SWEDENBORG, THE PHILOSOPHER AND THEOLOGIAN

BY THE REV. R. R. RODGERS, of Birmingham

International Swedenborg Congress, London, July 4 to 8, 1910

IT is my privilege to speak to you tonight, for a short time, upon Swedenborg as a Philosopher and Theologian. It is a subject of supreme interest and of equal moment. The history of the world is the history of its greatest men. If the voice of the people is the voice of God, it is always because they are wisely and rightly led. Thus it is with the subject of our study tonight. Swedenborg came as a pioneer and leader both in philosophy and theology.

For ages untold the world, through its most famous men, had been revising its creeds and theology, and correcting its scientific and philosophic errors. In both these spheres of thought, many amongst the wisest of men acknowledge that Swedenborg stands supreme. He was master of all the older sciences, corrected many of their errors, and led the way into other sciences quite new to the student. He exhausted all the former worlds of knowledge, discovered others, and invited men to profit by his labours. By the open avowal of many leaders of modern thought, and best able to judge—such as John Greenleaf Whittier, Henry Ward Beecher, Phillips Brooks, Julian Hawthorne, Emerson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Coleridge, Kingsley, Carlyle, Hiram Powers, Flaxman, and Coventry Patmore—it is hardly possible to "exaggerate Swedenborg's mental power, or to place him too high among the selectest company of men of intellect." Such is the man to whose labours I have the privilege to invite your attention.

Whether we refer to Swedenborg as a Philosopher or Theologian, there are three ways in which he has been, and still is studied. The first, is to read his works prejudiced against him; the second, is to read them prejudiced in favour of him; and the third, is to read them with a perfectly open mind. The story is told, that a Frenchman, an Englishman and a German, were once commissioned to write a description of a camel. The Frenchman went to the Zoological gardens, saw the animal for five minutes, and immediately produced his article. The German retired to his study, and there constructed him out of his own consciousness. The Englishman packed up his tea-caddy, pitched his tent in the East, studied the camel in his native country, and dealt with the facts which he had verified by quiet investigation. There are some people who study Swedenborg as the Frenchman studied the camel, others who imitate the German, and others who follow the example of the Englishman. In what I have to say tonight, I hope to speak as the Englishman spoke in his excursion into the field of natural history.

Swedenborg was the second son of the Bishop of Skara. He was born at Stockholm, January 29, 1688. He died in London, at 26, Great Bath Street, off Farringdon Street, 1772. At the age of four he was taken to Upsala, where his father had a house in the great cathedral square. Here he received the whole of his schooling. First he had a private tutor, then he entered the University, pursued his studies with great application, and in 1709, at the age of twenty-on years, took his degree and went home to Brunsbο, where his father then lived.

His first essay in literary work was an academical thesis on taking his degree. This thesis was a selection of moral and religious citations from Latin and Greek authors, chiefly from Seneca and the Bible, and used by him as texts for his own comments upon the virtues and graces of religion.

Next year (1711), at the age of twenty-two, he started for London, which he reached after four escapes from imminent danger. In London and Oxford he spent the greater part of two years. In London he visited St. Paul's, Westminster Abbey, museums, and whatever else he discovered worth seeing. He also sought the acquaintance of eminent men. In April 1711, he writes, “I visit daily the best mathematicians in town. I have been with Flamsteed, who is considered the best astronomer in England, and who is constantly taking observations." He visited Oxford, where he met Edmund Halley, a man second only to Newton, who discovered in 1682 the comet which has been troubling or blessing mankind ever since, and inspiring the unscientific with a sense of awful peril. While here he drained his purse in buying models of machinery, and copies of works on science. He afterwards visited Holland, France and Germany, in each country making the acquaintance of men of science; and returned home in 1715, completing an educational tour of five years.

During these travels he not only studied mathematics and astronomy, and read Dryden, Spenser, Milton, Ben Jonson and Shakespeare, but he invented what seems to be a submarine, "A ship which, with its men, is intended to go under the surface of the sea, whenever it chooses, and do great damage to the fleet of the enemy." He also anticipated the Maxim gun, and invented a magazine air gun to discharge sixty or seventy shots in succession without reloading. And above all, in 1714, he invented a flying machine, gave a picture of it drawn to scale, and stated its weight, its possibilities and drawbacks, and thus anticipated the modern aeroplane by nearly two centuries.

