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Review.

DR. MAUDSLEY AND SWEDENBORG. No. II.

BODY AND MIND. HENRY MAUDSLEY, M.D.

DR. MAUDSLEY does not overlook the unpleasant things made prominent by Mr. White, related by Swedenborg respecting the Quakers, and respecting David and Paul. And when such matters are thrust into glaring distinctness, instead of being, as they are, extremely exceptional, like some of the unpleasant details of the Bible, they do tend to shock and distress the reader. But a fair representation would always state that such things are very rare statements in Swedenborg, and require to be understood in their connection. The Society of Friends have long been models of order, virtue, and intelligence. They have fairly won for themselves the respect and esteem of all who admire Christian conduct and orderly progress. They have been the steady friends of education and of the abolition of slavery all over the world. Wherever there have been movements to mitigate human misery, to abolish war, and repress inhumanity, there the Society of Friends has long been known to hold a conspicuous position. Though caring less than others for the arts and graces which only contribute to the adornment of society, yet for all that promotes the abolition of vice and misery, for all that adds to the comfort of home, for all that promotes justice and fairness in legislation, for temperance and moderate enjoyment in life, they are recognized as the steady supporters. Their spiritual associates, we cannot doubt, will mainly be good spirits and angels, on the principle that like associates with like.

It is not of the Society of Friends, as they are now or as they became when they had settled down after their early excitement by fanatical spirits was over, that Swedenborg speaks, but as they were in their first years of extravagance, when they were impelled to do things of a most indecent character, as related by the annalists of those times, under the idea they were obeying the Holy Spirit. Their females then, on various occasions, are recorded to have exhibited themselves naked in the streets; and it will not be beyond belief that Swedenborg saw the spirits that induced them to commit such strange displays, and testifies to their nefarious character. This whole subject was fully discussed in our pages in the January and February numbers of 1868, to which we refer our readers.

Dr. Maudsley has not overlooked the references to David and Paul, reported by Mr. White from Swedenborg's early Diary. Dr. Maudsley thinks there is no escape from the dilemma either that David was an impostor or Swedenborg was mad. The Psalms of David were divinely inspired, and are a treasury of devotion for all ages. But David's character is far below the Christian standard; but little defence can be made against the charge that, in the possession of power and splendour, he became a really bad man. David in his youth was called a man after God's own heart, but in after-life he became ferocious even to extreme cruelty. His many wives a id concubines, and his lustful wickedness with Bathsheba, indicate a character the very opposite of heavenly, and his death was as little saintly as his 1 fe. He might well be supposed, in the developments of the eternal world, to have become such a David as Swedenborg describes, or, on the other hand, it might only be a personating spirit pretending to be David, or believing himself to be David, whom Swedenborg saw and describes. We are not aware whether Dr. Maudsley is acquainted with the fact that the notices of David and Paul which intimate that their inward character, as shown in

the eternal world, were not so elevated as Christendom has given them credit for, ARE NOT IN ANY WORKS HE PUBLISHED, but in his private notes in the Diary, dated in 1749 and 1751. That he never published them, or alluded to them in his printed works, is significant.

At that time his acquaintance with the spiritual world was recent, and comparatively imperfect. He frequently says, both of things and persons, he is not certain that they are as they appear to him. Evil spirits not only pretend, but even fancy, they are great personages which they are not; FOR ALL DEVILS ARE INSANE. Whether any person who presented himself to Swedenborg at that period was really what he represented himself to be is quite open to question, if it were necessary that we should concern ourselves about the eternal lot of any one. The Lord will doubtless make the best possible use of every one. But he will eventually be where the interior nature acquired by him in the world HAS FITTED HIM TO BE, and nowhere else.

