The Works of Honore de Balzac Part 60

"These books, which bear witness to Swedenborg's practical knowledge, were given to me by Baron Seraphitus, his cousin, and Seraphita's father.

"In 1740 Swedenborg sank into complete silence, never relaxing it excepting to renounce temporal studies and to think exclusively of the spiritual world.

"He received his first commands from heaven in 1745. This is how he relates his call:

"'One evening, in London, after he had dined, eating heartily, a thick mist filled the room. When the darkness cleared away, a being that had a.s.sumed a human form rose up in a corner of the room and said in a terrible voice, "Do not eat so much." He then fasted completely. Next evening the same man was visible, radiant with light, and said to him:

"'"I am sent by G.o.d, who has chosen thee to set forth to men the meaning of His word and His creation. I will dictate what thou shalt write."

"The vision lasted but a few minutes. The angel, he said, was clad in purple.

"During that night the eyes of his _inner man_ were opened and enabled to see into the heavens, into the world of spirits, and into h.e.l.l, three different circles, where he met persons he had known who had perished from their human state, some long ago, and some quite recently. From that time Swedenborg always lived the spiritual life, and remained in this world as a being sent from G.o.d.

"Though his mission was disputed by the incredulous, his conduct was visibly that of a being superior to human weakness. In the first instance, though limited by his means to the strictest necessaries, he gave away immense sums, and was known to be the means of restoring, in various commercial towns, some great houses of business that had failed, or were failing. No one who appealed to his generosity went away without being helped on the spot. An incredulous Englishman, going in search of him, met him in Paris, and he has recorded that Swedenborg's doors were always left open. One day his servant complained of this neglect, which exposed him to suspicion if his master should be robbed.

"'Let him make his mind easy,' said Swedenborg, smiling; 'I forgive him want of faith; he cannot see the guardian who keeps watch before my door.'

"And, in fact, in whatever country he might be living, his doors were never shut, and he never lost anything.

"When he was at Gothenburg, a town sixty miles away from Stockholm, three days before the news arrived of the great fire that raged at Stockholm, he had announced the hour at which it had begun, adding that his house was unharmed--which was true.

"The Queen of Sweden, when at Berlin, told the King, her brother, that one of her ladies being summoned to repay a sum of money which she knew that her husband had returned before his death, being unable to find the receipt, had gone to Swedenborg and begged him to inquire of her husband where the proof of payment could be. On the following day Swedenborg told her the place where the receipt was; then, in accordance with the lady's desire, he called upon the dead man to appear to his wife, and she saw her husband, in a dream, in the dressing-gown he had worn before his death, and he showed her the doc.u.ment in the place mentioned by Swedenborg, where in fact it lay hidden.

"One day, on sailing from London in the ship of a Captain Dixon, he heard a lady asking if there were a good stock of provisions on board.

"'You will not need a very large quant.i.ty,' said he. 'In a week, at two o'clock, we shall be in the port of Stockholm,' and it was so.

"The state of second sight, into which Swedenborg could pa.s.s at will in relation to earthly things, astonishing as it was to all who knew him, by it marvelous results, was no more than a weaker development of his power of seeing into the skies.

"Of all his visions, those in which he traveled to other astral worlds are not the least curious, and his descriptions are no doubt surprisingly artless in their details. A man whose great scientific acquirements are beyond question, who combined in his brain conception, will, and imagination, would certainly have invented something better if he had invented at all. Nor does the fantastic literature of the East contain anything that can have suggested the idea of this bewildering narrative full of poetic germs, if we may compare a work of faith to the writings of Arab fancy.

"The account of his being s.n.a.t.c.hed up by the angel who guided him in his first voyage is sublime to a degree as far beyond the poems of Klopstock, Milton, Ta.s.so, and Dante, as the earth, by G.o.d's will, is from the sun.

This chapter, which forms the introduction to his _Treatise on the Astral Worlds_, has never been published; it remains among the oral traditions left by Swedenborg to the three disciples who were dearest to him. M.

Silverichm has it in writing. Baron Seraphitus sometimes tried to tell me of it; but his memory of his cousin was so vivid that he stopped after a few words, and fell into a reverie from which nothing could rouse him.

"The discourse in which the angel proved to Swedenborg that those planets are not created to wander uninhabited, crushes all human science, the Baron a.s.sured me, under the grandeur of its divine logic.

