"He received his first commands from heaven in 1745. This is how he relates his call:
"'One evening, in London, after he had dined, eating heartily, a thick mist filled the room. When the darkness cleared away, a being that had assumed a human form rose up in a corner of the room and said in a terrible voice, "Do not eat so much." He then fasted completely. Next evening the same man was visible, radiant with light, and said to him:
"'"I am sent by God, who has chosen thee to set forth to men the meaning of His word and His creation. I will dictate what thou shalt write."
"The vision lasted but a few minutes. The angel, he said, was clad in purple.
"During that night the eyes of his inner man were opened and enabled to see into the heavens, into the world of spirits, and into hell, three different circles, where he met persons he had known who had perished from their human state, some long ago, and some quite recently. From that time Swedenborg always lived the spiritual life, and remained in this world as a being sent from God.
"Though his mission was disputed by the incredulous, his conduct was visibly that of a being superior to human weakness. In the first instance, though limited by his means to the strictest necessaries, he gave away immense sums, and was known to be the means of restoring, in various commercial towns, some great houses of business that had failed, or were failing. No one who appealed to his generosity went away without being helped on the spot. An incredulous Englishman, going in search of him, met him in Paris, and he has recorded that Swedenborg's doors were always left open. One day his servant complained of this neglect, which exposed him to suspicion if his master should be robbed.
"'Let him make his mind easy,' said Swedenborg, smiling; 'I forgive him want of faith; he cannot see the guardian who keeps watch before my door.'
"And, in fact, in whatever country he might be living, his doors were never shut, and he never lost anything.
"When he was at Gothenburg, a town sixty miles away from Stockholm, three days before the news arrived of the great fire that raged at Stockholm, he had announced the hour at which it had begun, adding that his house was unharmed—which was true.
"The Queen of Sweden, when at Berlin, told the King, her brother, that one of her ladies being summoned to repay a sum of money which she knew that her husband had returned before his death, being unable to find the receipt, had gone to Swedenborg and begged him to inquire of her husband where the proof of payment could be. On the following day Swedenborg told her the place where the receipt was; then, in accordance with the lady's desire, he called upon the dead man to appear to his wife, and she saw her husband, in a dream, in the dressing-gown he had worn before his death, and he showed her the document in the place mentioned by Swedenborg, where in fact it lay hidden.