The Doctrines of the New Church Briefly Explained/Chapter14

by Benjamin Fiske Barrett

 

XIV.—Religion.

What is religion? Few subjects, perhaps, have been more misunderstood, even by professing Christians, than this. Some have supposed it to consist in oral prayers and penitential sighs; others, in certain rites and ceremonies solemnly and reverently performed at stated times; others, in fastings, flagellations, and other bodily sufferings, either self-inflicted or imposed by ecclesiastical authority; others, in indiscriminate alms-giving and liberal endowments of religious institutions; others, in a certain system of religious belief, and a certain form of religious worship; others, in retiring from the world, renouncing its pleasures, cares and pursuits, and giving one's self up to a ceaseless round of solemn services.

But very different from all this is the teaching of the New Church respecting religion. Our illumined expositor says: "All religion has relation to life; and the life of religion is to do good." (D. Life,n. 1.) And throughout his writings he teaches that the true religion—while not rejecting forms and ordinances and external worship, but using them as a means of its development and growth—consists essentially in righteousness of life, in doing justly, loving mercy and walking humbly with God. He insists that the truly religious life is the life of God in the soul of man, manifesting itself in all the transactions and relations of life; and that this life is best developed, not in the cloister nor away from the business and turmoil of the world, but in the midst of its cares, duties, temptations and trials; that we become more and more religious in the true sense of this word, in the degree that we look to the Lord for light and guidance, and endeavor to perform all our duties honestly and well as He would have us;—try to carry a self-denying, righteous and loving spirit into all the common labors and trials and transactions of life. Performing all our common every-day duties faithfully, honestly, conscientiously, and in the spirit of true neighborly love—at the same time inwardly and humbly acknowledging that it is the Lord who gives us the power and the disposition thus to live and act—this, according to the belief and teaching of the New Church, is living a religious life. This is the true religion—the religion of heaven itself.

The following are some of the things which Swedenborg says he learned on this subject from his intercourse with spirits in the other world:

"I have been permitted to converse with some in the other life, who had withdrawn themselves from the business of the world, that they might live a pious and holy life; and with others also who had afflicted themselves in various ways, because they imagined that this was to renounce the world and to subdue the lusts of the flesh. But the greater portion of them,—having by such austerities contracted a sorrowful life, and removed themselves from the life of charity which can only be lived in the world,—cannot be associated with angels, because the life of the angels is one of gladness resulting from bliss, and consists in performing deeds of goodness which are works of charity.

"Besides, they who have led a life withdrawn from worldly affairs, are possessed with the idea of their own merit; and are thence continually desirous of being admitted into heaven, and think of heavenly joy as a reward, being totally ignorant of what heavenly joy is. And when they are admitted among the angels, and to a perception of their joy which is without the thought of merit, and consists in active duties and services openly performed, and in the blessedness arising from the good which they thereby promote, they are astonished like persons who witness things altogether foreign to their expectation. And because they are not receptible of that joy, they depart and associate with spirits like themselves, who have lived a similar life in the world. . . .

"These statements are made in order that it may be known, that the life which leads to heaven is not a life of retirement from the world, but of action in the world; and that a life of piety, without a life of charity which can only be acquired in the world, does not lead to heaven, but a life of charity does; and this consists in acting sincerely and justly in every occupation, in every transaction, and in every work, from an interior and thus from a heavenly origin; and such origin is inherent in such a life when a man acts sincerely and justly because it is according to the Divine laws. Such a life is not difficult; but a life of piety separate from a life of charity, is difficult; yet this life leads away from heaven, as much as it is believed to lead to it." (H. H. n. 535.)

 

The Essential Thing in Religion.

The New Church believes and teaches that love to the Lord and the neighbor is the essential thing in heaven and the church; that the degree of heavenly life, and consequent happiness, in any individual, depends on the degree in which this love is developed or received (for man is only a recipient subject), and the measure of its intensity. Love is life; and the stronger and more disinterested the love, the nobler and more exalted is the life—the nearer does the individual approach to the moral likeness of God himself, and the sweeter and more abundant his spiritual joy.

The great end of all God's dealings with us—the end of all his chastisements as well as his blessings—the end for which He reveals to us the laws of the soul's higher life—is, to develop within us a heavenly character—a pure and unselfish love;—to re-create us in his own Divine likeness. Truth, indeed, is important, but only as a means to this great end; and the higher and purer the truth we accept, the higher and more blessed the state of life to which we may attain—shall attain if we religiously obey the truth.

