Page:The Life and Mission of Emanuel Swedenborg.djvu/42

 you desire your children to grow up well." His great desire was that his own children should grow up in the fear and love of God. With this at heart, he gave them names that he trusted would be a help.

"I am fully convinced," he writes, "that children ought to be called such names as will awaken in them, and call to their minds, the fear of God and everything that is orderly and righteous. . . . The name of my son Emanuel signifies 'God with us;' that he may always remember God's presence, and that intimate, holy, and mysterious conjunction with our good and gracious God, into which we are brought by faith, by which we are conjoined with Him and are in Him. And, blessed be the Lord's name! God has to this hour been with him. And may He be further with him, until he be eternally united with Him in His kingdom! Eliezer signifies 'God is my help;' and he also has been graciously and joyfully helped by God. He was a good and pious child, and had made good progress, when, in his twenty-fifth year, he was called away by a blessed death. The youngest was called Jesper only for this reason, that he was born on the same day of the year and at the same hour as myself. . . . If the name Jesper be written Jisper, [in Hebrew] 'he will write,' the use has also followed the name; for I believe that scarcely any one in Sweden has written so much as I have, since ten carts could scarcely carry away what I have written and printed at my own expense: and yet there is much, yea, nearly as much, unprinted. My son Jesper has also the same disposition, for he is fond of writing, and writes much. I am a Sunday child; and the mother of my children, my late wife, was also a Sunday child, and all my children are Sunday children, except Catharina, who was born at Upsal on the third day of Easter. I have put my sons to that for which God has given them inclination and liking, and have not brought up any for the clerical profession; although many parents do so inconsiderately, and in a manner not justifiable, by which God's Church and likewise the ministerial