Visitors of the New Church Theological school in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He is president of the York, Maine, Historical society; corresponding member of the Maine Historical Society; member of the Washington Society of Philosophical Inquiry; of the American Philosophical Association and of the Cosmos club, Washington, District of Columbia. He is also a member of the Phi Beta Kappa and of the Alpha Delta Phi college fraternities; he is president of the New Church Evidence Society, and of the Swedenborg Scientific Association. In politics, he is a Democrat and has never changed his allegiance.
The special lines of reading most helpful to him have been the scientific, philosophical and theological works of Swedenborg, Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Taine, Symonds, Goethe and Janet. His relaxation has been music, sketching and country walks. For physical culture, he practises Sandow's home exercises. His own personal preference led him into his profession, and he says in regard to the impulse which first guided him in this direction, "In Rome on the Pincian Hill in the winter of 1858-59, I was moved to devote myself to the ministry of the New Church, and to write to Doctor Immanuel Tafel, the Swedenborgian scholar and editor, at that time librarian of the University at Tubingen, Germany, with reference to my coming to enter as a student at the university. Born and baptized in infancy in the New Church, my religious education inclined me to the church, and my philosophical studies in Germany led me to the broader view of the theology of the New Church in its universal relations." He thinks young Americans will be strengthened by the " possession of a strong and rationally entertained Christian faith, the regular observance of religious obligations, the assertion of principle before expediency, and the making of conscience the guide in civil as well as in individual life."
Doctor Sewall has published many volumes, among them are "The Christian Hymnal" (1867); "The Pillow of Stones" (1876); "The New Metaphysics" (1888); "The Ethics of Service" (1889); "Dante and Swedenborg and other Essays in the New Renaissance" (1893); "The Angel of the State" (1896); "Swedenborg and Modern Idealism" (1902). He has translated from the Latin: Swedenborg's "The Soul, or Rational Psychology" (1886); from the Italian: "The Poems of Giosue Carducci" (1892), and from the French: "The Trophies," Sonnets of J. M. de Heredia (1900).
