No man who has ever diligently and faithfully, without prejudice, read the Sacred Scriptures in the light of the Science of Correspondences, as revealed by the Lord through Emanuel Swedenborg, has ever failed to be satisfied that the Sacred Scriptures are Divine and plenarily inspired, and that they differ as much from the writings of men as do the works of God from the works of men. At this day, when so many of our clergy and intelligent laymen are beginning to doubt the special inspiration of the Sacred Scriptures, a knowledge of the Science of Correspondences, in accordance with which they were written, is wanted above every thing else, that the Christian Church "may revive again and draw breath through heaven from the Lord." The Lord speaks to man in parables, and "without a parable," we read, "spake He not unto them." The Lord intimates in many passages that the Sacred Scriptures, or His words, contain a spiritual sense, as in the following: "It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing; the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life." "The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life." "The early Christian Fathers, Clement of Alexandria, and Origen, understood that the Sacred Scriptures have a spiritual sense; and Origen--when that shrewd enemy of Christianity, Celsus, ridiculed the stories of the rib, the serpent, etc., as childish fables--reproaches him for want of candor in purposely keeping out of sight, what was so evident upon the face of the narrative, that the whole is a _pure allegory_."--_Noble's Plenary Inspiration._ "The idea of a spiritual sense in every part of the Scripture was the generally received doctrine of the Primitive Church--believed and taught by Origen, Ignatius, Justin Martyr, Jerome, Augustine, Pantaenus, Tatian, Theophilus, Pamphilius, Clement and Cyril of Alexandria, and nearly all the early Christian Fathers. And the same belief has been held by many eminent theologians ever since. Dr. Mosheim, speaking of the illustrious writers of the second century, says: 'They _all_ attributed a double sense to the words of Scripture; the one _obvious_ and _literal_, the other _hidden_ and _mysterious_, which lay concealed, as it were, under the veil of the outward letter.' But the Fathers had no recognized rule for eliciting the spiritual sense. Each one's own spiritual perception was his only guide. A hundred different expositors, therefore, might give as many different expositions of the same text."--_Rev. B. F. Barrett_. Every natural object is the form and embodiment of some spiritual idea or principle; and therefore it is the most perfect expression or type or picture of that idea.