The Last Judgment.
To the early reader of Swedenborg’s writings, few of his declarations appear stranger, at first, than his affirmation that the Last Judgment is past, that it took place in 1757. Yet although startling at first, it is a doctrine which, on closer acquaintance, readily comes within the grasp of reason and common sense; and we discover that all its early strangeness was owing to our having looked at it through the mist of prejudice and preconceived opinion.
The treatise on the Last Judgment, (although, as to size, only a pamphlet,) is a most effective and masterly exposition of the nature of the end of the church, the new heavens, and the new earth of the Apocalypse.
In the first place, it is shown that the day of the Last Judgment does not mean that of the destruction of the world; for neither the visible heaven nor the habitable earth will perish, but both will remain forever. The reason is that the heaven of angels is formed from the human race, all angels having lived the life of men, and none having been so created; and as the perfection of heaven increases to eternity with the increase of regenerate men from the world, it follows that the earth will never cease to exist, nor men to live and be born upon it. The world is the seminary of heaven. Heaven depends upon the world for its growth, increase, and perfection. Heaven could not exist without worlds.
Heaven being formed from the human race, so likewise is Hell; all devils and satans having at one time been men on this or some other earth. “That is not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural.”
These doctrines, it will be seen, militate against what are called orthodox opinions, which teach that angels were created before the world, and that no man can go to heaven or to hell before the time of the Last Judgment; when the souls of men having returned into their bodies, the visible world will be burned up; the sun and moon be quenched in nature’s night; and the stars, each surrounded with its own system of worlds, having first fallen upon this speck of a globe, are to be wiped out of existence. These common but crude and unscriptural ideas have afforded the best subjects for scoffing at the Christian religion which the skeptic could desire. For he triumphantly asks, How can so vast a heaven, and so many stars, with sun and moon, be destroyed and dissipated? And how can the stars fall from heaven upon the earth, when they are larger than the earth? How can men’s bodies, eaten up by worms, consumed by putrefaction, scattered to all winds, absorbed by vegetation, and again incorporated into other men’s systems, be re-collected for their souls? What is this day of Judgment? And has it not been expected for ages in vain? Together with many other such questions, all pertinent, but to which the church can give no rational answer.
And yet ignorance on such subjects cannot be excused; for men might have known from the Word that heaven and hell are from mankind, and that man is raised up and lives immediately after death. Information on these subjects might have been obtained from the Lord’s words to the thief upon the cross, “Verily I say unto thee, To-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise;” and from those which he spoke concerning the rich man and Lazarus, that the one went to hell, and spoke with Abraham, and that the other went to heaven; and what the Lord told the Pharisees respecting the resurrection, that “God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.” And then we see how inconsistent men are with themselves on these subjects. A worthy church-member, who is a firm believer in the burning up of the world, and the resurrection of the dead at the Last Judgment, comes to his death-bed, and straightway all his doctrine passes into forgetfulness; and he talks of going home to glory in heaven, and being within a few hours of the angels. He dies; and his friends, as orthodox as himself, think of him as happy in heaven; and yet they profess to believe in the resurrection of his corrupt and diseased body. What strange inconsistency is this! But it is one of the marks of error, that it is always inconsistent with itself.
The leading fact in Swedenborg’s doctrine of the Last Judgment, is, that it takes place in the spiritual world, where all men congregate after death. A judgment takes place in the world of spirits whenever a church comes to its end; that is, when its charity, and consequently its faith is dead, and all things that remain are mere empty forms of life. A judgment took place at the end of the Jewish church. For proof of this, we need only turn to the Gospel of John, (xii. 31,) where Jesus said: “Now is the judgment of this world: now shall the prince of this world be cast out.” We all know there was at that time no visible judgment in the natural world. Everything went on as before; yet, we learn from the Lord’s own lips, that a judgment was effected.
It is a great mistake, and one which even the best of men labor under, to suppose that the soul of man exists alone, and independent of any influences but those that are external to him, and of which he is conscious. We would ask, Who ever saw a grain of matter independent of the law of gravitation,—that cause which binds it to kindred matter with a bond as indestructible as its own existence? It is the same with men’s souls. No man lives independent of spiritual association. Place a man in the middle of some distant and desolate island; yet he is not alone. Around his soul are the spirits of those who have left the world before him, who love as he loves, and think as he thinks. The minds of men and spirits are most closely and intimately conjoined; for in the universe of mind, as in the universe of matter, there is no such thing as isolation and independency. And what can be more philosophical than such a doctrine? The laws of matter represent the laws of spirit; in every particular there exists a perfect correspondence. As matter is everywhere bound to matter, and compacted in firm communion, so likewise are the minds of men to be regarded as a universe of atoms, bound together by loves and affections. In meditating on this subject, we must remember that spirit knows nothing of material space.
