In the preceding essay on the “Spiritual Philosophy of African Slavery,” I ventured the assertion, that the barbarians of the world, and especially the dark-skinned savages, are descendants of the antediluvians.  The New Church reader will perhaps ask, What rational ground is there for such an hypothesis? 

There are evidently three great classes or types of men now existing in the world.

1.  Barbarians.—These people have never invented an alphabet, and therefore have no literature, no science, no theology, no rational government.  They lead the sensual-corporeal life of animals, with merely the exterior-natural, as Swedenborg calls it, of human life.  They do not accumulate facts so as to cultivate the scientific principle; nor have they the least idea of the rational, which is still more interior.  Consequently, they are totally unprogressive.

2.  Semi-civilized nations.—We may take the Hindoos as the most ancient and best type of this class.  They have the most extraordinary literature, theology, government, habits, customs, etc., thousands of years old, and in a strangely crystallized or unprogressive condition.  They are perfect enigmas to us modern thinkers; nor is there any key to the mystery, but the science of correspondences.  I assume that all such nations are the descendants of the men of the Ancient Church, and have been made unprogressive by the closure of the spiritual degree of the human mind.

3. Modern civilized nations—With the scientific and rational faculties of the mind in constant and progressive activity.

It is the ineradicable fault of modern philosophy to suppose that there has been, from the beginning, a regular progressive development of the human race from the savage condition upward, into the light and beauty of civilization.  It presumes that all nations were originally barbarous, with fetichism for their first and only theological manifestation.  From this stage they passed into a semi-civilized condition, with polytheism for their religion; and, lastly, they became scientific and philosophical, and, as to their theological opinions, atheistic, deistic, or monotheistic.  This corresponds to M. Comte's three stages of human evolution—the mythical, the metaphysical, and the positive. 

The Europeans, it is assumed, have outstripped all others in the race of civilization, on account of superior organization of brain, and a great number of favoring natural and external causes.  And it is confidently expected that the African and the Asiatic will, finally, come up to the same point of development, under the influence of similar stimuli and surrounding circumstances. 

I can not here appeal, as I might, to every department of human knowledge and inquiry to refute this doctrine, that the savage is the primitive man, or the seed out of which in due time the civilized man is unfolded.  I will make a single quotation from a distinguished Old Church authority, and then pass on to a more strictly New Church, or Swedenborgian, view of the subject:

"Were the savage the primitive man, we should then find savage tribes furnished, scantily enough it might be, with the elements of speech, yet at the same time with its fruitful beginnings, its vigorous and healthful germs.  But what does their language on close inspection prove?  In every case, what they are themselves, the remnant and ruin of a better and nobler past.  Fearful indeed is the impress of degradation which is stamped upon the language of the savage—more fearful than that even which is stamped upon his form. 

“Yet with all this, ever and anon in the midst of this wreck and ruin there is that in the language of the savage, some subtle distinction, some curious allusion to a perished civilization, now utterly unintelligible to the speaker; or some other note, which proclaims his language to be the remains of a dissipated inheritance, the rags and remnants of a robe which was a royal one once.  The fragments of a broken sceptre are in his hand, a sceptre wherewith he (or rather his progenitors) once held dominion over large kingdoms of thought, which have now escaped wholly from his sway.”—Dr.  Richard Trench, on the Study of Words, pp.  26 and 27. 

Swedenborg asserts that there were three great and distinct civilizations before the coming of Christ—celestial, spiritual, and natural—connected by influx, we may safely presume, respectively with the three distinct heavens.  The church is the medium of life, and progress occurs first and prominently on the plane where the church is.  The ancient civilizations perished because the celestial and spiritual degrees of the human mind were successively closed.  Now is it not probable that barbarism resulted from the closure of the celestial plane, and that a barbarian is a man spiritually organized like a child, that is, leading a sensual-corporeal life with celestial “remains” stored away in his interiors? 

Does the New Churchman object, that the whole human race perished at the flood or closure of the celestial plane, except the “remnant” in whom the spiritual plane could be opened?  and that all men thereafter are of the spiritual or natural type?  I answer, what then can Swedenborg mean by saying that the African race is of the celestial genius?  Does he mean spiritual-celestial, analogous to one half of the spiritual heavens?  I think not, for the African would then exhibit some token or trace, as the Asiatic does, of having once enjoyed a high degree of spiritual light.  But he is thoroughly sensual-corporeal, and his “remains” are evidently celestial, nor has he ever had any thing about him of which the spiritual could be predicated.

