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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

 

True Christian Religion #134

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134. At this point I shall insert more accounts of experiences, of which this is the first.

Once in the world of spirits I went into a church where there was a large congregation, and before the sermon they had a discussion on the subject of redemption. The church was square in plan without any windows in the walls, but with a large opening in the middle of the roof, allowing light from heaven to stream in, making the interior brighter than windows at the sides could have done.

While they were talking about redemption, a black cloud suddenly blew up from the north and covered the opening. This caused such thick darkness that people could not see one another, and hardly their hands in front of their faces. While they were standing struck dumb by this, the black cloud was split down the middle, and through the gap angels were seen, sent down from heaven to dispel the cloud in either direction, so that the church was filled with light again. The angels then sent down one of their number into the church to ask the congregation in their name the subject of their dispute, which had caused so dark a cloud to come over, block out the light, and spread darkness. They replied that they were talking about redemption, how this was effected by the passion of the Son of God on the cross, by which means He made expiation and rescued the human race from damnation and everlasting death.

To this the angel who has been sent down replied: 'Why do you say "by the passion on the cross"? Explain why you say it was by that means.'

[2] Then a priest came forward and said: 'I will give an orderly exposition of our knowledge and belief. These are that God the Father in His anger against the human race damned it and shut it out from the sphere of His clemency, declaring all its members condemned and accursed, and consigning them to hell. He was willing for His Son to take that sentence on Himself; the Son consented, and therefore came down, took human form, and allowed Himself to be crucified. He thus transferred to Himself the damnation of the human race; for we read "Cursed is everyone who hangs upon the wood of the cross." The Son thus by His intercession and mediation appeased the Father; and then the Father out of His love for the Son, and as the result of witnessing His suffering on the cross, was moved to pity, and decreed that He would forgive men, "but only those to whom I impute your righteousness. These I will turn from sons of wrath and cursing into sons of grace and blessing, and I will make them righteous and save them. Let the rest remain as previously decreed, sons of wrath." Such is our faith, and these things are what is meant by the righteousness which God the Father introduces into our faith, so that by itself it makes us righteous and saves us.'

[3] On hearing this the angel kept silent for some time, he was so astonished. But eventually he broke silence and spoke as follows: 'Can the Christian world have become so mad, and have abandoned sound reason for such ravings, as to deduce the fundamental dogma of salvation from those paradoxes? Is there anyone who cannot see that this is diametrically opposed to the Divine essence itself, that is, to God's Divine love and His Divine wisdom, and at the same time to His omnipotence and omnipresence? No decent master would treat his servants and maids like this; not even a wild beast would so treat its pups or young. It is unspeakable. Is it not contrary to His Divine essence to revoke the invitation given to every single member of the human race? Is it not contrary to the Divine essence to change the laws of order established from eternity, which prescribe that each person should be judged by the life he leads? Is it not contrary to the Divine essence to withdraw love and pity from any person, and more so from the whole of the human race? Is it not contrary to the Divine essence to be brought back to pitying by witnessing the Son's suffering, and since it is the very essence of God to pity, to be brought back to His own essence? It is utter wickedness to think that He could ever depart from it, for He is His essence from eternity to eternity.

[4] 'Is it not impossible to implant in anything, such as your faith, the righteousness of redemption, which in itself is a part of God's omnipotence, and impute or assign it to a person, and without any other means to pronounce him righteous, pure and holy? Is it not impossible to forgive anyone his sins, or to make anyone new, regenerated and saved, simply by imputing righteousness to him, which would be turning unrighteousness into righteousness, and cursing into blessing? Could one thus turn hell into heaven, and heaven into hell, or the dragon into Michael, and Michael into the dragon, and so put a stop to the battle between them? What would it take but to withdraw the imputation of your faith from one person and give it to another? In that case we in heaven would go in fear for ever. Nor is it consistent with righteousness and judgment for one person to take another's crime upon himself, so that the guilty should be held innocent, and the crime thus be purged. Is this not contrary to both Divine righteousness and human justice? The Christian world is still ignorant of the existence, even more so of the nature, of the laws of order that God introduced at the creation of the world; and that God cannot act contrary to order because that would be acting against Himself. For God is order itself.'

