doctor of philosophy. The next year he set out on his travels, and spent more than a year in London and Oxford. His travels extended over five years; and when he returned to Skara, he published a collection of poems which had been written at various places; but poetry was not the only art to which his attention had been turned, for in a letter to his brother-in-law from Paris, in 1714, he tells him of some wonderful mechanical contrivances which he had invented. The list includes, amongst other things, a drawbridge, a revolver, an hydraulic machine, a sort of ship in which a man can go below the surface of the sea, and do great damage to the fleet of an enemy; a universal musical instrument, by means of which the most inexperienced musician can execute all the kinds of modulation which are found in notation, an aërial ship, like the pictures which used to figure in shop-windows twenty years ago; and a method of discovering the desires and affections of men by analysis. In reading the catalogue, it strikes us that some must have been mentioned by way of joke, to test the credulity of Eric Benzelius, to whom the letter was addressed; and the last has a strange sound as an application of mechanical science.

In 1716 we find Emanuel conducting a periodical work entitled, "Dædalus Hyperboræus," a record of the new flights of mechanical and mathematical genius in Sweden. It was not long-lived, and having reached its sixth number in 1718, it disappeared altogether. In 1716, Emanuel was appointed by King Charles XII. to the office of assessor in the College of Mines. The King was fond of the study of mathematics; and Swedenborg has left us some interesting particulars of the conversations which he had with him on the subject. Had the King lived longer, it is possible that he might have made further use of Swedenborg's services; but he was killed in 1718, during the siege of Frederickshall, and was succeeded by his sister, Ulrica Eleanora, who soon after resigned the crown to her husband Frederick, Landgrave of Hesse.

Several scientific tracts were written by Swedenborg during this period, but they do not appear to have been much appreciated, a circumstance which was the cause of some vexation to their author. From 1722 to 1734, he studiously applied himself to the duties of his office, and during this whole time abstained from publishing. Yet we must not suppose that the duties of an assessor of mines were sufficient to engross the mind of a man of Swedenborg's genius and ambition. Although his previous experience in authorship had not been happy, his twelve years' silence must have been the preparation for a more lofty flight than he had hitherto attempted, for in 1734 he broke through his reserve, and presented to the world three folios, entitled "Opera Philosophica et Mineralogica." The first of them only, the "Principia Rerum Naturalium," is of any interest as throwing light on the subsequent development of his system. We should, however, think it doubtful

whether many of Swedenborg's more devoted adherents had ever the patience to wend their weary way through the intricacies of this dismal folio. Suffice it to say, that it is essentially materialistic. All nature is derived from a single point, for a point is the beginning of geometry, and geometry is the law and essential attribute of every substance in the world. Motion is derived from the point, ever flowing from a centre to a circumference, and around the circumference back to the centre, constituting an everlasting spiral. From the aggregation and co-acervation of gyrating points, the first finite is produced, from which, by a similar process, the second finite results, of which is formed the solar vortex. Hence follows the third finite or magnetic element, the fourth finite or ether, and the fifth finite or air and water.

The second part of this dull treatise is entitled "The mechanism of the intercourse between the soul and body." Its chief proposition is that the soul is in nature and sent into nature by GOD. It admits of being enclosed within the finite, i.e. within the body. It is clear from experience, altogether apart from reasoning, that the soul is a constituent of the body, limited to it, and although one of the body's natural parts, yet its last and subtilest part.

Shortly after the publication of the "Principia," the Bishop of Skara died, leaving a considerable fortune, which placed Emanuel in a condition of independence. He now found a substitute for his assessorship, to whom he assigned half his stipend, and again set out upon his travels, which occupied seven years, 1736-1743. The greater part of this time appears to have been spent in Italy. In 1741 he printed, at Amsterdam, "The Economy of the Animal Kingdom.' In this he assigns a spiritual body to the soul as well as a material. He denies the immortality of the soul per se, because it is created by the one only Immortal Being, Who is Life Eternal. For GOD to create anything that is immortal, would be to create that which He alone is. What therefore God does is to preserve the soul immortal through His own indwelling. When the soul is emancipated in death from the trammels of the body, it appears in the spiritual body, which is the exact form of the human body, and enters on a life pure beyond imagination. Thus death is the resurrection. The material body cannot be revived, but the soul, clothed with the spirit, preserves the perfect form of the body under new conditions. There is no judgment except that which is pronounced by a man's own conscience. The world is the seminary for Heaven, and the moral state of a man undergoes no change at, or after, death. In the light, into which the soul enters at death, the conscience pronounces its own sentence. If good, it rejoices in the light; if evil, it hastes away in pain, even as an injured eye shrinks into darkness, though all the while the light is excellent and blameless.