The church had been declining from the days of the Apostles. Men had forsaken the pure spirit of the gospel, and had sought to hide their evils of life by doctrines and creeds formed from their own darkened understandings. The popedom had arisen; and in the black night of the dark ages, had established its fearful assumptions, and blasphemously invoked the name of the Highest to sanctify its crimes. The Reformation, the last flicker of an expiring candle, had indeed established free thought, but it failed in its highest aims; and in the erroneous doctrine of justification by faith alone, had deadened the consciences of men, and extinguished all aspirations after spiritual life. Last and worst of all, Atheism reared its horrid front, and openly manifested itself; yet what of it was open and confessed, was as nothing to what lay concealed even under the vestments of the church. Toward the middle of the last century, Christendom had reached its lowest point of degradation; and any one who is anxious to test this affirmation of Swedenborg’s, need only turn to the history and literature of that period, and observe the selfishness, the negation and ridicule of everything pure and spiritual, the gross ignorance, the licentiousness and intemperance, and in fact the reduction of humanity to its lowest and most bestial condition. He will then understand the cry of the good, at that time, in the world of spirits, “How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?”
It is to be noted that from the time of the Lord’s advent, when he effected the Judgment upon the Jewish church, there had been pouring into the world of spirits, in countless myriads, the souls of those who were full of evils and falsities, and who, collecting around terrestrial humanity, lay as thick clouds between it and heaven. Forming themselves into societies by spiritual affinities, the reformed churches were in the middle; the Romanists around them; the Mahommedans in a still outer ring; and the various Gentile nations constituted a vast circumference; while beyond all, lay the appearance of a sea as a boundary. Of the states of those associations, we have a most graphic picture in Swedenborg’s treatise; and no where else out of the Apocalypse, do we find a more thorough exposure of the internal atheism of the priests of Rome, their blasphemies and subtlety. But the time of the end had come; the world groaned to be delivered; and the eyes of Swedenborg were favored to behold the process of the great redemption.
The vast concourse of these spirits, formed into societies, is what is meant in the Revelation by the first heaven and the first earth which passed away. The manner in which these societies were dissolved, Swedenborg describes as follows:—“Visitation was made by angels, and admonition given, and the good were singled out and separated by the heavenly ministers, agreeable to the Lord’s words, ‘He shall send his angels, and they shall gather together the elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other;’ and again, ‘All nations shall be gathered together before the Son of Man; and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth the sheep from the goats, and he shall set the sheep on the right hand, and the goats on the left.’” Then followed destruction. There were great earthquakes, and a vehement wind, which swept all before it. Then gulfs yawned, and seas appeared, into which the wicked threw themselves, and were drawn to their place in hell. “Then,” says Swedenborg, “I saw angelic spirits in great numbers rising from below, and received into heaven. They were the sheep who had been kept and guarded by the Lord, and who are understood in the Word by the bodies of saints which arose from their sepulchres and went into the holy city; and by the souls of those slain for the testimony of Jesus, and who were watching; and by those who were of the first resurrection.
“After this, there was joy in heaven, and light in the world of spirits, such as was not before; and the interposing clouds between heaven and mankind being removed, a similar light also then arose on men in the world, giving them new enlightenment.”
Such was the Last Judgment. Its centenary draws nigh; and how fruitful in good to mankind has been that century which is now drawing to a close! It is unnecessary to repeat the hackneyed phrases which tell of the progress of the world during the last hundred years. Every newspaper speaks of it. Everybody with open eyes observes it. It has become the universal opinion that the world is moving onwards and upwards; yet how few understand why the world is so moving. Men have yet to learn that effects can no more take place without adequate causes in the universe of mind than in the universe of matter. Nowhere out of Swedenborg can we find a description of those spiritual causes which are changing society and revolutionizing the whole world. We, who live in the dawn of the new era, can form, even in our highest states, but a faint conception of its coming glory. Yet we see in the wonderful movements of our age, in its growing benevolence, in its increasing intelligence and thoughtfulness, and in the prodigious advances that are making in every department of science and art, so many indubitable signs that the former things have passed away, and that the Lord is making all things new.
Every one knows that in the Scripture, the second coming of the Lord is described as simultaneous with the Last Judgment. We will hereafter endeavor to prove that the Lord has indeed come, and will describe the manner of his coming.
The reception of the doctrine of the Last Judgment is somewhat difficult, because the comprehension of it demands the understanding of many principles and spiritual laws unknown to the world at large, yet most worthy of any amount of labor requisite to master them. The remembrance of this fact will serve as an apology for any appearance of unfounded assumption in the outline of the doctrine we have given.