[5] The priest understood what the angel had said, because the angels up above poured down light from heaven. Then he gave a groan and said: 'What are we to do? Everyone nowadays preaches and prays and believes this. Everyone is saying "Gracious Father, have mercy upon us and forgive us our sins for the sake of your Son's blood, which He shed for us upon the cross." Then they pray to Christ: "Lord, intercede for us;" and we priests add, "Send us the Holy Spirit."'

Then the angel said: 'I have noticed that priests make ointments from a superficial understanding of the Word, which they smear on the eyes of those who have been blinded by their faith; or make up a poultice from the same source, which they place upon the wounds inflicted by their dogmas, but without healing them, since they have become chronic. So go to the man who is standing over there - and he pointed to me - he will teach you from the Lord that the passion on the cross was not the act of redemption, but the uniting of the Lord's Human with the Father's Divine. Redemption was the conquest of the hells and the ordering of the heavens; and had the Lord not performed these acts when He was in the world, no one on earth, nor anyone in the heavens, could have been saved. He will go on to teach you the laws of order, which were imposed from the time of creation, by which people must live to be saved. Those who live by them are counted among the redeemed and called the chosen.'

After this speech windows appeared in the sides of the church, brightness flooded in from all four quarters, and cherubs were seen flying in a radiance of light. Then the angel was lifted up through the opening in the roof to rejoin his companions, and we went away in a cheerful frame of mind.

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

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Conjugial Love #207

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

Some time later 1 I looked in the direction of the city Athenaeum, which I said something about in an earlier account, 2 and I heard an unusual clamor. In the clamor I heard an element of laughter, in the laughter an element of displeasure, and in the displeasure an element of sorrow. However, the clamor was not therefore inharmonious, but harmonious, because the elements did not mix with each other, but one was contained within another. (In the spiritual world, one distinctly perceives the variety and combination of affections in a sound.)

From a distance I asked, "What is the matter?"

They then said, "A messenger came from the place where newcomers from the Christian world first appear, saying he had heard from three of them there that in the world they had come from, they had believed like everyone else that the blessed and happy after death would have complete rest from their labors, and that since positions of responsibility, occupations and employments are labors, they would have rest from these.

"An emissary of ours has now brought these three here, and they are standing at the gate and waiting. A commotion broke out because of this, and after deliberating, the people have decided not to bring them into the Palladium on Parnassium hill, as they have done with visitors before, but to bring them into the great hall there, to disclose the news they have from the Christian world. Several delegates have been sent to formally usher them in."

[2] Since I was in the spirit - and since distances for spirits depend on the states of their affections, and I was then affected with a wish to see and hear these people - I found myself present there and saw them brought in and heard them speak.

The people in the hall who were older or wiser sat towards the sides, with the rest in the middle, and in front of them was a raised dais. In formal procession through the middle of the hall, some of the younger people conducted the three newcomers and the messenger to it. Then, after waiting for silence, one of the older ones there greeted them and asked, "What news do you have from earth?"

They said, "We have much that is new, but tell us, please, on what subject?"

So the older man replied, "What news do you have from earth regarding our world and heaven?"

They then answered, "When we first came into this world, we learned that here and in heaven there are positions of responsibility, ministries, occupations, business dealings, scholarly studies in every field of learning, and wonderful kinds of employment. Yet we had believed that upon our departure or passage from the natural world into this spiritual one, we would come into everlasting rest from our labors. What are occupations but labors?"

[3] To this the older man replied, "Did you think that eternal rest from labors meant eternal idleness, in which you would continually sit around or lie about, breathing in auras of delight with your breast and drinking in outpourings of joy with your mouth?"

Laughing gently at this, the three newcomers said that they had supposed something of the sort.

At that they then received this response: "What do joys and delights and thus happiness have in common with idleness? Idleness causes the mind to collapse rather than expand, or the person to become deader rather than more alive.

"Picture someone sitting around in a state of complete idleness, with hands hanging down, his eyes downcast or shut, and imagine that he is at the same time surrounded with an aura of rapture. Would drowsiness not seize both his head and his body, and the lively swelling of his face drop? With every fiber loosened, would he not finally begin to sway back and forth and eventually fall to the ground? What keeps the whole system of the body expanded and taut but an intentness of mind? And what produces an intentness of mind but responsibilities and employments, when these are undertaken with delight?

"So, then, I will tell you some news from heaven, that they have there positions of responsibility, ministries, higher and lower courts of law, and also trades and employments."