To relieve the tension of his severer studies, he wrote a volume of Fables. In speaking of them himself, Swedenborg says, "They are a kind of Fables like those of Ovid." In 1716, he wrote a volume of Miscellaneous Poems. He also turned journalist and edited a scientific periodical called Daedalus Hyperboreus—a journal devoted to essays and articles on Mathematics and Philosophy. It enjoyed but a very short life, and, for want of funds, came to an end with the sixth number.

Swedenborg was now thirty years of age, and though he had travelled, seen the world, enjoyed many privileges, and commanded many connections amongst men of influence, yet it must not be supposed that during all these years of study and preparation, he had no cares, troubles, or disappointments. On the contrary, as life unfolds with most men, he had his full complement. While at Oxford in 1711, he complains that he lived for sixteen months on £50, and that he is kept back in his studies for want of money. He also felt much discouragement that his early inventions, discoveries and labours seemed to be thrown away, and to bring him nothing but empty honours. Of honοurs he had more than enough.

At twenty-seven years of age (in 1715) he was presented to Charles XII, King of Sweden: being a clear thinker and a good mathematician himself, be at once perceived his abilities, and gave him the choice of three places. That of Assessor Extraordinary in the College of Mines was the one he selected, and held for the remainder of his public life. This post gave him the inspection of the mines and metallic works, embracing the whole mineral wealth of Sweden. But even this was an honour without material benefit, and brought him no salary. In 1719 he was so troubled with his financial outlook that he proposed to emigrate and seek his fortune abroad as an engineer, because he despaired of earning a living in Sweden. Yet in this same year, 1719, he and his family were ennobled by Queen Eleonora. This honour gave him a seat, as the eldest son, in the House of Nobles, and through this elevation in rank his name was changed from Swedberg to Swedenborg. He also shared the friendship of many of the most distinguished scientists of the time. His own eminence, indeed, in the scientific world was now fully established.

But with all these honours, it was not till 1724 that he met with even the smallest material benefit. Up to this time he had laboured, studied, written, invented, and all for nothing. Reward, however, came at last, and at the age of thirty-six he was appointed an Ordinary Assessor, at the salary of £100 a year—only two-thirds the usual amount. Six years later, in his forty-second year, he succeeded to the full salary of £150 per annum, and on this most modest income he toiled to the end, accomplished results beyond any other man, and rose to be characterized by his compeers in Science and Philosophy as "the Aristotle of the North." In acknowledgment of his eminence as a scientist in 1729, at the age of forty-one, he was elected a member of the Academy of Sciences in Stockholm.

Year by year he turned out books as fast as he could write them. Works on Algebra, Higher Mathematics, The Motion and Station of the Earth and Planets, On Tides and Changes in the Position of the Ocean, and On fixing the Value of Coins, were all written and published during 1718 and 1719. [As a Philosopher he wrote seventy-nine separate works on different branches of science.] With a brain capable of embracing every kind of knowledge, with a phenomenal vigour and activity of thought, and with an industry bewildering in its magnitude, his scientific productions appear with almost incredible rapidity. In 1720 he left a manuscript of 560 pages on The First Principles of Natural Things. Next year he published his first Prodromus, an essay on the way to explain Experimental Philosophy by Geometry and Chemistry. This same year he also published Discourses relating to Iron and Fire, A New Method of finding Longitude, and The Construction of Docks and Dykes. The following year (1722) he went to Leipsic, where he published Miscellaneous Observations on Natural Things. Upon this book the celebrated Dumas ascribed to Swedenborg the origin of the modern science of Crystallography, usually ascribed to Wollaston.

Though he wrote on the Power of the Deep Waters of the Deluge, on The Magnet and its Qualities, and various other works of Science, and though he attended to all his duties as Assessor of Mines with the utmost care, yet quietly and unnoticed for eleven long years, and with the patience of a dozen Jobs, he is accumulating materials for his great and crowning work on Physical Science, called the Opera Philosophica. This work was published in three handsome volumes and illustrated by 155 copper plates, at the expense of his friend, that patron of learning, the Duke of Brunswick. The first volume of this work is called the Principia. The object of the Principia is "to trace out a true system of the world." To secure the success of his purpose, he divides it into three parts. The first part treats of "the origin and laws of motion”; the second, "of the phenomena of magnetism"; and in the third, the author “seeks to explain the origin of the universe, including the origination of the planetary bodies from the sun."

