"You are suddenly grown very modest! Is this a snare? A woman is always so

much touched to find her weakness glorified!--Well, the evening after

to-morrow, come to tea. You will find our good Pastor Becker, and you will

see Minna, the most guileless creature I ever knew in this world.--Now

leave me, my friend; I must say long prayers this evening in expiation of

my sins."

"How can you sin?"

"My poor, dear friend, is not the abuse of power the sin of pride? I have

been, I think, too arrogant to-day.--Now go. Till to-morrow."

"Till to-morrow!" Wilfrid feebly echoed, with a long look at the being of

whom he desired to carry away an indelible memory.

Though he meant to leave, he remained standing for some moments outside,

looking at the lights that beamed from the windows of the Swedish castle.

"What was it that I saw?" he asked himself. "No, it was not a single being,

but a whole creation. I retain, of that world seen through veils and mists,

a ringing echo like the remembrance of departed pain, or like the

dizziness caused by dreams in which we hear the moaning of past generations

mingling with the harmonious voices of higher spheres, where all is light

and love. Am I awake? Do I still slumber? Have I not yet opened my sleeping

eyes, those eyes before whose sight luminous spaces stretch into

infinitude, eyes that can discern those spaces?--In spite of the night and

the cold, my head is still on fire. I will go to the manse. Between the

pastor and his daughter I may recover my balance."

But he did not yet leave the spot whence he could see into Seraphita's

sitting-room. This mysterious being seemed to be the radiant centre of a

circle which formed an atmosphere about her rarer than that which surrounds

others: he who came within it found himself involved in a vortex of light

and of consuming thoughts. Wilfrid, obliged to struggle against this

inexplicable force, did not triumph without considerable efforts; but when

he had got out of the precincts of the house, he recovered his freedom of

will, walked quickly to the parsonage, and presently found himself under

the lofty wooden porch that served as an entrance hall to Pastor Becker's

house. He pushed open the first door, packed with birch bark, against which

the snow had drifted, and knocked eagerly at the inner door, saying:

"Will you allow me to spend the evening with you, Pastor Becker?"

"Yes," was the answer in two voices speaking as one.

On entering the parlor, Wilfrid was gradually brought back to real life. He

bowed very cordially to Minna, shook hands with the minister, and then

looked about him on a scene which soothed the excitement of his physical

nature, in which a process was going on resembling that which sometimes

takes place in men accustomed to long contemplation. When some powerful

conception carries away a man of science or a poet on its chimera-like

wings, and isolates him from the external surroundings that hedge him in on

earth, soaring with him through those boundless regions where vast masses

of fact appear as abstractions and the most stupendous works of nature

seem but images, woe to him if some sudden noise rouses his senses and

recalls his wandering soul to its prison of bone and flesh! The collision

of the two powers: body and spirit, one of which has something of the

invisible element of lightning; while the other, like all tangible forms,

has a certain soft resistancy which for the moment defies destruction--this

collision, or, to be accurate, this terrible reunion, gives rise to

unspeakable suffering. The body has cried out for the fire that consumes

it, and the flame has recaptured its prey. But this fusion cannot take

place without the ebullition, the crepitation and convulsions, of which

chemistry affords visible examples when two hostile elements are sundered

that have been joined by its act.

For some days past, whenever Wilfrid went to Seraphita's house, his body

there fell into an abyss. By a single look this wonderful creature

translated him in the spirit to the sphere whither meditation carries the

learned, whither prayer transports the pious soul, whither his eye can

carry the artist, and sleep can waft some dreamers; for each there is a

call bidding him to that empyrean void, for each a guide to lead him

there--for all there is anguish in the return. There alone is the veil

rent, there alone is Revelation seen without disguise--an ardent and awful

disclosure of the unknown sphere of which the soul brings back nought but

fragments. To Wilfrid, an hour spent with Seraphita was often like the

dream so dear to the opium eater, in which each nerve-fibre becomes the

focus of radiating rapture. He came away exhausted, like a girl who should

try to keep up with the pace of a giant.

The sharp, punishing cold began to subdue the agony of trepidation caused

by the re-amalgamation of the two elements in his nature thus violently

wrenched asunder; then he always made his way to the manse, attracted to

Minna by his thirst for the scenes of homely life, as an European traveler

thirsts for his native land when home-sickness seizes him in the midst of

the fairy splendors that tempted him to the East.

At this moment the visitor, more exhausted than he had ever been before,

dropped into a chair and looked about him for some minutes, like a man

aroused from sleep. Pastor Becker and his daughter, accustomed no doubt to

their guest's eccentricity, went on with their occupations.

The room was decorated with a collection of Norwegian insects and shells.

These curiosities, ingeniously arranged on the background of yellow

pinewood with which the wall was wainscoted, formed a colored ornamentation

to which tobacco smoke had imparted a soberer tone. At the further end,

opposite the door, was an enormous wrought-iron stove, carefully rubbed by

the maid-servant till it shone like polished steel.

Pastor Becker was seated in a large armchair, covered with worsted work,

near the stove and in front of a table, his feet in a foot-muff, while he

read from a folio supported on other books to form a sort of desk. On his

right stood a beer-jug and a glass; on his left a smoky lamp fed with fish

oil. The minister was a man of about sixty years; his face of the type so

often painted by Rembrandt: the small, keen eyes set in circles of fine

wrinkles under thick grizzled brows; white hair falling in two silky locks

from beneath a black velvet cap; a broad, bald forehead, and the shape of

face which a heavy chin made almost square, and, added to this, the

self-possessed calm that betrays to the observer some conscious power--the

sovereignty conferred by wealth, by the judical authority of the

burgomaster, by the conviction of Art, or the stolid tenacity of happy

ignorance. The handsome old man, whose substantial build revealed sound

health, was wrapped in a dressing-gown of rough cloth with no ornament but

the binding. He gravely held a long meerschaum pipe in his mouth, blowing

off the tobacco smoke at regular intervals, and watching its fantastic

spirals with a speculative eye, while endeavoring, no doubt, to assimilate

and digest by meditation the ideas of the author whose works he was

studying.

On the other side of the stove, near the door that led into the kitchen,

Minna was dimly visible through the fog of smoke, to which she seemed to be

inured. In front of her, on a small table, were the various implements of a

needle-woman; a pile of towels and stockings to be mended, and a lamp like

that which shone on the white pages of the book in which her father seemed

to be absorbed. Her fresh, young face, delicately pure in outline,

harmonized with the innocence that shone on her white brow and in her

bright eyes. She sat forward on her chair, leaning a little towards the

light to see the better, unconsciously showing the grace of her figure. She

was already dressed for the evening in a white calico wrapper; a plain,

cambric cap, with no ornament but its frill, covered her hair. Though lost

in some secret meditation, she counted without mistake the threads in the

towel, or the stitches in her stocking. Thus she presented the most

complete and typical image of woman born to earthly duties, whose eye might

pierce the clouds of the sanctuary, while a mind at once humble and

charitable kept her on the level of man. Wilfrid, from his armchair between

the two tables, contemplated the harmonious picture with a sort of rapture;

the clouds of smoke were not out of keeping.

The single window which gave light to the room in the summer was now

carefully closed. For a curtain, an old piece of tapestry hung from a rod

in heavy folds. There was no attempt at the picturesque or showy--austere

simplicity, genuine homeliness, the unpretentiousness of nature, all the

habits of domestic life free from troubles and anxieties. Many dwellings

leave the impression of a dream; the dazzling flash of transient pleasure

seems to hide a ruin under the chill smile of luxury; but this parlor was

sublimely real, harmonious in color, and apt to suggest patriarchal ideas

of a busy and devout life.

The silence was broken only by the heavy step of the maid preparing the

supper, and by the singing in the pan of the dried fish she was frying in

salt butter, after the fashion of the country.

"Will you smoke a pipe?" said the pastor presently, when he thought that

Wilfrid would heed him.

"No, thank you, dear Pastor Becker," he replied.

"You seem less well than usual this evening," said Minna, struck by the

visitor's weak voice.

"I am always so when I have been to the castle."

Minna was startled.

"A strange creature dwells there, Pastor Becker," he went on after a pause.

"I have been six months in the village, and have never dared to question

you about her; and to-night I have to do violence to my feelings even to

speak of her. At first I greatly regretted to find my travels interrupted

by the winter, and to be obliged to remain here; for the last two months,

however, the chains binding me to Jarvis have been more closely riveted,

and I fear I may end my days here.--You know how I first met Seraphita, and

the impression made on me by her eyes and her voice, and how at last I was

admitted to visit her though she receives nobody. On the very first day, I

came to you for information concerning that mysterious creature. Then began

for me the series of enchantments----"

"Of enchantments?" exclaimed the pastor, shaking out the ashes of his pipe

into a coarse pan of sand that served him as a spittoon. "Are enchantments

possible?"

"You, certainly, who at this very moment are so conscientiously studying

Jean Wier's book of _Incantations_, will understand the account I can give

you of my sensations," Wilfrid replied quickly. "If we study nature

attentively, alike in its great revolutions and in its minutest works, it

is impossible not to admit the possibility of enchantment--giving the word

its fullest meaning. Man can create no force; he can but use the only

existing force, which includes all others, namely, Motion--the

incomprehensible Breath of the Sovereign Maker of the Universe. The

elements are too completely separated for the hand of man to combine them;

the only miracle he can work consists in the mingling of two hostile

substances. Even so, gunpowder is akin to thunder!

"As to effecting an act of creation, and that suddenly!--All creation needs

time, and time will neither hurry nor turn backwards at our bidding. Hence,

outside us, plastic nature obeys laws whose order and procedure cannot be

reversed by any human effort.

"But after conceding this to mere matter, it would be unreasonable to deny

the existence, within us, of a vast power, of which the effects are so

infinitely various that past generations have not yet completely classified

them. I will say nothing of man's faculty of abstracting his mind, of

comprehending nature in the limits of speech, a stupendous fact, of which

common minds think no more than they think out the act of motion, but which

led Indian Theosophists to speak of creation by the Word, to which they

also attributed the contrary power. The tiniest item of their daily food--a

grain of rice, whence proceeds a whole creature, which presently results in

a grain of rice again--afforded them so complete a symbol of the creative

Word and the synthetical Word, that it seemed a simple matter to apply the

system to the creation of worlds.

"Most men would do well to be content with the grain of rice that lies at

the origin of every genesis. Saint John, when he said that the Word was in

God, only complicated the difficulty.

