CHAPTER XLI.
BROOK FARM PROPAGATING SWEDENBORGIANISM.[ToC]
Our history of the career of Brook Farm in its final function of public teacher and propagandist, would not be complete without some account of its agency in the great Swedenborgian revival of modern times.
In a series of articles published in the Oneida Circular a year or two ago, under the title of Swedenborgiana, the author of this history said:
"The foremost and brightest of the Associations that rose in the Fourier excitement, was that at Brook Farm. The leaders were men whose names are now high in literature and politics. Ripley, Dana, Channing, Dwight and Hawthorne, are specimens of the list. Most of them were from the Unitarian school, whose head-quarters are at Boston and Cambridge. The movement really issued as much from transcendental Unitarianism as from Fourierism. It was religious, literary and artistic, as well as social. It had a press, and at one time undertook propagandism by missionaries and lectures. Its periodical, the Harbinger, was ably conducted, and very charming to all enthusiasts of progress. Our Putney school, which had not then reached Communism, was among the admirers of this periodical, and undoubtedly took an impulse from its teachings. The Brook Farm Association, as the leader and speaker of the hundred others that rose with it, certainly contributed most largely to the effect of the general movement begun by Brisbane and Greeley. But the remarkable fact, for the sake of which I am calling special attention to it, is, that in its didactic function, it brought upon the public mind, not only a new socialism but a new religion, and that religion was Swedenborgianism.
"The proof of this can be found by any one who has access to the files of the Harbinger. I could give many pages of extracts in point. The simple truth is that Brook Farm and the Harbinger meant to propagate Fourierism, but succeeded only in propagating Swedenborgianism. The Associations that arose with them and under their influence, passed away within a few years, without exception; but the surge of Swedenborgianism which they started, swept on among their constituents, and, under the form of Spiritualism, is sweeping on to this day.
"Swedenborgianism went deeper into the hearts of the people than the Socialism that introduced it, because it was a religion. The Bible and revivals had made men hungry for something more than social reconstruction. Swedenborg's offer of a new heaven as well as a new earth, met the demand magnificently. He suited all sorts. The scientific were charmed, because he was primarily a son of science, and seemed to reduce the universe to scientific order. The mystics were charmed, because he led them boldly into all the mysteries of intuition and invisible worlds. The Unitarians liked him, because, while he declared Christ to be Jehovah himself, he displaced the orthodox ideas of Sonship and tri-personality, and evidently meant only that Christ was an illusive representation of the Father. Even the infidels liked him, because he discarded about half the Bible, including all Paul's writings, as 'not belonging to the Word,' and made the rest a mere 'nose of wax' by means of his doctrine of the 'internal sense.' His vast imaginations and magnificent promises chimed in exactly with the spirit of the accompanying Socialisms. Fourierism was too bald a materialism to suit the higher classes of its disciples, without a religion corresponding. Swedenborgianism was a godsend to the enthusiasts of Brook Farm; and they made it the complement of Fourierism.
"Swedenborg's writings had long been circulating feebly in this country, and he had sporadic disciples and even churches in our cities, before the new era of Socialism. But any thing like a general interest in his writings had never been known, till about the period when Brook Farm and the Harbinger were in the ascendant. Here began a movement of the public mind toward Swedenborg, as palpable and portentous as that of Millerism or the old revivals.