This work is entirely free from the skepticism of the age; it is graced with a full acknowledgment of God and His Providence, and it unfolds its discoveries in an atmosphere of reverence and piety, and yet in 1739 it was prohibited by the Papal authority. Why this was done is not perfectly clear; but it is believed that it was because it opposed the old error, that God created all things out of nothing; and also, because Swedenborg's account of creation contravened the still further error, that the world was created in six days as stated by Moses in the first chapter of Genesis. Certain it is that it was prohibited; and certain it is that it is far better to be persecuted for teaching the truth, than to share imperial power and thereby enjoy the short-lived triumphs of error.

The second volume of the Opera Philosophica is an exhaustive treatise on iron, and the various methods of converting iron into steel. The third volume treats of the method of separating copper from silver, and of converting it into brass and other metals. In speaking of this work, in his Elements of the Art of Assaying, Cramer says that Swedenborg has "given the best accounts, not only of the methods and newest improvements in metallic works in all places beyond seas, but also of those in England and the American colonies."

The same year that the Principia appeared—1734—and following the same method, he published a supplemental work On the Infinite, and the final Cause of Creation, and the Intercourse between the Soul and the Body.

This same year (1734) the Imperial Academy of Sciences of St. Petersburg appointed him a corresponding member. In 1735 he lost the good Bishop, his father, from whom he inherited a substantial legacy. "Like a star, never hasting, but never resting, he fulfilled his God-given best"; he not only discharges his numerous duties as Assessor, but he contemplates the pursuit of a new study-broader, deeper and higher than anything attempted in previous years. With his mind matured by knowledge and experience, he now leaves pure physics, and begins the study of the higher science of metaphysics. In the first, or physical epoch of his studies, which ended at the age of forty-five, to discover the origin of nature was his object. In the second, or metaphysical epoch of his studies, to reach the soul, and discover its nature and character was his all-consuming desire.

At the age of forty-eight (1736) he asked leave of absence for a few years in order to travel, and write and publish a new work. But what the work was we have to guess. With a singular and somewhat unusual regard for fairness, he voluntarily gave up half his salary to his substitute, during his term of absence. In his travels he passed through Denmark, Hanover, Holland and Belgium. While at Rotterdam he wrote his famous eulogium upon the Republican form of government as compared with, not a constitutional, but an absolute monarchy. On September 4 we find him in Paris. From France he went to Italy, and spent a year at Venice and Rome (1738-9). In Rome, it is believed by some that he published Two Dissertations on the Nervous Fibre and the Nervous Fluid—1740. On March 17, 1739, he is at Genoa, and here, unfortunately, his Journal of Travel comes to an end. In all probability, in 1740 he returned to Stockholm.

During these four years of travel he turned his attention to anatomy, physiology, and psychology, and as the result of his studies he left (in 1710) a manuscript of 636 pages folio on the Anatomy of all the Parts of the Brain. Two out of the three volumes of this work have been translated into English by Dr. Tafel. In this treatise he anticipates many of the modern discoveries in relation to the functions of the brain, and in speaking of it Professor Retzius, of Upsala, says, "He towers in the history of the brain as a unique, wonderful, phenomenal spirit, as an ideal seeker for truth, who advances step by step to higher problems."

This same year (1740) he also published The Economy of the Animal Kingdom. By the Animal Kingdom, Swedenborg does not mean the lower animals, or brute beasts as distinguished from man; but the human body only. This treatise was published in two parts. The first part, 1740, deals with the blood, arteries, veins, and heart; with an introduction to Rational Psychology. The second part, 1741, is on the "Motion of the brain, of the cortical substance, and of the Human Soul." In this work he dissects the body in search of the soul, and though he seems at times almost to have grasped the coveted prize, yet the book closes, and, instead of the soul, "he only came to the inner parts of the human body."

This failure to discover the soul only stimulated him to renewed labour and study, and in four years afterwards he published The Animal Kingdom, in three parts, and still in search of the same object. The first treats of the Viscera, or Organs of the Lower Region. The second, of the Viscera of the Superior Region. The third, of the Skin, the Touch, the Taste, and of Organic Forms in General. (Partly printed at The Hague, and partly in London, 1744-5.) While the soul as the tenant of the body still eluded him, yet it has been said by one of his most competent critics, that " there is no inquirer into the human body, either for the purposes of medical or general intelligence, above all, there is no philosophical anatomist, who has done justice to himself, unless he has humbly read and studied The Economy and The Animal Kingdom of Swedenborg."