"But the fruition, the germination, and the blossoming of our ideas is but

a trifle if we compare this property, which is distributed among so many

men, with the wholly personal faculty of communicating it to certain more

or less efficient forces by means of concentration, and thus raising it to

the third, ninth, or twenty-seventh power, giving it a hold on masses, and

obtaining magical results by concentrating the action of Nature. What I

call enchantments are the stupendous dramas played out between two

membranes on the canvas of the brain. In the unexplored realms of the

spiritual world we meet with certain beings armed with these astounding

faculties--comparable only to the terrible powers of gases in the physical

world--beings who can combine with other beings, can enter into them as an

active cause, and work magic in them, against which their hapless victims

are defenceless; they cast a spell on them, override them, reduce them to

wretched serfdom, and crush them with the weight and magnificent sway of a

superior nature; acting, now like the gymnotus which electrifies and numbs

the fisherman; now, again, like a dose of phosphorus which intensifies the

sense of life or hastens its projection; sometimes like opium, which lulls

corporeal nature, frees the spirit from its bondage, sends it soaring above

the world, shows it the universe through a prism, and extracts for it the

nourishment that best pleases it; and sometimes like catalepsy, which

annuls every faculty to enhance a single vision.

"Miracles, spells, incantations, witchcrafts, in short all the facts that

are incorrectly called supernatural, can only be possible and accounted for

by the authority with which some other mind compels us to accept the

effects of a mysterious law of optics which magnifies, or diminishes, or

exalts creation, enables it to move within us independently of our will,

distorts or embellishes it, snatches us up to heaven, or plunges us into

hell--the two terms by which we express the excess of rapture or of pain.

These phenomena are within us, not outside us.

"The being we call Seraphita seems to me to be one of those rare and

awe-inspiring spirits to whom it is given to constrain men, to coerce

nature, and share the occult powers of God. The course of her enchantments

on me began by her compelling me to silence. Every time I dared wish to

question you about her, it seemed to me that I was about to reveal a secret

of which I was bound to be the impeccable guardian; whenever I was about to

speak, a burning seal was set on my lips, and I was the involuntary slave

of this mysterious prohibition. You see me now, for the hundredth time,

crushed, broken, by having played with the world of hallucinations that

dwells in that young thing, to you so gentle and frail, to me the most

ruthless magician. Yes--to me she is a sorceress who bears in her right

hand an invisible instrument to stir the world with, and in her left the

thunderbolt that dissolves everything at her command. In short, I can no

longer behold her face; it is unendurably dazzling.

"I have for the last few days been wandering round this abyss of madness

too helplessly to keep silence any longer. I have, therefore, seized a

moment when I find courage enough to resist the monster that drags me to

her presence without asking whether I have strength enough to keep up with

his flight.--Who is she? Did you know her as a child? Was she ever born?

Had she parents? Was she conceived by the union of sun and ice?--She

freezes and she burns; she comes forth and then vanishes like some coy

truth; she attracts and repels me; she alternately kills and vivifies me; I

love her and I hate her!--I cannot live thus. I must be either in heaven

altogether, or in hell."

Pastor Becker, his refilled pipe in one hand and in the other the stopper,

listened to Wilfrid with a mysterious expression, glancing occasionally at

his daughter, who seemed to understand this speech, in harmony with the

being it referred to. Wilfrid was as splendid as Hamlet struggling against

his father's ghost, to whom he speaks when it rises visible to him alone

amid the living.

"This is very much the tone of a man in love," said the good man simply.

"In love!" cried Wilfrid, "yes, to ordinary apprehensions; but, my dear Mr.

Becker, no words can describe the frenzy with which I rush to meet this

wild creature."

"Then you do love her?" said Minna reproachfully.

"Mademoiselle, I endure such strange agitation when I see her, and such

deep dejection when I see her not, that in any other man they would be

symptoms of love; but love draws two beings ardently together, while

between her and me a mysterious gulf constantly yawns, which chills me

through when I am in her presence, but of which I cease to be conscious

when we are apart. I leave her each time in greater despair; I return each

time with greater ardor, like a scientific inquirer seeking for Nature's

secrets and for ever baffled; like a painter who yearns to give life to

his canvas, and wrecks himself and every resource of art in the futile

attempt."

"Yes, that strikes me as very true," said the girl.

"How should you know, Minna?" asked the old man.

"Ah! father, if you had been with us this morning to the summit of the

Falberg, and had seen her praying, you would not ask me. You would say, as

Wilfrid did the first time he saw her in our place of worship, 'She is the

Spirit of Prayer!'"

A few moments of silence ensued.

"It is true!" cried Wilfrid. "She has nothing in common with the creatures

who writhe in the pits of this world."

"On the Falberg!" the old pastor exclaimed. "How did you manage to get

there?"

"I do not know," said Minna. "The expedition is to me now like a dream of

which only the remembrance survives. I should not believe in it, perhaps,

but for this substantial proof."

She drew the flower from her bosom and showed it to him. They all three

fixed their eyes on the pretty saxifrage, still quite fresh, which under

the gleam of the lamps shone amid the clouds of smoke like another light.

"This is supernatural," said the old man, seeing a flower in bloom in the

winter.

"An abyss!" cried Wilfrid, fevered by the perfume.

"The flower fills me with rapture," said Minna. "I fancy I can still hear

his speech, which is the music of the mind, as I still see the light of his

gaze, which is love."

"Let me entreat you, my dear Pastor Becker, to relate the life of

Seraphita--that enigmatical flower of humanity whose image I see in this

mysterious blossom."

"My dear guest," said the minister, blowing a puff of tobacco-smoke, "to

explain the birth of this being, it will be necessary to disentangle for

you the obscurest of all Christian creeds; but it is not easy to be clear

when discussing the most incomprehensible of all revelations, the latest

flame of faith, they say, that has blazed on our ball of clay.--Do you know

anything of Swedenborg?"

"Nothing but his name. Of himself, his writings, his religion, I am wholly

ignorant."

"Well, then, I will tell you all about Swedenborg."

III

SERAPHITA--SERAPHITUS

After a pause, while the pastor seemed to be collecting his thoughts, he

went on as follows:--

"Emanuel von Swedenborg was born at Upsala, in Sweden, in the month of

January 1688, as some authors say, or, according to his epitaph, in 1689.

His father was bishop of Skara. Swedenborg lived to the age of eighty-five,

and died in London on the 29th March 1772. I use the word 'died' to express

a change of condition only. According to his disciples, Swedenborg has been

at Jarvis and in Paris since that time.--Permit me, my dear friend," said

the pastor, with a gesture to check interruption, "I am relating the tale

without affirming or denying the facts. Listen, and when I have done you

can think what you choose. I will warn you when I myself judge, criticise,

or dispute the doctrines, so as to show my intellectual neutrality between

reason and the man himself.

"Emanuel Swedenborg's life was divided into two distinct phases," Becker

went on. "From 1688 till 1745 Baron Emanuel von Swedenborg was known in the

world as a man of vast learning, esteemed and beloved for his virtues,

always blameless, and invariably helpful. While filling important public

posts in Sweden, he published, between 1709 and 1740, several important

books on mineralogy, physics, mathematics, and astronomy, which were of

value in the scientific world. He invented a method of constructing docks

to receive vessels; he treated many very important questions, from the

height of the flood-tide to the position of the earth in space. He

discovered the way to construct more efficient locks on canals, as well as

simpler methods for the smelting of metals. In short, he never took up a

science without advancing it.

"In his youth he studied Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and the Oriental languages,

and became so familiar with these tongues that several celebrated

professors constantly consulted him, and he was enabled to discover in

Tartary some traces of the earliest book of God's Word, called the _Book of

the Wars of Jehovah_, and of the Judgments mentioned by Moses (Numbers xxi.

14, 15), by Joshua, Jeremiah, and Samuel. The wars of the Lord are said to

be the historical portion, and the Judgments the prophetic portion, of this

book, written prior to _Genesis_. Swedenborg even asserted that the Book of

Jasher, or of the Upright, mentioned by Joshua, existed in Eastern Tartary

with the worship by Correspondences. A Frenchman, I have been told, has

recently confirmed Swedenborg's anticipations by announcing the discovery

at Bagdad of several parts of the Bible unknown in Europe.

"In 1785, on the occasion of the discussion on animal magnetism started in

Paris, and raised almost throughout Europe, in which most men of science

took an eager part, Monsieur de Thome defended Swedenborg's memory in a

reply to the assertions so rashly made by the Commissioners appointed by

the King of France to inquire into this subject. These gentlemen stated

that there was no theory accounting for the action of the lodestone,

whereas Swedenborg had made it his study so early as in 1720. Monsieur de

Thome took the opportunity to point out the reasons for the neglect in

which the most celebrated savants had left the name of the learned Swede,

so as to be free to plunder his volumes and use his treasures in their own

works. 'Some of the most illustrious,' said Monsieur de Thome, alluding to

Buffon's _Theory of the Earth_, 'are mean enough to dress in the peacock's

plumage without giving him the credit.' Finally, by several convincing

quotations from Swedenborg's encyclopaedic writings, he proved that this

great prophet had outstripped by many centuries the slow progress of human

learning; and, indeed, to read his works is enough to carry conviction on

this point.

"In one passage he is the precursor of the present system of chemistry,

announcing that the products of organic nature can all be decomposed and

resolved into two pure elements; that water, air, and fire are not

elements; in another he goes in a few words to the heart of magnetic

mystery, and thus anticipates Mesmer.--In short," said the minister,

pointing to a long shelf between the stove and the window, on which were

books of various sizes, "there are seventeen works by him; one of them,

published in 1734, _Studies in Philosophy and Mineralogy_, consists of

three folio volumes.

"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 assumed 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 God, 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 hell, 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 God.

"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 document 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 quantity,' 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 pass 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 snatched up by the angel who guided him in his

first voyage is sublime to a degree as far beyond the poems of Klopstock,

Milton, Tasso, and Dante, as the earth, by God'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

assured 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 constituted like the angelic spirits of those globes,

have been enabled to know them.'

"The circumstances 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 circumstances 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 Assessor, 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, 'God 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 noble 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 Assessor; 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 assured 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 assured 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 circumstances 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. 'God 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 God has

shed its brightest light are: _The Delights of Wisdom in Conjugal Love_;

_Heaven and Hell_; _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 God_.

"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 God 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.

"To poets and writers he is infinitely marvelous; to seers it is all

absolute truth. His descriptions have been a matter of scandal to some

Christians; critics have laughed at the 'celestial substance' of his

temples, his golden palaces, his magnificent mansions where angels flutter

and play; others have ridiculed his groves of mystical trees, and gardens

where flowers have speech, where the air is white, and mystical

gems--sardonyx, carbuncle, chrysolite, chrysoprase, cyanite, chalcedony,

and beryl, the Urim and Thummim--are endowed with motion, express celestial

truths, and may be questioned, since they reply by variations of light

(_True Religion_, 217, 218). Some very good men will not recognize his

worlds where colors are heard in delicious concerts, where words are

flames, and the Word is written in inflected letters (_True Religion_,

278). Even in the North some writers have made fun of his gates of pearl,

of the diamonds with which the houses of his New Jerusalem are paved and

furnished, where the humblest utensils are made of the rarest materials.

