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I had prepared a very erudite and subtle treatise upon this query, enlivened by quotations from the ancient Mystics, such as Iamblicus and Proclus, as well as by a copious reference to the doctrine of the more modern Spiritualists, from Sir Kenelm Digby and Swedenborg, to Monsieur Cahagnet and Judge Edwards.
That lady at first looked blank, as she always did in the presence of any humour couched with the least indirection, and then drew back her chin and caught her lower lip in her gold-filled teeth. This was her conjugal rebuking. Swedenborg always uses "conjugial." And really this sounds more married. It should be used with reference to the Deacons.
In his intercourse with spirits from Jupiter, Swedenborg heard of animals larger than those that live on the earth.
Shakespeare knew little about physics; economics and sociology never troubled him; he had small Latin and less Greek; he never traveled, and the history of the rocks was to him a blank. Swedenborg anticipated Darwin in a dozen ways; he knew the classic languages and most of the modern; he traveled everywhere; he was a practical economist, and the best civil engineer of his day.
Without having read a word of Swedenborg, he was a believer in the absolute correspondence of the inward and outward; and, thus long before the younger Darwin arose, had suspected a close relationship remote identity, indeed, in nature and history, between the animal and human worlds.
The effects of that judgment are to-day gradually being manifested here on earth. Swedenborg tells us that he witnessed the downfall of Babylon the great in the spiritual world. By Babylon is meant those who are in the love of spiritual dominion over the souls of men. And also he witnessed the casting down of the Dragon.
Once a month there is an afternoon instead of an evening service, the minister having to officiate for a few of the followers of Swedenborg at Blackburn, who can't afford to pay, or won't get, or don't want, a regular expounder of their views. Mr. Rendell is a rather learnedly-solemn kind of gentleman.
"My dear friend," said the old man, emitting a puff of smoke, "to explain the birth of that being it is absolutely necessary that I disperse the clouds which envelop the most obscure of Christian doctrines. It is not easy to make myself clear when speaking of that incomprehensible revelation, the last effulgence of faith that has shone upon our lump of mud. Do you know Swedenborg?"
Now take Julius Caesar, or Immanuel Swedenborg, or a Fegee-Islander, and set him up there. Or suppose all together, and let them compare notes afterward. Will it appear that they have enjoyed the same prospect? What they will see will be as different as Rome was from Heaven or Hell, or the last from the Fegee Islands. For aught we know, as strange a man as any of these is always at our elbow.
I came across his track once or twice in the East. Travellers are always apt to be jealous of each other." "You are a strange compound of cynicism and credulity; but I should have fancied that you and Sir Philip would have been congenial spirits, when I found, among his favourite books, Van Helmont and Paracelsus. Perhaps you, too, study Swedenborg, or, worse still, Ptolemy and Lilly?"
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