As a Philosopher, the last book that Swedenborg wrote is called The Worship and Love of God—a book as full of poetry as anything from Thompson's Seasons to Shakespeare's Sonnets, and while it is scientific throughout, yet it is as profoundly religious as the Imitation of Christ, by Thomas á Kempis. It is a brilliant philosophic allegory, giving an account of the creation of the world, of Paradise, of the first-born man, of his marriage, his state of integrity, and the image of God. It gathers up and concentrates in one volume the vast results of all his previous studies. It is a religious book, written by a saintly-minded student of nature, and designed to enforce the great truth, as he himself says, that God created everything as the Fountain of all goodness and uses, and that in man God sees himself reflected, by the active principle of mutual love. [Worship and Love of God, 78] In a review of this book a Swedish writer concludes, "It is not only written in brilliant and harmonious latinity, but with so much poetic life and inspiration, that if divided amongst a dozen poets, it would be sufficient to fix everyone of them in the heaven of poesy as stars of the first magnitude."

The universal law illustrated by great writers throughout the world is this, that age impairs the imagination, lessens the power of varied expression, checks poetic fancy, dulls the intellect and makes composition dry and prosy. Swedenborg is a singular, rare, and an almost unique "literary phenomenon"; and in him, as sober reason matured, as knowledge extended, and the sweep of the intellect increased, his facility of expression was amplified, years enriched and developed his creative power, and the "soberness of his maturity” carried his ideal and poetic powers to their unexampled triumph. In this he stands, almost, if not entirely alone in the literary world.

As a Philosopher, Swedenborg's style is clear, forcible and felicitous; it is confident, confiding and free; he is at home everywhere, yet full of aspiration; he has no self-approbation; he is reverent beyond all other men, and his motto was, even as a Philosopher and maw of Science, " The soul of wisdom lies in the knowledge and acknowledgment of God." [Journal in Paris, 1736]  Glancing over the whole of his philosophical works, the first feature that strikes us is, that his method of procedure is based on the inductive and synthetic method combined. On whatever subject be ventured to write he was as well informed as he could be by the literature both of past ages and his own time. And then came his unheard of and his unimagined interpretations and deductions, revealing the magnitude of his genius as a Philosopher. In these interpretations he was ages before his time, and, like all his predecessors in the same rank, be was accordingly neglected by the world. But times are changing, and all in his favour.

All round, and by eminent professors of science, Swedenborg's name now stands amongst the great pioneers in original research. By Professor S. P. Thompson, in his monograph on Air Pumps, he is acknowledged to be the inventor of the first mercurial air pump: he was the first to give us a true theory of the birth of our earth from the sun. He is in advance of all others on the molecular theory of magnetism. To him we owe the first conception of heat as a mode of motion. Above all, in his Doctrine of Correspondence, Swedenborg broached a subject—first announced in his Animal Kingdom and perfected in his Theology—which will make his name famous while language exists; and in this Doctrine or Science of Correspondence, he reached his highest point as a philosopher of nature.

At the age of fifty-five he discontinued his scientific pursuits, and began to study Hebrew as a theologian. His preparation as a theologian had really been life-long, and as a young man, he adopted rules of life of a profoundly religious character, by which to regulate his character and action. These rules are‑

1. To read often and meditate well on the Word of God.

2. To submit everything to the will of Divine Providence.

3. To observe in everything a propriety of behaviour, and always to keep the conscience clear.

4. To discharge with fidelity the duties of my office, and to render myself in all things useful to society.

As far as we know, these rules were kept with the utmost care and loyalty.