"'But,' his disciples argue, 'though such substances are sparely

distributed in this world, is that any reason why they should not be

abundant in another? On earth they are but earthly, while in heaven they

are seen under celestial aspects in relation to the angelic state.' And

Swedenborg would quote on such points the great words of Jesus Christ, 'If

I have told you earthly things and ye believe not, how shall ye believe if

I tell you of heavenly things?' (John iii. 12.)

"I, sir, have read Swedenborg from beginning to end," the pastor went on,

with an emphatic gesture. "I may say it with pride, since I have preserved

my reason. As you read you must either lose your wits or become a seer.

Though I have escaped both forms of madness, I have often felt unknown

raptures, deep amazement, inward joy such as can only come of the fulness

of truth, the evidence of heavenly illumination. Everything here below

shrinks, dwindles, as the soul studies the burning pages of those writings.

It is impossible not to be struck with astonishment on reflecting that

within the space of thirty years this man published twenty-five quarto

volumes on the truths of the spiritual world, written in Latin, the

shortest containing five hundred pages, and all in small print. He left

twenty more, it is said, in London, in the care of his nephew, M.

Silverichm, formerly chaplain to the King of Sweden. Certainly the man who,

between twenty and sixty, spent himself in publishing a sort of

encyclopedia, must have had supernatural help to enable him to compose

these prodigious treatises, at an age when the powers of man are beginning

to fail.

"In these works there are thousands of propositions, all numbered, none of

them contradictory. Method, preciseness, and a collected mind are

everywhere conspicuous, all based on the one fact of the existence of

angels. His _True Religion_, in which his whole dogma is summed up, is a

work of powerful lucidity, and was conceived and carried out when he was

eighty-three years of age. His ubiquity, his omniscience, have indeed never

been disproved by his critics or his enemies.

"Nevertheless, even when I was soaked, so to speak, in this torrent of

celestial illumination, God did not open my inward eye; I judged of these

writings by the reason of an unregenerate man. I have often been of opinion

that Swedenborg, the _inspired_, must have misunderstood the angels. I

laughed at many visions, which, according to the seers, I ought reverently,

to believe in. I could not, for instance, appreciate the inflected writing

of the angels, nor their belts of thicker or thinner gold. Though the

statement, 'There are solitary angels,' at first struck me as singularly

pathetic, I could not reconcile this loneliness with their manner of

marriage. I did not see why the Virgin Mary should wear white satin robes

in heaven. I dared question why the giant demons Enakim and Hephilim came

again and again to fight with the Cherubim in the Apocalyptic fields of

Armageddon. I fail to see how the Satanic and heavenly angels can still

loud discussions. Baron Seraphitus replied to me that these details

referred to the angels who are yet on earth in human form.

"The visions of the Swedish prophet are often disfigured by grotesque

touches. One of his _Memorabilia_--the name he gives them--begins with

these words: 'I saw the spirits met together, and they had hats on their

heads.' In another of these _Memorabilia_ he received from heaven a small

paper on which, he says, he saw the letters used by primitive races,

composed of curved lines with little rings curling upwards. For clearer

proof of this communication from heaven I should have liked him to deposit

this document with the Royal Academy of Sciences at Stockholm.

"After all, I may be wrong; the material absurdities that are scattered

throughout his works have spiritual meanings perhaps. Otherwise, how can we

account for the growing influence of his doctrine? His followers now number

more than seven hundred thousand souls, partly in the United States of

America, where many sects have joined them in a body, and partly in

England, where there are seven thousand Swedenborgians in the city of

Manchester alone. Men no less distinguished by their learning than by their

worldly rank--some in Germany, and some in Prussia and the North--have

publicly adopted Swedenborg's beliefs, which indeed are more consolatory

than those of many another Christian communion.

"I should now like to expound to you in a few short words the capital

points of the doctrines set forth by Swedenborg to his Church; but such an

abridgment, from memory, would necessarily be defective. I can, therefore,

only enlarge on the arcana connected with the birth of Seraphita."

Here the pastor paused while meditating apparently to collect his

reminiscences, and then he went on:--

"Having proved mathematically that man shall live for ever in an upper or a

lower sphere, Swedenborg gives the title of angelic spirits to such beings

as, in this world, are prepared for heaven, where they become angels.

According to him, God did not create angels independently; there are none

but those who have been human beings on earth. Thus the earth is the

nursery ground for heaven. The angels are not angels by original nature;

they are transformed into angels by an intimate union with God which God

never refuses, the very essence of God being never negative, but always

active (_Angelic Wisdom_).

"Angelic spirits, then, go through three natures of love, for man can only

be regenerate by stages (_True Religion_). First, love of self: the supreme

expression of it is human genius, of which the works are worshiped. Next,

love of the world at large, which produces prophets and those great men

whom the earth accepts as guides, and hails as divine. Finally, love of

heaven, which forms angelic spirits. These spirits are, so to speak, the

flowers of humanity, which is epitomized, and strives to be epitomized, in

them. They must have either the love or the wisdom of heaven; but they must

dwell in that love before they dwell in wisdom. Thus the first

transformation of man is to love. To achieve this first grade, in his

previous existences he must have gone through hope and charity, which

engender in him the gifts of faith and prayer. The ideas gained by the

exercise of these virtues are transmitted to each new human embodiment

within which the metamorphoses of the inner man are hidden. Nothing avails

separately; hope is inseparable from charity, faith from prayer; the four

faces of this figure are equally important. 'For lack of one virtue,' says

he, 'the angelic spirit is as a flawed pearl.' Thus each existence is a

sphere into which are absorbed the celestial treasures of the former one.

The great perfection of the angelic spirits comes of this mysterious

progress, by which nothing is lost of the qualities successively acquired

till they attain to their most glorious incarnation; for, at every fresh

transformation, they unconsciously lose something of the flesh and its

works.

"When he lives in love man has thrown off all his evil passions; hope,

charity, faith, and prayer have, to use the word of Isaiah, _winnowed_ his

inner man, which must no longer be polluted by any earthly affection. Hence

the great lesson in Saint Luke, 'Provide yourselves a treasure in the

heavens that faileth not,' and the teaching of Jesus Christ that we should

leave this world to men, for it is theirs, and purify ourselves and go to

the Father.

"The second transformation is to wisdom. Wisdom is that apprehension of

heavenly things to which the spirit rises through love. The spirit of love

has triumphed over force; as a result of having conquered every earthly

passion, he loves God blindly; but the spirit of wisdom has intelligence

and knowledge of why he loves. The wings of the first are spread and bear

him up to God; the wings of the second are folded in awe derived from

knowledge: he knows God. One incessantly desires to see God, and soars up

to Him; the other stands near to Him and trembles.

"The union of a spirit of love with a spirit of wisdom lifts the creature

into the divine state in which the soul is woman and the body man--the

final expression of humanity, in which the spirit is supreme over the form,

and the form still contends with the divine spirit; for the form, which is

the flesh, is ignorant and rebellious, and would fain remain gross. It is

this supreme conflict which gives rise to the inexpressible anguish which

the heavens alone can see, and which Christ endured in the Garden of

Olives. After death, the first heaven opens to receive this purified

compound human nature. Thus men die in despair, while spirits die in

ecstasy. Hence the natural state, in which are all unregenerate beings; the

spiritual state, in which are the angelic spirits; and the divine state, in

which the angel dwells before bursting its husk, are the three degrees of

existence by which man attains to heaven.

"A sentence of Swedenborg's will admirably explain to you the difference

between the natural and the spiritual states: 'To men,' says he, 'the

natural passes into the spiritual; they regard the world under its visible

forms, and perceive it in a reality adjusted to their senses. But to the

angelic spirit the spiritual passes into the natural; he regards the world

in its inmost spirit, not under its outer form.'

"Hence our human sciences are but the analysis of form. The learned of this

world are purely superficial, as their knowledge is; their inner man is of

no avail except to preserve an aptitude for apprehension and truth. The

angelic spirit goes far beyond this. His knowledge is the thought of which

human science is the mere utterance; he derives a knowledge of things from

the Word by studying the correspondences through which the worlds are

harmonized with the heavens. The Word of God was written entirely by such

correspondences; it contains a hidden or spiritual meaning which cannot be

understood without the study of correspondences. 'There are,' says

Swedenborg (_Celestial Doctrine_), 'innumerable arcana in the inward

meaning of the correspondences.'

"Those men who have laughed to scorn the books in which the prophets have

treasured the Word, were in such a state of ignorance as men are in, who,

in this world, knowing nothing of a science, mock the truths of that

science. To know the correspondences of the Word with heavenly things, to

know the correspondences that exist between the visible and ponderable

things of the earthly globe and invisible and imponderable things of the

spiritual world, is to 'have the heavens in your understanding.'

"Every object of every creation proceeded from the hand of God, and has,

therefore, necessarily a hidden meaning, as we see in those grand words of

Isaiah, 'The earth is as a garment' (Isaiah li. 6). This mysterious tie

between the smallest atoms of matter and the heavens constitutes what

Swedenborg calls a _Celestial Arcanum_. Indeed, his _Treatise on the

Celestial Arcana_, in which he explains the correspondences or symbolism

of the natural and spiritual, containing, as Jacob Boehm has it, the 'sign

and sealing of all things,' contains no less than thirteen thousand

propositions, filling sixteen volumes. 'This wonderful apprehension of

correspondences which the grace of God vouchsafed to Swedenborg,' says one

of his disciples, 'is the secret of the interest taken in his works.'

According to this commentator, 'everything is derived from heaven,

everything returns to heaven. The prophet's words are sublime and lucid; he

speaks in the heavens, and is understood on earth. A volume might be

written on any one of his phrases.' And, among a thousand others, he quotes

this text: 'The realm of heaven,' says Swedenborg (_Arcana Celestia_), 'is

the realm of impulsion. Action takes form in heaven, and thence in the

world, and by degrees in the minutest details of earthly life; earthly

effects being thus continuous with heavenly causes, the result in every

case is correspondent and symbolical. Man is the link of union between the

Natural and the Spiritual.'

"Angelic spirits, then, inevitably know the correspondences that link each

earthly thing to heaven, and they know the inmost sense of the prophetic

words which foretell their evolution. Thus, to these spirits everything

here below has its hidden meaning. The smallest flower is a thought, a life

answering to some feature of the Great Whole, of whom they have a

persistent intuition. To them the adulteries and debauchery of which the

Scripture and the Prophets speak, and which are often misapprehended by

self-styled scribes, signify the state of the souls who in this world

persist in debasing themselves with earthly affections, and so confirm

their divorce from heaven. Clouds symbolize the veils that shroud God. The

candlesticks, the shewbread, the horses and riders, the whores, the

jewels,--everything in the Scriptures has for them a super-sensual meaning,

and reveals the future of earthly history in its relation to heaven. They

can all enter into the truth of the declarations of Saint John, which human

science demonstrates, and substantially proves at a later time, such as

this, 'pregnant,' says Swedenborg, 'with many human sciences': 'I saw a

new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth were

passed away' (Rev. xxi. 1). They know the suppers where 'they eat the flesh

of kings, and the flesh of captives, and the flesh of mighty men,' to which

[the fowls] are bidden by an angel standing in the sun (Rev. xix. 17, 18).

