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Editorial transcription, proofed and normalized from the scan. Line-break hyphenation, letter-spacing artifacts, and OCR errors have been repaired; the claims remain those of The Flaming Sword.
Swedenborg and the Cellular Cosmogony.
The Mission of the Swedish Seer was to Unfold the Spiritual, not the Natural Degree, of the Word; His Vision of the Hollow Globe and its Atmospheres.
Emanuel Swedenborg was chosen and ordained of God to unfold the spiritual degree ("sense") of the Word. This was not for the natural, but for the spiritual world. The spiritual degree ("sense") is for the spiritual angels, not for natural men. He himself said that the spiritual "sense" was not the Word in its fulness and holiness and power. "The Word is in its fulness, in its holiness, and in its power, in the natural sense." Emanuel Swedenborg always signed himself "Servant of the Lord." "The servant knoweth not what his Lord doeth." There being a natural degree ("sense"), it follows — if Swedenborg did not reveal it (and he did not, according to his own declarations and claims) — that the natural sense, which is the science of the Word, holds truth and principles that seem at variance with the spiritual degree.
Let us examine the question of the comparison of the natural (scientific) with the spiritual degree of the Word, on the basis of physical correspondences, and see if we cannot reach a satisfactory conclusion not in contradiction. In Swedenborg's "True Christian Religion," we find a presentation of fact from a state of illumination, in opposition to his preconceived ideas, and against which his natural mind rebelled when not in a state of illustration or enlightenment; that is, when out of his spiritual state. Swedenborg says in "True Christian Religion," paragraph 75, page 62:
When I was in illustration, I perceived that by means of the light and heat from the sun of your world, [he was talking with spirits,] spiritual atmospheres, which in themselves are substantial, were created one from another; and because there were three, and thence three degrees of them, three heavens were made; one for the angels who are in the highest degree of love and wisdom, another for the angels who are in the second degree, and the third for the angels who are in the lowest degree: but, because this spiritual universe cannot exist without a natural universe, in which it may produce its effects and uses, that then the sun, from which all natural things proceed, was created at the same time, and by this, in like manner, by means of light and heat, three atmospheres, encompassing the former, as the shell does the kernel, or the bark of a tree the wood; and at last, by means of these, the terraqueous globe, where are men, beasts, and fishes, also trees, shrubs, and herbs, was formed of different kinds of earths, which consist of loam, stones, and minerals.
When Swedenborg was in a state of illustration, he saw the universe as we scientifically portray it. When he was out of his state of illustration, he dropped back into his former consciousness of the Copernican humbug, and believed as he had been naturally taught.
Now, let us suppose, or admit, that Swedenborg saw the natural sun, and around it three distinct atmospheres — the central physical atmosphere, which we call boron, in which we maintain is the inner groupings of stars which in the physical heavens are the correspondences of the angels which he said occupied his highest spiritual heavens; the second atmosphere, which we call hydrogen, in which is the second story of physical stars, corresponding to his second heavenly degree; and our own atmosphere of oxygen and nitrogen, occupied by the physical stars which are visible to the physical eye, corresponding to Swedenborg's lowest heavens.
We breathe common atmosphere, not only with impunity, but because of a natural demand. We cannot breathe the hydrogen atmosphere above us with impunity. If we could bring down the hydrogen atmosphere and breathe it, we would become inanimate (like the Swedenborgian church), because that degree is discrete from our atmosphere, and will forever remain discrete.
What, then, can we do with that upper atmosphere (air), that we may utilize it for the good of common or natural life? We merely combine the hydrogen air with the oxygen air, and create another discrete degree, not to breathe, but to drink. It enters the body through the natural (the earthly, not the heavenly) channel. The stomach and the alimentary canal belong to the earth of man, but the lungs belong to the heavens of man.
What does the Swedenborgian church do? It attempts to bring the spiritual "sense," the spiritual atmosphere, made for the spiritual angels, down into the natural degree without transforming its discrete quality into the degree of its utility. The hydrogen air, which comprises the physical heavens immediately above our atmosphere of oxygen and nitrogen, uniting with oxygen, produces the water which we drink. Water is the symbol of scientifics; and as we take water into the stomach, and thence into the alimentary canal, so science is taken into the stomach of the brain, and thence into its alimentary canal.
We would change spiritual truth to scientific truth, and in doing this we would effect a transformation as great for the mind as the change of hydrogen (hydōr, water; and gennaō, to produce; that is, water-producer) is to the water we drink. The water we drink passes to the brain through digestion and assimilation, while the air we breathe passes directly to the brain through the pneumogastric nerve. The science of the Word is as distinct from its spiritual "sense," as water is distinct from either hydrogen or oxygen.
Let us present to a person not at all acquainted with either chemistry or physics, the gases — hydrogen and oxygen — and show him the difference between them, so that at another presentation of the same gases he could distinguish and know them; then again, bring him water made from the union of these two gases: would he know the water as hydrogen and oxygen?
The Flaming Sword · Vol. 14, No. 51 · Nov 9, 1900 · PDF p. 5