Swedenborg: Harbinger of the New Age of the Christian Church. Benjamin Worcester

age, called by Swedenborg the Ancient Church, though no longer to be led by the angels of infancy who do always behold the face of the Father in heaven, were yet willing to be instructed of heaven through their wise men learned in ancient ​traditions. With growing power of thought and imagination their successive generations developed language, song, and art—notably that of building—during thousands or myriads of years, over all central and southwestern Asia and northeastern Africa. Of their religion, at first heaven-derived and spiritual, we have remains in the early Hebrew Scriptures and in the sacred books of India, Persia, Egypt, and Turkestan. On the remains of their language all our modern languages are based. Of their prowess in building, the rock-temples of India and the pyramids of Egypt bear enduring witness, though of the period of religious decadence. Of their art the remains left in Greece by a late offshoot of the same stock, are still unequalled by modern genius. Grecian art and philosophy with Roman statesmanship have furnished the basis of modern civilization, as the Gospel of our Lord has furnished the inspiration—even as we see exemplified in the evolution of the heaven-aspiring Christian cathedral.

      In the discriminating thought of this Ancient Church at its best estate it distinguished and reverenced divers attributes of the Deity. In its ​ these attributes were personified and imaged, till in its downfall the images themselves were worshipped and idolatry was becoming universal. Then lest the knowledge of the One God and of His laws of life should be lost from the face of the earth, midway in both time and space between the erection of the pyramids and that of the Grecian temples, in the very centre of civilization, a new race was planted, in the land of Canaan—the old home perhaps of Adam and Eve—a race of Shemitic, still Noachian stock, a simple, nomadic race of unequalled persistence, fitting them to receive and preserve in integrity a new revelation of the Creator and His laws in concrete form—even graven in stone. These laws accompanied by many ritual statutes, with remains of the earlier Scriptural records, with the true yet symbolic history of this people, with their songs of prayer and praise, with prophecy from beginning to end of the coming of the Messiah who should bring dire judgment on their nation for their sins while bringing eternal salvation to those who would accept His redemption—all this was the spiritual legacy of this Noachian age to the ages to come. Says Schlegel—

​"The significant brevity of the first pages of the Mosaic history involves much profound truth for us in these later ages . . . did we but know how to extract the simple sense with like simplicity. ... In general the whole tenor of the Mosaic writings, like the existence of the Hebrew nation, was formed for futurity. . . . So the whole Hebrew people may in a lofty sense be called prophetic, and have been really so in their historical existence and destiny."^[1] "The Hebrew tongue was eminently adapted to the high spiritual destination of the Hebrew people, and was a fit organ of the prophetic revelation and promises imparted to that nation"^[2]

      The ever deplorable conduct of the Jewish leaders in crucifying Him who came to save them ended the leadership of that church in the spiritual development of mankind. But their traditions, their Scriptures remained to become the framework of the new church of the Lord, itself the prototype of the New Jerusalem, His final tabernacle with men. And we are never to forget the maternal service of the Hebrew Church for the birth of its Lord into the world, first in the written ​Word and then in its fulfilment in the flesh, our ever present Lord. The maternal office was not more real materially than it was spiritually. It was foretold to Eve with reference to her seed. It was repeated to Abraham who rejoiced to see the day coming. Its fulfilment was the theme of the prophets and was voiced in the Psalms of David. Abraham's obedience, repeated in Mary's Behold the handmaid of the Lord: be it unto me as thou hast said, furnished the fit germ for the human life of our Lord. And Mary said, My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God, my Saviour.

      Our Lord's coming in the flesh bringing the light of the Divine presence down among men caused a judgment on those to whom the light came, both in this world and in the world of spirits where the evil were assaulting the gates of heaven itself. His resistance to their assault upon His human nature at the same time cast them down in the spirit world to their home beneath, even as He declared—I beheld Satan as lightning fallen from heaven. But the Lord came not merely for judgment. He came also for a light to enlighten the Gentiles. The Gentiles were all people ​outside of the Jewish race. And indeed it was among these outside nations that His light was chiefly accepted and His Church established, on the faith that He was the Christ, the Son of the living God. In Him at last was seen Man in the image and likeness of God. He first did the will of the Father on earth as it is done in heaven, therein giving man the example for all time, abiding in him and by His Holy Spirit giving him the will to follow, as he will receive it. The world was ripe for the beginning of this realization of what living in the image and likeness of God might mean, as is evident from its marvellous spread during the early centuries; but only for the beginning. The young man thought he desired eternal life, the life of the kingdom of heaven. But when told to renounce all that he had of this world, he was very sorrowful, for he had great possessions. It was not difficult for the first disciples to give up worldly possessions, of which they had no great store—to forsake their nets and follow their Lord. But for this they at once asked what reward they should have in heaven, and disputed among themselves which should there be the greatest. Doubtless in this claim for ​reward in His kingdom the Lord saw the tares sown with the wheat and foresaw the sad end of this first age of His Church. None knew so well as He the slow and painful steps by which man must be led out of the natural self-seeking life of this world into the spiritual self-devoting life of the Father's kingdom.

      Man was yet but in early youth. A great step was gained in teaching him to set his heart, not on the riches and honors of earth where moth and rust doth corrupt, but on the treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt and thieves do not break through nor steal. The tares must be let alone until a riper age, when their fruit should be manifest and the developed reason should be ready to bind them in bundles and burn them. But this acceptance of the Gospel mainly through fear of torment or hope of reward in heaven gave every opportunity to self-seeking leaders for gaining control of their converts to their own personal advantage. Retaining the Gospel in their own hands, in a language which none but themselves could read, they devised creeds and canons to maintain their own supremacy. They took away the key of ​knowledge. Entering not into the kingdom themselves, them that would enter they hindered, all to their own worldly gain.

      Luther and his associates revolted from this prostitution of the religion of our Lord, so graphically represented to John in vision as Babylon the great adulteress. And in two centuries they and their followers did much to restore a true conception of the life of the kingdom and of the duty of the Church. But in controverting the error that heaven could be merited by undergoing the penances and paying the tribute imposed by the Church of Rome, substituting therefor belief only in the saving grace of Jesus Christ, Luther went too far. To emphasize the distinction between his Reformed Church and the Roman Catholic, he declared charity and good works to be of no avail for salvation.

      In the Protestant wing of the Church belief in the vicarious sacrifice of Jesus Christ was the only means of attaining heaven, and the condemnation of all who had not this grace was proclaimed with a severity equal to that of the anathemas of the Church of Rome. Either wing of the Lord's Church was ready to burn the ​other. The errors of both were sustained by a fundamental misunderstanding of the Trinity, which was unfortunately conceived as of distinct persons with different attributes. The Father was regarded as avenging justice and the Son as loving mercy, by which He atoned for the never-forgiven sin of Adam in taking upon Himself the punishment of the cross, the Father accepting the sacrifice so far as to pardon those whom the Son should elect.

      Thus darkened was the Sun of heaven. This unreasonableness of doctrine and lack of Christian charity, wars and massacres under the flag of Christian faith, with the profligate luxury of church officials in contrast with the desperate poverty of the people, easily bred contempt for religion at a time when by the art of printing great strides had been made in popular education. What wonder that atheism and deism were having their own way! Religion and morality in the eighteenth century were fast disappearing. The judgment of the Christian Church in the view of its sanest adherents was near at hand.

John Albert Bengel [d. 1752] said, "The doctrine of the Holy Spirit