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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 #391

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391. The seventh experience.

I have become aware as the result of conversations in the spiritual world with many laymen and many clergy what desolation of the truth and theological poverty exists in the Christian world at the present time. There is such spiritual famine among the clergy that they hardly know anything beyond the existence of the Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and the fact that faith alone saves. About the Lord Christ they know only the historical facts about Him related in the Gospels. The rest, however, of what either Testament of the Word teaches, as that the Father and He are one, that He is in the Father and the Father in Him, that He has all power in heaven and earth, that it is the Father's will that men should believe in the Son, and that he who believes in Him has everlasting life, and much else - all this is to them as unknown and remote as what lies on the ocean bed, or rather, what lies at the centre of the earth. When these statements are extracted from the Word and read, they stand as if listening but hear nothing. The words do not penetrate deeper into their ears than the sighing of the wind or the beating of a drum. The angels who from time to time are sent out by the Lord to visit the Christian communities in the world of spirits, that is, below heaven, complain bitterly. They say that such is their stupidity and as a result the darkness under which they labour in matters relating to salvation that it is almost like listening to a talking parrot. Even their learned men say that in spiritual matters and those relating to God they do not understand more than so many statues.

[2] An angel once told me of a conversation he had with two clerics, one whose faith was separated from charity and another whose faith was not so separated. With the one whose faith was separated from charity the conversation ran like this.

'Friend, what are you?' 'I am a Christian of the Reformed church,' he replied. 'What is your doctrine and thus your religion?' 'Faith,' he answered. 'What is your faith?' said the angel. 'My faith,' he replied, 'is that God the Father sent the Son to take upon Himself the damnation of the human race, and by this means we are saved.' Then he asked him, 'What more do you know about salvation?' He replied that salvation is achieved by that faith alone. Next he said, 'What do you know about redemption?' He replied that it was accomplished by the passion on the cross, and that Christ's merit is imputed by means of that faith. Next, 'What do you know about regeneration?' He replied that it is the result of that faith. 'Say what you know about love and charity.' He replied that they are the same as that faith. 'Tell me what you think about the Ten Commandments and the remainder of the Word.' He replied that they are contained in that faith. Then he said: 'So you will do nothing?' 'What can I do?' he replied, 'I cannot of myself do any good which is good.' 'Can you,' he said, 'have faith of yourself?' 'I don't enquire into that,' he answered, 'I shall have faith.' Finally he said, 'Do you know anything at all more about salvation?' 'What more is there,' he replied, 'when salvation comes solely by means of that faith?' The angel then said, 'Your answers are like someone playing a single note on the flute; I hear nothing but faith. If you know that and nothing else, you know nothing. Go away and look for your companions.' So he went away and came upon them in a desert where there was no grass. He asked there why this was, and was told it was because they had no church among them.

[3] The angel's conversation with the one whose faith was linked with charity went thus. 'Friend, what are you?' 'I am a Christian of the Reformed church,' he replied. 'What is your doctrine and so your religion?' 'Faith and charity,' he replied. 'These,' said the angel, 'are two.' 'They cannot be separated,' he replied. 'What is faith?' he asked. 'Believing what the Word teaches,' he replied. 'What is charity?' 'Doing what the Word teaches.' 'Have you only believed these things or have you also done them?' 'I have also done them,' he replied. The angel from heaven looked at him and said, 'My friend, come with me and live with us.'

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

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Conjugial Love #355

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355. The second account:

When I once looked out into the world of spirits, I saw some men in a particular meadow, dressed in the same sort of clothing that people wear in the world, from which I recognized that they had only recently come from the world.

I went over to them and stood to the side, in order to hear what they were saying to each other. They were talking about heaven; and one of them, who knew something about heaven, said there were wonders there which no one could ever possibly believe unless he saw them. He cited as examples the paradise-like gardens; the palaces, magnificently constructed architecturally owing to the quintessence of the art there, shining as though of gold, with columns of silver in front, and covered with precious stones in heavenly forms; the houses, too, of jasper and sapphire, fronted by majestic porticos through which the angels enter; and the adornments inside the houses, which neither art nor words can describe.

[2] "As for the angels themselves," he said, "they are of both sexes. There are young men and married men, maidens and wives - maidens so beautiful that the world has nothing to match such beauty. Yet the wives are even more beautiful, appearing as veritable pictures of heavenly love, and their husbands as pictures of heavenly wisdom. The latter are also all youthful young men; and what is more, they do not know what love for the opposite sex is other than conjugial love. Furthermore - something that will surprise you - the husbands have a continual ability to experience its delights."