But religious truth, according to the teachings of the New Church—no matter how pure, exalted, or abundant it be—is of no advantage to the receiver, unless he make it the means of restraining and overcoming in himself his selfish and infernal propensities, and developing the higher and nobler life; and this he does only by faithfully living or doing the truth—following whithersoever it points the way, and shunning, as a sin against God, whatever evil the truth condemns. Hundreds of passages confirmatory of this, might be quoted from the writings of Swedenborg; but three or four brief extracts will serve for illustration. Bear in mind that every one's character is according to the state of his heart or the nature of his dominant love—the ruling purpose of his life.

"Charity constitutes the church, and not faith separate from charity." (A. C. n. 3121. See also n. 809, 916, 1798, 1799, 1834, 1844, 2190, 2228, 2442.) And "Genuine charity is to believe in the Lord, and to act justly and rightly in every employment and office. That man, therefore, who from the Lord loves justice and practices it with judgment, is charity in its image and likeness." (T. C. R. n. 449.)

"Every man's character is known from his [dominant] love; for love is the esse of every one's life, the veriest life itself deriving its existence from it. The man, therefore, is such as is the nature of the love which rules in him. If it be the love of self and the world, and consequently of revenge, hatred, cruelty, adultery and the like, the man as to his spirit, or the interior man that lives after death, is a devil, whatever be his outward appearance. But if his prevailing love be the love of God and the neighbor, and consequently the love of goodness and truth, also of justice and honesty, he, whatever be his outward appearance, is an angel as to his spirit that lives after death." (A. C. n. 6872. See also n. 379, 33, 10,284. Ap. Ex. n. 251.)

"It is of no advantage to a man to know much unless he lives according to what he knows. For knowledge has no other end than goodness; and he who is made good [that is, pure and unselfish in his character] is in possession of a far richer treasure than he whose knowledge is the most extensive, and yet is destitute of goodness; for what the latter is seeking by his great acquirements, the former already possesses. . . . They who know little, but have a conscience [or who follow the little light they have], become enlightened in the other world even so as to become angels; and then their wisdom and intelligence are inexpressible." (A. C. n. 1100.)

A man's character, therefore, or his spiritual nearness to God, depends not so much on what he understands, thinks or believes, as on the kind and degree of his love—the state of his heart, or the ruling purpose of his life; and this, again, depends on the measure of his fidelity to duty, or the degree of his obedience to all known truth.

So often is the supreme importance of right living, or religious obedience to all the known laws of heavenly charity, insisted on by Swedenborg, and the relative insignificance of everything else, that it would be easy to fill a volume with passages similar to those here cited.

Reason in Religion.

Prior to Swedenborg's time, it was an established tenet in all the churches of Christendom, that religious doctrines were not to be scrutinized by the eye of reason; that they (some of them at least) were profound mysteries which people must not expect to understand, and should not, therefore, "pry into;" that they were to be accepted blindly, not rationally; that, in such matters the understanding was to be held in complete subjection to faith. And there was good reason for this; for the generally accepted beliefs of that day, were not such as would stand the test of rational examination. Therefore it became the habit of religious teachers, when closely questioned about their doctrines, to deny the lawfulness or propriety of exercising one's reason in matters of religious belief, and to seek shelter behind that much abused but very convenient word, mystery.

Swedenborg lays the axe at the root of this pernicious tree. He announces himself as the herald of a New Dispensation—a dispensation of rational religious truth; and throughout his writings he insists on the freest and most faithful exercise of the understanding in matters of faith. He repudiates, as a false and pernicious dogma, the prevalent idea of his day, that religious doctrines were not to be subjected to the scrutiny of reason, or brought within the grasp of the intellect; and insists that spiritual truth should be seen, or received rationally. Speaking of the New Church whose dawn he heralded, and whose doctrines he claims to have been specially commissioned to reveal, he says:

"In the New Church this tenet, that the undertanding must be kept in subjection to faith, is to be rejected; and in place of it this is to be received as a maxim, that the truth of the church should be seen before it is received; and truth cannot be seen otherwise than rationally. . . . Who can acknowledge truth and retain it unless he sees it? And what is truth not seen but a voice not understood?" (A. R. n. 564.)

And everywhere throughout his writings he insists on the importance of receiving truth rationally; that is, of exercising our reason on whatever is presented us for religious truth, or of seeing it with the eye of the mind before we accept it. And he declares that a blind belief is dangerous, and unworthy to be called a belief.

"Shut people's eyes," he says, "stop their ears, that is, induce them not to think from any understanding, and then tell those impressed with some idea of eternal life whatever you will, and they will believe it; yes, even if you should tell them that God can be angry and breathe vengeance; that He can inflict eternal damnation upon any one; that He requires to be moved to pity by his own Son's blood; . . . with other like extravagances. But open your eyes and unstop your ears, that is, think of these things from your understanding, and you will straightway see their utter disagreement with the truth." (D. F. n. 46.)

