Although the light thrown upon ancient conditions of life and thought has destroyed much that sometimes seems vital for the Old Testament, it has brought into relief a more permanent and indisputable appreciation of its significance, and it is gradually dispelling that pseudo-scientific literalism which would fetter the greatest of ancient Oriental writings with an insistence upon the verity of historical facts.
The 16th-century reformers strove to avoid the literalism of the words " This is my body," accepted frankly by the Roman and Eastern churches, and urged a Receptionist view, viz.
Stripped of its definitely miraculous character, the doctrine of the inner light may be regarded as the familiar mystical protest against formalism, literalism, and scripture-worship. Swedenborg, though selected by Emerson in his Representative Men as the typical mystic, belongs rather to the history of spiritualism than to that of mysticism as understood in this article.
