus removing the dark cloud of bad influences which hung upon mankind, leaving that world open and free for the descent, through it, of pure and good influences to men out of heaven, or through heaven from the Lord.

And, in connection with this, he announced, too, the second Advent of the Lord ; taking place, not as a personal and visible return of Him to our earth to destroy the world, but coming, as He is represented here in the 19th chapter of Revelation, as "the Word of God," i. e.< in and through a fuller revelation of His own Divine Truth ; by an exposition of the deeper meanings of His Word, from beginning to end ; by the disclosure of the exact meaning of all divine prophecy ; by unfolding, in his writings, the states of the departed and of life among the angels.

These events, coming together, mark the con> mencement of a New Dispensation, indicated in so much divine prophecy, and looked forward to in all ages of the Christian Church as the " latter day glory ;" predicted in Daniel as the divine or heavenly kingdom to be established in the latter days, to endure forever ; and signified by the New Jerusalem in the Book of Revelation.

It is these great causes, — instruments in the hand of Divine Providence, and vivified by a constant influx descending from Him, — that, as we believe, have inaugurated this New Age and are pushing forward its developments. Look at the vast preparations which are and have been making everywhere around us for the introduction of some new state of human society, and the commencement of some new phase of the world's history; old abuses everywhere melting away and being removed out of sight ; a quickened sense of justice and of right everywhere prevailing, so that institutions of all kinds are forced — sooner or later — to square themselves by them; benevolence towards the unfortunate classes everywhere felt; political and civil freedom coming to be accorded to the masses, nearly the world over; great movements taking place in the religious world towards the liberalization of sentiment, and the exaltation of a true Christian life as the great thing to be aimed at; intelligence quickened and illustrated by vast stores of new and extraordinary knowledge ; a new continent given to the world in the discovery and settlement of America ; and a new sky given in the discovery of the Copernican system and the revelations of astronomy, as preparations for this new age ; and, since, a new opening of the physical earth to our view, in the revelations of geology. Later still, by the explorations of every science known to man, thought is excited and inquiry stimulated, until at length, a new and occult universe has been discovered, latent, and hidden, as it were, within the other. The invisible and imponderable agents of nature have been drawn forth from their lurking-places and harnessed in the service of man. Steam, heat, electricity, magnetism, have become working powers and available agents in lifting man to a higher plane. They labor for him. against the impediments of space and time until those impediments seem well-nigh extinguished ; for, to-day, all Christendom, with a large part of heathendom, is brought together in momentary communication, like the population of a single city, or, more, perhaps, like one vast human body ; its ramified network of telegraphs acting like an immense nervous system, radiating from the great capitals of the world as from so many ganglionic centres of vital force-, binding the whole together into one body of sensation, and into a common consciousness of thought and feeling.

He who supposes that all these grand developments mean only physical and civil progress, has not yet mastered the great problems of the sacred philosophy of history. Who does not see at a glance, that great spiritual forces are at work, turning the wheels of events, and that the end and drift of all these mighty achievements is spiritual and moral progress ? Religion is, after all, the very core and centre of every man's life ; and, hence, under the constant supervision of Divine Providence, the church is the great axle upon which the wheel of human history revolves. A new, more enlightened, and better phase of the Church Universal is the object and final goal of all these preparations.

This expansion of natural knowledge is needed to form a basis for the reception and understanding of spiritual knowledge. The grand analogies of the universe hold good throughout. The former revelations of heavenly truth were conformed to the limited range of men's natural knowledge. There is just as vast a universe of new spiritual knowledge to be opened and revealed to human thought, as these later centuries have opened of natural science. But the natural must come first, to enlarge the range of ideas, break up narrow prejudices, illustrate the intelligence, quicken the thirst for knowledge, and furnish visible analogies in which exalted truths and great spiritual realities may be seen and viewed as in so many mirrors of reflection.

How could man comprehend, appreciate, or realize the vast, complicated, and subtle system of forces, which play through and operate from the spiritual world, until he had discovered, as if by his own intelligence, something of that mysterious system of invisible forces which play upon and mould the phenomena of the material world ? How could he appreciate a revelation concerning the powers and functions of the spiritual body until he had known something of the wonderful and inexplicable things contained in the physiologies and chemistries of the mortal body ? or, how could he be ready to believe, or intelligent enough to understand, that, everywhere within and beneath the letter of the "Word of God, there lies concealed an inexhaustible mine of spiritual and heavenly truth, until, after having explored the visible universe, he had found the march of physical science to be only the constant unveiling of hidden mystery, from beginning to end ? Not a square yard of sky, to which he has directed his optic tube, nor a foot of earth decomposed, but has opened to him concealed wonders of which his senses never told him, though he had enjoyed their observations for thousands of years.