At the age of fifty-five he retired from business as the Assessor of Mines in Sweden, with a pension equal to half his salary. He also gave up his scientific pursuits, and devoted six years to linguistic and other studies, as a further and final preparation for his new and important labours. In his new capacity of theologian, Swedenborg was like, and yet in some respects very unlike, all the men who had preceded him. Without any reservation, and in the most calm, deliberate, and dispassionate manner, he claimed to have his spiritual eyes open, like Elisha and some of the men of old. He claimed to have been called by the Lord to write on theology, to be able to speak with angels, and, in fact, to have open intercourse with the spiritual world. Because of this claim, he has been set down by some people as a madman. On this claim, however, it is well to remember, that from end to end of our Bible, intercourse with angels is regarded as a most natural thing in human experience. When God talks with Adam and Eve, with Noah, or Moses, it excites no wonder. When an angel appears to Balaam, when three angels visit Abraham, when two angels wait upon Lot, when an angel appeared to Manoah and Gideon, when an angel appeared to Zacharias, when angels sang to the shepherds in the field by night, when Gabriel appeared to Mary, when an angel visited Peter in prison, spake to Philip, and appeared to John in Patmos, they excite no surprise; and those who see and speak with them are not looked upon as lunatics. Intercourse with the spiritual world is an admitted fact by all Biblical writers, and the opening of the spiritual sight awakes no more astonishment than the opening of the natural eyes to those awaking from sleep in our own day. And if we believe our own Bibles, to say nothing of Socrates, Plato, Origen, Plotinus, Pascal, Fenelοn, John Bunyan, and ten thousand others, then there is nothing new, startling, or incredible in this claim made by Swedenborg.

The six years' preparation over, in 1794, at the age of sixty-one, he gave the world the first volume of his principal theological work, which he called the Arcana Cοelestia. This work is a spiritual exposition of Genesis and Exodus, and was originally published in eight quarto volumes in Latin. In this treatise we find the germs of everything Swedenborg has written. In addition to the Arcana, he wrote an expository work called the Apocalypse Explained, in six volumes, and also the Apocalypse Revealed, in two volumes. Besides these sixteen volumes explaining the spiritual meaning of the Word of God, he wrote a great number of other works upon special subjects. The chief of these are, The True Christian Religion, Conjugial Love, Divine Providence, The Four Leading Doctrines, Angelic wisdom concerning the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom, Earths in the Universe, and Heaven and Hell.

With the exception of The True Christian Religion, these minor works are all small compared with his expository writings. The one entitled Heaven and Hell, like all his books on special subjects, is profoundly interesting and most readable, and may be purchased for the small sum of six-pence. [Published by Messrs. Frederick Warne & Co., Bedford Street, Covent Garden, London] As Mr. White says of it, "it is a dish of cream skimmed from off the Arcana Coelestia."

Passing over most of the smaller writings upon special subjects, all of which are replete with suggestive thought, we come to Swedenborg's last work of this class, called The True Christian Religion. In this book he gives us an entirely new creed. It is found in number 3, and runs as follows‑

1. That God is One, in whom there is a Divine Trinity, and that He is the Lord God and Saviour Jesus Christ.

2. That saving faith is to believe on Him.

3. That evil actions ought not to be done, because they are of the devil and from the devil.

4. That good actions ought to be done, because they are of God and from God.

5. And that man should do them as of himself, but always in the acknowledgment that they are from the Lord operating with him and by him.

On this faith he bases everything he has to say; and, in his estimation, these five articles comprise all the essentials necessary to be believed by man.

Passing on to notice one or two of the particular doctrines he taught, the first, the chief, and the central doctrine in all his works, is the sole and undivided Deity of Jesus Christ. Around, or upon this doctrine, he builds the whole fabric of religion.

On the vexed question of how we are saved, whether it is by faith or by works, he tells us that faith is only another name for truth, and that while our firm belief in truth, as taught in the Word of God, must lead the way, yet, that every man is judged by his works; and, in accordance with this doctrine, it is declared in Rev. xx. 12, And I saw the dead small and great, stand before God; and they were judged every man according to their works."

But of all the doctrines propounded by Swedenborg, the most popular, the most fascinating, and the most delightful is the doctrine, or science, of Correspondence, first spoken of in his Animal Kingdom. The basis of this science is, that all natural objects are the result of a spiritual cause. Creation is the first Bible; and in our lucid moments we all seek to translate outward phenomena into spiritual principles and mental processes. God's thoughts are ultimated in the visible universe, and the relation existing between the one and the other is what Swedenborg means by Correspondence. As the works of God are parabolic, so with the Word of God: it is written in images drawn chiefly from nature. These images are there, not as mere poetic fancies, but by the Divine law of Correspondence, and when spiritually understood, the Bible becomes truly and really a spiritual revelation, unfolding the structure of our moral being and unveiling the unchanging purposes of the Almighty.

