ple, every
society in the spiritual world is a group of spirits arranged in
the form of a man, every heaven is a gigantic man composed of an
immense number of individuals, and all the heavens together
constitute one Grand Man, a countless number of the most
intelligent angels forming the head, a stupendous organization of
the most affectionate making the heart, the most humble going to
the feet, the most useful attracted to the hands, and so on
through every part.

With exceptions, then, we regard Swedenborg's doctrine of the
future life as a free poetic presentment, not as a severe
scientific statement, of views true in moral principle, not of
facts real in literal detail. His imagination and sentiment are
mathematical and ethical instead of asthetic and passionate. Milk
seems to run in his veins instead of blood, but he is of
truthfulness and charity all compact. We think it most probable
that the secret of his supposed inspiration was the abnormal
frequent or chronic turning of his mind into what is called the
ecstatic or clairvoyant state. This condition being spontaneously
induced, while he yet, in some unexplained manner, retained
conscious possession and control of his usual faculties, he
treated his subjective conceptions as objective realities,
believed his interior contemplations were accurate visions of
facts, and took the strange procession of systematic reveries
through his teeming brain for a scenic revelation of the
exhaustive mysteries of heaven and hell. "Each wondrous guess
beheld the truth it sought, And inspiration flash'd from what was
thought."

This hypothesis, taken in conjunction with the comprehensiveness
of his mind, the vastness of his learning, the integral
correctness of his conscience, and his disciplined habits of
thought, will go far towards explaining the unparalleled
phenomenon of his theological works; and, though it leaves many
things unaccounted for, it seems to us more credible than any
other which has yet been suggested.

The last of the three prominent phenomena which as before said
followed the Protestant Reformation was rationalism, an attempt to
try all religious questions at the tribunal of reason and by the
tests of conscience. The great movement led by Luther was but one
element in a numerous train of influences and events all yielding
their different contributions to that resolute rationalistic
tendency which afterwards broke out so powerfully in England,
France, a