The Life and Mission of Emanuel Swedenborg/Chapter1

by Benjamin Worcester

 

THE LIFE AND MISSION

OF

EMANUEL SWEDENBORG.

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTORY.—SWEDENBORG'S PLACE IN HISTORY.

Never had the outlook for Christianity been darker than during the period embraced by Swedenborg's life, from 1688 to 1772, In the time of Martin Luther the corruptions of the Roman Catholic Church were possibly more flagrant,—although, says Mosheim, in the seventeenth century "the corruptions, both in the higher and in the inferior orders of the Romish clergy, were rather increased than diminished, as the most impartial writers of that communion candidly confess."^[1] But in the determined and unscrupulous effort through the Jesuits to enslave the world, as witnessed in the cruel expulsion of Protestants from France in 1685, and in the persistent attempt to substitute its own authority with the people for that of the Word of God, as witnessed in the Bull Unigenitus,^[2] 1713, the Church at Rome was clearly pressing on to its doom, as was seen by its best friends and lamented with piteous wail.^[3]

In the Protestant Church, on the other hand, the very instinct of rational thought which had given it birth was now casting off all restraint, denying its creed, and on the point of rejecting even "the Headstone of the corner." The result might have been different had charity been given its due place in the scheme of the Reformers. But now kindness of heart as well as sound reason revolted against the bondage of faith alone, found not less galling than that of Rome herself. "Take away," cried Chillingworth, "this persecuting, burning, cursing, damning of men for not subscribing to the words of men as the words of God; require of Christians only to believe Christ, and to call no man Master but Him only; let those leave claiming infallibility that have no title to it, and let them that in their words disclaim it, disclaim it likewise in their actions; in a word, take away tyranny, which is the devil's instrument to support errors, . . . and restore Christians to the first and full liberty of captivating their understandings to Scripture only."^[4] "The opinions expressed on the part of the so-called orthodox party" (in Germany), says Dr. Dorner, "show that the Church had again become to them the self-centred possessor of direct Divine authority, endowed, once for all, with Divine powers and privileges; as if the Holy Spirit had relinquished His direct relation to souls, nay, had abdicated His power and energies in favor of the Church and her means of grace."^[5]

John Albert Bengel, perhaps the greatest theologian of his generation, lived and died (1752) in expectation of a speedy judgment. "It is," said he, "as if spiritual winter is coming on; it is a miserably cold time, and an awakening must come. . . . The power of reason and nature is exaggerated beyond measure, so that we shall soon not know what is faith and grace, and, in a word, what is supernatural. . . . The doctrine of the Holy Spirit is already gone; that of Christ is on the wane; and that of the creation hangs by only a slender thread. ... It is made a part of politics to so act and speak as to leave no trace of religion, God, and Christ."^[6]

"As far as Christology is concerned," says Dorner, "a declension from the ancient Lutheran doctrine concerning the Person of Christ had long set in even among the orthodox divines. The edifice of Lutheran Christology had been, for the most part, already forsaken by its inhabitants before 1750.^[7] . . . A deistical atmosphere seemed to have settled upon this generation, and to have cut it off from vital communion with God. To order one's self according to mere natural reason and self-complacency in this finite state of existence, and to think of nothing beyond it, were regarded as true wisdom and sound common-sense. Religion was converted into morality, and morality into the politic teaching of Eudaæonism, in a coarser or more refined form."^[8]

"Atheism," said Leibnitz, in the early part of the century, "will be the last of heresies; and in effect indifference, which marches in its train, is not a doctrine, for genuine Indifferents deny nothing, affirm nothing; it is not even doubt, for doubt being suspense between contrary probabilities supposes a previous examination: it is a systematic ignorance, a voluntary sleep of the soul. . . . Such is the hideous and sterile monster which they call indifference. All philosophic theories, all doctrines of impiety, have melted and disappeared in this devouring system, . . . this fatal system, become almost universal. . . . The state to which we are approaching is one of the signs by which will be recognized that last war announced by Jesus Christ: Nevertheless, when the Son of Man Cometh, shall He find faith on the earth?"^[9]

