Samuel Mills Warren

“ Man is an organ of life, and God alone is life. God infuses His life into the organ and all its parts, as the sun infuses its heat into a tree and all its parts. And God grants man a sense that the life in himself is as if it were his own; and is desirous that he should have such a sense of it, to the intent that he may live, as of himself, according to the laws of order —which are as many in number as the precepts of the Word—and may thus dispose himself to receive the love of God. ”

“ He came to me from the garden and said, "If you will come with me into our paradise you will hear and see wonderful things?" And I went with him. And he then said to me, "These whom you see (for there were many) are all in the love of truth, and thence in the light of wisdom. There is also a palace here which we call the Temple of Wisdom. But no one can see it who believes himself to be very wise; still less one who believes himself to be wise enough; and least of all one who believes that he is wise from himself. ”

“ It is but just here to say that Swedenborg does not profess to give all the internal meaning of which the Word is the repository. So far from it, he represents the Word to be infinite; to contain even profounder depths of wisdom than can be expressed in the language of men; adapted, by successive unfoldings, to the angels of all the heavens,—to the highest state of intelligence that finite minds can ever, to all eternity, attain; and extending upwards even to God Himself, as the rays of light extend to the sun. ”

“ Those who are in love that is truly conjugial, after death when they become angels, return to their youth and early manhood. However worn out with age, husbands become young men; and wives, however worn out with age, become young women. Each consort returns to the flower and into the joys of the age in which conjugial love begins to exalt the life with new delights, and to inspire sportiveness, for the sake of prolification. ”

“ The Fifth Commandment.
"Thou shalt not kill." This commandment not to kill, in the natural sense means not to kill man, and not to inflict upon him any wound of which he may die, and also not to mutilate his body; and it means, moreover, not to bring any deadly evil upon his name and fame, since with many fame and life go hand in hand. In a wider natural sense murder means enmity, hatred, and revenge, which breathe the spirit of murder; for murder lies concealed within them, as fire in wood beneath the ashes. Infernal fire is nothing else ”

“ If the attention is directed to the commonest things on earth, an image of regeneration is presented; in the wonderful transformation of silkworms and many worms into nymphs and butterflies; and of other insects which in time are furnished with wings. To which yet more trifling things may be added; it is represented by the desire of certain birds to plunge into the water to wash and cleanse themselves,—after which, like the nightingales, they return to their songs. In a word, the whole world, from its first things to its last, is full of representations and types of regeneration. ”

“ For all the angels are affections of love in the human form; the governing affection itself shines forth from their faces; and their raiment is derived to them from the affection and in accordance with it. It is therefore said in heaven that his own affection clothes every one. The husband appeared of an age intermediate between manhood and youth. From his eyes shone forth a light, sparkling from the wisdom of love. ”

“ All doctrine is called truth; and its good also is truth, because it only teaches it. But everything of life according to those things which doctrine teaches is called good; doing the truths of doctrine likewise is good. Thus is the church distinguished from religion. But where there is doctrine and not life it cannot be said that there is either a church or religion; because doctrine looks to life, as one with itself,— just as do truth and good, faith and charity, wisdom and love, understanding and will. There is therefore no church where there is doctrine and not life. ”

“ In general, with the married there is an inner beauty of the countenance; for the man takes from the wife the beautiful ruddiness of her love, and the wife from the man the brilliant lustre of his wisdom. For there the two consorts as to souls are united; and there appears besides a human fulness in each. This is in heaven; for there are no marriages elsewhere [in the spiritual world] , but beneath the heavens are only nuptial bonds which are made and broken. ”

“ Nay, it thinks and breathes scarcely anything but combats; its common delight or governing affection is to conquer, and when it conquers it boasts of victory. For this reason it is described by the wild ass, or the mule of the wilderness or ass of the forest, which cannot abide with others. Such a life is the life of truth without good, yea the life of faith without charity. ”

“ Besides, I cannot see any difference between a king of Sweden who possesses absolute power and an idol; for all turn themselves heart and soul as well to the one as to the other; they obey his will, and worship what passes from his mouth. ”

“ Has any special messenger of Divine truth of whom there is any record, ever been received by the children of men with less mistrust, denounced with less violence, or endured less persecution than he? Moses, the prophets, Christ, and His apostles, were all in turn treated more or less as public enemies, whose teachings threatened the peace of society. Divine truth always brings to the average man, not peace but the sword. Every stage of our spiritual growth is the fruit of a combat and a victory over some prejudice, passion, or unhallowed propensity. ”

“ The Erroneous Belief that the Jews are again to be Chosen.
The character of that nation is such, that above all other nations they adore external things, thus idols; and that they wish to know nothing at all about internal things. For of all nations they are the most avaricious; and avarice such as theirs, by which gold and silver are loved for the sake of gold and silver, and not for the sake of any use, is an affection the most earthly, and draws the mind down entirely into and immerses it in the body, and so closes the interiors that nothing at all of faith and love from heaven can enter. ”

“ With those who are in charity it is quite otherwise. Hereby are these two kinds of men distinguished, especially when they come into the other life. With those who are in no charity the spirit of hatred is then manifest in every least thing. They desire to examine every one, yea, to judge every one, and wish nothing more earnestly than to discover evil,—continually purposing in mind to condemn, punish, and torment. But those who are in charity hardly see another's evil, but observe all that is good and true in him, and what is evil and false they construe into good. Such are all the angels ”

“ For when a man dies, who does not say afterwards that his soul or spirit is in heaven or in hell? And who does not say of his own infants who are dead, that they are in heaven? And who does not comfort the sick, or one condemned to death, by the assurance that he will shortly come into another life? ”

“ It is well known that there is vital heat in man, and in every animal, but its origin is not known. Every one speaks of it from conjecture. Those, therefore, who have no knowledge of the correspondence of natural things with spiritual, have ascribed it either to the heat of the sun, or to the activity of particles, or to life itself; but as they did not know what life is, they proceeded no further than barely to say this. But he who knows that there is a correspondence of love and its affections with, the heart and its derivations, may know that love is the origin of vital heat. ”

“ This left Swedenborg financially independent, and completely master of his time; a condition fatal to the usefulness of a large portion of mankind, but one which is indispensible to the highest order of human achievement. No one can do the greatest things nor even his best in working for himself.
The human mind is, no doubt providentially, equipped with a wise mistrust of all pretensions to supernatural, or exclusive knowledges of any sort. It is a mistrust which protects us from the acceptance of much that is absurd and pernicious. ”

“ The works that he did before, however good they might appear in the external form, were all works of the love of self and of the world, in which there lay concealed hatred if they were not rewarded. So long as hatred is not removed so long man is merely natural, and a merely natural man remains in all his hereditary evil; nor can he become spiritual until hatred, with its root, which is the love of ruling over all, is removed; for the fire of heaven, which is spiritual love, cannot flow in so long as the fire of hell, which is hatred, opposes and precludes it. ”

“ Who at this day can think that he who is in the love of adultery does not believe anything of the Word, nor therefore anything of the church? nay, that in his heart he denies God? and on the other hand, that he who is in the chaste love of marriage is in charity, and in faith, and in love to God? and that the chastity of marriage makes one with religion, and the lasciviousness of adultery makes one with naturalism? ”

“ It is like the love of parents for their children, in that they do them good from love to them, not for the sake of themselves, but for their sakes. This is plainly seen in the love of a mother towards infants. ”