"According to the Seer, the inhabitants of Jupiter do not affect the sciences, which they call Shades; those of Mercury object to the expression of ideas by words, which they think too material, and they have a language of the eye; those of Saturn are persistently tormented by evil spirits; those of the Moon are as small as children of six years old, their voice proceeds from the stomach, and they creep about; those of Venus are of gigantic stature, but very stupid, and live by robbery; part of that planet, however, is inhabited by beings of great gentleness, who live loving to do good. Finally, he describes the customs of the people who dwell on those globes, and gives an account of the general purpose of their existence as part of the universe in terms so precise, adding explanations which agree so well with the effects of their apparent motion in the system of the universe, that some day, perhaps, scientific men will drink of these luminous founts. Here," said the pastor, taking down a volume and opening it at a page where a marker was placed, "these are the words which conclude this great work: 'If any one should doubt my having been transported to so many astral earths, let him remember my remarks as to distances in the other life. They exist only in relation to the external form of man; now I, having been inwardly const.i.tuted like the angelic spirits of those globes, have been enabled to know them.'

"The circ.u.mstances to which we owed the residence in this district of Baron Seraphitus, Swedenborg's dearly loved cousin, made me intimately familiar with every fact of the life of that extraordinary man.

"Not long since he was accused of imposture in some European newspapers, which reported the following facts as related in a letter from the Chevalier Beylon. Swedenborg, 'informed,' it was said, 'by some senators of a secret correspondence between the late Queen of Sweden and her brother, the Prince of Prussia, revealed the contents to that Princess, leaving her to believe that he had acquired the information by supernatural means. A man of the highest credit, Monsieur Charles-Leonard von Stahlhammer, Captain of the King's Guard and Knight of the Sword, refuted this calumny in a letter.'"

The pastor hunted through some papers in his table-drawer, found a newspaper, and handed it to Wilfrid, who read aloud the following letter:

"STOCKHOLM, _May 18, 1788_.

"I have read with astonishment the letter reporting the interview between the famous Swedenborg and Queen Louisa-Ulrica. All the circ.u.mstances are falsified; and I hope the writer will pardon me if I show him how greatly he is mistaken, by giving here an exact account, of which the truth can be attested by several personages of distinction who were present, and who are still living.

"In 1758, not long after the Prince of Prussia's death, Swedenborg came to Court; he was in the habit of doing so very regularly. No sooner did the Queen see him than she asked, 'By the way, Baron a.s.sessor, have you seen my brother?' Swedenborg said he had not, and the Queen replied, 'If you should see him, greet him from me.'

"She had no idea in saying this but of a jest; it did not occur to her to ask for any information concerning her brother.

"A week later--not twenty-four days, nor for a private audience--Swedenborg came again, but so early that the Queen had not yet left her own apartment, known as the white room, where she was chatting with her ladies of honor and other ladies about the Court. Swedenborg did not wait for the Queen to come out. He went into her private room and spoke in her ear. The Queen, quite astounded, turned faint, and it took some time to revive her. When she had recovered herself, she said to those about her, 'G.o.d alone and my brother could know what he has just told me!' And she said he had spoken of her last correspondence with the Prince, of which the subject had been known to themselves only.

"I cannot explain how Swedenborg gained his knowledge of this secret; but what I can aver on my honor is that neither Count H----, as the author of the letter states, nor any one else, had intercepted or read the Queen's letters. The Senate had at that time allowed her to write to her brother in the strictest confidence, regarding the correspondence as a matter perfectly indifferent to the State. It is evident that the writer of that letter knew nothing of Count H----'s character. That distinguished gentleman, who did his country important service, combines with intellectual talent fine qualities of the heart, and his advanced years have not deteriorated his n.o.ble gifts. Throughout his official career he has been equally remarkable for enlightened political views and the most scrupulous integrity, and he was always the declared enemy of secret intrigues and covert devices, which he regarded as the basest means to any end.

"Nor did the writer know Swedenborg the a.s.sessor; the only weak point in this thoroughly honest man was his belief in apparitions and spirits; but I knew him for a long time, and I can positively state that he was as well a.s.sured that he certainly did talk and mingle with spirits as I am at this moment of writing these lines.

As a citizen and as a friend, he was a man of absolute integrity, with a horror of imposture, and he led an exemplary life.

"Hence the account given of the incident by the Chevalier de Beylon is without foundation; and the visit said to have been paid to Swedenborg, at night, by Counts H---- and T---- is a pure invention.

"The writer of the letter may rest a.s.sured that I am anything rather than a follower of Swedenborg; nothing but the love of truth has moved me to relate with accuracy a fact that has often been told with details that are incorrect; and I affirm what I have here written to be the truth, and sign it with my name."