In England the Deistic atmosphere brooded over the land through the first half of the eighteenth century, then coming to final dissolution in the scepticism of Hume, who issued his Natural History of Religion in 1757, and therein attempted to show that Religion owed its origin to the tendency of the human mind to personify the causes of phenomena. In the same year, 1757, appeared Brown's Estimate of the Manners and Principles of the Times, showing their chief characteristics to be "a vain, luxurious, and selfish effeminacy." our principles," said he, "are as bad as our manners; religion is universally ridiculed, and yet our irreligion is shallow. Thus by a gradual and unperceived decline, we seem gliding down from ruin to ruin; we laugh, we sing, we feast, we play, and in blind security, though not in innocence, resemble Pope's lamb, licking the hand just raised to shed his blood."^[10]

In 1690 John Evelyn had noted in his Diary the prediction of the Bishop of St. Asaph that the judgment would come in thirty years; and he himself, gentleman and courtier, wrote that if ever corruption betokened a judgment at hand, then was the time. In 1713, in a Pastoral Charge to his clergy. Bishop Burnet said: "I see the imminent ruin hanging over the Church, and by consequence over the whole Reformation. The outward state of things is bad enough. God knows; but that which heightens our fears rises chief from the inward state into which we have unhappily fallen." In 1748 the excellent David Hartley said, in his Observations on Man:

"There are six things which seem more especially to threaten ruin and dissolution to the present States of Christendom—

"1. The great growth of atheism and infidelity, particularly amongst the governing parts of the States.

"2. The open and abandoned lewdness to which great numbers of both sexes, especially in the high ranks of life, have given themselves up.

"3. The sordid and avowed self-interest which is almost the sole motive of action in those who are concerned in the administration of public affairs.

"4. The licentiousness and contempt of every kind of authority, divine or human, which is so notorious in inferiors of all ranks.

"5. The great worldly-mindedness of the clergy and their gross neglect in the discharge of their proper functions.

"6. The carelessness and infatuation of parents and magistrates, with respect to the education of youth, and the consequent early corruption of the rising generation."

According to Abbey and Overton,—

"It was about the middle of the century when irreligion and immorality reached their climax. In 1753 Sir John Barnard said publicly: 'At present it really seems to be the fashion for a man to declare himself of no religion.' In the same year [Archbishop] Seeker declared that immorality and irreligion were grown almost beyond ecclesiastical power. . . . If we ask what was the state of the lower classes, we find such notices as these in a contemporary historian: '1729-30.—Luxury created necessities, and these drove the lower ranks into the most abandoned wickedness. It was unsafe to travel or walk in the streets. . . . 1731.—Profligacy among the people continued to an amazing degree.' H. Walpole writes of 1751: 'The vices of the lower people were increased to a degree of robbery and murder beyond example.'"^[11]

The thirty years of peace following 1714, though materially "the most prosperous season that England had ever experienced," were nevertheless, says Pattison, "one of decay of religion, licentiousness of morals, public corruption, profaneness of language,—a day of rebuke and blasphemy."^[12]

If such was the condition in sober, moral England, we need not say that in France it was far worse. Not to describe the manners, let us only hear one or two of the public utterances of the time. In 1758 appeared at Paris the essay of Helvetius, De l' Esprit, of which it was said by a famous woman that it uttered only the secret of all the world. "Self-love or interest," says the author, "is the lever of all our mental activities. . . . But since all self-love refers essentially only to bodily pleasure, it follows that every mental occurrence within us has its peculiar source only in the striving after this pleasure; but in saying this we have indicated where the principle of all morality is to be sought. It is an absurdity to require a man to do the good simply for its own sake. . . . Hence if morality would not be wholly fruitless, it must return to its empirical basis, and venture to adopt the true principle of all action; namely, sensuous pleasure and pain, or, in other words, selfishness as an actual moral principle."^[13]

La Mettrie, who died in 1751, declared everything spiritual to be a delusion, and physical enjoyment to be the highest end of man. He says,—

