Page:A Cloud of Independent Witnesses.djvu/55

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TESTIMONY OF REV. JOHN CLOWES. 49

to its dictates, consisting of the upright and sincere in heart among all people, nations and languages, and forming one grand body or kingdom here on earth, whereof the Lord Jesus Christ is the soul or head, and of which all are living members who worship Him in spirit and in truth. Woe be to those who would endeavor to confine this blessed tabernacle and temple of the Most High and Holy One within any pale of their own framing, under the delusive imagination that any mere opinion, speculation, doctrine, form or ceremony whatsoever, can of themselves constitute that spiritual building, in which the almighty and eternal Jehovah Jesus dwells, with all the blessings of his parental love, and the powers of his salvation! Whereas it must be very plain to every attentive reader, both of the Sacred Scriptures and of the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg, that the church of Christ consists solely of the humble, the upright and the obedient, agreeable to those words of the Lord, * My mother and my brethren are these, which hear the Word of God, and do it,". (Luke viii : 21); and in another place, * My sheep hear my voice,' (John x: 27); where to hear is to obey."

Such was this saintly man's idea of the New Church signified by the New Jerusalem. So well did he understand the meaning and purpose of the 4

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