[4] When the three newcomers heard that in heaven they have higher and lower courts of law, they began to say, "What is the purpose of these? Are not all in heaven inspired and led by God, and do they not all therefore know what is just and right? What need is there then for judges?"

But the older man replied, "In this world we are instructed and taught what is good and true, also what is just and right, the same as in the natural world. Moreover, we learn these things not directly from God but indirectly through others. Every angel, too, like every man, thinks truth and does good as though of himself, and this is not pure but mixed in character, depending on the angel's state. In addition, among angels also, some are simple and some wise, and the wise have to make judgments when the simple ones among them, owing to their simpleness or ignorance, are uncertain about what is just or deviate from it.

"But," he said to them, "since you are still newcomers in this world, follow me into our city, if you wish, and we will show you all."

[5] So they left the hall, with some of the older people accompanying them as well. And they went first to a great library, which had been divided into a number of smaller collections according to subject fields.

The three newcomers were dumbfounded at seeing so many books, and they said, "You have books in this world too! Where do you get the parchment and paper? Where you get the pens and ink?"

The older men said in reply, "We perceive that you believed in the previous world that because this world is spiritual, it would be barren. Moreover, that you believed this because you harbored an idea of spiritual existence that was abstracted from a material one, and anything abstracted from material existence seemed to you to be nothing, consequently as something barren. Yet we have a full array of everything here. It is just that everything here is essential in nature rather than material, and material objects take their origin from essential ones. Those of us who live here are spiritual beings because we are essential beings rather than material ones. So it is that everything found in the material world exists here in its perfect form, even books and manuscripts, and many other things."

When the three newcomers heard the term essential used, they thought it must be so, both because they saw the books that had been written, and because they had heard it said that material objects have their origin from essential forms.

To convince them further with respect to this, the men took the newcomers down to the quarters of copyists who were making copies of drafts written by some of the wise people of the city; and when the newcomers looked at the manuscripts, they marveled at how neat and polished they were.

[6] After this they escorted the newcomers to professional academies, gymnasia and colleges, also to places where their scholarly forums were held, some of which they called forums of the Daughters of Heliconeum, some forums of the Daughters of Parnassium, some forums of the Daughters of Athenaeum, and some forums of the Muses of the Spring. 3 They said they gave them these names because daughters or maidens symbolize affections for various kinds of knowledge, and everyone's intelligence depends on his affection for various kinds of knowledge. The forums so called were spiritual exercises and debates.

Next they took the newcomers around the city to its directors and managers and their officials, and these in turn introduced them to marvelous works, which their craftsmen create in a spiritual manner.

[7] After the newcomers had seen these things, the older man spoke with them again concerning eternal rest from labors, into which the blessed and happy come after death.

"Eternal rest does not mean idleness," he said, "because idleness affects the mind and consequently the whole body with listlessness, lethargy, insensibility and slumber, and these are conditions of deadness, not life, much less the eternal life experienced by angels of heaven. Eternal rest, therefore, is rest that dispels these states and vitalizes a person, and this must be something which rouses the mind. Thus it is some pursuit or employment by which the mind is awakened, animated, and afforded delight, which in turn depends on some useful service for the sake of which, in which, and towards which it is working. So it is that the whole of heaven is viewed by the Lord as a world of useful service, and each angel is an angel according to the service he renders. The pleasure in being useful carries him along, like a boat in a favoring current, bringing him into a state of eternal peace and the rest that comes with peace. This is what is meant by eternal rest from labors.

"An angel's vitality depends on an application of his mind to some pursuit for the sake of being useful, and confirmation of this is clearly seen from the fact that they each possess conjugial love with its vigor, potency and delights in the measure that they are engaged in a pursuit of genuine use."

[8] When the three newcomers had been convinced that eternal rest does not mean idleness but the pleasure in some employment that is of use, some young women came with articles of needlework and sewing, works of their own hands, which they presented to them. Then, as these newly introduced spirits were departing, the young women sang a song whose angelic melody expressed an affection for employments of use and its accompanying satisfactions.

Footnotes:

1. I.e., some time after the occurrence related in no. 182.

2. See no. 182; also nos. 151[r]-154[r]

3. In reference to these names, cf., in previous accounts of this city, the topographical features mentioned in nos. 151[r]:1, 182:1, 2.

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

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