or power, to the aggrandizement of themselves, to the displays of fashion and the pleasures of the senses, whose delight is in these things—all such are spiritually turned away from the Lord and heaven, and cannot see religious truth however clearly presented. If angels were to appear daily in the streets and preach to them, their ideas would go in at one ear and out at the other; for there are no heavenly affections in their souls to seize upon divine truths and clasp them to the heart as the very pearls of wisdom for which they had been searching and sighing.
Secondly: Those who are filled with the spirit of self-culture, which is only a more interior and subtile self-love. These believe in human development unaided by revelation, in nature and progress independent of Christ and his Word. They are the positivists, the rationalists, the communists, the spiritualists and others of the present day—a vast and increasing class. They may extricate themselves from the bondage of a gross sensualism, but it is only to fall victims to the Beelzebub of spiritual pride and the self-conceit of scientific culture. These are blind to the heavenly doctrines of the New Church, which teach us the deep-seated evils of our natures, the utter finiteness of our powers,