They see the woman with wings, clothed with the sun, and the man always

armed. 'The horse of the Apocalypse,' says Swedenborg, 'is the visible

image of the human intellect ridden by death, because it bears in itself

the element of its own destruction.' Finally, they recognize the nations

hidden under forms which, to the ignorant, seem grotesque.

"When a man is prepared to receive the prophetical insufflation of

correspondences, the Spirit of the Word moves within him; he then sees that

creations are but transformations; it gives vitality to his intellect, and

a burning thirst for truth which can only be quenched in heaven. In

proportion to the greater or less perfection of his inner man he can

conceive of the power of the angelic spirit; and guided by desire, the

least perfect state of unregenerate man, he proceeds to hope, which opens

before him the world of spirits, and thence to prayer, which is the key of

heaven.

"What human creature could fail to desire to become worthy of passing into

the sphere of those intellects that live in secret by love or wisdom?

During their life on earth those spirits remain pure; they neither see, nor

think, nor speak as other men do.

"There are two modes of perception--the external and the internal. Man is

wholly external; the angelic spirit is wholly internal. The spirit

penetrates the sense of numbers; it masters them all and knows their

meanings. It is lord of motion, and is one with everything by ubiquity:

'One angel is present to another whenever he will,' says the Swedish Seer

(_Angelic Wisdom concerning Divine Love_), for he has the power of escaping

from the body, and sees the heavens as the prophets saw them, and as

Swedenborg himself saw them.

"'In this state,' he says, in the _True Religion_, 'the spirit of a man is

borne from one place to another, his body remaining where it is, a state in

which I lived for twenty-six years.' This is the meaning to be given to the

Bible phrase, 'The Spirit carried me.'

"Angelic wisdom is to human wisdom what the numberless forces of Nature are

to its action, which is single. Everything lives again, moves, and exists

in the spirit, for it is in God, as it is expressed in these words of Saint

Paul, _In Deo sumus, movemur et vivimus_ (In God we live and move and have

our being, Acts xvii. 28). Earth offers no obstacle to it, as the Word

offers no difficulties. Its nearness to the divine state enables it to see

the thought of God veiled by the Word, just as the spirit dwelling inwardly

can communicate with the hidden meaning of all the things of this world.

Science is the language of the temporal world; love is that of the

spiritual world. Man, indeed, describes more than he explains; while the

angelic spirit sees and understands. Science saddens man; love enraptures

the angel; science is still seeking, love has found. Man judges of Nature

in relation to itself; the angelic spirit judges of it in relation to

heaven. In short, to the spirits everything speaks.

"The spirits are in the secret of the reciprocal harmony of creations; they

are in accord with the spirit of sounds, with the spirit of colors, with

the spirit of vegetable life; they can question minerals, and minerals

reply to their thoughts. What, to them, are the learning and the treasures

of earth when they can constantly command them by their sight, and when the

worlds of which men think so much are for the spirits no more than the

topmost step whence they will fly up to God? Heavenly love, or heavenly

wisdom, are visibly with them, seen by the elect in a halo of light that

envelops them. Their innocence, of which a child's innocence is the

external image, has knowledge which children have not; they are innocent,

and they know.

"'And,' says Swedenborg, 'the innocence of heaven makes so deep an

impression on the soul, that those who enjoy it feel a rapture which goes

with them all through life, as I myself have experienced.' 'It is enough,

perhaps,' he says elsewhere, 'to have the smallest inkling of it to

transform one for ever, and, by desiring to go to heaven, to enter into the

sphere of hope.'

"His doctrine of marriage may be summed up in a few words:

"'The Lord took the beauty and grace of man's life and infused them into

woman. When man is disunited from this beauty and elegance of life, he is

austere, sad, or savage; when he is reunited to them, he is happy, he is

complete.'

"The angels are for ever in the perfection of beauty. Their marriages take

place with miraculous ceremonies. To such an union, from which no children

are born, man brings Understanding, woman brings Will; they become one

being--one flesh on earth; then, after putting on the heavenly body, they

go to heaven. On earth, in the natural state, the mutual affection of the

two sexes leads to lust, which is an _effect_, producing fatigue and

disgust; but in their heavenly form, the pair, having become one spirit,

finds in itself a cause of perpetual joys. Swedenborg had seen such an

union of spirits, who, as Saint Luke has written, 'neither marry nor are

given in marriage,' and this union leads to none but spiritual pleasures.

An angel offered to take him to witness such a marriage, and bore him away

on his wings; the wings are only symbolical, and not an earthly reality. He

clothed him in his festal garment; and Swedenborg, seeing himself arrayed

in light, asked the reason.

"'On such occasions,' replied the angel, 'our robes light up and shine and

are nuptial garments' (_The Delight of Wisdom in Conjugal Love_).

"He then saw two angels who came--one from the South, and the other from

the East. The angel from the South rode in a chariot drawn by two white

horses, whose reins were of the color and the radiance of the morning; but

when they came close to him in heaven, he saw no more of the chariot or

horses. The angel from the East, clothed in purple, and the angel from the

South, in hyacinth color, rushed together like two breaths of wind, and

were one; one was an angel of Love, and the other an angel of Wisdom.

Swedenborg's guide told him that on earth these two angels had been bound

by an inward sympathy, and constantly united, though divided by space.

Consent, which is the essence of happy marriage on earth, is the habitual

condition of angels in heaven. Love is the light of their world.

"The perpetual ecstasy of the angels is produced by the faculty, bestowed

on them by God, of giving back to Him the joy they have in Him. This

reciprocity of the infinite constitutes their life. In heaven they too

become infinite by partaking of the essential nature of God, who is

self-subsistent. Such is the vastness of the heavens where the angels

dwell, that if man were endowed with vision as constantly rapid as the

transmission of light from the sun to the earth, and if he gazed through

all eternity, his eyes would find no horizon to rest on. Light alone can be

an emblem of the joys of heaven. 'It is,' says he (_Angelic Wisdom_), 'an

effluence of the virtue of God, a pure emanation from His glory, compared

to which our most brilliant day is dark. It is omnipotent, it renews

everything, and cannot be absorbed; it surrounds the angel, putting him

into contact with God by infinite joys which are felt to multiply and

reproduce themselves to infinity. This light kills the man who is not

prepared to receive it. No one on earth, or indeed in the heavens, can look

on God and live. This is why it is written (Exodus xix. 12, 21-23), 'Set

bounds unto the people round about [the Mount] ... lest they break through

... and many of them perish.' And again (Exodus xxxiv. 29-35), 'When Moses

came down with the two tables of testimony, the skin of his face shone, and

Moses put a veil upon his face till he had done speaking with the people.'

The Transfiguration of Jesus Christ also testifies to the light shed by a

messenger from heaven and the extreme joy of the angels in being for ever

bathed in it. 'His face,' says Saint Matthew (xvii. 2), 'did shine as the

sun, and His raiment was as white as the light ... and a bright cloud

overshadowed the disciples.'

"When a planet is inhabited only by beings who reject the Lord and misprize

His Word, when the angelic spirits have gathered from the four winds, God

sends a destroying angel to alter the whole mass of that rebellious world,

which, in the vast spaces of the universe, is to Him what an infertile seed

is in the natural world. As he approaches that globe, the destroying angel,

riding on a cornet, reverses it on its axis and makes the continents become

the bottom of the sea, the highest mountains then are islands, and the

lands hitherto covered by the seas reappear in all their freshness, obeying

the laws of Genesis; thus the Word of God is in power once more on a new

earth, which everywhere shows the effects of terrestrial waters and

celestial fires. The light the angel brings down from heaven makes the sun

pale. Then, as Isaiah saith (ii. 10, 19), men will enter into the holes of

the rocks and hide themselves in the dust. 'They will cry to the mountains

and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the wrath of the Lamb' (Rev. vi.

16). The Lamb is the great emblem of the angels who are unrecognized and

persecuted on earth.

"Christ Himself hath said, 'Blessed are they that mourn! Blessed are the

meek! Blessed are the peacemakers.' All Swedenborg is there: Suffer,

believe, and love. To love truly, must we not have suffered; must we not

believe? Love begets strength, and strength gives wisdom; this is

intelligence, for strength and wisdom include will. Is not true intellect

composed of knowledge, will, and wisdom, the three attributes of the

angelic spirit?

"'If the universe has a meaning, that surely is the worthiest of God,' said

Monsieur Saint-Martin to me when I saw him during his visit to Sweden.

"But," the minister went on, after a pause, "of what value can these shreds

be, snatched from a work so vast that the only way to give you an idea of

it is to compare it to a river of light, a torrent of flame? When a man

plunges into it, he is carried away by an overwhelming flood. Dante

Alighieri's poem seems a mere speck to the reader who will dive into the

innumerable passages in which Swedenborg has given actuality to the

heavenly spheres, just as Beethoven builds up palaces of harmony out of

thousands of notes, and architects construct cathedrals of thousands of

stones. He flings you up to infinite heights, where your mind sometimes

fails to bear you up. It is necessary certainly to have a powerful brain if

you are to come back sane and safe to our social notions.

"Swedenborg was especially attached to Baron Seraphitz, whose name,

according to an old Swedish custom, had from time immemorial taken the

Latin suffix _us_. The Baron was the Swedish prophet's most zealous

disciple; the eyes of his inner man had been opened by the Seer, who had

prepared him to live in conformity with commands from on high. He was in

search of a woman with the angelic spirit, and Swedenborg showed her to him

in a vision. His bride was the daughter of a shoemaker in London; in her,

said Swedenborg, the life of heaven shone brightly, and she had gone

through the first tests. After the prophet was translated, the Baron came

to Jarvis to solemnize his heavenly nuptials in the practice of prayer. For

my part, sir, I, who am no seer, could only note the earthly life of the

couple, and it was undoubtedly that of the saints whose virtues are the

glory of the Roman Church. They alleviated the sufferings of the

inhabitants, giving them a portion which does not suffice to live on

without work, but which is then sufficient for their needs; those who lived

with them never saw them moved to anger or impatience; they were invariably

gentle and beneficent, full of amiability, graciousness, and true kindness;

their marriage was the harmony of two souls in constant union. Two

eider-ducks in equal flight, a sound and its echo, the thought and the

word, are but imperfect images of that union. Here they were loved by

everybody with an affection which can only be compared to the love of

plants for the sun.

"The wife was simple in her manners and beautiful to behold; her face was

lovely, and her dignity worthy of the most august personage.