Swedenborg left his books a legacy to the world, to sink or swim as Providence might decree. In due time a few gentlemen, chiefly from the Church of England, began to read them. Increasing in number, they at last formed themselves into an unsectarian organization for propagating Swedenborg's views. Hence came the Swedenborg Society in 1810, and hence came the International Congress to celebrate the centenary of that institution. Tonight we are standing on historic and classic ground. This building—the Connaught Lecture Room—stands on the site of the old Freemasons' Tavern, where the Fathers of the Swedenborg Society dined together previous to the Annual Meetings for forty or fifty times. It is, however, specially to be noted, that these dinners were intended, not for animal gratification, but to promote charity and goodwill amongst the members. That principle is a bit of real and genuine Swedenbοrgianism, [See Τ. C, R., 433] and it seems a great pity that it should have been allowed to fall into disuse.

In studying Swedenborg's works, no one need fear that he will be led to think less of prayer, of worship, of faith, of Providence, the Divinity of Christ, the Word of God, salvation, immortality, heaven, hell, of the Church, the atonement, the two Christian sacraments—Baptism and the Holy Supper—and of all the great fundamental doctrines confessed by the Evangelical Christian world.

This being the case, the question will very naturally arise, "Wherein is the use of his theology, and why was it ever given to the world?" It is a perfectly fair question, and it deserves a perfectly explicit answer. In brief, Swedenborg's answer is, First, because in the whole of Orthodox Theology, from creation to the atonement, from the incarnation to the Bible itself, and from this life to the life to come, there was not remaining one single doctrine which had not been perverted; and in his esteem, unless true doctrines had been restored to mankind, "No flesh could be saved" (Matt. xxiv. 22; T. C. R., 758). Secondly, because while the doctrinal confessions of Protestant Christendom remain the same for all, yet they have not been understood, and they demand, and must have, a new and rational interpretation.

As an illustration of this fact, look for a moment at astronomy. Down to the sixteenth century, what is known as the Ptolemaic system of astronomy dominated the scientific public. The primary and fundamental doctrines of this system are, that the earth is the centre of the universe, and that the heavenly bodies revolve round it in circles, and at a uniform rate. [It must be borne in mind that what is called the Ptolemaic system of astronomy existed long before Ptolemy was born. What he did was to reduce to a scientific form the primitive notions held by Plato, Aristotle, aid Hipparchus.] For 1,500 years of the Christian era, this erroneous belief was held by the whole civilized world. But in the sixteenth century Copernicus came. He, too, turned his attention to the sun, moon, and stars, like Ptolemy of Egypt. There was nothing new in the heavenly bodies; they were just the same as Plato, Aristotle, Ptolemy, and all the great men before him had studied and written about, and they were the identical suns and planets that all mankind looked upon previously from the cradle to the grave. On these same objects familiar to all, Copernicus wrote a famous book. [On The Revolution of the Heavenly Bodies] He dared not have it printed until just before his death; just before he died in 1543 he sent it to the press, and the first copy was touched by his dying hands only a few hours before he expired. The principles propounded in this book were regarded by the Church in the sixteenth century as the grossest heterodoxy and heresy of the day. They were scorned and reviled; and if Copernicus had been alive he would have been imprisoned, and possibly executed for writing and publishing them. Here also comes the question: If Copernicus believed that the sun, moon, and stars were heavenly bodies, the same as all astronomers before him, and the same as all mankind in his day, what need was there for him to write his book and start this new heresy?

The reply is that, precisely the same as with Swedenborg today, it all turned upon the important question of interpretation. Copernicus believed that all astronomers down to his day had misinterpreted the movements of the heavenly bodies, and he was quite right. He did not invent any new worlds, and he did not try to lessen their number; all he did was to give mankind clear, definite, and correct information on subjects which before they did not possess. That was all. He told men for the first time in the history of the world, that the sun was at rest in the centre of the solar system, and that the earth and planets moved round it as a centre. That dreadful heterodoxy of Copernicus in the sixteenth century is the origin of everything believed by astronomers today. Although in its day the astronomy of Copernicus was regarded with horror and hatred by the Church, yet it was not only perfectly harmless, but substituted truth for dogma, knowledge for authority, correct information for blind credence, and rational science for superstition. Had the movements of the heavenly bodies been correctly interpreted, the heresy of this astronomer would never have been heard of. The sole purpose of the Copernican heterodoxy was simply to extend human knowledge.

