For all sincere lovers of the Word of God we entertain the deepest respect, and rejoice to think that their faith in the Bible remains unshaken amid such fiery trials. Yet if Christians were wise and unprejudiced, they would turn to Swedenborg’s “Arcana Cœlestia,” and there find all that heart or mind could wish. Its readers, who have been many, (and yet, when compared with the wide world of Christendom, insignificantly few,) have had, during all these seasons of doubt, the fullest peace; and have been ready to welcome every truth of science, however militating against the literal sense of the early chapters of Genesis; and all the while have remained such lovers of the Word as none but believers in its spiritual sense can be. We believe that the religious world will, in process of time, when all methods of reconciling the letter of Scripture with geology shall have manifestly failed, finally turn to Swedenborg; and when the heavenly truth glowing in his pages shall beam upon their opened sight, they will wonder why they did not read his luminous volumes sooner. From the Call of Abram, the Word is to be looked upon as a narration of historical events. Yet while, as history, it possesses a great charm and interest to every mind, from its matchless and beautiful simplicity, we cannot see what claim it could have to the title of the Word of God, did it not contain within itself, as Swedenborg abundantly demonstrates, a spiritual sense, universally applicable to men in all states, times, and situations. In the highest or celestial sense, the Word refers solely to the Lord, and is a description of his nature and attributes, of his assumption of corrupt humanity, and the process of its glorification. Man being formed in the Lord’s image and likeness, whatever treats of Him, is, in a secondary sense, or in a lower degree, descriptive of man, his nature and regeneration. This secondary application of the Word forms its spiritual sense, which when understood, transforms Genesis and Exodus from mere history and dull ceremonial law, into a Divine revelation of the laws of spiritual life, pregnant with practical benefit to all men, because applicable to every incident and thought of life.