of the endless diversity among its component parts.
It cannot be denied, therefore, that this doctrine of the human form of heaven is good and wholesome in its practical tendency. And what stronger evidence of its truth could any one have or desire than this? No such beneficent results could flow legitimately from a doctrine which is itself false. "Of a bramble-bush men do not gather grapes" "neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit."
And if this doctrine be, indeed, true and from heaven, as we believe and claim, and if the New Church foreshadowed and signified by the Apocalyptic New Jerusalem is, or is to be, "the crown of all the churches that have hitherto been in the world"—the glorious and consummate flower toward the expansion of which all the previous churches have looked, and each in a measure contributed,—then we should expect this Church would furnish an illustration of the heavenly doctrine we have been considering. We should expect to find in it great freedom of thought, and consequently great diversity in doctrinal beliefs as well as in states of life; and should look for perfect agreement only in two or three fundamentals (see A. C., n. 1834), and this in substance rather than in form or phraseology. We should expect in the authorized teachings of this
