At middle age, Swedenborg left the domain of physical re search for that of psychical and spiritual inquiry. Late in life he wrote to Oetinger that "he was introduced by the Lord first into the natural sciences, and thus prepared, and, indeed, from the year 1710 to 1745, when heaven was opened to him." Before his illumination he had been instructed by dreams, and enjoyed ex traordinary visions, and heard mysterious conversations. Ac cording to his own account, the Lord filled him with His spirit to teach the doctrines of the New Church by the word from Himself ; He commissioned him to do this work, opened the sight of his spirit, and so let him into the spiritual world, permitting him to see the heavens and the hells, and to converse with angels and spirits for years ; but he never received anything relating to the doctrines of the church from any angel but from the Lord alone while he was reading the word (True Christian Religion, No. 779). He elsewhere speaks of his office as principally an open ing of the spiritual sense of the word. In '747 he resigned his post of assessor of the board of mines, took up afresh his study of Hebrew, and began his voluminous works on the interpretation of the Scriptures. His life thenceforth was spent alternately in Sweden, Holland and London, in the composition of his works and their publication, till his death, which took place in London on March 29, 1772. He was buried in the Swedish church in Princes Square, St. George's-in-the-East, and on April 7, 1908, his remains were removed at the request of the Swedish government to Uppsala Cathedral.
Swedenborg never attempted to preach or to found a sect. He believed that members of all the churches could belong to the New Church without forming a separate organization. His theo sophic system is most briefly and comprehensively presented in his Divine Love and Wisdom. The point of view from which God must be regarded is that of His being the Divine Man. His esse is infinite love ; His manifestation or body is infinite wisdom. Divine love is the self-subsisting life of the universe. From God emanates a divine sphere, which appears in the spiritual world as a sun, and from this spiritual sun proceeds the sun of the natural world. The spiritual sun is the source of love and intelligence, or life, and the natural sun the source of nature or the receptacles of life ; the first is alive, the second dead. The worlds of nature and spirit are perfectly distinct, but they are intimately related by analogous substances, laws and forces. In God there are three infinite and untreated "degrees" of being, and in man and all things corresponding three degrees, finite and created. They are
love, wisdom, use ; or end, cause and effect. The final ends of all things are in the Divine Mind, the causes of all things in the spiritual world, and their effects in the natural world. By a love of each degree man comes into conjunction with them and the worlds of nature, spirit and God. The end of creation is that man may have this conjunction and become the image of his Creator and creation. In man are two receptacles for God—the will for divine love and the understanding for divine wisdom—that love and wisdom flowing into both so that they become human.
Swedenborgianism is based on the belief in Swedenborg's claims to have witnessed the last judgment, or the second advent of the Lord, with the inauguration of the New Church, through the new system of doctrine promulgated by him and derived from the Scriptures, into the true sense of which he was the first to be introduced. The "doctrines" of the New Church as given in the Liiurgy (which also contains the "Creed" and "Articles of Faith") are as follows :— BIBLIOGRAPHY.-Lithographed facsimiles of the mss. of Sweden borg's works were edited by R. L. Tafel, io vols. (Stockholm, 1869 70) ; another edition in 18 vols. was published at the same place (1901-16). Various editions of the single works have appeared, and about forty are available in English, Heaven and Hell, The Divine Providence and The Divine Love and Wisdom being published in the Everyman series. There are also translations into most European languages as well as into Arabic, Hindu, Tamil and Japanese.
See R. L. Tafel, Documents concerning the Life and Character of Swedenborg, collected, translated and annotated (3 vols., Swedenborg Society, 1875-77) ; J. Hyde, A Bibliography of Swedenborg (Sweden borg Society). Of English lives the principal are those by J. j. G. Wilkinson (1849) ; E. Paxton Hood (1854) ; W. White (1856, rewritten in 1867-68) ; G. Trobridge (1907). See also S. Warren, Compendium of the Theological Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg (1885) ; E. Swift, Manual of the Doctrines of the New Church (1885) ; T. Parsons, Outlines of Swedenborg's Religion and Philosophy; J. G. Herder's "Emanuel Swedenborg," in his Adrastea (Werke zur Phil. and Gesch., xii.) ; A. Dorner, Geschichte der protestantischen Theologie (Munich, 1867) ; and Transactions of the International Swedenborg Congress (London, 1910), summarized in The New Church Magazine (August