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It was said of these learned students that at their meetings they read Dante in the original Italian, Hegel in the original German, Swedenborg in the original Latin, which language the Swedish seer always used, Charles Fourier in the original French, and perhaps the hardest task of all, Margaret Fuller in the original English.
Swedenborg was one of these. 'The interiors of my spirit, he says, 'are opened by the Lord, so that while I am in the body I can at the same time be with angels in heaven, and not only converse with them, but behold the wonderful things which are there and describe them, that henceforth it may no more be said, "Who ever came from heaven to assure us it exists and tell us what is there?"
Petrea felt herself quite confidential with this excellent person, and inquired from her what was her opinion of Swedenborg, beginning also to give her own thoughts on spectral visions, ghosts, etc. The lady looked at her, as if she thought she might be a little deranged, and then hastened to change her place.
One may safely say that had Swedenborg lived a century later, while he might still have gone through the same mental and physical experiences, he himself would have given a very different interpretation of them. St. Paul, Professor James points out, "certainly had once an epileptoid, if not an epileptic seizure."
He was educated at Upsala, and after travelling for several years in Western Europe was appointed to a post in the Swedish College of Mines. Thenceforth, until he was 55 years of age, Swedenborg pursued, with equal industry and ingenuity, the career of a man of science, doing valuable work in mathematics, astronomy, navigation, engineering, chemistry, and especially in mining and metallurgy.
By the Dragon is meant those who are in the doctrine of salvation by faith and ceremonials alone. As the above vast organizations in the spiritual world were then removed from contact with men, I will let Swedenborg speak of some of the results which followed that judgment in the spiritual world, and of those which are following and which must follow in the Church on earth.
She sat at his feet, and listened by the hour to the outpourings of his fervid zeal. If she did not understand them, she was in no worse position than himself. His tongue was fluent. His words were like a lambent flame, playing with some indestructible material. His mind was weak, and devoted to metaphysical speculations mysticisms: the arcana coelestia of Swedenborg was Holy Writ to him.
In order to explain what perfect marriage is, Swedenborg works by the process of elimination and reveals every possible condition of mismating. Every error, mistake, crime, wrong and fallacy is shown in order to get at the truth. Swedenborg tells us that he got his facts from four husbands and four wives in the Spirit Land, and so his statements are authentic.
Finally, Swedenborg borrowed from Magianism, Brahmanism, Buddhism, and Christian mysticism all the truth and divine beauty that those four great religious books hold in common, and added to them a doctrine, a basis of reasoning, that may be termed mathematical.
The theosophists, the Swedenborgians, disciples of the sublime but obscure Swedenborg, the Saint Martin of Germany, pretended to complete the Gospel, and to transform humanity by overcoming death and the senses. All these dogmata were mingled in an equal contempt for existing institutions in one same aspiration for the renewal of the mind and things.
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