Page:A Compendium of the Theological Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg.djvu/74

lxvi faith in the Divine authority of the Word, the writer gratefully acknowledges himself to be one. It has also been his good fortune to know of many others who have been delivered from the bonds of dreary and hopeless unbelief by touching the hem of the same garment. The waters of Abana and Parphar may be better than all the rivers of Damascus for some purposes, but not for all.

Swedenborg was rather above middle height, and very active, even in old age. His hair was of a pale auburn color, and his eyes of a brownish grey. In his youth he was thought handsome, and his face, always full of benevolence and tenderness, retained unequivocal traces of beauty till his death. When in his eighty-first year, he told a friend that he then had a new set of teeth growing in his mouth. Flaxman the eminent sculptor, who examined Swedenborg's skull after death, said, "a cast ought to be taken of it, if only for its beauty."

Swedenborg was never married. While associated with Councillor Polhem, "the great Swedish Archimedes," as Swedenborg called him, in the construction of the locks at the outlet of Lake Wenner, and residing in his family, he became enamored of one of the Councillor's daughters; and not only the father, but the king became interested in his suit, the latter desiring thereby to bind them both together more indissolubly in his service. But the young engineer's affection was not reciprocated. He was a light eater, and for years before his death took little other food than coffee or chocolate, milk, biscuits, raisins and almonds. His dinner usually consisted of a wheaten roll broken into a bowl of boiled milk. He never used wine or spirits unless in company. Christopher Sprenger, a Swede by birth, a member of the Board of Trade under Pitt, and a warm personal friend of Swedenborg, writing to the Abbe Pernetty, says: "Swedenborg's knowledge as well as his sincerity was great. He was constant in friendship, extremely frugal in his diet, and plain in his dress. His usual food was coffee with milk,