"Verily!" Toby Lackpenny often exclaimed in after-times, when relating the progress of his conversion,—"although my will was stubborn, I often trembled before the spirit of that child, like Felix before Paul, or like the gaoler in the prison at Philippi!"
The astrologer burnt his books of the astral science, and all the other occult, and therefore satanical sciences; and he and Joe were thenceforth united in a novel and more elevated pursuit,—the acquirement of a purified and spiritual nature. But the distinctness of minds, and the force of habit in different natures, were strikingly discoverable in the relative degrees of zeal with which the youth and Toby followed their new object. Joe's ascetic fervour has been described. But Toby's bent was of a diverse character: he found it impossible to enter with Joe's vehemence into the quest of an entire renewal of heart,—and could not resist the tendency to seek for enlightenment among the curious treasures of his little library. With indescribable rapture Toby found, as he thought, exactly what he wanted, in the abstruse pages of Jacob Bœhmen. He had long kept the volumes of the mystical German on his shelves; but he assured himself that he never saw the true meaning of the high mysteries developed in the "Forty Questions," with so clear a vision as he did now the films of the "old Adam" were beginning to fall from his eyes.
It need scarcely be observed that Joe heard Toby's announcement of these abstract discoveries with rigid indifference. Neither when the lad's fervour had abated, and disgust and melancholy succeeded, did he feel able to receive the tailor's assurances of the superior consolation to be derived from these puzzling studies. Toby's exhilaration of spirits, happily for himself, suffered little interruption after the full growth of his devoted attachment to the cloudy exercitations of the old quietest.—"Of a truth," he would often say to his customers, "I can never be sufficiently thankful that a merciful Providence showed me the spiritual lantern of Jacob Bœhmen, wherewith I might find, and possess, the pearl of great price!"
Within two years of the expiry of Joe's apprenticeship, however, the devotional and marvel-loving tailor had transferred his worship from the shrine of the mystical German shoemaker to the more lofty, as well as more celestial image of Baron Emanuel Swedenborg. The Scripture histories had, thenceforth, an allegorical sense for Toby, as well as for Joe; and the lad could scarcely hint that he thought the transactions in the garden of Eden were to be read as a figure, before the learned Lackpenny was ready to pour out a profound descant on the proprium, or "sensual principle," which he affirmed to be typified by the serpent in the garden;—and declared his conviction, that the Mosaic account of the first human pair was, in reality, a mere symbolical history of "the First Church," and of the causes of its forfeiture of purity.
At another argumentative season, when the apprentice had ventured to ask if Toby did not think there was something incongruous in the account of Noah's flood, and in the size the ark was said to be,—and how the beasts went in,—and how they were supported,—the penetrating Swedenborgian assured the inquirer, with the utmost gravity, that he thought there was nothing in the whole world of books or facts more easy of explication.
"Know thou, my beloved Joey," said the sincere old man, raising his spectacles, and placing them, like two additional eyes, in the centre of his large forehead, "that whoever giveth his hearty faith to the teaching of the celestial-minded Swedenborg will receive a second eye-sight,—spiritual, and far more precious than the eyes of this earthly body. The Deluge, Joey, represents 'the Second Church,' as the garden of Paradise represents the first. The ark is the man of the church; and the forty days' rain is a figure for the temptations of the senses, by which the Second Church, as well as the First, was tried: you may see that figure plainly cleared up by our Saviour's temptation in the wilderness. The ark is also described as having a window above,—that signifies the intellectual principle; and a door, moreover, at the side,—that denotes the faculty of hearing."
"I wish all these things had been described in a plainer way, if they mean all this," interjected the youth, impatient of his mystic friend's harangue.
"If!" exclaimed Toby, astonished out of measure that any sane person could, for one moment, doubt what seemed to himself to be so pellucidly clear;—"if!—why, only read it for yourself, Joe, in the 'Celestial Arcana' of the inspired Emanuel of the North!"—and, therewith, the agile old philosopher sprang from his chair, and reached the volume from his shelves.
"Never mind, friend Toby: not at present," said Joe, very quietly.
"Well, well," said Toby, "another time then;—but you won't hear me out, or otherwise I could clearly prove what I had begun to say."