The first men created on earth were of the celestial genius.  A celestial church was established among them which no doubt had its rise, culmination, and fall.  There is no reason, however, to suppose that every created being had been brought into its intimate communion before its deterioration, nor that all, save the spiritual remnant, were suffocated by its disappearance.  The following from Swedenborg appears satisfactory on that point:

“By all which is on the earth expiring, those are signified who being of that church had acquired such a nature, as may appear from this consideration, that earth does not signify the whole habitable globe, but only those who are of the church, as was shown above.  Consequently there is no particular flood here meant, much less a universal flood, but only the expiration or suffocation of those who were of the church, when they had separated themselves from remains, and thereby from the intellectual things of truth, and from what appertained to the will of good, consequently from the heavens.” A.  C.  662. 

Swedenborg expressly declares that this suffocation or closure of the celestial plane in those of the Most Ancient Church, and the opening of the spiritual plane for the establishment of a spiritual church, were gradual processes.  Those who had extinguished remains by immersion in lusts and phantasies no doubt perished.  No doubt also this process would have gone on to the extermination of the whole race, for influx is through the church alone.  But with the opening of the spiritual degree, a great organic modification was induced.  Influx came through the spiritual into the natural and thence into the corporeal.  The sensual-corporeal life of both men and brutes was maintained by the influx from the New Church.  The process of extinction was arrested, but all, save the spiritual remnant, were left in a sensual-corporeal condition, with some few celestial “remains” deeply imbedded in their structure—their sole hope of future resuscitation. 

This rationale of barbarism, according to the New Church psychology, seems to be eminently clear and beautiful.  It explains the mysteries of savage life.  It shows why the scientific, rational, and spiritual degrees have not been opened in his mind.  His “remains” are celestial, and not till they are vivified, will his inferior faculties develop.  No influx or creative impetus has reached these remains since the flood—for no celestial church has existed.  When inferior things have been subordinated and coordinated for the descent of the celestial, then will those nations of the celestial type who can receive the new influx—especially the Africans—reveal the mercy, and wisdom, and power of God in a manner surpassingly strange and beautiful. 

Some barbarians appear doomed to inevitable extinction, such as our American Indians, the Australians, the Bushmen, some wild tribes in Ceylon and Malabar who live in trees and are very little superior to apes, the cannibals of Madagascar, some hopelessly degraded races in Siberia, Patagonia, and elsewhere, etc., etc.  Do they not all represent certain great principles or qualities in the Most Ancient Church, of which the “remains” were becoming extinct?  Were they not secured a low kind of physical existence by the change of influx as above mentioned, and will not the incipient influx of the celestial church ensure their destruction? 

Swedenborg speaks always well of the Africans, and his description of them, from a spiritual stand-point, will hereafter be regarded as a strong external proof of the reliability of his own revelations.  It is singular that although Africa is west and southwest of Asia and south of Europe, Swedenborg says Africa in thc spiritual or angelic sense means the East.  (Apoc.  Ex.  21.) It was of course correspondential, representing the celestial state nearest the Lord.  Its first people must have been celestial. 

In my former essay I intimated my belief that the Africans are to play a great part in the ultimation of the celestial church and the regeneration of the world.  It is more than a curious coincidence that at the time Swedenborg was revealing the vast organic system of spiritual truth, which is the doctrine of angels, a revelation was being made to negroes in the interior of Africa.  Of this remarkable fact we have as yet no external proof, but no New Churchman doubts that Swedenborg’s statement will be verified, perhaps in some unanticipated manner.  Notice this passage from Swedenborg: “I have heard the angels rejoice at this revelation, because it serves to open a communication with the rational principle in man, which has been heretofore closed up with the universally received dogma, that the understanding should be kept in obedience to ecclesiastical faith.” T.  C.  R.  840.  Now if I understand this sentence aright, it means, that we owe much of our great emancipation from the dogmas of the past to the quiet and imperceptible influx into our rational principle, of a sphere flowing from a little obscure community in Africa, whose celestial “remains” have been vivified by the special implantation of truth.  What effect then may we presume the sphere of Christianized Africans in the south to have on the world and church at large?  The natural man would scout such an idea, because he knows nothing of influx and correspondences.  We may owe all of our boasted civil and religious liberty to the fact, that the inmost celestial sphere of Africa has here in America impinged upon the rational-scientific sphere of the European.  Hence the whole world is thrown into dire commotion about African slavery.  It is, indeed, the question of questions.  The whole future of the church depends on the existence and Christianization of this institution.  Devils and enthusiastic spirits, by the agency of fanatics and misguided good people, would thwart the influx from the celestial by restoring the African to his original barbarism. 

