Page:Emanuel Swedenborg, Scientist and Mystic.djvu/33

III ] The university had been its child in Roman Catholic times. It was still its child in Protestant times, soon to be restive and wanting to lead a life of its own, but obliged as yet to put theology first.

Protestant intellect had given itself to shaping codes of doctrine and dogma as hair-splittingly futile as any of the medieval ones. Protestant emotion out of which the whole Reformation had sprung—aided by the fervent heart of Luther—opposed this desiccating process, and finally rebelled in the so-called "pietist" movement, which was sweeping Germany about the time that Jesper Swedberg was making his grand tour. 6

Completely unintellectual, it suited him to absorb the idea that "faith," which had come to mean tediously involved doctrine, was not nearly so important as a direct relationship with God expressed in "works." This relationship was nobly interpreted by believers with a touch of the mystic in them as the carrying into life of Christian principles no matter what worldly objections might be, but their hordes of lesser followers turned the movement into one of such "pietism" as glazed inactivity on the sabbath, disapproval of dancing and cards, and scorn of finery. For them this was the positive side of religion, and far less dangerous and difficult than Christian ethics.

The students at Upsala feared the new Dean might be a "pietist" and that "no student might wear wig or sword." But he went easy at first. "Wear wigs," he said, "especially if you need them." That made the boys laugh; they soon decided the hearty, pungent, booming Dean was a good fellow, and they gave him the deference of the young which makes a university such a cozy hothouse for the egoist with a flair for popularity.

He did indeed like to use pietist language against what was "worldly," against "sin," which showed itself in two things, sabbath-breaking and frivolous modern apparel, especially the wearing of wigs. The fashionable full-bottom wig had spread from France to Sweden, and literally nothing so appalled Swedberg as this. Throughout his whole book he comes back again and again to the virtue there is in wearing one's own "God-given" hair, and the dreadful consequences of the other custom. "My whole body trembles," he said, "when I am consecrating ministers and have to lay my hands on hair which is, perhaps, whore-hair."