applicable to the writings or of the character of this illustrious person. As to his being a visionary, we are not aware that there is anything very odious in the circumstance of seeing a vision. When it was enjoyed by holy men in ancient days, it was regarded as a privilege; and we do not see why it should be considered as a disadvantage in modern times. When the Lord predicted that "young men shall see visions,"[1] he surely did not intend that its fulfilment should be understood as a discreditable circumstance: on the contrary, he must have designed it for the information and benefit of mankind. If Swedenborg has seen and heard things in the spiritual world, it must have been a privilege granted him by the Lord with a similar design: We have already, we think, placed the truth of this statement on probability; before we close we expect to fix it upon a certainty.
But being driven from the objections referred to, it may be said that he should have attested his commission by the performance of miracles. In such a requisition we are presented with another evidence of the sensual condition into which the human mind has fallen. The Lord said that it is "an evil and adulterous generation that seeketh after a sign."[2] He also declared that if men "hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rose from the dead."[3] These statements assure us that miracles are not the proper evidences of truth, and also that they are not adapted to produce that reasonable conviction concerning it, which is to accompany the genuine faith of an enlightened Christian. To suppose that they were ever performed with such a view is a mistake; for the Lord predicted that "false christs and false prophets should rise, and shew signs and wonders, to seduce, if it were possible, the very elect."[4] Whence we learn, that if we regarded them to be admissible evidence upon the matter in question, there would exist the utmost difficulty in distinguishing the spurious from the genuine. Then if Swedenborg had performed any miracles, in the popular acceptation of the term, there would have been some ground for hesitating to acknowledge the truth of his pretensions;[5] and we suspect that that class of persons, who
- ↑ Joel ii. 28.
- ↑ Matthew xii. 39.
- ↑ Luke xvi. 31.
- ↑ Mark xiii. 22.
- ↑ If miracles be insisted on as necessary evidence in this case, and defined to be events deviating from the ordinary course of nature, may
