to save and bless; that it orders or permits each smallest circumstance of our lives, and overrules all our outward ills—all sicknesses, disappointments, losses and sorrows, for our highest ultimate good.
Only those who have experienced the cheering and strengthening influence of this doctrine in dark hours and amid the stern trials and rough conflicts of life, can know how replete it is with encouragement, comfort and inward support. Addressing itself to the intellect not less than to the heart, it leads the receiver to a joyful recognition of the Divine Wisdom and Love in every event, and so holds the creature in perpetual and blissful communion with his Creator.
"The Divine Providence of the Lord," says Swedenborg, "extends to the most particular things of a man's life; for there is only one Fountain of life which is the Lord, from whom we are, live, and act.
"They who think from worldly things about the Divine Providence, conclude from them that it is only universal, and that particulars appertain to man. But such persons do not know the arcana of heaven; for they form their conclusions only from the loves of self and the world, and their pleasures. Therefore, when they see the evil exalted to honors, and acquiring wealth more than the good, and that success attends them according to their artifices, they say in their hearts that this would not be the case if the Divine Providence were in all and singular things; not considering