affirming
or denying them. Listen; afterwards you can think and say what you like.
I will inform you when I judge, criticise, and discuss these doctrines,
so as to keep clearly in view my own intellectual neutrality between HIM
and Reason.

"The life of Swedenborg was divided into two parts," continued the
pastor. "From 1688 to 1745 Baron Emanuel Swedenborg appeared in the
world as a man of vast learning, esteemed and cherished for his virtues,
always irreproachable and constantly useful. While fulfilling high
public functions in Sweden, he published, between 1709 and 1740, several
important works on mineralogy, physics, mathematics, and astronomy,
which enlightened the world of learning. He originated a method of
building docks suitable for the reception of large vessels, and he
wrote many treatises on various important questions, such as the rise
of tides, the theory of the magnet and its qualities, the motion and
position of the earth and planets, and while Assessor in the Royal
College of Mines, on the proper system of working salt mines. He
discovered means to construct canal-locks or sluices; and he also
discovered and applied the simplest methods of extracting ore and of
working metals. In fact he studied no science without advancing it. In
youth he learned Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, also the oriental languages,
with which he became so familiar that many distinguished scholars
consulted him, and he was able to decipher the vestiges of the oldest
known books of Scripture, namely: 'The Wars of Jehovah' and 'The
Enunciations,' spoken of by Moses (Numbers xxi. 14, 15, 27-30), also
by Joshua, Jeremiah, and Samuel,--'The Wars of Jehovah' being the
historical part and 'The Enunciations' the prophetical part of the
Mosaical Books anterior to Genesis. Swedenborg even affirms that 'the
Book of Jasher,' the Book of the Righteous, mentioned by Joshua, was
in existence in Eastern Tartary, together with the doctrine of
Correspondences. A Frenchman has lately, so they tell me, justified
these statements of Swedenborg, by the discovery at Bagdad of several
portions of the Bible hitherto unknown to Europe. During the widespread
discussion on animal magnetism which took its rise in Paris, and in
which most men of Western science took an active part about the year
1785, Monsieur le Marquis de Thome vindicated the memory of Swedenborg
by calling attention to certain assertions made by the Commission
appointed by the King of France t