Page:Emanuel Swedenborg, Scientist and Mystic.djvu/22

12 "It properly places the worship of God in useful functions, and it causes least fear of death, as this religion regards death as merely a transition from one state to another, from a worse to a better situation; nay, upon his principles, I look upon death as being of hardly greater moment than drinking a glass of water." 7

The news of Swedenborg's clairvoyance, or "dabbling in the occult" as it might now be called, which had so shocked Baron Tilas and others, was no news, however, to the inner court circle to which Count Höpken belonged. Without trying to explain it, he was himself later to bear witness to the fact that Swedenborg had, in some strange way, carried out a commission which the Queen jestingly had given him.

She was the intrepidly intellectual sister of Frederick the Great of Prussia. At a court reception she had asked Swedenborg to look up her brother, the Prince Royal of Prussia, in the other world and remember her to him. Then she forgot about it, but soon afterward Swedenborg again appeared and, Höpken declared, "not only greeted her from her brother but also gave her his apologies for not having answered her last letter; he wished to do so now through Swedenborg, which he accordingly did. The Queen was greatly overcome, and said 'No one except God knows this secret.'"

Then there was the story of how Swedenborg had helped out the widow of the Dutch ambassador by finding out from the late diplomat where he had put a receipt for money which the widow would otherwise have been nearly ruined in having to pay again.

Or how he had seen and described a big fire in Stockholm while he was in Gothenburg and could not even have known that there was a fire. Many witnesses attested all these and similar stories, and many others scoffed at them and presented "natural" explanations.8

Whether such apparent wonders were believed or not did not much interest Swedenborg himself. While always courteous to candidates for amazement, he usually put them off. He was not including a belief in miracles as one of the pieces necessary in the right kind of world-picture. Nor did he try to proselytize. In fact, when a friend asked him how many he had succeeded in persuading of the truth of his doctrines, he said, after reflection that he