In a treatise on "The Worship and Love of GOD," published in

1745, Swedenborg gives a very fanciful and absurd account of man's first origin. In the midst of Paradise grew the tree of life, which bore a small egg, in which, as in a jewel, nature concealed herself with her highest powers for the initiation of the most consummate body. The supreme mind infused into the egg a soul by means of concentrated rays of the sun of life. The branch of the tree of life which bore the precious egg unfolded into a soft and easy nest lined within with bark and leaves. The adjacent trees instilled their sap into the roots of this honoured tree. The sun dared not approach with his hot rays, save through the mitigation of a circle of translucent leaves. Heaven also let down her inhabitants that they might mould and direct the offices of nature. How Heaven possessed any inhabitants we are not told, but we are subsequently informed that there is no angel or devil who has not first been a man. As time elapsed, the egg-bearing boughs declined nearer and nearer to the cotton cradle, and at the appointed hour, the baby man cracked his shell and began to breathe the air. The naked and beautiful babe sucked the ends of the boughs of the tree of life, which nourished him with milk. He crept out of his cradle and played with the flowers which grew around, but he had not yet learned to walk, and, therefore, to teach him to walk, his soul contrived various tricks. She bent his eyes on the beautiful fruits which hung aloft, and inspired him with a desire to reach them. Celestial genii added their divine cunning to the freaks of the soul. At one time they represented above his head a pendant Paradise, wreathed with garlands and nosegays; at another time they led him to think that he saw winged infants as so many little brothers flying about above him. He sprang up to meet them, but they receded from his grasp. By these attempts to spring upwards he learnt to walk in a few days erect and with his face towards Heaven.

The birth and marriage of Eve is similarly fantastic. There was a grove, distant some furlongs from that in which Adam dwelt; into this Adam strolled one evening, and lay down to sleep under its tree of life. He had a dream, in which a beautiful nymph appeared to him, but when he sought to fold her in his arms she glided away in a light cloud. In attempting to catch her, he so irritated the parts above his thorax that one of his ribs seemed to leap out of its place. After some efforts he appeared to himself to catch her and covered her lips and cheeks with kisses, but at this moment he awoke and found, to his dismay, that he had been dreaming. He did not know that the apple tree under which he rested bore the egg from which his future wife should be produced, and that the branch at his breast was what he had embraced in his arms, and that, in pressing it with kisses, he had infused into the egg a living soul from his own. In due time Eve was born in like manner as Adam had been. Adam had long been trying to re

discover the grove where he had experienced his happy dream. One day, however, whilst pursuing his search, he beheld Eve herself in the very flesh, and exclaimed "I see clearly that she is mine, for she is from my own bosom, and from my own life," and now the solitary Adam had found a help-meet for himself.

We must remember that up to this time Swedenborg had made no pretentions to a direct revelation from Heaven. The dreamy and fantastic pictures presented to his mind were the creations of his own fancy, and the deductions of his own reasoning; and the similarity which these bear to the later dreams which he mistook for revelations is an evidence, if we needed one, that both arose from the same source; but having enwrapped himself in a dreamworld of his own creation, it is not wonderful that he learnt to dwell more and more in the marvellous, and to deceive himself into the belief that the things which he fancied were true.

