Page:Emanuel Swedenborg, Scientist and Mystic.djvu/378



BOUT Christmas, 1771, Swedenborg was touched by paralysis in one side. Up till then he had been working on additions to his True Christian Religion; 1 now he had to stop. The Shearsmiths and their maid took care of him. He lay in a lethargic state for over three weeks, during which time he ate nothing, except that he had a little tea without milk, cold water, and once "about two teaspoonfuls of red currant jelly." At the end of that time he recovered a little, though he was still partly paralyzed and remained in bed.2 He was then eighty-four years old.

Dr. Messiter attended him, and Mr. Hartley came to see him, though not so often as Mr. Hartley wished. The local Swedish pastor, a good man by the name of Arvid Ferelius, visited him frequently. In a letter to a friend he reported that, although Swedenborg used to talk with great energy to invisible listeners, he was not "eccentric and whimsical; but the very reverse was the case. He was very easy and pleasant in company, talked on every subject that came up, accommodating himself to the ideas of the company; and he never spoke on his own views, unless he was asked about them."

It did worry Ferelius that Swedenborg would mention various celebrated spirits as having just been in the room, but when the pastor asked why no one else enjoyed such revelations and spirit intercourse, Swedenborg said that everyone might, "the real hindrance is that men at the present time are so carnally minded."

Pastor Ferelius asked Swedenborg several times if he felt this was going to be his death, and each time the latter said Yes. The last time this happened, the clergyman declared to Swedenborg that "as quite a number of people thought that his sole purpose in promulgating his new theological system had been to make himself a name, or to acquire celebrity, which object, indeed, he had thereby attained, if such had been the case, he ought now to do the world the justice to retract it either in whole or part, especially