"Faith in the existence of a God is as groundless as it is fruitless. The world will not be happy till atheism becomes universally established. . . . In reference to the human soul there can be no philosophy but materialism. All the observation and experience of the greatest philosophers and physicians declare this. Soul is nothing but a mere name, which has a rational signification only when we understand by it that part of our body which thinks. This is the brain. . . . Immortality is an absurdity. The soul perishes with the body of which it forms a part. With death everything is over: la farce est jouée!"^[14]

Whether in grim humor or in earnest, it was in perfect keeping with the times that Cabanis was said to have discovered religion and poetry to be the product, some say function, of the small intestines.^[15] Well might Carlyle say, in his Life of Frederick the Great,^[16]—

"A century so opulent in accumulated falsities,—sad opulence, descending on it by inheritance, always at compound interest, and always largely increased by fresh acquirement on such immensity of standing capital,—opulent in that bad way as never century before was! Which had no longer the consciousness of being false, so false had it grown; and was so steeped in falsity, and impregnated with it to the very bone, that—in fact the measure of the thing was full, and a French Revolution had to end it."

Were not observers of the times justified in thinking that the judgment-day of the Church was at hand?^[17] Was not her sun in heaven darkened? Did not her moon, faith in the sun, fail to give its light? Were not her stars, knowledges of Divine truth,^[18] all falling from their place? Could her authority and power for good fall lower? Could greater abuses possess her citadels, sins more needing condemnation? Was not her measure full? Had not Bengel reason to think that God's "mighty judgments" were about to come?

Let us suppose that Bengel has slept these hundred and thirty years, and now we awake him. We take him on the Sabbath-day to all the churches in the land. Everywhere, in church and Sabbath-school, he hears his beloved Gospel read with reverence and charity, and the Commandments taught, with the grace of our Lord Jesus. Of predestination, of the damnation of infants and the heathen, he happily hears not a word. Take him on the week-day through the public schools, to the charitable institutions, to the Bible societies, where he may see the Gospel in a hundred and fifty languages, ready to be sent from pole to pole, from sun to sun. Take him to his own home in Germany, and let him meet the British Bible-Society agent on his mission there. Let him go into the old theological halls and hear the doctors reverently carrying on the exegetical study that he himself introduced; patiently and laboriously discovering in all the Scriptures the things concerning their Lord;^[19] discarding with care such teachings of the later Church as he condemned; with all their might reconciling philosophy with Christianity;^[20] earnestly seeking to bring to view the Personal Christ as the real Divine impersonation; in short, as Dorner says, regenerating theology.^[21] Let him see with them side by side, almost hand in hand, the advanced Catholic theologians, pursuing the same studies, with nearly the same results.^[22] And, does he ask more about the Roman Catholic Church, show him the temporal power a suppliant at every Court in Europe, but the spiritual power never so great in restraining the evil passions of men, in educating and curing souls. And, does he ask about Papal, clerical corruptions, tell him that their day is past; they are forgotten. Let him sit with us day by day and read the constantly surprising utterances of hopeful faith from the pulpit, from the press,"^[23] from royal lips, from dying statesmen; and, overlooking the wide margin of lost ground yet to be recovered by the Church, will he not joyfully exclaim that he was right; that the judgment was coming, and is now passed; that the "spiritual winter" is over; that "the good and pleasant spring weather gains the upper hand, and the verdure breaks out from beneath the snow;"^[24] that the Day-spring from on high is now again visiting His people?