Substituting the name of Swedenborg for that of Copernicus, and the doctrines of the Christian religion for the theories of the ancient astronomers, we have a fair and complete answer to the question, why it was that Swedenborg's Theology was given to mankind. It was simply to interpret the Word of God aright; to explain the divine Trinity, to extend our knowledge of redemption, salvation, the future life, the church, the incarnation, the atonement, and the Second Advent, and to give the information which mankind, by their own confession, did not, and by their own confession do not, even now, possess. At this moment it is admitted on all hands, that there is doctrinal chaos throughout the whole of the Christian world. The need of Swedenborg was never greater than it is today.

Swedenborg aims to destroy not one single Christian verity. His teaching is not like Rationalism, Agnosticism, Secularism, Postivism, or even Unitarianism. All these heterodoxies are to some extent negative and destructive. Every ο e of them aims to destroy man's reverence for the Word of God as an infallible divine revelation; and every one of them seeks to degrade the Lord Jesus Christ and reduce Him to the level of a specially-gifted man. Where these heterodoxies come, nothing, that Evangelical Christians reverence, is safe. On the other hand, where Swedenborg's teaching comes, what they reverence is not only safe, but doubly secure. If orthodox Christianity had been able to answer man's questions relating to the Bible, God, and the future life, Swedenborg would never have been heard of; but it was not able, and it is not able now. His theology came, because old creeds and old ideas in theology failed to satisfy the critical intellect; it came as an antidote to infidelity and skepticism, and it came to help forward reverent and rational Christian thought in all departments of religion. It came under the direction of the Divine Providence to meet one of the ever-increasing spiritual needs of man; it came as an interpreter of old subjects not understood, and it came in fulfillment of the divine command, “Let there be light."

Taking no credit to himself for what he teaches, but ascribing all to the Lord, yet Swedenborg claims to supply the information needed by those in darkness, doubt, and unbelief, and what he asks for above all things is, honest and impartial investigation. Above all, whatever Swedenborg may have to say upon marriage, baptism, the Holy Supper, worship, the atonement, the Word of God or salvation, his supreme purpose is to make this world a religious world; to regulate the affairs of this life by the practice of what we know to be right, and to induce mankind to do God's will on earth as it is done in heaven.

Swedenborg's teaching is affirmative in everything consistent with rational religion, and its crowning doctrine is that "All religion has relation to life, and the life of religion is to do good." [Doctrine of Life, 1] Its purpose is, "To study and obey the laws of God so far as they concern man's individual life, until the ideal humanity is reached in body, brain, and spirit." Swedenborg's doctrine of life comes and “knocks at the door of every household, and utters its command of duty to every member of the family, so that what they do shall purify and beautify the world. It goes to the office of every businessman, and utters its command to be honest, fair and just, so that every person he deals with shall be benefited and not hurt. It makes business a part of the religious elevation of the world. It goes to politics, and bids every politician order his affairs so that justice shall be subserved, so that human well-being shall be reached, and so that humanity shall be made a little better. It goes to the manufacturer, the employer, and the capitalist, and it bids each one manage the mighty power of his capital, not to crush those who work for him, but to treat them as men, with justice and fairness, and try to make them better men as well as better cogs in a machine. It goes to the labourer, and tells him to be faithful in his calling, to do good work, and so to better his own condition that the condition of the whole race shall be better at the same time." This, in the estimate of Swedenborg as a Theologian, is the great purpose of all his works.

His Theology ever looks forward and dreams of a day when, above everything, charity shall be supreme, and when all good men, in all communities, irrespective of creed or nationality, shall recognize each other as brethren. The one aim of his Theology is the triumph of Christianity, when war and poverty and crime will only be remembrances of the far-off past; when all men and women will be loving, true, and faithful to each other in all the relations of life; when there will be no more evil, no necessity for reformatories and gaols, and when all mankind will have the law written in their hearts. It believes there is room for improvement everywhere and in everything; it appeals to men's intelligence as well as their reverence; it aims to make men free and religious; it places the Bible in every man's band, and while it is fearless in criticism, yet its sole aim is to unfold its wisdom as a revelation from God. It seeks to deliver men from spiritual bondage, to liberate those sitting in spiritual darkness, and to end the reign of religious mystery; and on all subjects its affirmative declaration is, in Swedenborg's own words, “It is now permitted us to enter intellectually into the mysteries of faith.”