ot
for months but years, patiently traversing the entire Bible, and at the
same time carefully committing to paper everything "seen and heard" in
the spiritual world; for his London excursion beyond the borderland
which separates the here from the hereafter had been only the first of
similar journeys taken not merely by night but in broad daylight. To use
his own phraseology: "The Lord opened daily, very often, my bodily eyes;
so that in the middle of the day I could see into the other world, and
in a state of perfect wakefulness converse with angels and spirits."

His increasing absorption--absent-mindedness, his friends would call
it--his habit of falling into trances, and his claim to interworld
communication, could not fail to excite the surprise of all who had
known him as scientist and philosopher. But these vagaries, as people
deemed them, met the greater toleration because of the evident fact that
they did not dim his intellectual powers and did not interfere with his
activities in behalf of the public good. True, in 1747 he resigned his
office of assessor of mines in order to have more leisure to prosecute
his adventures into the unknown; but as a member of the Swedish Diet he
continued to play a prominent part in the affairs of the Kingdom, giving
long and profound study to the critical problems of administration,
economics, and finance with which the nation's leaders were confronted
during the third quarter of the century. So that--bearing in mind the
further fact that he was no blatant advocate of his opinions--it seems
altogether likely his spiritistic ideas would have gained no great
measure of attention, had it not been for a series of singular
occurrences that took place between 1759 and 1762.

Toward the end of July in the first of these years, Swedenborg (whose
fondness for travel ceased only with his death) arrived in Gottenburg
homeward bound from England, and on the invitation of a friend decided
to break his journey by spending a few days in that city. Two hours
after his arrival, while attending a small reception given in his honor,
he electrified the company by abruptly declaring that at that moment a
dangerous fire had broken out at Stockholm, three hundred miles away,
and was spreading rapidly. Becoming excited, he rushed from the room, to
reenter with the news that the house of one of his friends was in ashes,
and that his own house was threatened. Anxious moments passed, while he
restlessly