Hence, we conclude, that a new revelation of holy truth, instead of being at this day improbable, is, on the other hand, the very thing to have been expected, and that a new and better understanding of Sacred Scripture is precisely what all this great movement of natural intelligence seems to foreshadow and predict. We may as soon suppose that an intelligent human parent at this day among us would withhold from his children the common information afforded by our schools and books, as that the great Heavenly Parent of us all should withhold from the great family of men the new spiritual knowledge suited to the advanced maturity at which they have now arrived.

He has not done so. The revelation has been made, and we have it. According to the prediction of our text, heaven has been opened, and the doctrinal system of angels has been given to men. The light of the New Jerusalem is beginning to shine in the world for the benefit of all who desire or are willing to walk by the light of it.

I shall be able to mention but very few of the things contained in the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg. The most I can expect to do is to lead inquiring minds into the vestibule of the great temple of truth ; leaving them to enter subsequently and explore for themselves. There are no writings which so richly repay the reader for the trouble of perusal as these.

We are a reading people. We almost literally devour books — novels, poetry, biography, history, philosophy. There is a plentiful supply of very good, popular, religious literature; and yet I am able to testify, after many years experience, both of what is in these writings and of what other books contain, that there is no literature in the world — outside the Bible — equal to them ; no writings that can be found where so much truth can be learned ; none where so much elevating thought, and so much satisfying mental food obtained, or with so little labor. Considered even as a literary and philosophic achievement, they are more worthy of perusal than any other volumes that can be taken from the shelf. And, as the great Atlantic cable, though apparently a failure at first, yet, in the very nature and progress of things, was sure to be a final success, so these writings are sure to attract, more and more, the attention of mankind, insuring careful and candid perusal, until they form the connecting medium between the two great continents of mind; — until religion and philosophy are bound together in one indissoluble, rational tie, and the thought of men be brought into harmony and correspondence with the thought of heaven.

These doctrines are not to be blindly received. Like all real truths, they are addressed to the intellectual understanding and quickened intelligence of men. It is important that religious truth, especially, be received into a perfectly free ground in the will, and be rationally implanted ; that so the religious affections can act in unison with the reasonable convictions of the mind, and the whole man be fed and elevated.

In exploring such subjects as those which are now before us, the great requisite is to pass, as far as possible, out of the region of obscure, vague, and indefinite thought into one of intelligent illustration — of clear ideas, and definite, fully formed conceptions. By a little patient thinking, a great deal more may be known on subjects of this kind than those who have never examined them are at all aware.

CHAPTER IT.

REALITY AND EXTENT OF THE OTHER WORLD. 11 — A great multitude, which no man could number." — Rev. vn. 9.

The Apostle Paul frequently speaks of " the powers of the world to come," and of the great influence of those " powers " upon us, either for good or for evil ; while the Sacred Scripture throughout is full of such references and allusions.

We shall be helped to realize the actualness (so to speak) of that world, by simply considering, for a while, its extent. As we thoughtfully contemplate its vastness, the sense and impression of its reality, too, will gradually deepen. In Swedenborg's work on Heaven and Hell, a chapter is devoted to what he calls " The Immensity of Heaven," in which a great many interesting and instructive things are contained; among others, this one, that in it (i. e., in heaven) the great mercy and goodness of the Lord are displayed in His receiving into it, not only good Christians of all denominations, but also all good men — every one who has in his heart looked up to a divine Being, and led a good, sincere, honest, and orderly life, according to the best of his knowledge, in whatever age of the world he may have lived, or from whatever country he may have come ; whether he were Jew or Gentile, or whatever may have been his religion while in the world.

This thought alone will suggest to us something of how immense the present population of heaven must be ; for it is constantly and rapidly receiving additions, every year and every day. And when we add to this another fact taught us in these writings, namely, that all infants likewise are received there, and educated under the auspices of the Lord ; and reflect that, according to extensive medical statistics, it is calculated that about half the human race die in infancy (i. e., under five years of age), we have another vast source from which the population of that realm has been increased.

