Page:The Life and Mission of Emanuel Swedenborg.djvu/10

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PREFACE.

greatly increase, as with our fellow-servant we learn to give all the praise to Him whom he loved to serve. And our task is reduced to setting in such order the things most surely believed among us, as will cause us to listen to Swedenborg's own words and to believe with him that they were not from himself, but from the Spirit of Truth.

Of all previous biographies of Swedenborg mention will be made in the Appendix. Let us here but express our obligations to the first known to us, by Mr. Nathaniel Hobart, which will always be held in grateful remembrance; and to the most complete by far, the collection of Documents, in three large octavo volumes, by the indefatigable Rev. R. L. Tafel; from which, as in most authentic form, the greater part of our material has been drawn. To these Documents and to Swedenborg's published works the student is referred for further research.