Page:A Compendium of the Theological Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg.djvu/59

Rh "It is, therefore, my humble wish, that you graciously release me from office, but without bestowing upon me any higher rank, which I most earnestly beseech you not to do. I further pray, that I may receive half of my salary, and that you will graciously grant me leave to go abroad, to some place where I may finish the important work on which I am now engaged." The king, by royal decree, acceded both requests, and in the most flattering terms. "Although," he said, "we would gladly see him continue at home the faithful services he has hitherto rendered to us and to his country, still, we can the less oppose his wish, as we feel assured that the work on which he is engaged will, in time, contribute to the public good, not less than the other valuable works written and published by him have contributed to the use and honor of his country, as well as of himself. . . As a token of the satisfaction with which we look upon his long and faithful services, we also most graciously permit him to retain for the rest of his life the half of his salary as an Assessor."

This left Swedenborg financially independent, and completely master of his time; a condition fatal to the usefulness of a large portion of mankind, but one which is indispensible to the highest order of human achievement. No one can do the greatest things nor even his best in working for himself. The human mind is, no doubt providentially, equipped with a wise mistrust of all pretensions to supernatural, or exclusive knowledges of any sort. It is a mistrust which protects us from the acceptance of much that is absurd and pernicious. This mistrust, however, like all our faculties of moral selection, if abused, conducts to errors as grave as those from which it is designed to protect us. Reckless scepticism is as misleading as reckless credulity. Whether Swedenborg was actually called to the exalted mission to which he professed and no doubt believed himself to have been called, is a question which there is no occasion here to discuss, but it is proper to say that his pretensions are not to be rejected upon any presumptive impossibility.

Why one man is made a vessel of honor and another of