2507.—Swedenborgianism.
By A. L. M.
What is Swedenborgianism?
Swedenborgianism is the doctrine of one Emanuel Swedenborg, or the system of philosophy and theology taught by him, and which has been developed from his writings by his followers; the doctrine, usages, organization, and characteristics of Swedenborgians. Swedenborg himself lived between the years 1688 and 1772. His form of mysticism was based on revelations claimed to have been received by him, teaching especially an intercourse with the spiritual world and the law of correspondences by which every material thing has a spiritual thing corresponding to it, closely connected with it, or upon the Scriptures allegorically interpreted. According to it there are in things three degrees of being, corresponding to three degrees of being in God; love, the celestial degree; wisdom, the spiritual; and use, the natural; answering to end, cause, and effect. In other words, it is an early form of Spiritualism, and is based on the ancient falsehood of the serpent, “Ye shall not surely die.” They hold that man is an immortal spirit, having a body of flesh, which is laid aside at death, after which man wakes to consciousness in the spiritual world, and according to the life he has acquired on earth dwells in heaven as an angel or seeks an abode with his like in hell. They hold that the second coming of Christ has already taken place, in not the coming in person, but a revelation of Christ in an internal sense of His word, and is the beginning of a new Christian church of divine promise, and a new era of enlightenment and progress among men, all of which is unscriptural.