Page:The Life and Mission of Emanuel Swedenborg.djvu/39

 received him kindly, conversed with him familiarly, invited him to his table, and encouraged him in his labors for the good of the people.

Skara, Swedberg's new diocese, lies between Lakes Wener and Wetter, in the southern part of Sweden. Removing, in 1703, from Upsal to Brunsbo, his seat near Skara, when just fifty years old, he made his home there till he died, thirty-two years later. The duties of his bishopric he fulfilled with characteristic fidelity and vigor. For twenty-six years he said he had never neglected to attend public worship, but had indefatigably preached from the Gospels and Epistles, had held confessions, read with his curates, and himself held the examinations in the catechisms, believing more good to be done by them than by artistic preaching. "He followed and recommended the simple analytical mode of preaching, where the sermons flowed without any straining or forcing from the text; for, said he, 'then God recognizes again His own Word.

Pietism at this time had spread into Sweden, and was branded as heresy by the orthodox. Bishop Swedberg attended a prayer-meeting of the Pietists, to learn about them for himself, and then publicly declared that he could fully approve of them, and that it would be very desirable for every father of a family to hold similar meetings in his own house. Boldly bearing the same testimony in the consistory, he caused Pietism to be more leniently dealt with that year in the Diet.

In 1712 the Bishop's seat at Brunsbo was burned, with the barns and outhouses and all their contents. Hardest of all for him, all his books and manuscripts were destroyed. To Queen Ulrica Eleonora, as after the fire at Upsal, he announced his affliction with deep humility. "I acknowledge sorrowfully my sins," he said, "which have provoked the wrath of God; I am thankful, however, that I am able to bear it