many startling facts in it. Let us see, however, if there are inducements enough for us to become students of his writings. He was born in that fine old Scandinavian land of Sweden, that has blessed the world with so many men of thought and action. His father was Jesper Swedberg, bishop of Skara, and his son Emanuel was born in the year 1688. He was not a very jovial sort of boy, and of his early life we have not many memorials, beyond the fact that he was given to thought and speculations on religious matters. Some men must begin very early in life the great work they have to do. He went to the University of Upsala: in his studies he was diligent, patient, and laborious, and at the age of twenty-two took his degree of doctor of philosophy. In 1710 he came to London, and had a narrow escape with his life. At that time an epidemic raged in Sweden, and vessels that come to this country had to undergo quarantine. Swedenborg was induced by some of his countrymen, who came off in a boat, to go with them into the city. For this he was very near being hanged, and was only freed under the condition that if anyone attempted the same thing again, he should not escape the gallows. It was his custom to resort to all places of learning, and we therefore find him at Oxford, at Utrecht, at Paris. Everywhere he was perpetually working, and very soon he was perpetually writing. Of his poems, that is, those in metrical form, published in early life, he could not say much. His great poems were to be found in his after religious books. In 1716 he commenced his Daedalus, a periodical. He then became acquainted with Polheim, and while living under Polheim's roof he wished very much to marry Polheim's daughter. He got a sort of agreement on the matter from the father, with the daughter's signature, which was attached from feelings of filial obedience. This agreement, which gave the young lady uneasiness, her brother stole from Swedenborg's desk, and put it in the fire, which to Swedenborg

was a grief at the time; but he was a man who had other work to do than to sit and watch the ashes. In his after life he was on one occasion jocosely asked if he was ever desirous of marrying, and he said he was once on the road to matrimony, "but," said he, "the lady would not have me." However painful it might have been to Swedenborg to miss Lady Polheim, it was a great good to us all, and perhaps a blessing to the lady herself. In 1718 we find him at the siege of Frederikshall, with Charles XII. He there ingeniously planned rolling machines, by which two galleys, five boats, and a sloop, were conveyed overland a distance of fifteen miles, and under cover of which Charles was enabled to carry on his operations. In 1719 he was ennobled, not made baron, as is generally supposed. He was at this time appointed Assessor of the Board of Mines in Sweden, and perfected his studies in metallurgy. In 1724 he published some of his works on natural philosophy, and one on the Philosophy of the Infinite. In 1744 appeared his great work "The Animal Kingdom," and in 1745 "The Worship and Love of God." In all his scientific doings and works he was a patient, exact, and practical man. Of all the men ever called dreamers, Swedenborg was the least like one. He meddled with all knowledge, and was a quiet, methodical, orderly, patient, duty-doing man; and it was on this basis he was to uprear that which afterwards made his name still more famous,-his attempt to discover the nature and properties of spirit, and to penetrate into the unseen world. This great change occurred between his fiftieth and sixtieth year. Up to that time he had been a man of science. In the fifty-eighth year of his age he appears in a new character. He says on this subject, "I have been called to a holy office by the Lord himself, who was graciously pleased to manifest himself to me, his servant, in the year 1743, when he opened my sight to a view of the spiritual world, and granted me the privilege of conversing

