rienced and
understand. The intellectual rejection of all
purely spiritual knowledge is the most marked
indication of this indolence, of which thinkers
of every standing are certainly guilty.

That the initial effort is a heavy one is
evident, and it is clearly a question of strength,
as well as of willing activity. But there is
no way of acquiring this strength, or of using
it when acquired, except by the exercise of the
will. It is vain to expect to be born into great
possessions. In the kingdom of life there is no
heredity except from the man's own past. He
has to accumulate that which is his. This is
evident to any observer of life who uses his
eyes without blinding them by prejudice; and
even when prejudice is present, it is impossible
for a man of sense not to perceive the fact. It
is from this that we get the doctrine of punishment
and salvation, either lasting through great
ages after death, or eternal. This doctrine is a
narrow and unintelligent mode of stating the
fact in Nature that what a man sows that shall
he reap. Swedenborg's great mind saw the fact
so clearly that he hardened it into a finality in
reference to this particular existence, his prejudices
making it impossible for him to perceive
the possibility of new action when there is no
longer the sensuous world to act in. He was too
dogmatic for scientific observation, and would
not see that, as the spring follows the autumn,
and the day the night, so birth must follow
death. He went very near the threshold of the
Gates of Gold, and passed beyond mere intellectualism,
only to pause at a point but one
step farther. The glimpse of the life beyond
which he had obtained appeared to him to
contain the universe; and on his fragment of
experience he built up a theory to include all
life, and refused progress beyond that state
or any possibility outside it. This is only
another form of the weary treadmill. But
Swedenborg stands foremost in the crowd of
witnesses to the fact that the Golden Gates
exist and can be seen from the heights of
thought, and he has cast us a faint surge of
sensation from their threshold.

III

When once one has considered the meaning
of those Gates, it is evident that there is
no other way out of this form of life except
through them. They only can admit man to
the place where he becomes the fruit of which
manhood is the blossom. Nature is the kindest
of mothers to those who need her; she never
wearies of