New Christian Bible Study

Commentary

 

Memorable Occurrences in Swedenborg's Writings

This list of Memorable Occurrences in Swedenborg's Writings was originally compiled by W. C. Henderson in 1960 but has since been updated.

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Conjugial Love #293

Study this Passage

  
/ 535  
  

293. To this I will append two narrative accounts. Here is the first:

I once looked out my window toward the east and saw seven women sitting next to a rose garden by a spring drinking water. I strained my eyes intently to see what they were doing, and the intensity of my gaze caught their attention. With a motion of the head one of them therefore invited me over. Accordingly I left the house and hurried in their direction. And when I arrived, I politely asked them where they were from.

They then said, "We are wives. We are talking here about the delights of conjugial love, and we have concluded from a good deal of evidence that these delights are also delights of wisdom."

This response so delighted my heart that I seemed to be more interiorly in the spirit and to have on that account a more enlightened perception than ever before. So I said to them, "Permit me an opportunity to ask you some questions about those pleasant delights." And they nodded their assent.

So I asked, "How do you wives know that the delights of conjugial love are at the same time delights of wisdom?"

[2] They then replied, "We know it from the correspondence that exists between wisdom in our husbands and the delights of conjugial love in us. For the delights of this love in us heighten or diminish and take on altogether different qualities according to the wisdom in our husbands."

On hearing this I inquired further, saying, "I know you are affected by gentle words from your husbands and cheerful states of mind on their part, and that you take delight on account of these with all your heart. But I wonder at your saying that it is in response to their wisdom. However, tell me what wisdom is and what sort of wisdom you mean."

[3] To this the wives replied with annoyance, "You think we do not know what wisdom is and what sort of wisdom we mean, even though we continually reflect on it in our husbands and daily learn it from their mouths. Indeed, we wives think about the state of our husbands from morning to evening, with scarcely any time intervening in a day when this is interrupted or in which our instinctive thought is entirely withdrawn or gone from them. Our husbands in contrast spend very little time in the course of a day thinking about our state. As a result we know what sort of wisdom in them finds delight in us. Our husbands call this wisdom a spiritual-rational wisdom and a spiritual-moral one. Spiritual-rational wisdom, they say, is a matter of the intellect and its intellectual concepts, while spiritual-moral wisdom is a matter of the will and its mode of life. Yet they join the two together and regard them as one; and they maintain that the pleasant delights of this wisdom are transposed from their minds into delights in our hearts, and from our hearts back to their hearts, so that these return to the wisdom from which they originated."

[4] I then asked whether they knew anything more about this wisdom in their husbands - "wisdom," I said, "which finds delight in you."

"We do," they said. "It is a spiritual wisdom, and from that a rational and moral one. Spiritual wisdom is to acknowledge the Lord our Savior as God of heaven and earth, and through the Word and discourses from it to acquire from Him truths connected with the Church, from which comes a spiritual rationality; and in addition to live from Him according to those truths, from which comes a spiritual morality. Our husbands call these two the wisdom which in general works to produce truly conjugial love. We have also heard from them the reason, namely, that this wisdom opens the inner faculties of their mind and thus of their body, providing free passage from the firsts to the last of these for the stream of love, on whose flow, sufficiency and strength conjugial love depends for its existence and life.

"As regards marriage in particular, the spiritual-rational and spiritual-moral wisdom of our husbands has as its end and goal to love only their wives and to rid themselves of all desire for other women. Moreover, to the extent they achieve this, to that extent that love is heightened in degree and perfected in quality, and the more clearly and keenly do we then feel matching delights in us corresponding to the contented pleasures of our husbands' affections and the pleasant exaltations of their thoughts."

[5] I asked them next whether they knew how the communication took place.

They said, "All conjunction by love requires action, reception, and reaction. The state of our love and its delights is the agent or that which acts. The state of our husbands' wisdom is the recipient or that which receives. And this same wisdom is also the reagent or that which reacts in accordance with their reception. This reaction is then perceived by us with feelings of delight in our hearts according to our state and the measure in which it is continually open and ready to receive those elements which in some way are connected with and so emanate from virtue in our husbands, thus which in some way are connected with and so emanate from the final state of love in us."

At that point they also inserted, "Take care you do not interpret the delights we have mentioned to mean the end delights of conjugial love. We never talk about these, but only about the delights of our hearts which constantly correspond to the state of wisdom in our husbands."

[6] After that there appeared in the distance what looked like a dove in flight with a leaf from a tree in its mouth; but as it drew near, instead of a dove we saw a little boy with a piece of paper in his hand. Coming over to us then, he held it out to me and said, "Read it in the presence of these maidens of the spring."