"In 1783, in the twenty-sixth year of her age, this woman bore a child; it

was a time of solemn rejoicing. The husband and wife took leave of the

world, telling me that they had no doubt that they should be transformed

when the child should have shed the garb of flesh, which would need their

care until she should have received strength to live by herself. The child

was born, and was this Seraphita with whom we are just now concerned; for

the nine months before her birth her father and mother lived in greater

retirement than before, uplifting themselves to heaven by prayer. Their

hope was that they might see Swedenborg, and faith procured its fulfilment.

On the day of Seraphita's birth, Swedenborg appeared in Jarvis, and filled

the room where the babe was born with light. His words, it is said, were:

"'The work is accomplished; the heavens rejoice!'

"The servants in the house heard strange sounds of music, brought, they

declared, by the winds from the four points of the compass.

"The spirit of Swedenborg led the father out of the house and out on the

fiord, where it left him. Some men of Jarvis, going up to the Baron, heard

him repeating these soothing words from Scripture--'How beautiful upon the

mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings!'

"I was setting out from the manse to go to the castle, intending to baptize

the child, and carry out the duties enjoined on me by law, when I met the

Baron.

"'Your ministrations are superfluous,' said he; 'our child is to be

nameless on earth. You will not baptize with earthly waters one who has

been bathed in fires from heaven. This child will always be a flower; you

will not see it grow old; you will see it pass away. You have existence, it

has life; you have external senses, it has not; it is wholly inward.' The

words were uttered in a supernatural voice, which impressed me even more

than the brightness of his face, which shed a radiance. His whole

appearance was a realization of the fantastic ideas we form of inspired

men, as we read the prophecies in the Bible. Still, such effects are not

rare in our mountains, where the nitre formed in the permanent snows

produces singular effects on our persons.

"I asked him the cause of his agitation.

"'Swedenborg has appeared; I have just parted from him; I have breathed the

air of heaven,' said he.

"'Under what form did he appear to you?' I asked.

"'Under his mortal aspect, dressed as he was the last time I saw him in

London with Richard Shearsmith, near Coldbath Fields, in July 1771. He had

on his shot velveteen coat with steel buttons, a high waistcoat, a white

cravat, and the same imposing wig, with heavy, powdered curls at the side,

and the hair combed back from the forehead, showing that broad and luminous

brow in harmony with his large, square face, so full of calm power. I

recognized his nose with its open, ardent nostrils; the mouth that always

smiled--an angel's mouth, from which fell these words of promised

happiness, "We meet again, soon!" And I felt the glory of heavenly love.'

"The conviction stamped on the Baron's face prohibited any discussion; I

listened in silence; his voice had an infectious fervor that warmed me to

the core; his enthusiasm stirred my heart, as another man's anger can

thrill one's nerves. I followed him, without speaking, home to his house,

where I saw the nameless child lying mysteriously wrapped on her mother's

bosom. Seraphita heard me come in, and raised her head towards me; her eyes

were not those of an ordinary infant; to express the impression they

produced on me, I can only say they already saw and understood.

"The childhood of this predestined being was marked by some extraordinary

circumstances of climate. For nine years our winters were milder and our

summers longer than usual. This phenomenon gave rise to much discussion

among the learned; but their explanations, which seemed inadequate to the

Doctors of the Academy, made the Baron smile when I repeated them to him.

"Seraphita was never seen perfectly nude, as children are sometimes; she

was never touched by the hand of man or woman; she lay spotless on her

mother's breast, and she never cried. Old David will confirm these facts if

you question him about his mistress, for whom he feels such veneration as

the king whose name he bears had for the Ark of God.

"At the age of nine the child began to be absorbed in prayer. Prayer is her

life; you saw her in our church on Christmas Day, the only day she ever

comes there. She is placed apart from the other worshipers by a

considerable distance. If this space is not left about her, she is ill.

Indeed, she spends most of her time indoors. The details of her life are,

however, unknown; she never shows herself; her faculties, her feelings are

essentially inward; she is commonly in the state of mystical contemplation,

which, as Papist writers tell us, was familiar to the first Christian

recluses, in whom dwelt the tradition of Christ's teaching. Her

understanding, her soul, her body, everything about her, is as virginal as

the snow on our mountains. At ten years old she was what you see her now.

"When she was nine her father and mother died at the same instant without

pain, without any visible malady, after naming the hour at which they

should cease to breathe. She, standing at their feet, looked on them with a

calm eye, displaying neither grief, nor pain, nor joy, nor curiosity; her

father and mother smiled at her.

"When we went in to carry away the two bodies, she said:

"'Take them away!'

"'Seraphita,' said I, for we called her by that name, 'are you not grieved

by your father's and mother's death? They loved you so well.'

"'Dead?' said she. 'No, they are still in me. This is nothing,' she added,

pointing to the bodies they were taking away.

"This was the third time I had seen her since her birth. It is difficult to

see her in church; she stands near the pillar that supports the pulpit, in

such a dark corner that it is hardly possible to discern her features.

"Of all the servants of the house, none were left at the time of that event

but old David, who, though he is eighty-two years old, manages to do all

his mistress' needs. Some of the people of Jarvis have strange tales about

the girl. Their stories having assumed some consistency in a land that is

greatly addicted to mysteries, I set to work to study Jean Wier's 'Treatise

on Sorcery,' and other works on demonology, in which the effects on man of

the supernatural (so-called) are recorded, in search of facts analogous to

what are ascribed to her----"

"Then you do not believe in her?" asked Wilfrid.

"Indeed, yes," said the pastor with simplicity, "in so far that I regard

her as a most fantastic creature, spoilt by her parents, who have turned

her brain by the religious notions I have set forth to you."

Minna shook her head in a gentle expression of negation.

"Poor girl!" the pastor went on, "she has inherited from her parents the

fatal enthusiasm which misleads mystics and makes them more or less crazy.

She fasts in a way that drives poor David to despair. The good old man is

like some frail plant that trembles at a breath of wind and basks in the

smallest gleam of sunshine. His mistress, whose incomprehensible language

he has adopted, is to him the breeze and sunshine; to him her feet are

diamonds, her forehead crowned with stars; she moves environed by a white

and luminous halo; her voice has an accompaniment of music; she has the

gift of becoming invisible. Ask to see her; he will tell you that she is

wandering through astral worlds. It is difficult to believe such fables.

Every such miracle, you know, is more or less like the story of the Golden

Tooth: we have a Golden Tooth at Jarvis, that is all.

"For instance, Duncker, the fisherman, declares that he has seen her

plunging into the fiord and coming to the surface in the form of an

eider-duck, or walking on the waves during a storm. Fergus, who tends the

herds on the _soeter_, says that, in rainy weather, he has seen the sky

always clear over the Swedish castle, and always blue over Seraphita's head

if she goes out. Several women hear the chords of an immense organ when

Seraphita comes to church, and ask their neighbors quite seriously if they

also do not hear it.

"However, my daughter, to whom Seraphita has taken a great fancy these two

years past, has heard no music, and has not perceived the heavenly perfumes

which embalm the air, they say, wherever she goes. Minna has often come

home full of a simple girl's admiration for the beauties of the spring; she

is enraptured by the fragrance of the first tender larch shoots, the

fir-trees, and the flowers they have enjoyed together; but after our long

winter nothing can be more natural than such intense delight. There is

nothing very remarkable in the conversation of that being, is there, my

child?"

"His secrets are not mine," replied Minna. "When I am with him, I know all

things; away from him, I know nothing; with him, I cease to be myself; away

from him, I forget that more perfect life. Seeing him is as a dream, of

which my remembrance depends on his will. I may have heard, when with him,

the music of which Bancker's wife and Erikson's speak, and forget it when

we are apart; I may have perceived those celestial perfumes and have beheld

marvels, and yet know nothing of them here."

"What has most surprised me since I first knew her," said the pastor to

Wilfrid, "is that she should allow you to approach her."

"To approach her!" said the stranger. "She has never allowed me to kiss nor

even to touch her hand. The first time I saw her she abashed me by her

look, and said, 'You are welcome here; you were due to come.' It was as

though she knew me. I trembled.--My fear makes me believe in her."

"And my love," said Minna, without a blush.

"Are you making fun of me?" said the pastor, laughing with good humor;

"you, my child, in calling yourself a Spirit of Love; and you, sir, in

making yourself out to be a Spirit of Wisdom?"

He drank off a glass of beer, and did not observe a singular look which

Wilfrid gave to Minna.

"Jesting apart," Becker went on, "I was greatly amazed to hear that those

two crazy girls had gone to-day for the first time to the top of the

Falberg; but is not that some exaggeration? The girls must have simply

climbed some hill; the summit of the Falberg is inaccessible."

"Father," said Minna, in some agitation, "I must then have been in the

power of the demon; for I climbed the Falberg with him."

"This is a serious matter," said the pastor. "Minna has never told a lie."

"My dear sir," said Wilfrid, "I can assure you, Seraphita exerts the most

extraordinary power over me; I know not what words can give any idea of it.

She has told me things which no one but I could know."

"Somnambulism!" cried the old man. "Various cases of that kind are reported

by Jean Wier as phenomena easy to account for, and known of old in Egypt."

"Lend me the theosophical works of Swedenborg," said Wilfrid. "I long to

plunge into those lakes of light; you have made me thirst for them."

Pastor Becker handed a volume to Wilfrid, who immediately began to read. It

was about nine o'clock in the evening. The maid had just brought in the

supper, and Minna made the tea. The meal ended, all three sat silently

occupied; the pastor read Jean Wier's "Treatise on Demonology;" Wilfrid

lost himself in the study of Swedenborg; Minna sewed and dreamed over her

recollections. It was a thoroughly Norwegian scene, a peaceful, studious

evening, full of thought--a flower under the snow. Wilfrid, as he read the

writings of the prophet, was alive only to his inward senses. Now and again

the pastor, with a half-serious, half-ironical gesture, pointed him out to

Minna, who smiled rather sadly. To Minna, Seraphitus smiled down upon them,

floating above the cloud of tobacco smoke in which they were wrapped.

Midnight struck. Suddenly the outer door was violently pushed open; heavy

but hasty steps, the steps of a terrified old man, were heard in the sort

of small hall between the two doors. Then David burst into the room.

"Violence! Violence!" he cried. "Come! all of you, come! The Satans are

unchained; they wear mitres of flame! Adonis, Vertumnus, the Sirens! They

are tempting her as Jesus was tempted on the mountain. Come and drive them

out."

"Do you recognize the language of Swedenborg, pure and unmixed?" said the

pastor, laughing.

But Wilfrid and Minna were gazing in terror at old David, who, with

streaming hair and wild eyes, his legs trembling, and covered with snow,

stood shaking as if he were buffeted by a stormy wind.

"What has happened?" asked Minna.

"Well, the Satans hope and purpose to conquer her."

The words made Wilfrid's heart beat.

"For nearly five hours she has been standing up with her eyes raised to

heaven, her arms uplifted; she is in torment; she calls upon God. I cannot

cross the line; hell has set Vertumni to guard it. They have raised a

barrier of iron between her and her old David. If she wants me, what can I

do? Help me! Come and pray!"