At the time Swedenborg describes himself as having seen spirits who professed to be David and Paul, the world of spirits was crowded with evil ones of the most infernal and self-deluded characters, such as Christendom had long been furnishing. It was more like an immense madhouse than anything else. There were no doubt plenty of Pauls, Davids, gods even, just as you will find them in an asylum at the present day. It was in 1749, the year in which he published the first volume of the " Arcana," that a spirit who fancied himself the devil who had deceived Adam and Eve, spoke to Swedenborg, and with him Paul, and this Paul is named in a few other places, but all within a very limited time, AND ONLY NOTICED, as we said before, IN THE DIARY, WHICH SWEDENBORG NEVER PUBLISHED. Now, this l'aul is certainly described as being in an evil state; Swedenborg believed at the time that he was the Apostle Paul, but whether he was really so is quite open to doubt; and the following considerations should have some weight in the case :

Firstly, Swedenborg states that spirits personate and pretend to be other persons than they really are. Secondly, The spirit who was with Paul the first time Swedenborg saw him, imagined himself the devil that deceived Adam and Eve, but THERE WAS NO INDIVIDUAL DEVIL that deceived individuals called Adam and Eve; so that this particular spirit was not what he professed to be, but a lunatic spirit, and possibly it might be equally so with the other professing to be Paul. Thirdly, Swedenborg says, in the Diary, No. 28, that he had been mistaken in relation to some spirits calling themselves the patriarchs, and others the APOSTLES, although he had been during some weeks holding conversation with them from time to time. These are his words:" During SEVERAL WEEKS I have been holding conversations WITH THE APOSTLES, with Abraham, with Jacob, Moses, Aaron, Sarah the wife of Abraham, Leah, and Rachel, and at the time I could not think otherwise than that I was conversing with them; but since then, taught by experience, I have learned that they were only such as acted the parts of these persons, but who, while they were sustaining their characters, believed that they were the very people." He then suggests how this may be the case, and ends by saying, "These things have come into my thoughts to-day, but whether the matter is really so with them I cannot yet know for a certainty." On the contrary, both in the "Adversaria" and in the printed works, Swedenborg speaks of Paul as an apostle, and even as one of the twelve, as if he regarded the Lord's personal selection of Paul as a more perfect supply of the place which Judas had occupied than the choice of Matthias. The latter was appointed by the eleven, but after that was heard of no more.

Thus, "Adversaria," 475, he says, "But lest these things" (the existence and blessedness of the Lord's kingdom in heaven) "should be rejected as

fables, I am able to testify, and that most sacredly, that by the Messiah Himself, the Saviour of the world, Jesus the Nazarene, I have been introduced into His Kingdom, and have spoken there with celestial genii, with spirits, and with those who have been raised from the dead, yea, with some who declared themselves to be Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Sarah, Rebekah, Moses, Aaron, and the apostles, ESPECIALLY WITH PAUL AND JAMES, and that now for a period of eight months almost continually."

Again, in "True Christian Religion," 735, the angel who had the guidance of the novitiates who were to be convinced of their error in supposing that constant feasting would result in heavenly joy, took them to a region where, in a paradise, there were arranged fifteen tables on each side for the three patriarchs and the twelve apostles and their wives. When enumerating the tables he speaks of one for each of the three patriarchs, and a fourth for Peter, a fifth for James, a sixth for John, and a seventh for PAUL. Again, when the people were tired and were hasting away, they are asked if they would not stay and take their turns with Peter and PAUL, thus twice in this one relation is Paul regarded as one of the twelve; and of the twelve, Swedenborg says the twelve disciples are now ANGELS.—“ True Christian Religion," No. 4.

In the "True Christian Religion," 154, Paul is mentioned, along with Peter, James, and John, as being filled with the Spirit of the Lord, and as taking his portion of the Divine Wisdom to diffuse the Gospel, by preaching and writing throughout the world. And, elsewhere, Swedenborg more than once shows that it is a mere mistake to suppose that St. Paul's writings support the doctrine of FAITH alone.

Indeed a study of the epistles, so as to get at their spirit and the standpoint of the Apostle Paul, in the then transition state of the New Christian Church, will amply prove what Swedenborg stated in his letter to Dr. Beyer. "The writings of the apostles are very good books for the Church, inasmuch as they insist on the doctrine of charity, and faith thence derived, as strongly as the Lord Himself has done in the gospels, and in the Revelation of St. John."-New Jerusalem Magazine for 1790, p. 140.

