There is a sure refuge from all these difficulties, a quiet haven where the spirit may rest, in a confident assurance of having received at least the lower and more general forms of that great system of truth, on which the universe rests.—
Here, there are no collisions between the truths of science and those of theology. However far these truths may be removed from each other, yet they are bound together by the principle of correspondence, to which reference has so often been made,—the lower forms of truth thus illustrating and confirming the higher, and serving as mirrors, in which those higher forms can be more perfectly seen. Here also is a system of doctrines which is intimately connected with all those great works of charity and usefulness, which so peculiarly distinguish the present age. They are, in fact, the very life, the soul of these benevolent enterprises. For the essential principle of these heaven-descended doctrines is, the love of usefulness. And though this love may sometimes manifest itself in no higher form than that of removing physical suffering and want, yet even in this form, it is internally connected with those heavenly principles on which the Church of the New Jerusalem is built. Here is a system of doctrines whose truths are everywhere useful. Whether in the halls of legislation, in the courts of justice, in the temples of science, or at the domestic fire-side,—wherever man is called to act or to perform any duty whatever, if he would perform that duty in the best, the most successful and most useful manner, his mind ought to be first informed and filled with these heavenly truths.—My prayer and hope is that both the reader and myself may become better acquainted with these doctrines, that they may henceforth be the delight of our hearts, and the guide of our lives,—may be a means of greatly increasing our usefulness here in the natural world, and of making us much better prepared for an eternal life in heaven.
