Page:Beauty for Ashes.djvu/60

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

CHAPTER II.


INFERENCES.


"The canker-worm spoileth, and fleeth away. Thy crowned are as the locusts, and thy captains as the great grasshoppers, which camp in the hedges in the cold day; but when the sun ariseth, they flee away, and their place is not known where they are."—Nahum iii. 16, 17.


What, now, are the inferences forced upon us by the testimony exhibited in the foregoing chapter, viewed in connection with the prevailing belief of Christians of the present day upon the subject we have been considering? In view of the dense cimmerian darkness which had overspread the Christian world prior to the time of Swedenborg, who will deny that there was need of a new revelation from God out of heaven? And who can doubt that, ere long—dating from that dark period of the church when men "groped as if they had no eyes"—such a revelation would be vouchsafed as would eflfectually dissipate these shades of night?

Besides, this old doctrine of infant damnation is part and parcel of a stupendous heap of theological errors, which had been accumulating for more than fifteen