CHAPTER XIV. DIVINE PROVIDENCE AND HUMAN PRUDENCE. "There is a destiny that shapes our ends, Rough-hew them how we will.”—Shakspeare. Ir is a frequent remark of those who have had much experience in the world, and especially those who have met with many disappointments, that "there is no use in planning." Indeed, how often do we hear it said "Nothing that I ever undertook to do yet, came out as I intended. I never did any thing that I wanted to do, in my whole life. I have been balked in every thing. I seem to myself like drift-wood, floating down the great stream of life, not knowing what I was made for, or whither I am tending." Ah, yes, "A greater Power than thou couldst contradict But it is one straight and continuous story; God hath an infinite use for thee an eternal ocupation. Thou must fill that place in the universe which from eternity was foreseen and provided. Thou art a particle from the Infinite Deity. And as sure as God exists, thou must do that work which was wrapped up in the germ of thy destiny from the very first. Truly, there is but little use in planning. Many of us have lived long enough to see our most cherished plans utterly frustrated, and ourselves in such uses and stations as no human sagacity could foresee or imagine. "Man appoints, God disappoints." Look out into the world, and see the currents of its mighty forces, and the strongly interlinked connections of all its business, activity, and enterprise. And when we think of how it all came into being, how much the past generations have had to do with the present scene, -how a child is born, and endowed, and circumstanced from the very first; then may we ask ourselves how much of destiny, and how much of freewill, compose this complicated web and mystery of life. But there is one thing connected with this subject, that we do not sufficiently reflect upon. It relates to the inmost affections of man, which form and determine his active thoughts. Whenever man acts or does any thing from what seems to him his own prudence, it is always from some love or affection from which the thought is. Now, it is the thought alone which comes into his sight, and not by any means the affection alone. Love in itself has no form, and only comes into manifest perception from the form which it takes in its own thought. As truth or falsity, it can be seen and taken cognizance of by man, but not as good or evil alone. Every truth is the form of some good, and every falsity of some evil. There are indeed certain gross and external affections which manifest themselves in the sensations of the body, but seldom ever in the thought of the mind. "But the internal affections of thought, from which the external exist, never manifest themselves before man; concerning these one knows no more than one sleeping in a carriage concerning the road, and no more than he feels the circumrotation of the earth." D. P. 199. Now, it is these internal, hidden affections, which are the more immediate subjects of the divine operation. And how innumerable, how infinite they are! And when we reflect that the externals, which alone come into our sight, are from these internals, and it is these only which form the thought and reflection of man, and constitute all his prudence, how little does that prudence become, and how manifestly under the divine control! Providence with God is prudence with man; and with those who are in the love of self and the world, all their thoughts and actions, plans and schemes, are from the low and base affections which favor these two loves. The Lord sees these affections, and the angels also who are set over man, and they understand them much better than the man himself does. Hence the plans which grow from them are so frequently thwarted by unforeseen occurrences, and are either turned to favor man's salvation, or to lighten the evil of condemnation which he would otherwise bring upon himself. They are permitted to succeed for a time, they go on bravely and well, as though in truth the man had power in his own hands to become "the architect of his own fortune." But by and by he is circumvented in a way he least suspected. Some change of societies in the spiritual world, or power applied there, starts up an obstruction here in the ultimates of nature; all his boasted power is humbled into nothing; the mighty fabric of his pride topples down before him as he looks on in astonishment; and he is obliged to confess to that mysterious destiny which the natural man knows nothing of, only to dignify with the name of Fortune. And in like manner also, if the man is principled in the love of the Lord and the neighbor. He may need a lighter or even a heavier treatment; more or less disappointment or suecess; but inasmuch as his aim is now heavenly, he is more fully within the sphere of the Divine Providence, and less implicated in the mistakes of mere humanity. He is therefore carried to his goal in a more orderly manner. It is one's own prudence that lies hid in every evil from its origin, and in which also is concealed the acknowledgment of nature alone. Hence also it is that those in the future world who have most relied upon their own prudence against the Divine Providence, become, according to Swedenborg, mere worshippers of nature, and more than others, magicians also, and skilled in wicked arts. For it is by these means that they hope to affect more fully their own purposes, to circumvent the laws of nature, and to provide for themselves. It will not of course be inferred, or felt in the least, from any thing which has been said of the perfection and fulness of the Divine Providence, that any relaxation of effort is encouraged on the part of man: for inasmuch as the whole of nature is in effort, or connatus, to effect its own results, so man, as a part of it, though acted upon continually by the Divine Will and by influx from the unseen world, must still continue with all energy to exert himself, and to contribute his part to the mighty movement. Because there is so resistless and continual a Providence, that is no reason why man should not act with all diligence as of himself; for it is the very order of Providence to cause man to act, and thus, by means of his free powers, receive and appropriate those blessings which he can thus only enjoy. He could not enjoy them unless he appeared to acquire them himself. How great is the satisfaction of accomplishing any thing of one's self! What a divine pleasure in the very work itself! In fact, Providence can only come, most fully and successfully, where the free-will of man is most active to admit it. It thus opens the doors, and throws open the windows of the mind, for influx. Hence the proverb"Providence helps those who help themselves." But if we deny it, or do not look to it, our own power dwindles into imbecility. We may succeed for a while, but the great currents of influx and of destiny will sooner or later assert their mastery, and man be humbled and carried away with them. "I have discoursed with good spirits," says Swedenborg, "concerning the Divine Providence, and concerning man's own proper prudence, and they showed me about this by a representative familiar amongst them, namely by a mote scattered and rare in the atmosphere, saying that man's own proper prudence is to the Divine Providence as that mote is to the universal atmosphere, which mote is respectively nothing, and also falls down. They added, that they who attribute all things to their own proper prudence, are like those who wander in thick forests, and do not know the way out, and if they find it, they attribute it either to their own prudence, or to fortune." A. Č. 6485. "But I know that human prudence brings over the rational more to its side, than the Divine Providence does to its; for the reason that the latter is not apparent, but the former is apparent: it can be more easily received that there is one only life, which is God, and that all men are recipients of life from Him; and yet this is the same thing, because prudence is of life. Who in reasoning does not speak in favor of one's own prudence, and in favor of nature, when he reasons from the natural or external man? but who in reasoning does not speak in favor of the Divine Providence, and in favor of God, when he reasons from the spiritual or internal man? But I say to the natural man, pray write books, and fill them with arguments, plausible, probable, and likely, and in your judgment solid; one in favor of one's own prudence, the other in favor of nature, and afterwards give them into the hand of any angel, and I know that he will write below these few words: "They are all appearances and fallacies."" D. P. 213 |