Emanuel Swedenborg; A Biography (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: PART IV. It is extraordinary how well Swedenborg has answered the children's questions; those enquiries of little tongues that the parents divert, but do not satisfy. If we wished to give his theology an experiment, we should select for its recipients children of from five to ten years of age, and teach them nothing of it except in answer to their own enquiries. The whole scheme would be elicited presently by the moving curiosity of almost -infantine querists. As a satisfaction to such like, including those simple adults whose faculties are as those of children, there is a completeness in his revelations; the first circle of intellectual wants is gratified with parental forethought; the proffered education, drawn forth by the pupil himself, is exact and suitable; and the youthful mind runs no danger of subsequent complexity in the learning with which his easy teacher provides him. The personal Maker of the world, his name and abode; His quality as the best of men; the purpose of all things for our use; the immortality not of the soul but of the man, or rather not his immortality but his straight continuance; the way in which people die and rise again; the great pleasantness of heaven for the good, and the pain of hell for the naughty; the men and women living in each of the bright stars, and one day to be our friends ? these are things to satisfy babes of all conditions and ages. We would back Swedenborg for comforting little ones weeping over a lost brother or sister, against all the clergy that ever preached. We would back him at a marriage for throwing upon the wedding ring a brighter shine of the skies. We should have confidence in him for the real events and unguarded moments that happen to men through life. However this may be, he is the first theologian with a v...