It is curious and instructive to see how spheres withdraw or approach, and are correspondentially represented in history.  The celestial is closed, and Africa and America disappear from the consciousness of the race.  The spiritual is closed, and Hindostan, China, and Japan exist to the Greek and Roman only by tradition.  The natural is nearly closed, and the Jew alone remains, thoroughly sensual-corporeal—the ultimate form of the ancient civilizations.  The new natural of ascending civilization is formed in Europe, and spheres approach again.  Asia comes into contact with Europe by the crusades, the career of Moor and Turk, and, finally, by the British domination in India.  Asia comes into contact with Africa by the Moor and Arab imposing the Mohammedan religion on almost all the tribes of Central Africa.  The celestial approaches, and Africa and America are re-discovered.  Africa comes into contact with Europe in America—and it will meet Asia again on the same ground by the emigration from China to our Pacific Coast, and the importation of Coolies into tropical America.  The celestial, spiritual, and natural will meet in tropical America, and not until their spheres have been fully subordinated and co-ordinated will the New Jerusalem descend in all its fulness upon earth, and the New Zion be established.  The Jew—the connecting link between the descending and ascending civilizations will be the last to be regenerated, and then the triumph of our Lord, the Redeemer, will be complete. 

No one, I hope, will infer from these remarks that I suppose the celestial, spiritual, and natural, which are discrete degrees, can possibly exist upon the same plane.  If the celestial church had not fallen, we would have remained forever in connection with the third heavens.  If the spiritual church could have persisted, we might have been still connected by influx with the second heavens, and so on.  But having descended into the sensual-corporeal, we become by the process of reconstruction or regeneration only celestial-natural or spiritual-natural.  The African will be celestial-natural, the Asiatic spiritual-natural, the European either.  Our world, according to Swedenborg, belongs to the corporeal sphere, and has place in the cutaneous principle of the Grand Man.  For this reason the Word is given here in so sensuous a form, and our Lord became a sensual-corporeal being on our planet.  All things are repeated or represented in ultimates, and hence our descent from the celestial to the sensual, and our acquisition of a new basis into which all the higher elements may be inserted. 

If I am not greatly mistaken, the application of the doctrines of influx, order, series, degrees, and correspondence, in the light of Swedenborg’s direct revelations, to the physical, moral, and historical study of man, will be productive of great results.  Physiologists, ethnologists, and historians are collecting the facts, which the New Church philosophy alone can ever harmonize or explain. 

Not only will the natural history of man and the philosophy of history be elevated into rational light, but the moral government of God will be vindicated from many objections which have been urged against it.  God created no man a savage, or black, or yellow, or hideous and deformed, or idiotic, or insane.  Men have made themselves and their children so.  God governs the hells and all states of human imperfection and barbarism with infinite mercy.  By confining a vast portion of the race for a definite and provisional period to barbarism, he saved them from total annihilation.  Those people viewed in spiritual light are children, and they have unquestionably been saved in heaven.  The fears of orthodoxy for their salvation are wholly gratuitous.  In the fulness of time, when His celestial church is ultimated, these people, preserved as a remnant or seed for that very purpose, will be the principal means and agents to a perfect reorganization of society.  The end was foreseen in the beginning and provided for.  He has led us by ways we knew not, and we may be sure, that the wonders and mercies of the past will be immeasurably eclipsed by those of the future.  “The light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun shall be sevenfold.”

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Dr.  Horace Bushnell, in his work on “Nature and the Supernatural,” cites a case in his own experience, of what he regards as the possession of a spiritual gift in an African, which may perhaps be referred to the “vivification of remains.”  After relating numerous facts in proof that “miracles and spiritual gifts are not discontinued,” Dr.  B.  proceeds:

“I cite only one more witness; a man who carries the manner and supports the office of a prophet, though without claiming the repute of it himself.  He is a fugitive from slavery, whose name I had barely heard, but whose character and life have been known to many in our community, for the last twenty years.  He called at my door, about the time I was sketching the outline of this chapter, requesting an interview.  As I entered the room, it was quite evident that he was struggling with a good deal of mental agitation, though his manner was firm, and even dignified.  He said immediately, that he had come to me ‘with a message from de Lord.’ I replied, that I was glad if he had any so good thing as that for me, and hoped he would deliver it faithfully.  He told me, in terms of great delicacy, and with a seriousness that excluded all appearance of a design to win his way by flattery, that he had conceived the greatest personal interest in me, because, in hearing me once or twice, he had discovered that God was teaching me, and discovering Himself to me in a way that was specially hopeful; and that, for this very reason, he had been suffering the greatest personal burdens of feeling on my account.  For more than a year he had been praying for me, and sometimes in the night, because of his apprehension that I had made a false step, and been disobedient to the heavenly vision.  During all this time, he had been struggling also with the question, whether he might come and see me, and testify his concern for me? 

