Page:The Life and Mission of Emanuel Swedenborg.djvu/48

 that God is the Creator and Preserver of nature, that He imparts understanding and a good disposition to men, and various other things that follow. I knew nothing then of that learned faith which teaches that God the Father imputes the righteousness of His Son to whomsoever and at what times He chooses, even to those who have not repented and have not reformed their lives. And had I heard of such a faith, it would have been then, as it is now, above my comprehension." No doubt this description of his early faith mirrors, with perhaps an added light of its own, his father's teaching, and shows that the simple apostolic faith manifested in a good life was the faith the good Bishop preached.

Strangely enough, we know nothing of the manner of Emanuel's early education. Born in the city of Stockholm, Jan. 29, 1688, taken to Vingåker at four years of age, and the same year to Upsal on his father's removal thither, he must have received at Upsal all his schooling. He was fifteen years old when his father removed to Brunsbo; and as his sister and playmate Anna, sixteen months older, was married the same year and settled at Upsal, we may conclude that it was at this time Emanuel became a member of her family; for he must now have well entered upon his academical studies. In 1709 he concluded these studies at the university, and with the consent of the Faculty he prints, with an affectionate dedication to his father, his academical thesis just read in the university hall at Upsal. In this thesis we find little attempt at display. It was a solid collection of selected sentences from Latin and Greek authors, mostly from Seneca, with some from Holy Writ, arranged to set forth certain moral and religious sentiments, and accompanied with apposite reflections. So far, we should say, the religious bent of the child still rules the young man.

The same year, the Bishop published a Swedish poetical paraphrase of the twelfth chapter of Ecclesiastes, with comments, and with the same rendered into Latin verse by his son Emanuel. This taste and facility for Latin verse, proba-