THE NEW CHURCH
SIGNIFIED BY
THE NEW JERUSALEM.
I.
A POPULAR BUT MISTAKEN IDEA OF THIS CHURCH.
Most of the people in Christendom who have heard of the organization known as the New Church, or the New Jerusalem, regard this church as only another Christian sect. And no wonder; for the students of Swedenborg, who have organized themselves into a separate religious body, speak of this body as "the Church of the New Jerusalem," or "the New Church," precisely as if such visible organization were this church. The first sentence in an article on the "New Jerusalem" Church in the American Cyclopædia, written by a distinguished member of the New-Church organization, defines this church as "a religious body which holds the doctrines set forth in the theological works of Emanuel Swedenborg"—as if this church, like the various sects in Christendom, were a visible body distinguished solely by