He says that no one in heaven accepts for truth anything which seems to him unreasonable, or which does not satisfy the demands of his intellect.

"All in heaven see truths with the understanding, and so receive them [that is, rationally]; but what they do not see with the understanding, they do not receive. And if any one says to them that they must have faith, although they neither see nor understand, they turn away, saying: How is that possible? What I see or understand; I believe; but I cannot believe what I do not see nor understand." (Ap. Ex. n. 239. See also D. P. n. 73-88. A. R. 564, 914. Ap. Ex. 1100, 232, 242, 759. D. F. 46, '7, '8. A. C. 5432.)

And throughout his theological writings this illumined teacher vindicates the claims of reason, and insists on the faithful exercise of the understanding in all our religious inquiries. The New Church therefore repudiates and condemns the old dogma that we are to believe blindly, or that, in religious matters, the understanding is to be held in servile subjection to faith. And while it never exalts human reason above Divine revelation, it inculcates, as an imperative duty, the free and faithful exercise of our rational faculties upon whatever claims to be such revelation, and counsels us to accept for religious truth nothing against which our reason revolts, or which fails to commend itself to our rational intuitions.

Religion without Asceticism.

Prior to the year 1757, asceticism was, in the popular mind, intimately connected with religion, and was looked upon by multitudes of professing Christians as forming a very considerable part of it. Religion was held to be something quite incompatible with any sort of indulgence in worldly pleasures, and more closely allied to austerity and gloom than to cheerfulness and joy. All kinds of amusements—even dancing and the drama—were held to be positively sinful, and unfit, therefore, for religious people to indulge in.

But the New Church teaches a different doctrine on this, as on all other subjects. It believes and teaches that the loves of self and the world are the ruling loves of the natural or unregenerate man; while, in the truly human or regenerate state, the opposite loves—that is, love of the Lord and love of the neighbor—bear rule. It teaches further, that the whole work of regeneration consists, not in uprooting or extinguishing these natural loves, but in bringing them into a state of due subjection and subordination to the higher and truly human loves. Christianity, therefore, as understood in this Church and interpreted by its authorized teachings, inculcates purity, holiness and righteousness, without austerity or asceticism. It inculcates a reverent regard for our whole nature, the lower as well as the higher. It teaches that all our appetites and natural desires—our love of knowledge, love of wealth, love of amusement, love of pleasure, honor, reputation, power—are good and useful in their proper place; and are not, therefore, to be extinguished, but to be brought into complete subjection to the higher and truly human loves. It holds that these are all good and useful as servants, but tyrannous and cruel as masters. And not only so, but that natural delights become more and more delightful as the higher motive or spiritual affection—love of the Lord and the neighbor—enters into and vitalizes them. To cite one or two passages in confirmation of this from the authorized teachings of this Church:

"It is well to observe that the man who is regenerated is not deprived of the delight of pleasures of the body or the mind; for this delight he enjoys fully after regeneration, even more fully than before, but in an inverted ratio. The delight of pleasures before regeneration was the all of his life; but after regeneration the good of charity becomes the all of his life, and in this case the delight of pleasures serves as a means and an ultimate plane, in which spiritual good with its happiness and blessedness terminates. When, therefore, the order is to be inverted, then the former delight of pleasures expires and becomes as nothing, and a new delight from a spiritual origin is insinuated in its place." (A. C. n. 8413.)

"Some suppose that whoever desires to be happy in the other world must by no means enjoy the pleasures of the body and sense, but must abstain from all such delights, urging in favor of this, that corporeal and worldly pleasures abstract and detain the mind from spiritual and celestial life. They who think so, however, and therefore voluntarily give themselves up to wretchedness while living in the world, are not aware of the real truth.

"It is by no means forbidden any one to enjoy corporeal or sensual pleasures, or those arising from the possession of lands, money, honors and public appointments; those of conjugial love and love of infants and children, of friendship and social intercourse; the pleasure of listening to singing and music, or of seeing beautiful things of various kinds, such as handsome apparel, well-furnished houses, magnificent gardens, and the like, all of which are delightful from harmony; the pleasure of smelling agreeable odors, of tasting delicacies and useful meats and drinks; and the pleasure of touch; for all these are the lowest or corporeal affections which have their origin from those which are interior. Interior affections which are living, all derive their delight from the good and the true; and the good and true derive theirs from charity and faith, and these come from the Lord, consequently from the very essential Life. Therefore affections and pleasures which have this origin are alive; and if genuine or from this source, they are never denied to any one. When pleasures are thus derived, their delight exceeds indefinitely that from every other origin." (A. C. n. 995.)