Who Was Swedenborg?

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WHO WAS SWEDENBORG?

An article suggested by one of the New York Anniversary Celebrations.

Among the reports that occupy so large a space in the morning papers, about these times, we see figuring a Society that has arisen out of the life and “divine dreams” of a man whose name is often heard, but the particulars of whom few know; we mean Swedenborg¹, the Spiritualist. The Society named from him met in New York last night to commemorate their “New Church,” and its founder. We were lately in a large company where the subject of Swedenborgianism being alluded to, a lady, not at all wanting in general intelligence, candidly asked, “And what is Swedenborgianism? And who was Swedenborg?” Upon neither point could any one of that large company give our lady definite information. Perhaps, therefore, we may be doing the public some service by devoting one of our columns to an answer of the latter question.

The life of this man of the future (American Spiritualism is doubtless all from him), began in 1688 and ended in 1772. He therefore went off the stage just as the United States came on. But his followers boldly say that all his career, and his spiritual discoveries, have special reference to America; that here, in due time, will spread the definitely formed results of his doctrines, and will assume fitting and national proportions in a New Church indeed. If this be so, it is certainly time that we should know something about so distinguished a personage—one who is to cut such a figure among us in times to come.

During the earlier and middle portions of his life, Swedenborg was known in his native country, Sweden, as a man of science; for he was very learned, and equally practical. He was appointed Inspector General of the Mines, and introduced many improvements in mining. In mathematics, chemistry, physiology, and other departments, he was one of the first savans of Europe, and his books thereon are remarkable, even to this day. In such studies, in correspondence with the learned, in travel, in commissions of state, in writing his scientific works, and in practical superintendence of the national mines, he passed most of his life, till we was past middle age, when he suddenly underwent a total change—a revolution, probably one of the most curious in human experience.

At that time was opened to him, in the twinkling of an eye, “the spiritual world,” and he saw it. (Or was it that he fancied he saw it?) The inference is that this spiritual world exists at all times with us and around us, but that few, indeed hardly any, come into rapport with it. But Emmanuel Swedenborg was one of the few.

And how does the reader suppose this ineffable privilege commenced—and what occasion great enough and appropriate enough to start it? Alas! a most unromantic and even vulgar occasion—nothing less than eating dinner! And more than that, the meaning of the heavenly visit, the “first lesson,” was summed up in the plain, practical phrase—“Don’t eat so much.” As Swedenborg himself relates it, he was just finishing his dinner at an inn in London, when a mist surrounded him, amid which he distinguished reptiles crawling on the floor; and when the mist cleared away, a man radiant with light sitting in the corner of the room uttered a less-eating direction as above.

Out of such a somewhat comical beginning, however, soon rose more serious matter—for the radiant man, at his next appearance, informed Swedenborg to the following effect: “I, the Redeemer, the Creator and Lord, have chosen thee to explain to mankind the inward and real sense of the Holy Scriptures, and I shall dictate to thee what thou shalt write.” Thus the thing at once assumed formidable proportions.

When this happened Swedenborg was about fifty-five years of age. “That very night,” says he, “the eyes of my inner man were opened, and I was able to look into heaven, the world of spirits—and also into hell. I saw those who were dead here, but they were living there; I saw many persons of my acquaintance, some deceased long before, and others recently.” After this revelation, he seems gradually to have settled up his worldly affairs and in a little while to have devoted his life to his new occupation of spiritual seer, and recorder.

In the numerous books Swedenborg has left of his experience, and of the things exhibited to him alone among men, there is curious naivete and literalness. He escaped the ties of the body, and had the entree to “the spheres” at pleasure. He reports his conversations with God, angels, and spirits of the dead, and describes his excursions to the planets of the solar systems, and occasionally to the fixed stars, given specimen-portraits of their inhabitants, and of some peculiarities about them. All these are offered, not as amusing tales, but illustrations and proofs of the mystical religions which he wrought out, shaped, and commenced giving to the world. He wrote all his books in Latin.

Many were attracted by curiosity toward him—some by sympathy. The ecclesiastics of Sweden obtained a commission from the government to inquire into his heresies; but nothing came of it. Swedenborg always professed to found his system on the Christian Bible, and said he only could give the true explanation of the Bible—that it was not to be interpreted after the manner of common books, but in a way of its own. He established the curious and poetical theory of “Correspondences,” by which every thing in nature, in the whole universe, finds its counterpart in the human soul. The commission soon hauled off, and after that, he went on his way in peace to the rest of his life.

Most of the ensuing time, Swedenborg lived in a moderate-sized house in the midst of a large garden, in Stockholm. He was never married. (We have not heard the point alluded to among his followers, but our private opinion is that he was, through his life, a stranger to women.) He was in easy circumstances; his life was irreproachable, and his habits simple. And it must be carefully noted of him that he never turned what he evidently thought his divine mission, toward becoming a source of any worldly profit to himself. His books of record are very voluminous: only a few are condensed and translated. (These, and the disciples of them, make rendezvous at the Cooper Institute in New York—and it is their Anniversary proceedings as reported in this morning’s papers, that have given rise to this article.)

But the statement of Swedenborg’s religion, in plain terms—what is that statement? We confess we cannot give it; we have never even felt satisfied with the presentation of it by the leading Swedenborgians themselves, or by their preachers. There is something in it that eludes being stated. We can only present a few running facts about “the founder,” and leave the inferences to be drawn by readers for themselves.

Swedenborg, in his writings, presents every thing in a plain, matter-of-fact way. He is no poet, and, amid all his wondrous experiences, he does not once lose his balance—he never faints, not goes into literary or any other hysterics. If he reports the appearance and statistics of the spirits, the heavens, the hells, all is as regular as a page of the United States Census Returns—nothing is removed from the level of the measurements and utilities of our own earth.

Though now looming up before the civilized world, and especially in America, as one who, whatever may be said about him, will probably make the deepest and broadest mark upon the religions of future ages here, of any man that ever walked the earth, yet in his own time Swedenborg was neglected and comparatively unknown. The English philosophers and literary persons do not all mention him; if they heard of him at all, they doubtless put him down as a temporary oddity. The Germans the same. Voltaire ² and Rosseau ³, either, do not notice him—very likely they too never heard of him, although all were contemporaries. During Swedenborg’s time indeed flourished a galaxy of genius—of discoverers, new men, revolutionists. During his long life he was, at some period, contemporary with the French Encyclopedists, and Addison⁴, Pope⁵, Hume⁶, Gibbon⁷, Johnson⁸, Wm. Pitt⁹, Franklin¹⁰, Jefferson¹¹, Washington¹², and Goethe¹³. But there is no proof that any one of these men gave him even a passing thought; or rather there is proof enough that they did not.

Swedenborg lived to be very old, preserving himself in full vigor to the last. He died in London, at the age of eighty-five. On his death-bed he reiterated in the most affecting manner the bona-fide of his statements and books, to the minutest particular. And is it so—or could he have been an impostor? Or could he have been self-duped? For our own part, we never think of Swedenborg as an impostor; his life, and all about him, when studied, forbid such an inference.

Viewing him in something like his own spirit, he appears as the precursor of the great religious difference between past centuries and future centuries. Indeed his followers, among whom are some of the leading minds of our nation, boldly claim that no man, of any age, is now making more significant marks upon American thought, theology, and literature than Emanuel Swedenborg.

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