So I read the following:

Tell the inhabitants of the earth among whom you live that there is such a thing as truly conjugial love, offering a million delights scarcely any of which are yet known to the world. But they will be discovered when the church betroths itself to her Lord and becomes His bride and wife.

Then I asked the wives, "Why did the boy call you 'maidens of the spring'?"

"We are called maidens when we sit by this spring," they replied, "because we are forms of affection for the truths of our husbands' wisdom; and an affection for truth in form is termed a maiden. The spring likewise symbolizes the truth of wisdom, and the rose garden we are sitting next to its delights."

[7] One of the seven wives then wove a garland of roses; and sprinkling it with water from the spring, she placed it over the cap the boy had on, fitting it around his little head and saying, "Receive the delights of intelligence. Your cap, you see, symbolizes intelligence, and the garland from this rose garden its delights."

Thus adorned the boy then departed, and in the distance he looked once more like a dove in flight, but this time with a little crown on its head.

  
/ 535  
  

Many thanks to the General Church of the New Jerusalem, and to Rev. N.B. Rogers, translator, for the permission to use this translation.

From Swedenborg's Works

 

True Christian Religion #567

Study this Passage

  
/ 853  
  

567. At this point I shall add some accounts of experiences, of which this is the first. 1

I was suddenly struck by a nearly fatal illness. My whole head became heavy. A pestilential fog assailed me from the Jerusalem, the name of which is Sodom and Egypt (Revelation 11:8). I was half-dead with savage pain, and awaited my end. I lay thus in my bed for three and a half days. My spirit underwent these pains, and so consequently did my body. Then I heard voices around me saying: 'Look, here there lies dead in a street in our city the man who preached repentance for the forgiveness of sins, and Christ the man alone as God.' They asked some of the clergy whether he deserved burial. They said he did not; 'let him lie there for people to see.' They kept going away, coming back and ridiculing me. This truly happened to me, when I was writing the explanation of the eleventh chapter of Revelation.

Then I heard serious charges brought against me by those who ridiculed me, in particular the following. 'How,' they said, 'can one repent without faith? How can Christ the man be reverenced as God? When we are freely given salvation without any merit on our part, what need have we of anything but faith that God the Father sent His Son to take away the condemnation imposed by law, to impute His own merit to us and so to justify us in His sight, to absolve us from our sins by a priest's proclamation, and then to give us the Holy Spirit, who performs all the good we do? Surely all this is in agreement with Scripture, and also with reason? The crowd standing round applauded this speech.

[2] I heard this, but was unable to reply, because I lay almost dead. But after three and a half days my spirit revived, and I went out from the street in the spirit into the city, and said again: 'Repent and believe in Christ, and your sins will be forgiven and you will be saved; if not, you will perish. Did not the Lord Himself preach repentance for the forgiveness of sins, and that men should believe in Him? Did He not command His disciples to preach the same? Does not the dogma of your faith lead to total lack of concern for how you live?'

'What nonsense!' they said. 'Did not the Son make satisfaction? And does not the Father impute that? He justifies us who have believed this. Thus we are led by the spirit of grace; what sin is there then in us? What has death to do with us? Do you understand this Gospel, you who proclaim sin and repentance?'

Then a voice came out of heaven, saying: 'What is the faith of the impenitent but a dead one? The end has come, the end has come upon you who feel secure and blameless in your own eyes, you satans who think yourselves justified by your faith.' Then suddenly a pit opened up in the middle of the city, gaped wide, and house after house fell into it, and they were swallowed up. A little while later water boiled up out of that broad whirlpool and flooded the devastated city.

[3] When they had been thus seen to be plunged and overwhelmed in a flood, I wanted to know what was their fate in the depths, and I was told from heaven that I should see and hear.

Then before my eyes the waters disappeared which had overwhelmed them, for waters in the spiritual world are correspondences, and therefore appear around those who have false beliefs. Then I saw them on a sandy bottom, where there were heaps of stones, among which they ran about bewailing their expulsion from their great city.

They kept shouting and crying: 'Why has this happened to us? Are we not through our faith clean, pure, righteous and holy? Have we not been by our faith cleansed, purified, justified and sanctified?' Others cried: 'Have we not been made through our faith fit to appear before God the Father, and to be seen, accounted and declared before the angels clean, pure, righteous and holy? Have not reconciliation, propitiation and expiation been accomplished for us, so that we are acquitted, washed and cleansed of sins? Has not Christ taken away our condemnation by the law? Why then have we been cast down here as damned? We heard a daring man denouncing sin in our great city cry "Believe in Christ and repent." Did we not believe in Christ, when we believed in His merit? Did we not repent, when we confessed ourselves to be sinners? Why then has this happened to us?'

