The Apostolic canon in such cases is, 'Believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they be of God'. (1 John iv. 1.) And the touchstone to which they are to be brought is pointed out by the Prophet: To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no truth in them. (Is. viii. 20.) But instead of this canon you offer another * * *. It is simply this: Whoever professes to be the bearer of divine communications, is insane. To bring Swedenborg within the operation of this rule, you quote, as if from his own works, a passage which is nowhere to be found in them, but which you seem to have taken from some biographical dictionary or cyclopædia; few or none of which give anything like a fair account of the matter.
Aye! my memory did not fail me, I find. As to insanity in the sense intended by Gulielmus, namely, as
mania
,—I should as little think of charging Swedenborg with it, as of calling a friend mad who laboured under an
acyanoblepsia
.
Ib. p. 323.
Did you never read of one who says, in words very like your version of the Baron's reverie: It came to pass, that, as I took my journey, and was come nigh unto Damascus, about noon, suddenly there shone from heaven a great light round about me: and I fell on the ground, and heard a voice saying unto me, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?
In the short space of four years the newspapers contained three several cases, two of which I cut out, and still have among my ocean of papers, and which, as stated, were as nearly parallel, in external accompaniments, to St. Paul's as cases can well be:—struck with lightning,—heard the thunder as an articulate voice,—blind for a few days, and suddenly recovered their sight. But then there was no Ananias, no confirming revelation to another. This it was that justified St. Paul as a wise man in regarding the incident as supernatural, or as more than a providential omen.