Page:Emanuel Swedenborg, Scientist and Mystic.djvu/365

XXVII ] scholars, and he was well thought of both as to heart and head. Dr. Messiter was reputed to be an eminent physician.

The Reverend Mr. Hartley seems to have belonged to the type who, like the believers in the Lost Tribes (British Israelites), are able to block off a vault in their minds where they house their favorite "key" to some theological problem, preferably an involved and "revealed" interpretation of the Bible. And there is no use in denying the fact that, with all Swedenborg's belief in reason, he had come to resent its application in the evaluation of his "mission" to explain "the internal sense" of Scripture, which he inexorably continued to see as necessary for proving the truth of his lofty ethical and religious philosophy.

In Hartley he found the right disciple, a man with the peculiar gift of being an intellectual who was able to suspend his intellect on the one point of accepting Swedenborg's "authority" for the Bible exegesis.

After meeting Swedenborg, apparently for the first time, in the summer of 1769, the English parson wrote a letter in which one may say that, putting it mildly, he showed himself as overwhelmed.5

Thanking Swedenborg for the honor of having been allowed to converse with him, Hartley said, "But your charity towards the neighbor, the heavenly benignity shining from your countenance, and your childlike simplicity, devoid of all vain show and egotism, are so great, and the treasure of wisdom possessed by you is so sweetly tempered with gentleness, that it did not inspire in me a feeling of awe, but one of love which refreshed me in my innermost heart. Believe me, o best of men, that by my intercourse with you I consider myself crowned with more than royal favor . . ."

Hartley did not stop at words alone; he offered, together with Dr. Messiter, to provide asylum for him in England in case he should be persecuted by the Swedish clergy on return to his own country, and he also begged Swedenborg to give him some biographical data, so that, if need be, they could defend him against "malignant slanderers" in England.

Swedenborg answered a little stiffly, thanking Mr. Hartley for the praises, but taking them as "love for the truths contained in my writings," and he then gave him a short autobiography and a list of his offices, honors, and his more eminent relatives. He assured