When those newly arrived spirits heard that they did not have any love for the opposite sex there other than conjugial love, and that they had a continual ability to experience its delights, they laughed among themselves and said, "What you are saying is unbelievable. Such an ability is not possible. You are, perhaps, making up stories."

[3] But then an angel from heaven stood unexpectedly in their midst and said, "Listen to me, please. I am an angel from heaven, and I have lived with my wife now for a thousand years, in the same flower of youth in which you see me here. I have this youthfulness as a result of conjugial love with my wife; and I can declare that I have had and continue to have the continual ability you are talking about. However, because I perceive that you believe it is not possible, I will speak with you on this subject in terms of its reasons, in accordance with the light of your intellect.

"You know nothing of the original state of man, which you call the state of his integrity. In that state, all the interior faculties of the mind were opened all the way to the Lord, and consequently were pervaded by a marriage of love and wisdom or of goodness and truth. So, because the goodness of love and the truth of wisdom are continually drawn to each other by love, they continually aspire to be united; and when the interior faculties of the mind are opened, this conjunctive, spiritual love freely flows down with its continual impetus and imparts the ability.

[4] "Because man's very soul is pervaded by a marriage of goodness and truth, it is impelled not only by a perpetual striving for union but also by a perpetual striving to be fruitful and produce a likeness of itself. So, when a person's interior faculties are open all the way down from the soul from that marriage there - since the interior faculties continually look to producing an effect in outmost expressions as their goal, in order to manifest themselves - as a result that perpetual striving to be fruitful and produce a likeness of itself, which is one of the soul, becomes one of the body. Consequently, because the ultimate operation of the soul in the body in the case of a married couple is into the ultimate expressions of love there, and these depend on the state of the soul, it is apparent why they have this continual ability.

[5] "They experience as well a perpetual fruitfulness, because there is a universal atmosphere of begetting and propagating the celestial attributes that have to do with love, the spiritual attributes that have to do with wisdom, and so the natural attributes that have to do with offspring - an atmosphere which emanates from the Lord and fills the entire heaven and entire world. Thus that heavenly atmosphere fills the souls of all people, and descends through their minds into the body, even to the outmosts of it, imparting a generative power. However, this power can be imparted only to those in whom a passage stands open from the soul through the higher and lower regions of the mind into the body and its outermost elements, which is the case in those who allow themselves to be led back by the Lord into the original state of their creation.

"I can declare that for a thousand years now I have never lacked the ability, or the power, or the virility, and that I have not experienced at all any diminishing of its forces, since these are continually renewed by the continual flowing in of the aforesaid universal atmosphere. They also then gladden the spirit, and do not leave it depressed, as happens in the case of those who suffer a loss of them.

[6] "Furthermore, truly conjugial love is altogether like the warmth of spring, whose flowing in inspires all things to burgeon and be fruitful. That, too, is the kind of warmth we have in our heaven. Consequently married partners there have springtime in them with its constant stimulus; and that constant stimulus is the impetus from which our virility comes.

"The fruits produced among us in heaven, however, are of another kind than among people on earth. With us the fruits are spiritual, which are the fruits of love and wisdom or of goodness and truth. A wife acquires from her husband's wisdom a love of it in her, and from his wife's love of wisdom a husband acquires wisdom in him. Indeed, a wife is actually transformed into an embodiment of love for her husband's wisdom, which is accomplished by her receptions of the propagations of his soul with delight - a delight arising from her willing to be an embodiment of love for her husband's wisdom. From being a maiden she thus becomes his wife and a likeness of him. As a result, too, love with its inmost friendship constantly increases in the wife, and wisdom with its happiness in the husband, and this to eternity. This is the state of angels in heaven."

[7] After the angel said that, he looked at the men who had come recently from the world and said to them, "You know that when you have felt the virile urge of love, you have made love to your married partners, and that after experiencing the delight you have turned away. But you do not know that in heaven we do not make love to our partners because of that virile force, but we have that virile force because of our love; and because we love our partners continually, that virility is continual in us.

"If you can reverse your state, therefore, you can understand this. When a man loves his partner continually, does he not love her with his whole mind and his whole body? For love directs all things of the mind and all things of the body to that which it loves; and because it is reciprocated, it so joins the two that they become as one."

[8] He said further, "I will not speak to you of conjugial love's having been implanted from creation in males and females, and of their inclination to a legitimate union; nor of the procreative faculty in males, which is tied together with a faculty for proliferating wisdom from a love of truth; nor of the fact that so far as a person loves wisdom from a love of wisdom, or truth from goodness, so far he experiences truly conjugial love and its accompanying power."

  
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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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