rrestrial substances, whereas in heaven they assume celestial
forms and are in keeping with angels.' In this connection Swedenborg
has used the very words of Jesus Christ, who said, 'If I have told you
earthly things and ye believe not, how shall ye believe if I tell you of
heavenly things?'

"Monsieur," continued the pastor, with an emphatic gesture, "I have read
the whole of Swedenborg's works; and I say it with pride, because I have
done it and yet retained my reason. In reading him men either miss his
meaning or become Seers like him. Though I have evaded both extremes, I
have often experienced unheard-of delights, deep emotions, inward joys,
which alone can reveal to us the plenitude of truth,--the evidence of
celestial Light. All things here below seem small indeed when the soul
is lost in the perusal of these Treatises. It is impossible not to be
amazed when we think that in the short space of thirty years this man
wrote and published, on the truths of the Spiritual World, twenty-five
quarto volumes, composed in Latin, of which the shortest has five
hundred pages, all of them printed in small type. He left, they say,
twenty others in London, bequeathed to his nephew, Monsieur Silverichm,
formerly almoner to the King of Sweden. Certainly a man who, between the
ages of twenty and sixty, had already exhausted himself in publishing
a series of encyclopaedical works, must have received supernatural
assistance in composing these later stupendous treatises, at an age,
too, when human vigor is on the wane. You will find in these writings
thousands of propositions, all numbered, none of which have been
refuted. Throughout we see method and precision; the presence of the
spirit issuing and flowing down from a single fact,--the existence of
angels. His 'True Christian Religion,' which sums up his whole doctrine
and is vigorous with light, was conceived and written at the age of
eighty-three. In fact, his amazing vigor and omniscience are not denied
by any of his critics, not even by his enemies.

"Nevertheless," said Monsieur Becker, slowly, "though I have drunk deep
in this torrent of divine light, God has not opened the eyes of my inner
being, and I judge these writings by the reason of an unregenerated man.
I have often felt that the _inspired_ Swedenborg must have misunderstood
the Angels. I have laughed over certain visions which, according to his
disciples, I ought to have believed with veneration. I have failed to
i