cientific interest of
divinely inspired communications respecting natural laws and processes
would justify a student of science in regarding them as most desirable
messages from a being of superior wisdom and benevolence. If prophecies
and tongues, why not knowledge, as evidence of a divine mission?

Such thoughts are suggested by the claim of some religious teachers to
the possession of knowledge other than that which they could have gained
by natural means. The claim has usually been quite honest. The teacher
of religion tests the reality of his mission in simple _a priori_
confidence that he has such a mission, and that therefore some one or
other of the tests he applies will afford the required evidence. To one,
says St. Paul, is given the word of wisdom; to another, the word of
knowledge; to another, faith; to another, the gift of healing; to
another, the working of miracles; to another, prophecy; to another, the
discerning of spirits; to another, divers kinds of tongues: and so
forth. If a man like Mahomet, who believes in his mission to teach,
finds that he cannot satisfactorily work miracles--that mountains will
not be removed at his bidding--then some other evidence satisfies him of
the reality of his mission. Swedenborg, than whom, perhaps, no more
honest man ever lived, said and believed that to him had been granted
the discerning of spirits. 'It is to be observed,' he said, 'that a man
may be instructed by spirits and angels if his interiors be so open as
to enable him to speak and be in company with them, for man in his
essence is a spirit, and is with spirits as to his interiors; so that
he whose interiors are opened by the Lord may converse with them, as
man with man. _This privilege I have enjoyed daily now for twelve
years._'

It indicates the fulness of Swedenborg's belief in this privilege that
he did not hesitate to describe what the spirits taught him respecting
matters which belong rather to science than to faith; though it must be
admitted that probably he supposed there was small reason for believing
that his statements could ever be tested by the results of scientific
research. The objects to which his spiritual communications related were
conveniently remote. I do not say this as desiring for one moment to
suggest that he purposely selected those objects, and not others which
might be more readily examined. He certainly believed in the reality of
the communications he described. But possibly t