[4] Then a voice was heard close by saying to them: 'Do you know any sin that is in you? Have you ever examined yourselves, and therefore shunned any evil as a sin against God? Anyone who does not shun it remains in it. Is not sin the devil? You therefore are those of whom the Lord says:

Then you will begin to say, We ate and drank in your presence, and you taught in our streets. But he will say, I tell you, I do not know where you are from. Depart from me, all who do iniquity, Luke 13:26-27; also those described in Matthew 7:22-23.

Depart, therefore, each of you to his own place. You see the openings leading to caves. Go in there, and there each of you will be given work to do, and you will receive food in proportion to the work you do. Even if you refuse, hunger will none the less force you to go in.'

[5] Afterwards a voice came from heaven to some people on the earth's surface, who had been outside that great city (and those too are mentioned in Revelation 11:13), saying loudly: 'Beware! Beware of associating with such people. Can you not understand that it is the evils called sins and iniquities that make a person unclean and impure? How can anyone be cleansed and purified from them, except by real repentance and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ? Real repentance is examining oneself, recognising and acknowledging one's sins, accusing oneself and confessing them before the Lord, asking for help and power to resist them, and so desisting from them, leading a new life, and doing all this as if of oneself. Do this once or twice a year, when you go to Holy Communion, and thereafter, when the sins you accused yourselves of recur, you should say to yourselves, "We do not want to do those things because they are sins against God." This is real repentance.

[6] 'Can anyone fail to understand that a person who does not examine himself and see his sins continues in them? For from birth we find every evil pleasant. It is pleasant to take revenge, commit fornication, cheat, blaspheme, and particularly to control others out of self-love. Does not the pleasure cause them not to be seen as sins? And if perhaps someone says that they are sins, would not the pleasure they give make you excuse them, or even use false arguments to prove that they are not sins? Thus you continue in them and do them afterwards more than before; and this goes on until you do not know what a sin is, or rather, whether there is such a thing as sin. The case is different with anyone who has really repented, He calls his evils, which he has recognised and acknowledged, sins, and therefore begins to shun them and turn away from them; and he ends by feeling the pleasure they give as distasteful. In so far as this happens, he sees and loves what is good, and ends by feeling the pleasure that gives, and this is the pleasure experienced by the angels in heaven. In short, in so far as anyone casts the devil behind his back, he is adopted by the Lord, who teaches and guides him, restrains him from evils and keeps him in good deeds. This and no other is the way from hell to heaven.'

[7] It is extraordinary that the Reformed have some inborn resistance, contrariety and aversion for real repentance. This is so strong that they cannot bring themselves to examine themselves, and to see their sins, and to confess them before God. A kind of horror grips them when they form such an intention. I have questioned very many in the spiritual world on the subject, and they all said that this is beyond their powers. On hearing that the Roman Catholics none the less do this, that is, examine themselves and openly confess their sins before a monk, they were very surprised; and they said too that the Reformed are unable to do this secretly before God, although this duty is imposed equally on them, before coming to the Holy Supper. Some people there enquired why this was, and discovered that it was the dogma of faith alone that had produced such a state of impenitence and made their hearts like this. Then they were allowed to see that those Roman Catholics who worship Christ, and do not invoke the saints, are saved.

[8] After this a clap of thunder was heard and a voice speaking from heaven, saying: 'We are astonished. Tell the gathering of the Reformed: "Believe in Christ, and repent, and you will be saved."' So I told them, and went on: 'Is not baptism a sacrament of repentance and so an introduction into the church? What else do the godparents promise on behalf of the person to be baptised, but to abjure the devil and his works? Is not the Holy Supper a sacrament of repentance and so an introduction to heaven? Are not communicants told that they must at all costs repent before they present themselves? Is not the Catechism the universal doctrine of the Christian church, and does it not teach repentance? Is it not said there in the six commandments of the second table, "You are not to do this or that evil act," not "You are to do this or that good act." From this you may know that in so far as anyone abjures and turns away from evil, so far does he strive after and love good; and that before this he does not know what good is, nor even what evil is.'

Footnotes:

1. This passage is repeated from Apocalypse Revealed 531.

  
/ 853  
  

Thanks to the Swedenborg Society for the permission to use this translation.

©2024 New Christian Bible Study Corporation. All rights reserved. Printed from newchristianbiblestudy.org