Where has the sole and Supreme Divinity of the Lord Jesus been more fully declared than by St. Paul, Col. ii. 9; Rom. ix. 5? Where has charity had so full, accurate, and tender a definition as in 1 Cor. xiii.? Where is a life in harmony with the Lord's commandments more emphatically insisted upon than by this apostle, Rom. ii. 6-12; and 1 Cor. vii. 19? Only from actual life-knowledge-could he have described the struggles of the regeneration as a resurrection from spiritual death to spiritual life and beauty. Surely experience alone can have enabled the apostle to write as he does in Rom. vii, 15-25; Phil. iii. 10-21; and the Epistle to the Galatians throughout. We cannot but think with horror at such a life-struggle as St. Paul's issuing in such a spirit as Swedenborg speaks of in the Paul he describes. And, seeing that Swedenborg in his printed writings, and especially in the "Universal Theology of the New Church," his last work, quotes copiously from the epistles of this apostle, we are strongly impelled to the conclusion that the Paul he saw in his early experience, and to whom he did not later refer, was but a personation. He had discovered by more thorough knowledge that he was not the real Apostle Paul.

In the "Adversaria," 5021, when Swedenborg is speaking of the spirit who personated Samuel, as related 1 Sam. xxviii. 14, he not only declares that it was a personation and not Samuel, but he adds, "When it is permitted to evil spirits, or their leader, they can most dexterously represent any person they wish, if only the person has been seen and known by the one to whom he appears, yea, so skilfully that not the least of the voice or

whatsoever was natural to the person was wanting. Two or three times some spirits made the experiment with me. They placed before me some whom I had known during their life in the world, with whom I spoke for a long time, and they were just the same as they had been in their life-time; but yet I just as often doubted whether they really were the same persons, and I mentioned my doubts to the spirits, and thus I learned that they could represent any person soever if only the person had been known to the one to whom he appears."

Taking into account this easy solution of the difficulty, remembering also the condition of the spirit world prior to the great judgment in 1757, and Swedenborg's comparative inexperience, when he saw the pretended Paul, we rejoice to be able to accept the solution that the spirit whom Swedenborg mentions as claiming to be the Apostle Paul, was some poor lunatic spirit whose pride had led him to fancy he was the great apostle of the Gentiles. We are quite aware that the apostles have all been gilded and magnified by the imaginative piety of antiquity, and were really very different men from what the pious fancy of many ages has pictured them. This is especially true of the Apostle Paul. He was but little thought of in the second century. The Bishop of Rome in A.D. 200, as Tertullian complains, forbad churches to be named after him. Chiefly since the Reformation has the authority of Paul been so exalted as to make his writings relatively to overshadow the gospels in Protestant countries, but that is no fault of the apostle, it is due to the frame of mind which desires to get to heaven by a short, sharp, easy method, securing salvation as is supposed with as much obedience to the divine commandments as it may be convenient to render. There is a mental pleasure felt by a large portion of the Protestant worl in the thought that the Lord Jesus received all the punishment due, or that ever will be due to them, and they obtained His righteousness with all its rewards. This spiritual dishonesty is the essence of ninety-nine out of the hundred tracts that are delivered about with so much pious zeal, and that make the shallow religion of thousands upon thousands of professing Christians of the popular denominations. They lay hold of some expressions of the Apostle Paul used at a transition period, and interpret the words, especially the term faith and works, by modern ideas, instead of the ideas of the apostle, and so set up what they consider the more perfect religion of faith alone, thus twisted out of the apostle's writings, against the divine morality of the Sermon on the Mount.

