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His church numbers to-day more than seven hundred thousand believers, as many in the United States of America as in England, where there are seven thousand Swedenborgians in the city of Manchester alone.
Methodists, Episcopalians, Baptists, Presbyterians, Swedenborgians, Congregationalists, Universalists and Unitarians, so called, here clasp hands in a common Christian brotherhood, and give themselves to the work of saving the lost and lifting up the fallen." "Why do you call it a Church?" asked Mrs. Birtwell.
The real source of Swedenborg's inspirations will be tolerably obvious to all, at least, who are not Swedenborgians. But our account of his visions would not be complete in a psychological sense without a brief reference to the personal allusions which the spirits and angels made during their visits or his wanderings.
He lays down propositions and proves them in a thousand pages. Yet this must be confessed: The Swedenborgians and the Christian Scientists as sects rank above most other denominations in point of intellectual worth.
Writing about it to his family from Angouleme he explained that he was attempting in it to vie with Goethe and Byron, with Faust and Manfred. It was to be a conclusive reply to his enemies, and would make his superiority manifest. Some day or other it would lead science into new paths. Meantime it would produce a deep impression and astonish the Swedenborgians.
With spiritualists James had little or no sympathy; he was not so impatient of them as the Swedenborgians commonly are, and he probably acknowledged a measure of verity in the spiritistic phenomena; but he seemed rather incurious concerning them, and he must have regarded them as superfluities of naughtiness, mostly; as emanations from the hells.
The Orthodox assert that the same Holy Ghost has been transmitted without a break in their priesthood. The Protestants of every kind Lutherans, Reformed Church, Presbyterians, Methodists, Swedenborgians, Mormons assert that the Holy Ghost is only present in their communities.
A wise man may get many nice bits out of him, and be the healthier for such eating; but if he swallows Swedenborg whole, as the fashion is with his followers, why, it lays hard in the stomach, and the man has a nightmare on him all his natural life, and talks about 'the Word, and 'the Spirit, 'correspondences, 'receivers. Yet the Swedenborgians have a calm and religious beauty in their lives which is much to be admired."
March came and went, and with it went his soul on the day predicted, if prediction there were. They buried him in London, and there in early season, out of his grave blossomed the religion that has preserved his name, his fame, his doctrines. To the dead Swedenborg succeeded the living Swedenborgianism. But what shall those of us who are not Swedenborgians think of the master?
While the Swedenborgians, as a religious sect, are not numerically sufficient to be reckoned among the world's great religions, it is yet a fact that the followers of the great Swedish seer and scientist hold a prominent place among the innumerable sects which the beginning of this century finds flourishing.
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