"The visions of the Swedish prophet are often disfigured by grotesque touches. One of his Memorabilia—the name he gives them—begins with these words: 'I saw the spirits met together, and they had hats on their heads.' In another of these Memorabilia he received from heaven a small paper on which, he says, he saw the letters used by primitive races, composed of curved lines with little rings curling upwards. For clearer proof of this communication from heaven I should have liked him to deposit this document with the Royal Academy of Sciences at Stockholm.
"After all, I may be wrong; the material absurdities that are scattered throughout his works have spiritual meanings perhaps. Otherwise, how can we account for the growing influence of his doctrine? His followers now number more than seven hundred thousand souls, partly in the United States of America, where many sects have joined them in a body, and partly in England, where there are seven thousand Swedenborgians in the city of Manchester alone. Men no less distinguished by their learning than by their worldly rank—some in Germany, and some in Prussia and the North—have publicly adopted Swedenborg's beliefs, which indeed are more consolatory than those of many another Christian communion.
"I should now like to expound to you in a few short words the capital points of the doctrines set forth by Swedenborg to his Church; but such an abridgment, from memory, would necessarily be defective. I can, therefore, only enlarge on the arcana connected with the birth of Seraphita."
Here the pastor paused while meditating apparently to collect his reminiscences, and then he went on:—
"Having proved mathematically that man shall live for ever in an upper or a lower sphere, Swedenborg gives the title of angelic spirits to such beings as, in this world, are prepared for heaven, where they become angels. According to him, God did not create angels independently; there are none but those who have been human beings on earth. Thus the earth is the nursery ground for heaven. The angels are not angels by original nature; they are transformed into angels by an intimate union with God which God never refuses, the very essence of God being never negative, but always active (Angelic Wisdom).
"Angelic spirits, then, go through three natures of love, for man can only be regenerate by stages (True Religion). First, love of self: the supreme expression of it is human genius, of which the works are worshiped. Next, love of the world at large, which produces prophets and those great men whom the earth accepts as guides, and hails as divine. Finally, love of heaven, which forms angelic spirits. These spirits are, so to speak, the flowers of humanity, which is epitomized, and strives to be epitomized, in them. They must have either the love or the wisdom of heaven; but they must dwell in that love before they dwell in wisdom. Thus the first transformation of man is to love. To achieve this first grade, in his previous existences he must have gone through hope and charity, which engender in him the gifts of faith and prayer. The ideas gained by the exercise of these virtues are transmitted to each new human embodiment within which the metamorphoses of the inner man are hidden. Nothing avails separately; hope is inseparable from charity, faith from prayer; the four faces of this figure are equally important. 'For lack of one virtue,' says he, 'the angelic spirit is as a flawed pearl.' Thus each existence is a sphere into which are absorbed the celestial treasures of the former one. The great perfection of the angelic spirits comes of this mysterious progress, by which nothing is lost of the qualities successively acquired till they attain to their most glorious incarnation; for, at every fresh transformation, they unconsciously lose something of the flesh and its works.
"When he lives in love man has thrown off all his evil passions; hope, charity, faith, and prayer have, to use the word of Isaiah, winnowed his inner man, which must no longer be polluted by any earthly affection. Hence the great lesson in Saint Luke, 'Provide yourselves a treasure in the heavens that faileth not,' and the teaching of Jesus Christ that we should leave this world to men, for it is theirs, and purify ourselves and go to the Father.
"The second transformation is to wisdom. Wisdom is that apprehension of heavenly things to which the spirit rises through love. The spirit of love has triumphed over force; as a result of having conquered every earthly passion, he loves God blindly; but the spirit of wisdom has intelligence and knowledge of why he loves. The wings of the first are spread and bear him up to God; the wings of the second are folded in awe derived from knowledge: he knows God. One incessantly desires to see God, and soars up to Him; the other stands near to Him and trembles.
"The union of a spirit of love with a spirit of wisdom lifts the creature into the divine state in which the soul is woman and the body man—the final expression of humanity, in which the spirit is supreme over the form, and the form still contends with the divine spirit; for the form, which is the flesh, is ignorant and rebellious, and would fain remain gross. It is this supreme conflict which gives rise to the inexpressible anguish which the heavens alone can see, and which Christ endured in the Garden of Olives. After death, the first heaven opens to receive this purified compound human nature. Thus men die in despair, while spirits die in ecstasy. Hence the natural state, in which are all unregenerate beings; the spiritual state, in which are the angelic spirits; and the divine state, in which the angel dwells before bursting its husk, are the three degrees of existence by which man attains to heaven.
"A sentence of Swedenborg's will admirably explain to you the difference between the natural and the spiritual states: 'To men,' says he, 'the natural passes into the spiritual; they regard the world under its visible forms, and perceive it in a reality adjusted to their senses. But to the angelic spirit the spiritual passes into the natural; he regards the world in its inmost spirit, not under its outer form.'