So Hagenbach, in his History of the Church in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries:—

"Vehement storms, quite beyond human control, have broken through the badly kept enclosure, and have borne off what had been well nurtured. Volcanoes have sent forth their long-restrained fires, and the lava-stream has flowed over many a happy field. But there have come into play those healing forces which are as little within the grasp of human power as the destructive ones. Bright, fruitful sunbeams have announced the dawn of a new age, and a Higher Voice than that of man has called out of the chaos new creations, whose germ could scarcely have been imagined in the preceding centuries."^[25]

So Dr. John Cairns, in his essay on Unbelief in the Eighteenth Century:—

"Not only was the Deistic wave rolled back by the dikes opposed to it, but by a higher influence was made to fertilize the recovered soil. The beleaguered fortress was not only set free, but in its lowest depths was opened a spring of living water. . . . Christianity has not been saved to us in Great Britain mainly by the arguments of Butler and Sherlock, but by the slow yet sure revival that began to spread over the whole English-speaking world; nor was Germany rescued from rationalism, in so far as it has been, merely by professors and theologians meeting negative criticism, but by the return of visible Christianity, and by the calling forth of prayer which has power with God. Here, as everywhere, faith has brought victory; and who that contrasts the fortunes and prospects of Christianity almost anywhere in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, with what they were in the eighteenth, can deny that Christianity has not only survived but overcome?"^[26]

As unanimous as is the testimony to the increasing corruption and desolation of the Church up to the middle of the last century, so unanimous is the testimony to the amendment and revivification during the century now past. And if Bengel should inquire of us what time the sick man began to amend, the answer would be remarkable: it could be no other than, "Yesterday at the seventh hour the fever left him."^[27] The seventh hour with the Jews was the hour past noon. The decade after the middle of the last century is constantly referred to by English and German historians as the period of the downfall of Deism. Thus Dr. Dorner:—

"A further result of the conflicts and disorders in the region of politics, morals, and religion was the appearance of Deism after the second half of the seventeenth century, and its unchecked and triumphant progress till about 1750. . . . In 1750 many who desired that the excellence of Christian morality should be admitted, owned their obligations to Deism for having delivered them from superstition and dogmatism. Thus was Deism dreaming of its victory over Christianity. . . . But it was just now, when in the public opinion of the educated world the victory of Deism seemed in a scientific aspect decided, and when being unobstructed by opponents it was to begin to develop the supposed fulness and self-assurance of Deistic reason, in the place of that Christianity which it rejected, that its emptiness became apparent, and it incurred the fate of all negative criticism. It had unconsciously been living upon its adversary, theological science; and when this succumbed, it fell with it."^[28]

This testimony of "the greatest living theologian," in his History of Protestant Theology, to the common fall, just after 1750, both of the old "theological science," belonging to the scheme of faith alone, and of Deistic reason, is noteworthy. So again Leslie Stephen: "Every creed decays; or certainly the creed decayed in this instance, as it became incapable of satisfying the instincts of various classes of the population, and the perception of its logical defects was the consequence, not the cause, of its gradual break-up. . . . Towards the middle of the century the decay of the old schools of theology was becoming complete. Watts died in 1748;^[29] Doddridge in 1751; the good Bishop Wilson died in his ninety-third year, in 1755."^[30]

While thus in Germany and England the doctrines of the Protestant Church were engaged in a death struggle with its own offspring, Deism, in France Jesuitism, in behalf of Papal supremacy, was engaged in a similar struggle with Jansenism, a new Calvinistic offshoot still clinging to the mother Church. The immediate bone of contention was the Bull Unigenitus, which was specially aimed at the Jansenist Testament of Father Quesnel. For forty years the contention had gone on. It was perceived by both sides to involve the question of existence. From 1753 to 1755, Parliament espoused the cause of the Jansenists, running the risk of excommunication. In 1756 Louis XV. interposed to save the Jesuits, and by an act of supreme sovereignty compelled Parliament to register an edict in favor of the Bull. Great excitement ensued, and a severe conflict for three years longer, when of a sudden the Jesuits found their power with the King mysteriously gone. The same year, 1759, they were expelled from Portugal, in 1764 from France, and in 1773 the order was abolished by Papal decree. Not less plainly than of Protestant dogma and Protestant Deism, is the breaking point of Romish domination seen to have been in the seventh hour of yester-century.