The Scriptures frequently refer to this vastness. When the Psalmist would give an idea of the infinitude or incomprehensible greatness of the Creator, he expresses it by saying that " even the heaven of heavens cannot contain Him ;" thus making use, for comparison, of heaven, as the greatest among known things for immensity or vastness.

And the Apostle John, in the Revelation — when, as we read, a portion only of that population tvas opened to his view — speaks of them in these well-known words : " After this, I beheld, and lo, a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, and palms in tlieir hands." Now, when we consider that this multitude included none of the angelic host, none of the sealed among Jews or Christians, but was composed of " the nations" i. e., of Gentiles, and of people from beyond Christendom, we can see what a fragment they were of the inhabitants of heaven ; and yet the Apostle declares them to be a multitude so great as to defy the powers of human reckoning to compute ; that is, for human thought to realize or comprehend by any definite expression. So in many other places, especially in the Revelation, are the inhabitants of heaven spoken of as immense in numbers, existing in vast concourses or communities, and constantly receiving accessions.

But even the whole heavenly world is only one department of the spiritual world. There are vast populations in other departments of it. There are those spirits who are not yet prepared for heaven, but are on the way thither. There are those who do not like to be in heaven — who do not love its light, or its order, or its goodness — who a great deal rather obey the impulses of their own selfish desires than obey the Lord and His holy truth ; and so they have residences apart. And there is a very great multitude of them. In the very nature of the case, viewed rationally and from what we see and know of human nature in this world, the population of those communities there, who choose evil rather than good for themselves, must be immense. So much for the extent of that world.

Let us remember, too, its permanency — the abiding character of its communities and their inhabitants.

The population of our earth increases. In two thousand or twenty-five hundred years it has gone up, it is computed, from something over 200,000,000 to nearly 1,200,000,000. The inhabitants of China, it is estimated, in a much less time than that, have risen from about 20,000,000 to over 400,000,000. In our own country we are witnesses of a similar augmentation of numbers to a remarkable degree. Our city, within our own memories, has largely increased. We have seen it grow and expand before our eyes.

And yet, while all this takes place in our earthly communities, think how short the stay of men in this world is, after all ! How many we lose every year by death ! And in how short a period the whole mass is removed, and a new generation is on the stage!

In this respect, our countries form a striking contrast to the communities in the spiritual world. They do not lose any of their inhabitants by death. They are receiving accessions as rapidly as births occur in this world; and what they get they keep. When a man who has gone into the spiritual world enters a heavenly society, to abide permanently as a member of it, he remains there forever, he goes no more out. Hence we can see with what constant rapidity those communities must be swelling in size by the increase of numbers. Swedenborg in one place says, that to gO from any part of the natural world to any part of the spiritual world, is like going from a small country village into a large and populous city, so immense is the concourse of spirits one everywhere encounters.

In every permanent community in that world there are, of course, those who have been there for ages. Those communities began to be formed when history began ; — as soon as men began to be removed from this world to that. Hence, many of them are several thousands of years old. There are the antediluvian patriarchs, still alive. And their descendants, the world's population in all the ages since ; — perhaps a thousand generations of men. The world's past has not been blotted out, it has only been transferred to a still more living scene of action. The great nations of antiquity are all there, — still active and flourishing: the men and women who formed the successive populations of Babylon and Nineveh, of Thebes and Memphis, of Greece, Rome, and Carthage.

Our Lord, in His day, to the Sadducees, who denied that there is any resurrection, i. £., that there is any immortality to the soul, or any life after death, said, — "Now that the dead are raised, even Moses showed at the bush, when he called the Lord the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, for God is not a God of the dead, but of the living i for, to Him, all are living." They had never died. They had simply put off their external bodies, their mortal part, and risen into the spiritual world. And there they were, and are, alive, and all their ancestors, and all their descendants, with them.

22 .REALITY AKD EXTENT OF THE OTHER WORLD.

Members of the Jewish Church lived in the expectation of seeing those patriarchs, as well as their own immediate ancestors, when they should go into the spiritual world. Hence the phrase so frequently occurring in Scripture, in relation to a man when he deceased, that "he was gathered unto his fathers," meaning thereby that he had gone to live with his ancestors in the spiritual world. And, in the 14th chapter of Isaiah, the different nations and people in that world, who had gone thither from the great oriental empires, are represented as rising up to meet the King of Babylon at his decease, and greeting him on his entrance into their world.

