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162 shuts them in a great measure from the benefit of other teachings, and threatens to make them bigots, though of such mild strain as shows them to be the followers of one singularly mild and magnanimous.

For Swedenborg was one who, though entirely open and steadfast in the maintenance of his pretensions, knew how to live with kings, nobles, clergy, and people, without being the object of persecution to any. They viewed with respect, if not with confidence, his conviction that he was “in fellowship with angels.” They knew the deep discipline and wide attainments of his mind. They saw that he forced his convictions on no one, but relied for their diffusion upon spiritual laws. They saw that he made none but an incidental use of his miraculous powers, and that it was not to him a matter of any consequence whether others recognized them or not; for he knew that those whom truth does not reach by its spiritual efficacy cannot be made to believe by dint of signs and wonders.

Thus his life was, for its steady growth, its soft majesty, and exhibition of a faith never fierce and sparkling, never dim, a happy omen for the age. Thus gently and gradually may new organizations of great principles be effected now! May it prove that, at least in the more advanced part of the world, revolutions may be effected without painful throes! Such a life was in correspondence with his system, which is one of gradation and harmony.

I have used the word system, and yet it is not the right one. The works of Swedenborg contain intimations of a system, but it is one whose full development must be coincident with the perfection of all things. Some great rules he proffers, some ways of thinking opens; we have centre and radii, but the circumference is not closed in.

This is to us the greatness of Swedenborg and the ground of our pleasure in his works, that in them we can expatiate freely; there is room enough. We can take what does us good, and de-