The poor old man's despair was terrible to behold.

"The glory of God protects her; but if she were to yield to violence?" he

said, with persuasive good faith.

"Silence, David, do not talk so wildly. These are facts to be verified.--We

will go with you," said the pastor, "and you will see that there are

neither Vertumni in the house, nor Satans, nor Sirens."

"Your father is blind," David whispered to Minna.

Wilfrid, on whom his first reading of a treatise by Swedenborg, hasty as it

had been, had produced a powerful effect, was already in the passage

putting on his snow-shoes. Minna was ready in a moment. They rushed off to

the Swedish Castle, leaving the two old men to follow.

"Do you hear that cracking?" said Wilfrid.

"The ice is moving in the fiord," said Minna; "the spring will soon be

here."

Wilfrid said no more. When they were in the courtyard, they both felt that

they had no right, no strength, to enter the house.

"What do you think of her?" asked Wilfrid.

"What a blaze of light!" cried Minna, standing in front of the drawing-room

window. "There he is--great God! and how beautiful! Oh, my Seraphitus, take

me to thee!"

The girl's outcry was inward and inaudible. She saw Seraphitus standing

lightly shrouded in an opal-tinted mist, which was diffused for a short

distance all about the apparently phosphorescent body.

"How lovely she is!" was Wilfrid's mental exclamation.

Pastor Becker now came up with David; he saw his daughter and the stranger

in front of the window, came close to them, looked into the room, and said:

"Well, David, she is saying her prayers."

"But try to go in, sir."

"Why disturb her when she is praying?" replied the pastor.

At this moment a ray of moonlight from beyond the Falberg fell on the

window. They all looked round, startled by this natural phenomenon; but

when they turned again to look at Seraphita, she had vanished.

"That is strange!" said Wilfrid in surprise.

"But I hear exquisite strains," said Minna.

"Well, what next?" said the pastor; "she is going to bed, no doubt."

David had gone in. They walked home in silence; all three interpreted this

vision in a different sense. Pastor Becker felt doubt; Minna felt

adoration; Wilfrid, desire.

* * * * *

Wilfrid was a man of six-and-thirty. Though built on a large scale, he was

not ill-proportioned. He was of a middle height, like most men who are

superior to the common herd; his chest and shoulders were broad, and his

neck was short, as in men whose heart is near their head; he had thick,

fine black hair, and his eyes, of a tawny brown, had a sunny sparkle in

them that showed how eagerly his nature absorbed light. If his strong and

irregular features were lacking in that internal calm which is given by a

life free from storms, they revealed the inexhaustible forces of ardent

senses and instinctive appetites; just as his movements showed the

perfection of physical structure, adaptability of nature, and responsive

action. This man might hold his own with the savage; might hear, as he

does, the footfall of the enemy in the depths of the forest, scent his

trail in the air, and see a friendly signal on the remote horizon. His

sleep was light, like that of creatures alert against surprise. His frame

quickly adapted itself to the climate of any country whither his stormy

life might lead him. Art and Science alike would have admired this

organization as a sort of human model; everything was truly balanced, heart

and movement, intelligence and will.

At first sight he might seem to be classed with those purely instinctive

beings who abandon themselves wholly to material needs; but, early in life,

he had made his way in the social world to which his feelings had committed

him; reading had raised his intelligence, meditation had improved his mind,

science had expanded his understanding. He had studied the laws of

humanity, and the play of interests moved to action by the passions, and he

seemed to have been long familiar with the abstract notions on which

society is founded. He had grown pale over books, which are human actions

in death; he had kept late hours in the midst of festivities in many a

European capital; he had waked up in many strange beds; he had slept

perhaps on a battle-field on the night before the fight, and the night

after a victory; his tempestuous youth might have tossed him on to the deck

of a pirate ship in the most dissimilar quarters of the globe; thus he was

experienced in living human action. So he knew the present and the past;

both chapters of history--that of the elder and that of the present time.

Many men have been, like Wilfrid, equally strong of hand, heart, and brain;

and, like him, they have generally misused this threefold power.

But though this man's outward husk was still akin to the scum of humanity,

he certainly belonged no less to the sphere where force is intelligent.

Notwithstanding the wrappers in which his soul was shrouded, there were in

him those indescribable symptoms visible to the eye of the pure-hearted, of

children whose innocence has never felt the blighting breath of evil

passions, of old men who have triumphed over theirs; and these signs

revealed a Cain to whom hope yet remained, and who seemed to be seeking

absolution at the ends of the earth. Minna suspected the slave of glory in

this man; Seraphita recognized it; both admired and pitied him. Whence had

they this intuition? Nothing can be simpler or, at the same time, more

extraordinary. As soon as man desires to penetrate the secrets of nature,

where there is no real secret, all that is needed is sight; he can see that

the marvelous is the outcome of the simple.

"Seraphitus," said Minna, one evening a few days after Wilfrid's arrival at

Jarvis, "you read this stranger's soul, while I have only a vague

impression of him. He freezes or he warms me; but you seem to know the

reason of this frost and this heat; you can tell me, for you know all about

him."

"Yes, I have seen the causes," said Seraphitus, his heavy eyelids closing

over his eyes.

"By what power?" asked the inquisitive Minna.

"I have the gift of specialism," he replied. "Specialism constitutes a sort

of inward vision which penetrates all things, and you can understand its

processes only by a comparison. In the great cities of Europe, where works

of art are produced by which the human hand endeavors to represent the

effects of moral nature as well as those of physical nature, there are some

sublime geniuses who express their ideas in marble. The sculptor works on

the marble; he shapes it, and puts into it a world of thought. There are

such marbles to which the hand of man has given the power of representing a

wholly sublime or a wholly evil aspect of humanity; most beholders see in

these a human figure and nothing more; others, a little higher in the scale

of human beings, discern some part of the thoughts rendered by the

sculptor, and admire the form; but those who are initiated into the secrets

of Art are in sympathy with the sculptor; when they see his work they

recognize in it the whole world of his thoughts. These are the princes of

Art; they bear in themselves a mirror in which nature is reflected with all

its most trifling details.

"Well, in me there is a mirror in which moral nature is reflected with all

its causes and effects. I can read the past and the future by thus looking

into the conscience. You still ask me how? Suppose the marble to be a man's

body, and the sculptor to be feeling passion, vice, or crime, virtue,

error, or repentance; then you will understand how I could read the

stranger's soul, though you will not understand specialism; to imagine what

that gift is you must possess it."

Though Wilfrid was akin to both the primitive and widely different types of

men--men of might and men of mind--his excesses, his stormy life, and his

sins had often shown him the way of faith; for doubt has two sides--the

side of light and the side of darkness. Wilfrid had too thoroughly squeezed

the world in both its aspects--matter and spirit--not to have felt the

thirst of the unknown, the longing for the Beyond which comes to most men

who have knowledge, power, and will. But neither his knowledge, nor his

actions, nor his will had due guidance. He had escaped from social life

from necessity, as a criminal flies to the cloister. Remorse, the virtue of

the weak, could not touch him. Remorse is impotence; it will sin again.

Only repentance is strong; it can end everything. But Wilfrid, in traveling

through the world, which he had made his sanctuary, nowhere found balm for

his wounds; nowhere had he found a nature to which he could attach himself.

Despair had dried up in him the well-spring of desire. His was one of those

spirits which, having come to a conflict with passion, have proved

themselves the stronger, and so have nothing left to clutch in their

talons; spirits which, the opportunity failing them for putting themselves

at the head of their peers to trample a whole people under their horse's

hoofs, would pay the price of a dreadful martyrdom for the gift of a faith

to be wrecked upon; like lofty rocks waiting for the touch of a staff which

never comes, to enable them to shed springs of running water.

Tossed among the snows of Norway by one of the purposes of his restless and

inquiring life, the winter had taken him by surprise at Jarvis. On the day

when he first saw Seraphita, the meeting wiped out all memories of his past

life. This girl gave him such intense agitation as he had fancied was dead

for ever. The ashes burst into flame again, and were blown away by the

first breath of that voice. Who has known what it is to become young and

pure again after growing cold with age and foul with impurities? Wilfrid

loved suddenly, as he had never loved; he loved in secret, with faith and

awe and hidden frenzies. His life was disturbed to its very source at the

mere thought of seeing Seraphita. When he heard her speak, he was borne

away to unknown worlds; he was dumb in her presence--she bewitched him.

Here, under the snows, amid the ice-fields, this heavenly flower had

blossomed on the stem--the flower to which his hopes went up, till now

deceived, whose mere presence gave rise to the new aspirations, the ideas,

the feelings, that crowd around us to lift us up to higher realms, as

angels transport the elect to heaven in the symbolical pictures suggested

to painters by some familiar spirit. Celestial odors softened the granite

of this rock, light endowed with language poured forth the divine melodies

which escort the pilgrim on his way to heaven. Having drained the cup of

earthly love and crushed it with his teeth, he now saw the cup of election,

sparkling with limpid waters, the chalice that gives a thirst for unfading

joys to all who approach it with lips of faith so ardent that the crystal

does not break at their touch. He had met with the walls of brass he had

been seeking throughout the world that he might climb them.

He flew to Seraphita, intending to express to her the vehemence of a

passion under which he was plunging, like the horse in the story under the

bronze rider whom nothing can move, who sits firm, and whose weight grows

greater as the fiery steed tries to throw him. He went to tell her his

life, to display the greatness of his soul by the greatness of his sins, to

show her the ruins in his desert. But as soon as he had entered the

precincts, and found himself in the vast domain surveyed by those eyes

whose heavenly blue knew no limits in the present or in the past, he became

as calm and submissive as a lion when, rushing on his prey in the African

plain, he scents a love message on the wings of the breeze, and stands

still. A gulf opened before him in which the words of his delirium were

lost, and whence a voice came up that transformed him: he was a boy again,

a boy of sixteen, shy and bashful before this maiden of the tranquil brow,

this white creature whose immovable calm was like the stern impassibility

of human justice. And the struggle had never ceased till this evening when,

with a single look, she had at length stricken him down like a hawk, which,

after describing bewildering spirals round its prey, makes it drop stunned

before carrying it off to its eyrie.

We have long struggles with ourself, of which the outcome is one of our

actions; they are, as it were, the inner side of human nature. This inner

side is God's; the outer side belongs to men.

More than once had Seraphita chosen to show Wilfrid that she knew that

motley inner part which forms the second life of most men. She had often

said to him, in her dove-like tone, when Wilfrid had vowed on the way up

that he would carry her off to be his own possession, "Why so much

vehemence?" Wilfrid, when alone, was strong enough to utter the cry of

rebellion he had given vent to at Pastor Becker's, to be soothed by the old

man's narrative. This man--a mocker, a scorner--at last saw the light of a

starlike belief rising in his darkness; he wondered whether Seraphita were

not an exile from the upper spheres on her homeward road. He did not offer

this Norwegian lily the homage of such idealization as lovers of every land

are apt to squander; he really believed in her divinity.

