Page:Biographical and critical studies by James Thomson ("B.V.").djvu/357

A STRANGE BOOK 34I animal, and drop of water in the forest and river it enjoys for its day, then may some little human prophet or seer reveal to his little fellow- men all the mysteries of the universe. But perhaps the strangest thing to note in such truly devout and wise men as Swedenborg and Wilkinson, who so bitterly denounce and ruthlessly punish lack of faith in others, however splendid their genius, however beneficent their lives, and who so ardently proclaim their own faith in ever-flowing, all- vivifying Divine Influx through every world and order of the Universe, is their utter want of faith in be- lieving that their God's last word is locked up in a series of obscure and incongruous pamphlets, written no one knows when or by whom, coherent solely by aid of the bookbinder ; containing doubtless many noble and wise things, as all antique literatures do, but containing also things (not the less sacred) most absurd, most vile, most detestable. In direct oppo- sition to their Lord's own warning, these seraphic doctors of the New Church insist on constructing it out of the broken and rotten ruins of the Old Church, on putting new wine into the old worn leathern bottles, in making the white garments of the saints in glory out of tattered and dirty " Hebrew old clo's." We have seen that this volume fully deserves its title of " Improvisations ; " but what of the " from the Spirit," meaning " from the Lord ? " Some of the pieces, as shown by the quotations in Section I., were obtained in answer to direct invocation of the Lord. But in a large number of cases, it is not the Spirit of the Lord who dictates; it is not even the writer himself, who may be supposed but the medium of the