On the mount of transfiguration, as we read in the Gospel, Moses came and stood by the side of our Lord, and the three disciples saw him. Moses had been gone about fifteen hundred years, and all that time had been living in the spiritual world. The prophet Elijah, also, stood there, and was seen by them. And he had been in the other world a little less than a thousand years. And, so, one of the angels who was seen by John, in the Revelation, with whom he conversed, and who, as he says, showed him many of the things seen in that remarkable vision, told him that he was a human being, like himself, and that he had been, when in this world, one of the former prophets. Now, whichever of those prophets he may have been, he must then have been living in the spiritual world at least six or seven hundred years.

This, concerning the spiritual world of our own

REALITY AOT> EXTENT OF THE OTHER WORLD. 23

earth. But we are taught in our writings that there are other earths in the universe; that there are multitudes of other planets, some in our solar system, but vastly many more beyond our solar system ; that nearly all of them are covered with in* habitants, as our earth is, that being the object for which the planets are created, — that they may be peopled with inhabitants. We are told, too, that those inhabitants are men, — human beings like ourselves, — though in great variety, even as there is a great variety in the inhabitants of our own globe ; and thus that this saying of the Lord in the Gospel is true, in its largest sense, — " And other sheep have I, also, which are not of this fold ; — them also must I bring, that there may be one fold and one shepherd."

In the highest or universal heaven all are gathered under one Shepherd, and into one fold, no matter from what earth or planet they may have come.

These things in regard to the visible heavens, or floating bodies of our sky, are confirmed by the discoveries of astronomy, and by the rational conclusions of astronomers founded thereon. We have introduced the topic briefly, here, merely to bring into view, in passing, some conception of the vastness, or real immensity of the universe of the Creator, — of the small province in it which our world constitutes, and of the limited number of which the present population of our globe consists, — when compared to the untold myriads included in the

24 REALITY AOT) EXTENT OF THE OTHER WORLD.

entire family of human beings, as that is seen and viewed by the eyes of the Lord our God ; or, even by the eyes of angels.

Our principal interest of course must be confined to the spiritual world of our own earth, and it is to this, therefore, that I propose to direct the rest of our attention and inquiry.

OR THE SIGHT OPENED. 25

Chapter III. Seership, Or The Sight Opened

" He that is now called a Prophet was beforetime called a Seer." -1 Sam. ix. 9.

A question which naturally arises with many, is, Where is this vast spiritual world, and its thronging populations ?

Under the instructions of the New Jerusalem, we answer, it is not far off. It is not located in any physically remote region of the universe. It is near by, and close around us. Internally, and as to our minds or spirits, we are in constant association with it, and our spiritual associations are according to our affinities. They depend for their character upon our own states of thought and feeling;. We are always in communication with just those portions of the spiritual world to which our prevailing desires incline us. Here, in this world we naturally draw about us those with whom we are in sympathy and for whom we feel an attraction, while we avoid and separate from those for whom we feel an aversion. It is so with respect to our internal association with

26 SEERSHIP, OR THE SIGHT OPENED.

inhabitants of the spiritual world. We draw near to those whose association we love, and they draw near to us, in mutual sympathy, while those spirits, who are widely different from us in character and feeling, have no bond or attraction by which they can, or desire to, come and associate with us.

This nearness of the spiritual world is constantly set forth in the Bible. And, as we read, it was in the early ages very frequently rendered visible. All divine revelations come, of course, from that world, being communications from inhabitants of that world to inhabitants of this. Hence, whenever a revelation has been made, it has been effected by an opening made between this world and that, a lifting, so to speak, of the thin veil which separates the two worlds from each other. It is most properly called an opening ; for it is effected by an opening in men of perceptions which are usually closed up, that is, by an opening of the spiritual senses.

Every man has these senses, by virtue of having been born an immortal spirit. They are the senses which come into operation the moment the physical body is laid aside, and man enters the spiritual world. They are the senses by which he then holds his intercourse with his fellow-beings, by which he sees, hears, touches and converses with spirits in that world, as he formerly held intercourse or conversed with men in this world. They are the eyes, the ears, and the hands of his spiritual body ; which body is within the mortal body while he lives here in the world ; but, as a bird in the shell has