Why was she buried in the depths of this fiord? What was she doing there?

Unanswerable questions crowded on his mind. What could happen between him

and her? What fate had led him hither?

To him Seraphita was the motionless statue, as light as a shade, that Minna

had just seen standing on the brink of the abyss. Seraphita could thus

confront every abyss, and nothing could hurt her; the line of her brow

would be unmoved, the light in her eye would never tremble. His love, then,

was without hope, but not without curiosity.

From the first moment when Wilfrid suspected the ethereal nature in this

sorceress, who had told him the secret of his life in harmonious dreams, he

resolved to try to subjugate her, to keep her, to steal her from heaven,

where perhaps they awaited her. He would be the representative of humanity,

of this earth, recapturing their prey. His pride, the only sentiment which

can uplift a man for any length of time, would make him rejoice in that

triumph for the rest of his life. At the mere thought his blood boiled in

his veins, his heart swelled. If he could not succeed, he would crush her.

It is so natural to destroy what you cannot get possession of, to deny what

you do not understand, to insult what you covet.

Next day Wilfrid, full of the ideas to which the extraordinary spectacle he

had witnessed had naturally given rise, wanted to cross-question David, and

came to see him, making a pretext of his wish for news of Seraphita. Though

Pastor Becker thought the poor old man was childish, the stranger trusted

to his own perspicacity to guide him in discovering the grains of truth the

old serving-man might drop in the torrent of his wandering talk.

David had the rigid but undecided expression of a man of eighty; under his

white hair his brow showed deep wrinkles, forming broken stratifications,

and his whole face was furrowed like the dry bed of a torrent. All his

vitality seemed to be concentrated in his eyes, where a spark still

gleamed; but that light even was hidden behind clouds, and might be either

the fitful activity of a feeble mind, or the stupid glare of intoxication.

His slow, heavy movements betrayed the chill of old age, and seemed to

communicate it to any one who gazed at him for long, for he had the

strength of inertia. His narrow intelligence awoke only at the sound of his

mistress' voice, at the sight or the thought of her. She was the soul of

this merely material wreck. When David was alone you would have thought him

a corpse; if Seraphita appeared, or spoke, or was spoken of, the dead rose

from the grave and recovered motion and speech.

Never were the dry bones that the breath of God shall revive in the valley

of Jehoshaphat--never was that Apocalyptic parable more vividly realized

than in this Lazarus perennially called forth from the sepulchre by the

voice of this young girl. His mode of speech, always highly figurative, and

often incomprehensible, kept the villagers from talking to him; but they

greatly respected a mind so far removed from the vulgar routine; it

commands the instinctive reverence of common folk.

Wilfrid found David in the outer room apparently asleep, close to the

stove. Like a dog recognizing a friend's approach, the old man opened his

eyes, saw the stranger, and did not stir.

"Well, where is she?" asked Wilfrid, sitting down by the old man.

David fluttered his fingers in the air to represent the flight of a bird.

"She is not still in pain?" asked Wilfrid.

"None but those beings who are plighted to heaven can suffer without any

diminution of their love; that is the seal of true faith," said the old man

gravely, like an instrument responding to a chance touch.

"Who tells you to say that?"

"The spirit."

"What happened, after all, last evening? Did you force your way past the

Vertumni on guard? Did you steal in between the Mammons?"

"Yes," replied David, waking as if from a dream.

The mist before his eye cleared off under a flash that came from within,

and which made it grow gradually as bright as an eagle's, as intelligent as

a poet's.

"What then did you see?" asked Wilfrid, amazed at this sudden change.

"I saw Species and Shapes, I heard the Spirit of All Things; I saw the

Rebellion of the Wicked, I listened to the words of the Good. Seven devils

appeared, seven archangels came down to them. The archangels stood afar,

they were veiled, and looked on. The devils were close at hand, they

glittered and moved. Mammon was there in a shell of pearl, in the guise of

a beautiful naked woman; his body was as dazzling as the snow, no human

form can be so perfect; and he said, 'I am all pleasure, and thou shalt

possess me!'--Lucifer, the Prince of Serpents, came in his royal attire; he

was as a man, as beautiful as an angel, and he said, 'The human race shall

serve thee!'--The Queen of the Covetous, she who never restores that which

she has taken--the Sea herself appeared in her mantle of green; she opened

her bosom and showed her store of gems, she vomited treasures and offered

them as a gift; she tossed up waves of sapphire and emerald; her creatures

were disturbed, they came forth from their hiding-places and spoke; the

fairest of the pearls spread butterflies' wings, she listened, and spoke in

sea-melodies, saying, 'We are both daughters of suffering, we are sisters;

wait for me; we will fly together; I have only to be changed into a woman.'

The bird that has the talons of an eagle and the legs of a lion, the head

of a woman and a horse's quarters--the Animal--crouched before her and

licked her feet, and promised seven hundred years of plenty to this

well-beloved daughter.

"The most formidable of all, the Child, came to her very knee, weeping, and

saying, 'Can you forsake me, so feeble and helpless? Mother, stay with me!'

He played with the others, he shed idleness in the air; heaven itself might

have yielded to his lament. The Virgin of pure song brought music that

debauches the soul. The Kings of the East passed by with their slaves,

their armies, and their women; the Wounded clamored for help, the Wretched

held out their hands: 'Do not leave us, do not leave us!' was their cry.

"I too cried, 'Do not leave us; we will worship you--only stay!'

"Flowers burst from their seeds, and wrapped her in perfume, which said,

'Stay!' The Giant Anakim came down from Jupiter, bringing Gold and his

comrades, and all the Spirits of the astral worlds who had followed him,

and they all said, 'We will be thine for seven hundred years.' At last

Death got off his pale horse and said, 'I will obey thee!' And they all

fell on their faces at her feet; if you could but have seen them! They

filled a vast plain, and all cried to her, 'We have fed thee; thou art our

child; do not forsake us!'

"Life came up from the red waters and said, 'I will not desert thee!' Then,

finding Seraphita speechless, she suddenly blazed like the sun, and

exclaimed, 'I am the Light!'--'The light is there!' replied Seraphita,

pointing to clouds where the archangels were astir. But she was worn out;

Desire had broken her on the rack; she could only cry aloud, 'My God!'

"How many Angelic Spirits who have climbed the hill, and are on the point

of reaching the summit, have stumbled on a stone that has made them fall

and roll back into the depths!--All these fallen Spirits marveled at her

constancy; they stood there a motionless chorus, weeping, and saying,

'Courage!' At last she had triumphed over Desire, unchained to rend her in

every Shape and Species. She remained praying; and when she raised her

eyes, she saw the feet of the angels flying back to heaven."

"She saw the feet of the angels?" repeated Wilfrid.

"Yes," said the old man.

"This was a dream that she told you?" asked Wilfrid.

"A dream as real as that you are alive," replied David. "I was there."

The old servant's calm conviction struck Wilfrid, who went away, wondering

whether these visions were at all less extraordinary than those of which

Swedenborg wrote, and of which he had read the evening before.

"If spirits exist, they must surely act," said he to himself as he went

into the manse, where he found the pastor alone.

"My dear pastor," said he, "Seraphita is human only in form, and her form

is unaccountable. Do not regard me as mad or in love: conviction cannot be

argued away. Convert my belief into a scientific hypothesis, and let us try

to understand all this. To-morrow we will go to see her together."

"And then?" said the minister.

"If her eye knows no limitation of space, if her thought is the sight of

the intellect, allowing her to apprehend the essence of things and to

connect them with the general evolution of the universe; if, in a word, she

knows and sees everything, let us get the Pythoness onto her tripod, and

compel the eagle to spread its wings, by threats. Help me! I breathe a

consuming fire; I must extinguish it, or be devoured by it. In short, I see

my prey; I will have it."

"It will be a conquest difficult of achievement," said the minister, "for

the poor girl is----"

"Is?"----said Wilfrid.

"Mad," said the pastor.

"I will not dispute her madness," said Wilfrid, "so long as you do not

dispute her superiority. Dear Pastor Becker, she has often put me to the

blush by her learning. Has she traveled much?"

"From her house to the fiord."

"She has never been away!" cried Wilfrid. "Then she must have read a great

deal?"

"Not a page, not a jot. I am the only person in Jarvis who has any books.

Swedenborg's writings, the only works in the hamlet, are here; she has

never borrowed a single volume."

"Have you ever tried to converse with her?"

"Of what use would it be?"

"No one has dwelt under her roof?"

"She has no friends but you and Minna; no servant but old David."

"And she has never learned anything of Science or Art?"

"From whom?" said the pastor.

"Then, when she discusses such matters very pertinently, as she has often

done with me, what would you infer?"

"That the girl may, perhaps, during all these years of silence, have

acquired such faculties as were possessed by Apollonius of Tyana, and by

certain so-called wizards, who were burned by the Inquisition, which

rejected the idea of second sight."

"When she talks Arabic, what can you say?"

"The history of medicine contains many accredited instances of women who

spoke languages they did not understand."

"What can I do?" said Wilfrid. "She knows things concerning my past life of

which the secret lay in me."

"We will see if she can tell me any thoughts that I have never spoken to

any one," said Pastor Becker.

Minna came into the room.

"Well, my child, and how is your Spirit-friend?"

"He is suffering, father," said she, bowing to Wilfrid. "The passions of

humanity, tricked out in their false splendor, tortured him in the night,

and spread incredible pomp before his eyes.--But you treat all these things

as mere fables."

"Fables as delightful to him who reads them in his brain as those of the

_Arabian Nights_ are to ordinary minds," said her father, smiling.

"Then, did not Satan," she retorted, "transport the Saviour to the summit

of the Temple and show Him the kingdoms at His feet?"

"The Evangelists," replied Becker, "did not so effectually correct their

text but that several versions exist."

"You, then, believe in the reality of these apparitions?" Wilfrid asked of

Minna.

"Who can doubt that hears him tell of them?"

"Him?--Who?" asked Wilfrid.

"He who dwells there," said Minna, pointing to the castle.

"You speak of Seraphita?" said Wilfrid, surprised.

The girl hung her head, with a gentle but mischievous glance at him.

"Yes, you too take pleasure in confusing my mind.--Who is she? What is your

idea of her?"

"What I feel is inexplicable," said Minna, coloring.

"You are both mad!" said the pastor.

"Then we meet to-morrow," said Wilfrid, as he left.

IV

THE CLOUDS OF THE SANCTUARY

There are spectacles to which all the material magnificence at man's

command is made to contribute. Whole tribes of slaves or divers go forth to

seek in the sands of the sea, in the bowels of the rocks, the pearls and

diamonds that adorn the spectators. These treasures, handed down from heir

to heir, have blazed on crowned heads, and might be the most veracious

historians of humanity if they could but speak. Have they not seen the joys

and woes of the greatest as well as of the humblest? They have been

everywhere--worn with pride at high festivals; carried in despair to the

money-lender; stolen amid blood and pillage; treasured in miracles of

artistic workmanship contrived for their safe keeping. Excepting

Cleopatra's pearl, not one has perished.

