Page:The Other Life.djvu/279

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ceive, intuitively as it were, the causes and qualities of things better than the intellect can know them. He that has this divine love of use in his heart, recognizes the doctrinal truths of the New Church very clearly, for he perceives their power to regenerate the individual soul, to renovate the church, to re-organize society on heavenly principles, and to restore, by means of the spiritual sense of the Word, the lost communication between angels and men.

The three great affections, the love of truth, the love of beauty and the love of use, are at work in all men and at all times with different degrees of power. They are all at work in every individual mind which examines the heavenly doctrines; and there is no man, however bigoted and sectarian, who will not be forced to cry out occasionally over the pages of Swedenborg, How rational! how beautiful! how pure and elevating!

Why cannot the sectarian see the doctrines of the New Church in all their truth and all their beauty and all their adaptability to the needs of the soul? Because he loves his dogmas, his church, his minister, his people, better than he loves the pure truth, which he can never see until he is ready to sacrifice all these and everything else for it. Be-