For some time previous to his claim to a new revelation Swedenborg's mind appears to have been subject to strange hallucinations. He saw visions, the result no doubt of an imagination which had suffered derangement from too close an application to his studies. A diary, kept during the years 1743 and 1744, which was brought to light about nine years ago, is full of the strangest and most incoherent nonsense that ever was read. In 1744 Swedenborg was in London, lodging in the house of one Brockmer, in Fetter Lane. During his residence there he had a fit of insanity, the details of which were published by Wesley in the "Arminian Magazine" for January, 1781, on the authority of Mathesius, the Swedish Chaplain, who had it from Brockmer himself. Brockmer relates that during the beginning of Swedenborg's residence in his house, he used to frequent the church of the Moravian Brethren in Fetter Lane; he lived a solitary life, and told his landlord that he was writing a small Latin book, which would be gratuitously distributed amongst the learned men in the Universities of England.

One evening, while he was at a coffee-house, Brockmer was called by his maidservant, who said that something strange must have happened to Swedenborg, as she had knocked several times. at his door without receiving any answer. Brockmer went home, and knocked himself, when Swedenborg jumped out of bed, and after saying that he would not have his bed made, as he had a great work in hand, rushed through the door after Brockmer in a state of most intense excitement. He told him that he had something to communicate to him, and said that he was the Messiah who was come to be crucified for the Jews, and that Brockmer must be his spokesman and go with him to the synagogue the next day. His landlord advised Swedenborg to send for a physician, and made a bargain with him that if an angel appeared to him that night, he would go with him to the synagogue, but if he did not, Sweden

borg must go with him to Dr. Smith the next morning. As the angel did not come, Brockmer reminded Swedenborg of his promise, but was unable to induce him to go to Dr. Smith's. The landlord, however, went to fetch the Doctor, and whilst he was gone Swedenborg made his escape, and went to the Swedish Embassy, where failing to get admittance, he pulled off his clothes and rolled himself in deep mud in the gutter. In this state the servants of the Swedish Envoy found him, and he was safely placed under the care of Dr. Smith. There may be some little doubt whether the account of Mathesius is not exaggerated, and at this distance of time it is impossible to ascertain the exact truth. Hindmarsh, a zealous Swedenborgian, professed to have shaken Brockmer's testimony in some respects, but this much is undoubted that Swedenborg was under the care of Dr. Smith as an insane patient in 1744.

We shall not be surprised to find that the commencement of Swedenborg's revelations synchronised with the time of his madness. Although he continually alludes in his writings to the source from whence they were received, he has nowhere given a detailed account of the act which designated him the Apostle of the New Jerusalem. His friend, M. Rabsahn of Stockholm, tells us that having inquired of Swedenborg when and in what manner his revelations began, he replied :

"I was in London and dined late at my usual quarters, where I had engaged a room, in which to prosecute my studies on Natural Philosophy. I was hungry, and ate with great appetite. Towards the end of the meal, I remarked, that a kind of mist spread before my eyes, and I saw the floor of my room covered with hideous reptiles, such as serpents, toads, and the like. I was astonished, having all my wits about me, and being perfectly_conscious. The darkness attained its height, and then passed away. I now saw a man sitting in the corner of the chamber. As I had thought myself alone, I was greatly frightened, when he said to me, 'Eat not so much.' My sight again became dim, but when I recovered it I found myself alone in my room. The unexpected alarm hastened my return home. I did not suffer my landlord to perceive that anything had happened, but thought over the matter attentively and was not able to attribute it to chance or any physical cause. "The following night the same man appeared to me again. I was this time not at all alarmed. The man said, 'I am GOD, the LORD, the Creator, and the Redeemer of the world. I have chosen thee to unfold to men the spiritual sense of the Holy Scripture. I will Myself dictate to thee what thou shalt write.' The same night the world of spirits, hell and heaven, were convincingly opened to me, when I found many persons of my acquaintance of all conditions. From that day forth I gave up all worldly learning, and laboured only in spiritual things, according to what the LORD commanded me to write. Thereafter the LORD daily opened the eyes of my spirit to see in perfect wakefulness what was going on in the other world, and to converse, broad awake, with angels and spirits."—Vol. I. pp. 243, 244.