Page:Emanuel Swedenborg, Scientist and Mystic.djvu/248

232 entry he insisted that he did not accept any "representation, vision or discourse" from spirit or angel without reflecting on them "as to what thence was useful and good, thus what I might learn therefrom." Now as he believed that all truth and good were from the Lord, he could reassure himself that he had been instructed "by no spirit nor by any angel but by the Lord alone from Whom is all truth and good . . ." 5

"God-Messiah," a Judæo-Christian expression, disappeared from his writings in January, 1748,6 and "the Lord" took His place, since in Swedenborg's developed theology, as with other Protestant mystics before him, there was only one God who had taken the form of Jesus Christ in order to divinize humanity, not by any "Atonement," but by ethical example.7

In the diary passage quoted above, Swedenborg explains the not unessential point as to how he knew whether what the spirits said was true and good and thus from the Lord; it was by "an interior and intimate persuasion."

For those who consider this authority enough, Swedenborg's Bible exegesis may have the value of "revelation"—there are many such revelations in the history of sects—but others find it hard to understand how so intelligent a man could so uncritically have accepted interpretations devoid of scholarship.

And the only explanation is of course that he was startled into belief because they came to him and continued coming to him either by way of automatic writing, or, as was probably the case later, by way of auditory hallucinations, or clairaudience, depending on the point of view taken of his experiences.

Were those experiences furnished by his unconscious mind or were they at least in part from some discarnate mind or minds? The "interpretations" furnished by much of the automatic writing in The Word Explained, those seemingly from the second century, are so unlike his known reading and interests that adherents of "spirit" hypotheses could be tempted to imagine them as coming from discarnate minds attracted to their favorite sport of Bible exegesis with which to slam their opponents, the "unconverted" Jews who still clung to Moses.

But we do not know everything read by Swedenborg.7 a In regard to the interpretations in the Arcana we know that many of the