"The proofs of his mission given by Swedenborg to the families of Prussia and Sweden no doubt formed a basis for the belief he inspired in several personages of the two Courts," the pastor went on, replacing the newspaper in his drawer. "At the same time, I cannot tell you all the facts of his material and visible life; his habits precluded their being exactly known.

He lived in strict retirement, never trying to grow rich or to rise to fame. He was even remarkable for a sort of repugnance to proselytizing; he spoke freely to very few persons, and never communicated those gifts but to those who were conspicuous for faith, wisdom, and love. He could read at a glance the frame of mind in which each one approached him, and could make seers of those whom he desired to touch with his inward Word.

"After the year 1745 his disciples never saw him do a single thing from a merely human motive.

"One man only, a Swedish priest named Matthesius, accused him of madness.

By a singular coincidence this Matthesius, the enemy of Swedenborg and his writings, went mad not long after, and was living a few years since at Stockholm on a pension allowed him by the King of Sweden.

"A discourse in honor of Swedenborg was composed with great care as to the details of his life, and read at a general meeting in the Hall of the Royal Academy of Sciences at Stockholm, by Monsieur de Sandel, Councillor to the College of Mines, in 1786. Finally, a deposition laid before the Lord Mayor of London testifies to the smallest circ.u.mstances of Swedenborg's last illness and death under the ministrations of Pastor Ferelius, a Swedish ecclesiastic of the highest respectability. The persons attesting declared that, far from recanting, Swedenborg always averred the truth of his writings.

"'In a hundred years' time,' said he, 'my doctrines will govern the Church.'

"He foretold very precisely the day and hour of his death. On that day, Sunday, March 29th, 1772, he asked what o'clock it was.

"'Five o'clock,' was the answer.

"'It is all over,' said he. 'G.o.d bless you!'

"And ten minutes after he died quite calmly with a gentle sigh. Thus, moderation, simplicity, and solitude were the features of his life.

"Whenever he had finished writing a treatise, he took ship to have it printed in London or in Holland, and never talked about it. He thus published twenty-seven works in all, written, as he declared, at the dictation of angels. Whether or no this be true, few men are capable of enduring this flaming language.

"Here they all are," said the minister, pointing to an upper shelf on which stood about sixty volumes. "The seven books on which the Spirit of G.o.d has shed its brightest light are: _The Delights of Wisdom in Conjugal Love_; _Heaven and h.e.l.l_; _the Apocalypse Explained_; _An Exposition of the Inward Sense_; _On the Divine Love_; _The True Christian Religion_; _The Angelic Wisdom of the Omnipotence, Omniscience, and Omnipresence of those who share the Eternity and Immensity of G.o.d_.

"His explanation of the _Apocalypse_ begins with these words," said the pastor, opening the volume that was lying near him: "'Herein I have written nothing of my own; I have spoken at the bidding of the Lord, who said to John, by the same angel, "Thou shalt not seal the words of this prophecy."'

"My dear sir," the good man went on, looking at Wilfrid, "many a winter night have I quaked in every limb while reading the tremendous works in which this man sets forth the greatest marvels in perfect good faith.

"'I have seen,' says he, 'the heavens and the angels. The spiritual man sees spiritual man far more clearly than the earthly man sees earthly man.

I obey the command of the Lord who hath given it to me to do. Men are free not to believe me; I cannot put others into the state into which G.o.d hath put me. It is not in my power to make them hold conversation with the angels, nor to work a miracle in predisposing their understanding; they themselves must be the agents of their angelical exaltation. For twenty-eight years now I have dwelt in the spiritual world with the angels, and yet on earth with men; for it hath pleased the Lord to open the eyes of my spirit as he opened the eyes of Paul, of Daniel, and of Elisha.'

"Certain persons, however, have had visions of the spiritual world through the complete severance of their external body and their inner man by somnambulism. In that state, Swedenborg tells us in his _Treatise on Angelic Wisdom_, man may be raised to celestial light, because, the physical senses being in abeyance, heavenly influences act on the inner man without interference.

"A good many persons who do not doubt that Swedenborg had celestial revelations, still do not regard all his writings as equally stamped with divine inspiration. Others insist on a complete acceptance of Swedenborg, while confessing his obscurities; but they think that it was the imperfection of earthly language that hindered the prophet in expressing his spiritual visions, so that such obscurities disappear before the eyes of those who are regenerate by faith; to use a striking expression of his favorite disciple's, the flesh is begotten externally.