Jesus
of Nazareth, as a person, he regards simply as a great teacher of this
sect of philosophers; and in the Christ of the New Testament, a being
endowed with supernatural powers, he sees a personification of the
Spirit of Truth. The literal history of a series of supernatural
events occurring in Judea two thousand years ago he transforms into
sublime teachings of the great truths inherent in human nature, and
which, wherever man is, are there forever reenacting the same
drama,--in the assumed history of Jesus, divinely portrayed,--not, if
rightly understood, as an actual history of any one man, but as a
symbolic narration, representing the spiritual life of all men.
Many grave reflections are forced upon us in contemplating a view so
original of a subject upon which apparently nothing more remained to be
said. It becomes not only the question, How will this work be received
by the religious world? but, How, in a true spirit of inquiry,
_ought_ it to be received? The theory of the author is peculiarly
simple, but in its simplicity lies an exceeding beauty. The idea that
the Scriptures are symbolical has always found adherents, but never
such an advocate. Swedenborg affirmed this truth, and invented a
formal mode of interpretation, upon which he wrote his multitudinous
octavos, themselves mystical volumes, and whose effect has been to
involve a subject already obscure in still deeper darkness, and to
transfer the adoration of a small portion of the Christian world from
the letter of the Scriptures to the letter of Swedenborg,--a
questionable benefit to his followers, in spite of the many important
truths which this great man advocated.
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