One of the chief ends of his mission was the revival of the lost science of correspon. dences—the science of sciences in the most ancient times. The law of correspondence is universal; the natural world is the outbirth of the spiritual world, and the spiritual world of the invisible mental world. Unseen evil is manifested in things hurtful and ugly; unseen good, in things useful and beautiful. Man is a summary of nature; na ture is man in diffusion; all things, therefore, in nature, in fire, air, earth, and water— every beast, bird, fish, insect, and reptile—every tree, herb, fruit, and flower, represent and express unseen things in the mind of man. The Scriptures are written according to correspondences, and by aid of the science their mysteries arc unlocked. By it, too, the constitution of heaven and hell is revealed. There are three heavens, consisting of three orders of angels; the first distinguished for love, the second for wisdom, and the last for obedience. All angels have lived on earth; none were created such. They are men and women in every respect; they marry, and live in societies in cities and coun tries just as in the world, but in happiness and glory ineffable. All in whom love to God and man is the ruling principle, go to heaven at death. Between heaven and hell, a perfect equilibrium is maintained. As there are three heavens, there are three hells, and every angelic society has an infernal opposite. Hell, as a whole, is called the devil and Satan; there is no individual bearing that name. All in whom self-love is the ruling motive, go to hell. There is no resurrection of the earthly body. Every one passes to his final lot at death, some making a short sojourn in an intermediate state, designated the world of spirits, where the good are cured of their superficial infirmities and intel lectual mistakes, and where the evil are stripped of all their pretenses to good.
Swedenborg professed to enjoy a numerous acquaintance with departed celebrities, and some of his verdicts on character are appalling; for example, he describes king David and St. Paul as among the lost, while Louis XIV. and George II. are distin guished angels. Nor did he confine his intercourse to ghosts from earth, but extended it to souls from the moon and planets, with the unfortunate exceptions of Uranus, Nep tune, and the Asteroids. For these visions, enjoyed while sitting in his chamber, he had this explanation: although in the spiritual world there are appearances of space, there is nothing of the objective reality which here divides London from Melbourne. If one spirit desires to see another, the desire instantly brings them together. A. good man is, as to his mind, in heaven, and an evil man in hell: and supposing the spiritual sight of either was opened—that is, if the eyes of the spiritual body, which transfuse and animate the material ones, were disengaged from their fleshly vesture—he would see his spiritual companions and the country where he would abide after death.
The grand and distinctive principle of Swedenborgian theology, next to the doctrine of the divine humanity, is the doctrine of life. God alone lives. Creation is dead— man is dead; and their apparent life is the divine presence. God is everywhere the
same. It fallaciously appears as if he were different in one man and in another. The difference is in the recipients; by one he is not received in the same degree as another. A man more adequately manifests God than a tree; that is the only distinction. The life of devils is God's presence perverted in disorderly forms. " All things, and each of them to the very uttermost, exist and subsist instantly from God.. If the connection of anything with him were broken for a moment, it would instantly vanish; for existence is perpetual subsistence, and preservation perpetual creation." By this law of life is explained man's self-consciousness, freedom, and personality. All these sensations are communicated from God to man. He dwells in man so cordially that he gives him to feel that he lives of himself, even as lie lives.
Swedenborg made no attempt to establish a sect. When he proclaimed the Christian church at an end his expectation was, that a new church would be raised up among the Gentiles; but toward the close of his life he was silent as to that hope, and spent his energies in attacking Protestant theology, as if bent on the conversion of northern Europe. All his works were written in Latin, and received little attention from his contemporaries. Apart from his visions, there was nothing peculiar about Swedenborg. He was shrewd in worldly affairs, affable in society, and discussed politics and finance in the Swedish diet like a man of the world. He was never married. In diet he was a vegetarian.
Swedenborgians, or, as they designate themselves, "The New Church signified by the New Jerusalem in the Revelation," were first organized as a separate body in 1788 by Robert Hindmarsh, a printer in Clerkenwell, Loudon, who was elected by lot to baptize and to ordain his comrades in the ministry. The Swedenborgians accept Sweden borg's voluminous theological writings as nothing less than revelations from heaven. The body has not bad a prosperous existence. The number of its registered members in Britain is little over 4,000, divided into 58 congregations. These are chiefly in the large towns and in Lancashire; four are in Scotland, but none in Ireland. At one time there were reputed to be a number of receivers of the doctrines of Swedenborg among the clergy of the church of England. The translator of the Arcana Cxlestia was the rev. John Clowes, rector of St. John's, Manchester, for sixty-two years. He died in 1831, and in the pulpit and numerous publications made no secret of his faith. In the United States the Swedenborgians have nearly 100 societies, and about 5,000 members. They chiefly exist iu the northern states; and their largest congregation is in Boston. In France, Germany, Sweden, and Russia, there are Swedenborgians, but few and scat tered. There is a Swedenborg society, established in 1810, for printing and publishing Swedenborg's works, with a house in London, and an income of about £200 a year. See the life of Swedenborg by White (London, 1867), and various Documents, published by prof. Tafel (ed. 1875).