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The majority of the members were undoubtedly of the "liberal" school in theology, and found in the preaching of Theodore Parker the kind of spiritual instruction they desired. At one time there was an enthusiastic interest in the teachings of Swedenborg.
It would almost seem, though to the faithful Swedenborgian the thought will doubtless appear very wicked, that the system of Swedenborg gave no place to Uranus and Neptune, simply because he knew nothing about those planets.
The students now interested in this whole class of alleged supernormal phenomena are seldom believers in the philosophy of Spiritualism in the American sense of the word. Mr. Tylor, as we have seen, attributes the revival of interest in this obscure class of subjects to the influence of Swedenborg. It is true, as has been shown, that Swedenborg attracted the attention of Kant.
The very silence of a superior person is impressive. And knowing this, we do not wonder that Swedenborg would sometimes call unannounced on men in high station, and forgetting his letters, would ask for an interview. The audacity of the request would break down the barriers, and his calm, quiet self-possession would do the rest. The man wanted nothing but knowledge.
The theological belief which Swedenborg imbibed in his early youth, tinctured his description of the heavens and hells of the spirit world, causing him to represent the soul as reaching a period in its love of evil when it cannot retrace its steps. The hells of the spirit are similar to the hells of earth, being like them the result of the ignorance and perverted loves of animal man.
That the Divine Life and Energy actually lives in us is inseparable from Religion." How thoroughly this is in keeping with the thought of the highly illumined seer, Swedenborg, is indicated when he says: "The Lord's Kingdom is a Kingdom of ends and uses."
He will not hear of presentiments, and, unlike Hegel, he scouts the Highland second-sight. The 'possessed' of anthropology are epileptic patients. This reference to Swedenborg is remarked upon by Schubert in his preface to the essay of Kant. The opinion in paragraph 35 is a general one as to mystics.
Cage and crate and chain had been his portion, and narrow rooms, baggage cars, and station platforms. The nearest he had come to the country was when chained to benches in the various parks while Jacob Henderson studied Swedenborg. So that trees and hills and fields had ceased to mean anything. They were something inaccessible, as inaccessible as the blue of the sky or the drifting cloud-fleeces.
"Still, men of great intelligence, such as Plutarch, Swedenborg, Bernardin de St. Pierre, and others have, if I mistake not, pronounced in the affirmative.
"The path of sorrow, and that path alone, Leads to the land where sorrow is unknown." What are the employments of heaven we cannot know with any particularity. Swedenborg tells us that the angels are constantly performing uses; but what these uses are we are not distinctly told.
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