The fever had left the man as dead. There was now no longer any Church power existing. Romanism had failed. Lutheranism and Calvinism had failed. Deism, or scientific religion, had failed. Hume had proved with incontestable logic that natural reason was powerless to substantiate a religion. The fountain of living waters was forsaken; cisterns were hewn out, broken cisterns; they could hold no water.^[31] The desolation was complete.^[32] And yet in honest hearts there remained good soil in which the seed of the Gospel was even then springing up to bear fruit a hundredfold. Had not their Lord said of John, the apostle of love and good works, " What if I will that he tarry till I come?" though Peter, the apostle of faith in Him, should have grown old and been carried where he would not, even unto the death?^[33]

The story of the good seed sown by many in many lands, notably by Spener and Zinzendorf in Germany, Wesley and Whitefield^[34] in England and America, is too long for us here to tell. Suffice it that the sowing seems to have been that of John the Baptist, rather than that of the Son of Man, calling forth indeed fruit meet for repentance, but fruit still partaking too much of the old root and of human weakness.

Neither can we tell of the terrible devastation that followed in France, whence the good soil of Protestantism had been expelled, when infidelity came to cope with the failing power of Romanism; and it was as if seven devils had been brought back more wicked than the first. What we have to do is to inquire whether our good Bengel's judgment—the judgment foretold by our Lord in Matthew, and foreshadowed to John in vision—has really taken place, or whether we are to look for another such time of desolation, and worse. God forbid the latter conclusion! Possibly it would be like the Jews' awaiting their Messiah. We have seen strong indications of a crisis, of the turning of the fever, soon after the middle of the last century. At that very time, culminating in 1757,^[35] Swedenborg tells us that the vision of the judgment, described in the Apocalypse, was fulfilled in all particulars, not in this world, but in the world of spirits, on those who had been collecting there through the long centuries of Christian misrule.

The thought is new; but what more reasonable? Clearly, the judgment should not be on a single generation of men. The whole idea and description forbid. But it has been assumed that all these generations which had gone would return to the earth to be judged. What more unreasonable? This could be only by the assumption again of earthly bodies, and the day for such a supposition is gone by. We do not hesitate to say that such a spiritual fulfilment as Swedenborg describes is the only one that in this age can be accepted.^[36] There will remain then the question of time. What time more probable, when we take into view the nearness and the connection of the one world with the other, than the time when the old life of the Church came to its end, there was a pause, and then new life with astonishing power began to spring forth? In short, what time more probable than when Bengel felt it must come, and would now believe it did come? Is any time conceivable in the future more probable? It will not do to fall back on the old idea of "the end of the world." No one of common-sense now believes that this world will come to an end within practically conceivable time. Every one knows that the Greek words mean "the consummation of the age." (Matt. xxiv. 3; xxviii. 30.) Need we look for a more thorough consummation of a Christian age than was that of the last century?^[37]

One question remains: how does Swedenborg profess to know this? He says that he was permitted to witness it, the eyes of his spirit being opened for the purpose. But is that possible? All things are possible to Him who openeth the eyes of the blind. But for what purpose did the Lord grant so great a privilege to one man? Through him to tell it all to us,—all about heaven and hell that in this new age we need to know; and most of all to unfold to us in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself, as seen in His own light,—the light of heaven; in short, to reveal in His Word the transparent stones, the gates, the wall, and the streets of His Holy City,—His tabernacle ready to descend to us out of heaven.

No demonstration of the need of such a revelation, of its coincidence with prophecy, of fit attendant circumstances, avails for its establishment. We ask with reason. Can any good thing come out of Nazareth? The only thing to do is to come and see. To the disciples of John the Baptist, who are many in these days, and who come to learn whether this is what was to come, the only answer can be, See whether, being blind, you will now receive sight; being lame you will walk; being deaf you will hear; being dead you will be raised up; being poor you will have the Gospel preached to you. If such are the works of the revelation of Divine and heavenly truth in the Sacred Scriptures, by the hand of Swedenborg, blessed are they who are not offended therein. At the same time, admitting the possibility of such revelation, it is most natural and proper to inquire as to its medium; what fitness he had for such a mission, and in what manner he performed it. It is these inquiries that we are to find answered in the following pages, bearing in mind, however, that it is a suitable man of the age that we are to look to see; not an imaginary one of the future, nor a traditional one of the past. When the Lord has new things to say to men, He says them through one whose ideas and language are those of the men to whom He would speak.^[38]

