第21章

"And yet," continued the pastor, thoughtfully, "certain persons have had visions of the spiritual world through the complete detachment which somnambulism produces between their external form and their inner being.'In this state,' says Swedenborg in his treatise on Angelic Wisdom (No.257) 'Man may rise into the region of celestial light because, his corporeal senses being abolished, the influence of heaven acts without hindrance on his inner man.' Many persons who do not doubt that Swedenborg received celestial revelations think that his writings are not all the result of divine inspiration.Others insist on absolute adherence to him; while admitting his many obscurities, they believe that the imperfection of earthly language prevented the prophet from clearly revealing those spiritual visions whose clouds disperse to the eyes of those whom faith regenerates;for, to use the words of his greatest disciple, 'Flesh is but an external propagation.' To poets and to writers his presentation of the marvellous is amazing; to Seers it is simply reality.To some Christians his descriptions have seemed scandalous.Certain critics have ridiculed the celestial substance of his temples, his golden palaces, his splendid cities where angels disport themselves; they laugh at his groves of miraculous trees, his gardens where the flowers speak and the air is white, and the mystical stones, the sard, carbuncle, chrysolite, chrysoprase, jacinth, chalcedony, beryl, the Urim and Thummim, are endowed with motion, express celestial truths, and reply by variations of light to questions put to them ('True Christian Religion,' 219).Many noble souls will not admit his spiritual worlds where colors are heard in delightful concert, where language flames and flashes, where the Word is writ in pointed spiral letters ('True Christian Religion,' 278).Even in the North some writers have laughed at the gates of pearl, and the diamonds which stud the floors and walls of his New Jerusalem, where the most ordinary utensils are made of the rarest substances of the globe.

'But,' say his disciples, 'because such things are sparsely scattered on this earth does it follow that they are not abundant in other worlds? On earth they are terrestrial substances, whereas in heaven they assume celestial forms and are in keeping with angels.' In this connection Swedenborg has used the very words of Jesus Christ, who said, 'If I have told you earthly things and ye believe not, how shall ye believe if I tell you of heavenly things?'

"Monsieur," continued the pastor, with an emphatic gesture, "I have read the whole of Swedenborg's works; and I say it with pride, because I have done it and yet retained my reason.In reading him men either miss his meaning or become Seers like him.Though I have evaded both extremes, I have often experienced unheard-of delights, deep emotions, inward joys, which alone can reveal to us the plenitude of truth,--the evidence of celestial Light.All things here below seem small indeed when the soul is lost in the perusal of these Treatises.It is impossible not to be amazed when we think that in the short space of thirty years this man wrote and published, on the truths of the Spiritual World, twenty-five quarto volumes, composed in Latin, of which the shortest has five hundred pages, all of them printed in small type.He left, they say, twenty others in London, bequeathed to his nephew, Monsieur Silverichm, formerly almoner to the King of Sweden.Certainly a man who, between the ages of twenty and sixty, had already exhausted himself in publishing a series of encyclopaedical works, must have received supernatural assistance in composing these later stupendous treatises, at an age, too, when human vigor is on the wane.You will find in these writings thousands of propositions, all numbered, none of which have been refuted.Throughout we see method and precision; the presence of the Spirit issuing and flowing down from a single fact,--the existence of angels.His 'True Christian Religion,' which sums up his whole doctrine and is vigorous with light, was conceived and written at the age of eighty-three.In fact, his amazing vigor and omniscience are not denied by any of his critics, not even by his enemies.