For this, however, the apostle is not accountable. He preached, as we preach, a livelong struggle against the evils of our nature. He had evidently his failings as all men have. To them Dr. Maudsley makes allusion when he says, Paul DID NOT UNDERVALUE HIS IMPORTANCE. But, we cannot read the references to his personal experiences in the over thirty years of his toilsome, struggling, suffering, persevering life, his humble fears least he himself should be a castaway, his supreme love to the Lord Jesus, his trust in Him, his faithful declaration that there is no religion unless there be in the soul the fruits of religion, which are love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance, Gal. v. 22, 23. We feel that this is the way in which a man lives and labours to become an angel.

On such a subject it would not be becoming to dogmatize. The disclosures of the eternal world will no doubt be often very different from the appearances of this. Our suppositions cannot in the slightest degree affect the final lot of any one. All will be placed in the best conditions their interior and real characters will permit; yet a consideration of all the sides of this interesting case does seem to point to the solution we have ventured to suggest as the true one. Only very cogent arguments would compel the adoption of a different view, one painful to be thought of in relation to the Apostle Paul, and we are satisfied they do not really exist.

Dr. Maudsley has evidently intended to furnish a fair account of Swedenborg, and hence, although his researches being confined to Mr. White's supply of material, and not in Swedenborg direct, he introduces matter which is inore than dubious, and supplies what may be startling in far too large a proportion to give a true representation of Swedenborg, yet he affords his readers many glimpses of truths which must impress them favourably. Such is the extract respecting Count Hopken which he gives in full, p. 254. Prime Minister Hopken-who had known Swedenborg for TWO AND FORTY YEARS, and who averred that, in all his experience, he did not recollect a character of more uniform excellence, always contented, never fretful nor morose-said of his religion :

"I have sometimes told the king, that, if ever a new colony were formed, no better religion could be established there than that developed by Swedenborg from the Sacred Scriptures, and for these reasons:

"1. This religion, in preference to and in a higher degree than any other, must produce the most honest and industrious subjects; for it places, and places properly, the worship of God in uses.

"2. It causes the least fear of death; death being regarded merely as a transition from one state to another, from a worse to a better situation. Upon his principles, I look upon death as of hardly greater consequence than drinking a glass of water."

He also gives the description of Swedenborg's death. "On the 29th of March, 1772, he gently expired, having, it is said, predicted on what day he should die. He was as pleased, said the servant, as I should have been if I was going to have a holiday, or going to some merry-making."-Pp. 254, 260.

Dr. Maudsley, notwithstanding, is quite satisfied Swedenborg was of unsound mind, with many others whom he names,-George Fox, the founder of the Society of Friends, Benvenuto Cellini, the unequalled artist, and Comte, the author of the Positivist Philosophy; indeed, we suppose we must add all who believed they had communication with angels or with the inner world, since everything supernatural he dismisses with a summary sneer.-P. 260. This, of course, would include all the prophets, the apostles, the Lord Jesus Himself, all the founders of religion, in every age and in every part of the world. But all the hopes of religion, all the order and progress which religion inspires and sustains, and the charity and virtue which have softened and elevated mankind in every age, all the yearning after more light, more love, and universal good-will, our Sunday schools, our Churches, all the blessings of piety and purity, are based upon the inspirations of religion; and if Dr. Maudsley's views are right, they are simply the MAUNDERINGS OF

LUNATICS.

This is a very extraordinary result to arrive at, and we can hardly wonder at a gentleman with such a standpoint regarding Swedenborg as rather insane. But what would he call sanity?

If religion, with its virtue and order in this world, and its bright hopes of immortality, of regeneration, of angels and heaven, be the result of insanity, we, for our part, shall much prefer it to the sanity that has no thought for anything higher than nerves, matter and earth.

But may we not say to gentlemen like Dr. Maudsley, Why do you reject all tidings of that brighter side of our being, which is connected with immortality, with everlasting order, joy, hope and peace?

The only reason afforded in this essay is an adaptation of Hume's very poor axiom in relation to miracles. Hume said it was quite contrary to experience that miracles should be performed, but quite in accordance with experience that people should say what is false, and, therefore, he believed any relation of a miracle was a falsehood.

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