The great and the rich are assembled to see a king crowned--a monarch whose

raiment is the work of men's hands, but who, in all his glory, is arrayed

in purple less exquisite than that of a humble flower. These festivities,

blazing with light, bathed in music through which the words of men strive

to be heard in thunder,--all these works of man can be crushed by a

thought, a feeling. The mind of man can bring to his ken light more

glorious, can make him hear more tuneful harmonies, show him among clouds

the glittering constellations he may question; and the heart can do yet

more! Man may stand face to face with a single being and find in a single

word, a single look, a burden so heavy to be borne, a light so intense, a

sound so piercing, that he can but yield and kneel. The truest splendors

are not in outward things, but in ourselves.

To a learned man, is not some secret of science a whole new world of

wonders? But do the clarions of force, the gems of wealth, the music of

triumph, the concourse of the crowd, do honor to his joy? No. He goes off

to some remote nook, where a man, often pale and feeble, whispers a single

word in his ear. That word, like a torch in an underground passage, lights

up the whole of science.

Every human conception, arrayed in the most attractive forms that mystery

can invent, once gathered round a blind man sitting in the mud by a

roadside. The three worlds--the Natural, Spiritual, and Divine--were

revealed to an unhappy Florentine exile; as he went he was escorted by the

happy and by the suffering, by those who prayed and those who cursed, by

angels and by the damned. When He who came from God, who knew and could do

all things, appeared to three of His disciples, it was one evening at the

common table of a poor little inn; there and then the Light broke forth,

bursting material husks, and showing its spiritual power. They saw Him in

His glory, and the earth clung to their feet no more than as the sandals

they could slip off them.

The pastor, Wilfrid, and Minna were all three excited to alarm at going to

the house of the extraordinary being they proposed to question. To each of

them the Swedish castle was magnified into the scene of a stupendous

spectacle, like those of which the composition and color are so skilfully

arranged by poets, where the actors, though imaginary to men, are real to

those who are beginning to enter into the spiritual world. On the seats of

that amphitheatre the pastor beheld arrayed the dark legions of doubt, his

gloomy ideas, his vicious syllogisms in argument; he called up the various

philosophical and religious sects, ever contentious, and all embodied in

the shape of a fleshless system, as lean as the figure of Time as imagined

by man--the old mower who with one hand raises the scythe, and in the other

carries a meagre world, the world of human life.

Wilfrid saw there his first illusions and his last hopes; he imagined human

destiny incarnate there and all its struggles; religion and its triumphant

hierarchies.

Minna vaguely found heaven there, seen through a vista; love held up a

curtain embroidered with mystical figures, and the harmonious sounds that

fell on her ears increased her curiosity. Hence this evening was to them

what the supper at Emmaus was to the three travelers, what a vision was to

Dante, what an inspiration was to Homer; to them, too, the three aspects of

the world were to be revealed, veils rent, doubts dispelled, darkness

lightened. Human nature in all its phases, and awaiting illumination, could

find no better representatives than this young girl, this man, and these

two elders, one of them learned enough to be sceptical, the other ignorant

enough to believe. No scene could be simpler in appearance or more

stupendous in fact.

On entering, shown in by old David, they found Seraphita standing by the

table, on which were spread the various items constituting a Tea, a meal

which takes the place in the north of the pleasures of wine-drinking,

reserved for southern lands. Nothing certainly betrayed in her--or in

him--a wondrous being who had the power of appearing under two distinct

forms, nothing that showed the various forces she could command. With a

homely desire to make her three guests comfortable, Seraphita bid David to

feed the stove with wood.

"Good-evening, neighbors," said she. "Dear Pastor Becker, you did well to

come; you see me alive, perhaps, for the last time. This winter has killed

me.--Be seated, pray," she added to Wilfrid.--"And you, Minna, sit there,"

and she pointed to an armchair near the young man. "You have brought your

work, I see. Did you find out the stitch? The pattern is very pretty. For

whom is it to be? For your father or for this gentleman?" and she turned to

Wilfrid. "We must not allow him to leave without some remembrance of the

damsels of Norway."

"Then you were in pain again yesterday?" asked Wilfrid.

"That is nothing," she replied. "Such pain makes me glad; it is

indispensable to escape from life."

"Then you are not afraid of dying?" said the minister, smiling, for he did

not believe in her illness.

"No, dear pastor; there are two ways of dying--to some death means victory,

to some it is defeat."

"And you think you have won?" said Minna.

"I do not know," said she. "Perhaps it is only a step more."

The milky radiance of her brow seemed to fade, her eyes fell under her

lids, which slowly closed. This simple circumstance distressed the three

inquirers, who sat quite still. The pastor was the boldest.

"My dear girl," said he, "you are candor itself; you are also divinely

kind. I want more of you this evening than the dainties of your tea-table.

If we may believe what some people say, you know some most wonderful

things; and if so, would it not be an act of charity to clear up some of

our doubts?"

"Oh yes!" said Seraphita, with a smile. "They say that I walk on the

clouds; I am on familiar terms with the eddies in the fiord; the sea is a

horse I have saddled and bridled; I know where the singing flower grows,

where the talking light shines, where living colors blaze that scent the

air; I have Solomon's ring; I am a fairy; I give my orders to the wind, and

it obeys me like a submissive slave; I can see the treasures in the mine; I

am the virgin whom pearls rush to meet, and----"

"And we walk unharmed on the Falberg," Minna put in.

"What, you too?" replied the Being with a luminous glance at the girl,

which quite upset her. "If I had not the power of reading through your

brows the wish that has brought you here, should I be what you think I

am?" she went on, including them all in her captivating gaze, to David's

great satisfaction, and he went off rubbing his hands.--"Yes," she went on

after a pause, "you all came overflowing with childish curiosity. You, my

dear pastor, wondered whether it were possible that a girl of seventeen

should know even one of the thousand secrets which learned men seek

diligently with their noses to the ground instead of with their eyes raised

to heaven! Now, if I were to show you how and where plant life and animal

life mingle, you would begin to doubt your doubts.--You plotted to

cross-question me, confess?"

"Yes, beloved Seraphita," said Wilfrid. "But is not such a desire natural

to man?"

"And do you want to worry this child?" she said, laying her hand on Minna's

hair with a caressing gesture.

The girl looked up, and seemed to long to be merged in the Being before

her.

"The word is given for all," the mysterious Being went on very gravely.

"Woe to him who should keep silence even in the midst of the desert,

thinking that none would hear. Everything speaks, everything hears here

below. The word moves worlds.--I hope, Pastor Becker, not to speak in vain.

I know what difficulties trouble you most: would it not be a miracle if I

could at once apprehend all the past experiences of your conscience? Well,

that miracle will be accomplished.--Listen to me: you have never confessed

your doubts in their full extent; I alone, immovable in my faith, can set

them before you, and frighten you at your own image. You are on the darkest

declivity of doubt. You do not believe in God, and everything on earth is

of secondary importance to the man who attacks the first cause of

everything.

"Let us set aside the discussions thrashed out without result by false

philosophers. Generations of Spiritualists have made no less vain efforts

to disprove the existence of matter than generations of Materialists have

made to disprove the existence of the Spirit. Why these contests? Does not

man, as he is, afford undeniable proofs of both? Is he not an union of

matter and spirit? Only a madman can refuse to find an atom of matter in

the human frame; when it is decomposed, natural science finds no difference

between its elements and those of other animals. The idea which is produced

in man by the power of comparing several different objects, on the other

hand, does not seem to come within the domain of matter. On this I give no

opinion; we have to deal with your doubts, not with my convictions.

"But to you, as to most thoughtful men, the relations which you have the

faculty of discerning between things, of which the real existence is made

certain to you through your senses, do not, I suppose, seem _material_. The

natural Universe, then, of things and beings meets in man with the

supernatural Universe of likeness or difference which he can discern

between the innumerable forms in nature--relations so various that they

seem to be infinite; for if, till the present day, no one has been able to

enumerate the created things of this earth only, what man can ever

enumerate their relations to each other? Is not the small fraction with

which you are familiar, in regard to the grand total, as an unit to the

infinite?

"Hence here you find yourself already made aware of the existence of the

infinite, and this necessarily leads you to conceive of a purely spiritual

sphere. Hence, too, man is in himself sufficient evidence of these two

modes of life: Matter and Spirit. In him ends a finite, visible universe;

in him begins an infinite and invisible universe--two worlds that do not

know each other. Have the pebbles of the fiord any cognizance of their

relative shapes, are they conscious of the colors seen in them by the eye

of man, do they hear the music of the ripples that dance over them? Let us

then leap the gulf we cannot fathom, the unthinkable union of a material

with a spiritual universe, the concept of a visible, ponderable, tangible

creation, conterminous with an invisible, imponderable, intangible

creation; absolutely dissimilar, separated by a void, united by

indisputable points of contact, and meeting in a being who belongs to both!

Let us, I say, mingle in one world these two worlds, which, in your

philosophy, can never coalesce, and which, in fact, do coalesce.

"However abstract man may call it, the relation which binds two things

together must stamp its mark. Where? On what? We have not now to inquire to

what degree of rarity matter may be reduced. If that were indeed the

question, I do not see why He who has linked the stars together at

immeasurable distances by physical laws, to veil His face withal, should

not have created substances that could think, nor why you will not allow

that He should have given thought a body.

"To you, then, your invisible, moral, or mental universe, and your visible,

physical universe, constitute one and the same matter. We will not divide

bodies from their properties, nor objects from their relations. Everything

that exists, that weighs upon and overwhelms us from above and beneath us,

before us or within us; all that our eyes or our minds apprehend, all that

is named or nameless, must, to reduce the problem of Creation to the

standard of your logic, be a finite mass of matter; if it were infinite,

God could not be its master. Thus, according to you, dear pastor, by

whatever scheme you propose to introduce God, who is infinite, into this

finite mass of matter, God could no longer exist with such attributes as

are ascribed to Him by man. If we seek Him through facts, He is not; if we

seek Him through reason, still He is not; both spiritually and materially

God is impossible. Let us hearken to the word of human reason driven to its

utmost consequences.

"If we now conceive of God face to face with, this stupendous whole, we

find only two conditions of relationship possible: Either God and Matter

were contemporaneous, or God was alone and pre-existent. If all the wisdom

that has enlightened the human race from the first day of its existence

could be collected in one vast brain, that monstrous brain could invent no

third mode of being, short of denying both God and Matter. Human

philosophers may pile up mountains of words and ideas. Religions may

accumulate emblems and beliefs, revelations and mysteries, still we are

forced on to this terrible dilemma, and must choose one of the two

propositions it offers. However, you have not much choice, for each leads

the human mind to scepticism.