Page:Emanuel Swedenborg, Scientist and Mystic.djvu/321

XXIII ] nor in many other streets. Yet all the houses were full of people, he was told, and if evil spirits had been there they would have seen lighted windows and people at them.8

Swedenborg was also told about the citizens of Stockholm that "they care for nothing except to hear what happens in the city, and outside the city, as for instance, who was with me . . ."

"Who was with me . . ." This was written about the time when Stockholm had recently discovered that Assessor Swedenborg had, as Baron Tilas put it, conversations with the dead whenever he chooses, and the word went around that now the dead Senator Ehrenpreuss had been with him, now Count Gyllenborg, now Baron Horlemann, and now, forsooth, he claimed he had talked with Luther! 9

It is understandable that Stockholm wanted to know who was with him. By 1764 Gjörwell, the librarian of the Royal Library, was so curious that, although he did not know Swedenborg, he called on him, putting down the impressions he received the same day.

Gjörwell found Swedenborg in his garden, simply dressed and tending to his plants. He offered to show the librarian the garden before he knew who he was or what was his purpose. Gjörwell's ostensible purpose was to procure Swedenborg's books for the Royal Library, which the latter readily agreed to. "My purpose," be said, "in publishing them has been to make them known and to place them in the hands of intelligent people."

Then he showed his visitor the garden and as they walked among the lindens and roses, box and carnations, Gjörwell drew from Swedenborg by "polite questions" and by not being too challenging, some statements in regard to his system of theology. As Gjörwell reported them, Swedenborg said "that faith alone is a pernicious doctrine, and that good works are the proper means for becoming better in time and for leading a blessed life in eternity. That in order to acquire the ability or power to do good works prayer to the only God is required and that man also must labor with himself, because God does not use compulsion with us; nor does he work any miracles for our conversion." Man must live temperately and piously. "He also said that Doctor Luther was at