1. Maclaine: Mosheim's Ecclesiastical History, vol. ii. § ii. part i. ch. 36.
2. Appendix I.
3. Appendix II.
4. Leslie Stephen: History of English Thought in the 18th Century, i. 76.
5. Dr. I. A. Dorner: History of Protestant Theology, Eng. ed. ii. 213.
6. Hagenbach: History of the Church in the 18th and 19th Centuries, i. 383.
7. Dr. Dorner: Op. cit. ii. 274.
8. Ibid. ii. 296.
9. Palmer: Treatise on the Church of Christ, i. 348.
10. Leslie Stephen: Op. cit. ii. 195.
11. Abbey and Overton: The English Church in the 18th Century, ii. 44.
12. M. Pattison: Tendencies of Religious Thought in England, 1688-1750.
13. Schwegler: History of Philosophy, p. 235.
14. Ibid. 239.
15. See Carlyle's Essay on the Signs of the Times.
16. Vol, i, p. 11.
17. Kürtz, referring to the remarkable number of mystical pietists in the first half of the 18th century, says: "The utterances which took place in an ecstatic state were exhortations to repentance, to prayer, to imitation of Christ, revelations of the Divine will in regard to the affairs of society, and announcement of the approaching judgment of God over the degenerate world and Church."
18. Swedenborg.
19. Appendix III.
20. Appendix IV.
21. "Regenerated German theology exercises, in the present century, a very powerful influence upon foreign Reformed Churches. Since about 1750, indeed, their own theological activity may be said, in many instances, to have stagnated; they have, therefore, been the more easily affected, though some decayed subsequently, by the movements of German theology."—Dr. Dorner: History of Protestant Theology, ii. 473.
22. In the history of recent German Catholicism . . . we again find solid ground; for a more intimate reciprocity exists between the Protestants and Catholics in Germany than in France. German science is the beautiful bend, uniting those who adhere to different confessional standpoints. . . . Protestants and Catholics have been nourished as twin-brothers at the same breast of German philosophy, though each one has assimilated his nourishment differently. The Catholic and the Protestant theology of Germany have passed through the same stages of development."—Hagenbach: Op. cit. ii. 440.
23. As we write, we read in a daily journal: "American publishers are unwilling to print essays or books of professed atheists."
24. Bengel's words quoted by Hagenbach.
25. Vol. ii. p. 2.
26. Pages 87, 191.
27. John iv. 52.
28. Dr. Dorner: Op. cit. ii. 90.
29. With the going to sleep of the good man and of the Church at about the same hour, it is pleasant to associate his own tender evening prayer:—

    "I lay my body down to sleep,
    Let angels guard my head;
    And thro' the hours of darkness keep
    Their watch around my bed."

30. Op. cit. i. 381, 388.
31. Jeremiah, ii. 13.
32. Appendix V.
33. According to Schelling: "The periods of the Church are typified by the three principal Apostles, Peter, Paul, and John. Of these periods the first two, Catholicism and Protestantism, have passed; while the third. Johannine Christianity, is approaching."—Schwegler: History of Philosophy, p. 390.
34. We are not unmindful that both the Pietism of Spener and the Moravianism of Zinzendorf contained elements of weakness, and lost in time their power for good; and that the religion of Wesley, and still more that of Whitefield, contained a leaven of Calvinism which has to die. Yet they all incited an active faith and desire for new life. See Appendix VI.
35. The year when began the "Seven Years' War;" and, according to Hume, "in 1758 the war raged in all quarters of the world."
36. What other was the judgment accomplished at our Lord's first coming, when He beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven? .
37. Appendix VII.
38. "Great transitions commonly find their beginnings in a single soul. Their source is apparently insignificant, and generally undetected, until the stream of history has revealed its power."—Rev. George Matheson: Growth of the Spirit of Christianity, vol, i. p. 330.