“I asked him to explain, and not to suffer any feeling of constraint.  In a manner of the greatest deference possible, and with a most singularly beautiful skill, he went on, gathering round his point, and keeping it all the while concealed, as he was nearing it, straightening up his tall, manly form, dropping out his Africanisms, rising in the port of his language, beaming with a look of intelligence and spiritual beauty, all in a manner to second his prophetic formulas—'The Lord said to m’' thus and thus; ‘The Lord has sent me to say ;’ till I also, as I gazed upon him, was obliged internally to confess, ‘verily, Nathan the prophet has come again!’  It was really a scene such as any painter might look a long time to find such dignity in one so humble; expression so lofty, and yet so gentle and respectful; the air of a prophet so commanding and positive, and yet in such divine authority, as to allow no sense of forwardness or presumption. 

“It came out, finally, as the burden of the message, that on a certain occasion, and in reference to a certain public matter, I had undertaken that which could not but withdraw me from God’s teaching, and was certain to obscure the revelations otherwise ready and waiting to be made.  ‘Yes,’ I replied, ‘but there was nothing wrong in what I undertook to set forward.’ It brought no scandal on religion.  It concerned, you will admit, the real benefit of the public, in all future times.’  ‘Ah, yes,’ he answered,’ it was well enough to be done, but it was not for you.  God had other and better things for you.  He was calling you to Himself, and it was yours to go with Him, not to be laboring in things more properly belonging to other men.’  I had given him the plea, by which, drawing on my natural judgment, I had justified myself in going into the engagement in question.  And yet, I am obliged to confess to a strong, and even prevalent impression, that my humble brother was right. 

“I thanked him for his message, and even looked upon him with a kind of reverence as we parted.  I found, on inquiry, that he was a man without blame, industrious, pure, a husband and father, faithful to his office, and always in the same high key of Christian living.  But the people of his color, knowing him well, and having nothing to say against him, could yet offer no opinion at all concerning him.  He was plainly enough a strange being to them; they could make nothing of him.  The most they could say was, that he is always the same. 

“I have since visited him, in his little shop, and drawn out of him the story of bis life.  He became a Christian about the time of his arrival at manhood, and gives a very clear and beautiful account of his conversion.  And the Lord, he says, told him, at that time, that he should be free, soul and body.  To which he answered, ‘Yea, Lord, I know it.’  A promise that was afterward fulfilled in a very strange and wonderful deliverance.  I observed that, in the account he gave me, he was continually saying, in the manner of the prophets, ‘the Lord said,’ and ‘the Lord commanded,’ and ‘the Lord promised,’ and I called his attention to the fact, asking—what do you mean by this? Do you hear words audibly spoken?  ‘Oh no.’ ‘What then?  Do you think what appears to be said to you, and call that the saying of the Lord?’   ‘Yes, I think it; but that is not all.’   ‘How then do you know that it is any thing more than ——'s thought?’   ‘Well, I know it, I feel it to be not from me, and I can tell you things that show it to be so;’ reciting facts, which, if they are true, prove beyond a question, the certainty of some illumination not of himself.  ' Why, then,' I asked, ' does God teach you in this manner, and not me? I feel a strong conviction, sometimes, that I am in the will, I know not how, and the directing counsel of God, but I could never say, as you do, ' the Lord said thus to me.' ' Ah,' said he, ' but you have the.  means—you can read as I can not, you have great learning.  But I am a poor, Ignorant child, and God does with me just as he can.' Whatever may be thought of his revelations, none, I think, will deny him, in his reply, the credit of a true philosophy.  What can be worthier of God.  than to be the guide of this faithful, and otherwise dejected man, making up for his privations of ignorance, by the fuller and more open vision of Himself?

“And yet I should leave a wrong impression, were I not to say, that this Christian fugitive, this unlettered body servant, now, of Christ, as once of his earthly master, is deep in the wisdom of the Scriptures, quotes them continually with a remarkable eloquence and propriety, and with a degree of insight which many of the best educated preachers might envy.  He also believes that God has healed the sick, in many instances, in immediate connection with his prayers, giving the names and particulars without scruple.”