with spirits and angels, which I enjoy to this day. From that time I began to print and publish various arcana, that have been seen by me, or revealed to me, respecting heaven and hell, the state of man after death, the true worship of God, the spiritual sense of the Word, with many other most important matters conducive to salvation and true wisdom." Now here was a very large claim put in by Swedenborg. He (the lecturer) supposed that his audience were Christians. Where was the extravagance? Swedenborg asserts that there is a spiritual world. Was that a novelty? Did they not believe in a heaven and a hell? Could they tell when intercourse with that world ceased to be possible? Could they draw some sharp chronological line, to define when spiritual gifts ceased? There was nothing in all Christian theology so loosely done as the line when gifts and graces of a supernatural kind ceased out of this world. There they were, and when did they go? There had been an unbroken series of churches that asserted that these supernatural gifts never did die out. Christian people treat Swedenborg's claim as a seer of visions, as a priori ridiculous. How angry people are at the supernatural claims of those they do not like! If Col. Gardiner gets converted by a vision, and professes to have seen Christ crucified on the cross; forthwith Dr. Doddridge writes his life and the Religious Tract Society publishes many editions of it, without note or comment to say, “We are very sorry that Col. Gardiner should have been so fanatical as to attribute his conversion to a vision." He (Mr. Dawson) might show other cases. A member of the Society of Friends was not at all put out by Fox's illuminations and voices. Bunyan had visions: but then Bunyan was a Baptist, and belonged to our regiment, and so he had a licence. But on the other side, the feeling was that if you are not of us,-if you have visions-then you are a fool and a madman. But they say Gardiner's vision was only once, and Swedenborg's vision lasted through

many years. The marvel is that the thing is done at all. It is not the number of cases, but the thing itself that is disputed. It is quite as mar

vellous to have one vision as a thousand. He did not say that he believed Swedenborg's claim at present. He left that, but he would ask why people laugh at him. The great men of the world had all voted on that side of the great question. Socrates and Plato of the old world, St. John and others in the New Testament, Origen, Plotinus, Jacob Behmen, Pascal, Fenelon,-all the great men were those who believed that underlying the sensuous, visible world, there is a spiritual and unseen world, in which might be discovered the essences of things. Swedenborg was therefore in good company; his inward or spiritual eyes were opened. Some people complained of the abstruseness of Swedenborg's books. He (the lecturer) believed there was not a sentence in them that could not be made plain to an ordinary audience. Swedenborg did not say he was inspired, but only that his spiritual or inward vision was open. He said that man's inward eyes were overclouded by sin, or they would see and hear what was now hidden from them. He (the lecturer) would ask the audience if they had never heard in the song of birds, more at one time than at another, and what was this but the quickening or opening of some inward sense? Swedenborg said there was an inward sight and an inward hearing. It is a phenomenon running all through history, that as a man greatens and brightens all life is altered to him. Did they never marvel where Wordsworth, and Byron, and Shakspere, found all their bright thoughts? They never had such ideas visit them. No, how could it strike them if there eyes were sealed? What was the difference between Shakspere and other people. The difference was that there were eyes within the poet's outer eyes. There were spiritual eyes as well as eyes of the body; and under the visible forms of nature there lay a significance, a beauty, and a meaning that was hid

den from the common observer, but which was seen by the poetic soul. So says Swedenborg,-for this spiritual world around us there is an eye prepared. It is not shown to the body's eye, and God was pleased to open his inward eye, and these things were made plain to him.

From this time Swedenborg dropped his secular duties, and gave up his assessorship. The king, in consideration of his long and faithful service of thirtyone years, continued his salary, but Swedenborg desired only half of it. He then devoted the rest of his long life to the one great purpose of reforming the theology of his time, and to founding what was called the New Church. His spiritual gifts soon got noised abroad, and some thought they meant fortunetelling. A widow, Martiville, sought his advice for the recovery of a lost receipt of a sum of money that had been paid and was demanded a second time. Swedenborg was kind and did not scowl her away. By means of his spiritual privilege he conversed with the deceased husband who had paid the money, and the receipt was found; but those who thought that a prophet was no good excepting for the lost spoon, or that this great man was good for fortune-telling, would find that he kept clear of that.

When Swedenborg began to write these great heresies, a worthy bishop and doctor got up a complaint against him. The doctor, whose name was Ekebom, had the honesty to say of himself, that he took great care not to examine Swedenborg's works. Don't read what those opposed to you say, as Sydney Smith remarks, lest you should be prejudiced, you know. Swedenborg, however was a man of good connections, of high repute, and of such a calm, quiet, blameless life, that it was found impossible to get up any very great stir about him.

In 1771 we find him in London. A little before his death he was seized with apoplexy. He was at this time visited by a Lutheran clergyman, who asked him if he adhered to his spiritual revelations,