Page:Emanuel Swedenborg, Scientist and Mystic.djvu/39

III ] always merry and bright. He loved work. Perfectly unhappy if he wasn't working.

That was true, he was in ceaseless activity. As to the forgiving and gentle heart, Emanuel must have thought it odd that in this book his father included the letter to Andreas Hesselius.

Andreas was his nephew by marriage. The Bishop was in charge of the Swedish congregations abroad, one of his most self-mentioned glories, and he had sent Andreas to take charge of a parish in America. Later he recalled him, without having any job for him at home. Andreas sent his uncle a letter in which can be traced a resentment of that, and some veiled reference to the fact that he had been done out of an inheritance. He also mentions that he is sorry not to be able to oblige his uncle in the matter of writing a new history of the American congregations in which the Bishop is to be eulogized.

It is not a very friendly letter. The man is evidently overcome by many troubles, but the retort, printed in full, is a scream of excommunication and anathema. So disproportionate is it that the reader is considerably puzzled, until he discovers that the Queen had enjoyed an account of America written by Hesselius, in which there was no mention of Bishop Swedberg.

"I never asked you for a eulogy," Swedberg declares. "In all my books I never praise myself, but other people have done it in abundance." Nor, he points out, had Hesselius brought him the customary present of furs from America. But the reference to the inheritance stung worst of all. The Bishop had published one of his favorite godly works with money left for that purpose by his second wife, Hesselius's aunt. Didn't she have the right to leave the money as she wished? "Who can justly object, save the unjust driven by the spirit of avarice whose tongue is a fire and a world of injustice and ignited by hell?"

There were thousands of words the reverse of gentle forgiveness.

Only a man like Swedberg who had never taken a real look at himself could have called attention to this. Nor could he have written of various other matters which illustrate his attitude toward physical cause and effect. Material for Emanuel, who was to be concerned about a universe of law.